{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2129",
    "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": 2129,
    "subject": "Posthumous",
    "messages": 3,
    "voices": 3,
    "first": "2000-02-10T15:26:50+00:00",
    "last": "2000-02-11T13:18:13+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0797@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Christy",
        "address": "cglst7+ at pitt.edu"
      },
      "date": "2000-02-10T15:26:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Posthumous",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I haven't read *Strange Travelers* yet (it is en route from Amazon), but I\ncan say that the jag on living on after death is Swedenborgian. No doubt\nat the behest of Jorge Luis Borges, we can assume that Wolfe has read some \nof his material (*Heaven and Hell* is the most famous and interesting) and\nis devoting some airplay to it. Swedenborg explains a system of thanatosis\nthat has appealed to many (most apparent is William Blake), and most\nrecently to M. Night Shyamalan, the writer/director of *The Sixth Sense*.\nWatch that movie, or read Swedenborg's book, to ask the same horrible\nquestion that Wolfe must have already asked himself: am I already dead?\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\t\t\t-C-"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0798@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William H. Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-02-10T23:50:46+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Posthumous",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0797@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Christy <cglst7+ at pitt.edu> wrote:\nask the same horrible\nquestion that Wolfe must have already asked himself: am I already dead?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Now that I think about it, that is rather horrible. If I'm already dead\nthen I don't have anything to look forward to!\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0801@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alex David Groce",
        "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu"
      },
      "date": "2000-02-11T13:18:13+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Posthumous",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0798@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm sure Wolfe's come across Borges references to Swedenborg, and perhaps\nread some--but really the idea of dead protagonists (from \"The Other Dead\nMan\", PEACE, etc.) is not necessarily thus derived.  It's not an unheard of\ntheme.  Wolfe's general take on it seems to be in the mode of \"Purgatorial\nFantasy\"--an alternative to Dante's view of purgatory as a place, bringing\nin the tropes of the ghost story instead.  It does match Swedenborg well, but\nthat's probably not the only possible source.\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}