{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1885",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1885,
    "subject": "Agonizing over Wolfe's place in literary history",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-28T22:02:00+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-28T22:02:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0315@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Rabin",
        "address": "danrabin at a.crl.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-28T22:02:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Agonizing over Wolfe's place in literary history",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[It's not that I'm not enjoying the modernism thread, but that I can't\ncontribute much, being the Modernism-101-only-plus-Pynchon sort myself.]\n\nI think we're agonizing a lot over a non-problem.  Several of us have\ntestified to hooking other people on Wolfe's work.  Some of the hookees\nwill hook others in turn.  Some of their kids will discover their parents'\ncopies of the books on some low-lying shelf before they pass the age at\nwhich _The Book of Gold_ may be found.  No one I know who is impressed with\nWolfe feels much restraint against proclaiming their admiration for the\nman's work.  These are pretty good conditions for preservation.\n\nA lot of the angst seems to stem from pessimism that Wolfe's work will be\n_canonized_, a different matter from whether he will be _read_.  Wolfe will\nbe read, because he writes treasures.\n\nAs for the question of what the critical consensus will be, who cares?\nToday's critical consensus (for literature as a whole, not for the genre)\nexcludes Tolkien and is hence mistaken.  You ignore my _Book of Gold_, I\nignore your criticism.  Seems fair to me.\n\n  -- Dan Rabin"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}