{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2220",
    "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": 2220,
    "subject": "Little, Big: the magic goes away",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-05-01T22:45:20+00:00",
    "last": "2000-05-01T22:45:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0951@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-05-01T22:45:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Little, Big: the magic goes away",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Alex wrote:\nif I recall, we see the \"inward vanishing\" of the Drinkwater clan into\nthe \"Big\" world inside ours (with, as Nutria suggests, hints that the\n\"old fairies\" went down into a deeper recursive descent).  And our world\nis left poorer."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I agree with the first of these sentences, but not with the second. I\ndon't recall any indication that the presence of the fairies brought any\nbenefits to the world at large, either directly or through the diffusion\nof enchantment.  The world of the final section is impoverished not\nbecause of the absence of magic, but because of the real destruction\nbrought about by the civil war that the fairies themselves caused.  \n\nThe book's final paragraph is beautiful, but it's not an objective\ncomparison between now and then.  It's an expression of nostalgia,\nsharpened by material deprivation; and (I would suggest) a nostalgia as\nmisplaced as the nostalgia for Russell Eigenblick described in\n\"Fifty-two Pickup\" (Book Six, Chap. Four).\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}