{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2380",
    "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": 2380,
    "subject": "Latro ruminates",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-31T20:39:22+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-31T20:39:22+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0200@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigelprice1 at compuserve.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-31T20:39:22+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Latro ruminates",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Peter Westlake (Hi Peter!) wrote:\nI'm impressed by Nigel's summary, too. Were you recording it, Nigel,\nor just taking very good notes? I stopped writing things down when I\nheard the papers were to be published."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Er, well, no, I just wrote it down from memory. You know, before the blow\non the head I received at the Hot Springs erased my every recollection of\nthe day...\n\n(As I said on Saturday, amongst his other gifts, Wolfe had given me the\nvocabulary to describe my inadequacies. I have the memory of Latro, the\nvisual accuity of Master Ultan, the manual dexterity of the Annese - and\nthe dress sense of Severian...)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Because Peter Wright was going to talk about The Fifth Head of Cerberus,\nI finally managed to make enough time to read it while wide awake."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reading"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "before going to sleep, as I normally do, doesn't work for Wolfe! I\nfinished\nit on the train, half a mile outside Birmingham, so it was fresh in my\nmind\nfor Peter's talk. The only thing I would add to Nigel's synopsis is the\nidea\nthat Victor is in some sense free, though imprisoned, because he is no\nlonger\npart of either of the conflicting societies. (That isn't a very good way\nof\nexpressing it, I fear - are you here yet, Peter?) Since then I have had a\nlook at Robert Borski's \"Cave Canem\" website, and the contrast between\nthe\ntwo interpretations is quite marked. In one, VRT is a positive figure,\neven\nbecoming quite a good anthropologist, and in the other he's a crazed\nkiller!\nOne problem I had with \"Cave Canem\" is that it fails to distinguish\nthings\nstated in the text from conjecture. It assumes that the cat is a shape-\n-shifted Annese woman, for instance, which seems very unlikely to me."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I came home from the symposium determined to reread Fifth Head. The idea\nthat the hybrid Annese-Human shape-shifter is a better anthropologist than\nthe person whose life and role he appropriates is a fascinating one. I was\nconvinced when Peter was reading his paper, but I want to look at it all\nagain. I had always thought of VRT as someone who is caught in the gears of\nthe corrupt colonial society in which he finds himself. He escapes one\ndead-end life by jumping into another.\n\nI agree with you about \"Cave Canem\". Perceptive literary criticism does\nseem to walk side by side with what seems more like invention or, at the\nvery least, extrapolation. Am I being fair, Robert?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "On the way home I read \"Strange Travelers\", which was probably a mistake.\nReading \"And When They Appear\" when you're tired is not an experience I\nwould wish on anyone. I tried reading on in the hope of finding something\nmore upbeat ... well, most of you will have read ST, so you can imagine."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is a story that I would like to discuss. I think I know what it's\nabout, but, you're right, it is grim. To me, it's another example of the\nsatirical streak in Wolfe's writings that I was talking about, and that\ngoes right back to Operation Ares, and that early story of the boy in the\ntree house, saving rocks to throw at the rioters. The boy in \"And when they\nappear\" has the chance to escape by hiding in the freezer (Have I got the\nright story here? It's late, and you know what my memory's like...), but\nfails to do the sensible thing. His parents are gone, and he left alone,\nwith inadequate, inhuman protection, and falls prey to the worst sort of\nhuman monster. A good example, too, of the melancholy that Alex was\ndescribing. (Was it here, or on Whorl?)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Peter (Spectacled Bear)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(Who, following Sev's sartorial example, turned up at the symposium\nbear-chested.)\n\nNigel"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}