{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2022",
    "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": 2022,
    "subject": "Tracking Song haunts me",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-12-12T03:36:12+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-12T03:36:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0608@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Clifford Drane",
        "address": "dranec at hotmail.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-12T03:36:12+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song haunts me",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I keep thinking about the story \"The Tracking Song\", enough to search the \nUrth lists for insight. This seems to be one of the most obscure Wolfe tales \n- I have an idea that doesn't exactly explain many details, but might be a \nstart of another way of thinking about the story. I tend to shoot from the \nhip, get excited about a theory (see my infrequent posting) to then see it \nshot down. I submit myself to the firing squad once again. :)\n\nI think The Tracking Song could be a story about the origins of an aborigine \nmyth, not told in the way an elder tells a youngster a story to explain \nCreation or somesuch belief. But told as if the myth truly happened, from \nthe first person WITHOUT completely reducing the magic to science (that's \nthe key). I recall Mailer's Ancient Evenings, and the very detailed \nretelling of the main story behind the Egyptian mythos - how details were \ntold without destroying or explaining away the magic. Also, if any of you \nsaw the animated version of Watership Down - the brilliant prelude which \ntails the tail of Creation from the standpoint of rabbits (ok, so who got \nthat pun?). The \"realities\" in each of those stories were interwoven with \nthe myth - and I think we're encountering Gene's version of this with the \ntypical omitted-detail-method-of-telling-a-story-by-not-telling-a-story that \nis his calling card.\n\nI think Tracking Song could be taking us inside a world that still lives in \nthe mythological. I also think trying to find an American Indian (or other \nculture) parallel myth is a red herring.\n\nBlindfold, please. :)\n\nCCD"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}