{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2050",
    "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": 2050,
    "subject": "PW's review of STRANGE TRAVELERS",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-12-21T15:38:19+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-21T15:38:19+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0652@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Patri10629",
        "address": "patri10629 at aol.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-21T15:38:19+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PW's review of STRANGE TRAVELERS",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In a message dated 12/20/99 10:31:35 PM, Publisher's Weekly is quoted:\n\n<<... there are also several tasteless and misogynistic entries. Chief among \nthem is \"The Ziggurat,\" in which a mother coaches her daughters in the art of \nfalse accusation and the father--whose wife leaves him broke--eventually \nregains all by finding a woman he can dominate and a technology he can steal. \nAll too frequently in this volume, even when women show men 'the pleasures of \nHell,\" biting them till they bleed, men emerge loutish and triumphant. >>\n\nPW was right to characterize the collection as disturbing. It certainly is.\n\nI read an advance copy and blurbed it thusly: \"Strange Travelers reads like \nan artifact of magic--something hidden, stumbled upon, irresistible and \ndangerous. A book of nightmares too beautiful to be true, too real to be \ndenied, too vivid to be forgotten. Why doesn't everyone know Gene Wolfe is \nthe best writer alive?\"\n\nSo. You see.\n\nI am flabbergasted by their take on \"The Ziggurat\" which I believe is a \nclassic story. One of the most beautiful and moving short stories I have ever \nread.\nIn its defense I'll say: A portrait of a hateful character (the wife) is not \nthe same thing as a polemic about misogyny. The husband, while sympathetic, \nis no perfect hero and not just a woman hater. One would have to ignore his \nrelationships to his daughters to come to that conclusion.  And PW's \ninterpretation of the ending leaves out levels of ambiguity that are critical \nto the story. This female alien (which he \"adopts\") is one of a group that \nkilled his son and pet coyote and kidnapped his daughter and tried to kill \nhim. Is it not some great leap of empathy, some form of redemption that the \nman binds her wound, attempts to heal her, protect her, and make a place in \nhis life for her? Why no mention of the implication that the alien may be \nmanipulating him? Why no mention of the alien humming \"God Save The Queen\"? \nThe irony, and humor, and implications of that? Why not say it is a first \nstumbling attempt between two hostile alien species (Male and female?) at \nsome imperfect form of reconciliation and empathy? Yes, this \"female\" is \ntotally dependent on him, and he feels comfortable in the old-fashioned male \nas protector role. Yes, that is pathetic. But it is one of many things \nswirling around in the ending. Wolfe is never just anything.  And it seems to \nme to be myopic in the extreme to brand this magnificent story as \n\"misogynistic.\"\n\nYes, there are other unsympathetic portraits of women and men throughout the \nvolume. This does not lead me to conclude that Wolfe hates humanity.\n\nPatrick O'Leary"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}