{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2416",
    "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": 2416,
    "subject": "PEACE: the haunted Mr. Tilly",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-10-25T10:22:34+00:00",
    "last": "2000-10-25T10:22:34+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0050@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-10-25T10:22:34+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE: the haunted Mr. Tilly",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Oh dear, here we are again.  Get it over with fast, get back on track.\n\nJulius Smart tells the tale of Mr. Tilly, who is haunted by a ghost that is\ntrying to poison him with a chemical that will turn him to stone.  Tilly\nhimself is a pharmaceutical chemist running a sideline in manufacturing\ncircus freaks through voluntary chemistry.  Tilly finally dies.  In the end\n(one view, at least), it is his freakified wife who has been\nhaunting/poisoning him.\n\nThis is not presented as a fairy tale, but as a true story that was\nwitnessed by the teller (as opposed to urban legends, which usually have a\ndegree of further separation: \"This happened to a friend of a friend\").  So\nI shouldn't be talking about it now, except for the fact that I've\nmentioned it before.\n\nYes, as I've alluded, \"Man partially turned to stone by wife\" is the motif\nof \"The Ensorcelled Prince\" of nights one and two in Burton's ARABIAN\nNIGHTS.  Furthermore, that story has the wife turning citizens into fish\n(which seems not too far from Tilly's fake freaks).  In the end, the prince\nkills the wife (he had already killed her politically incorrect black\nstereotype of a lover).\n\nFor his own part, Smart himself later has to deal with a cheating wife.\nOlivia's rapid gain in size might be a sign of involuntary freakification\n(but maybe not: there are indications that it might be a genetic trait that\nDen has, too).  Smart's wife dies (killed by one of her lovers).\n\nTilly as a word can mean \"clay\" (it can also mean \"gift from the vendor\").\nLitho is the stone man (created by Tilly), and Den writes a lot of weird\nstuff about stone men, new races, artificial stags, and similar stuff.\n\n(I think the idea of the voluntary freaks is a sly jab by Gene Wolfe at the\nparticipants of the drug culture in the 60s and 70s.)\n\nSo this ARABIAN NIGHTS tale is (or seems to be) a central story to the\nnovel, and it is disquised as something else, even though the frametale\n(\"The Fisherman and the Jinni\") remains intact as the frame to \"ben Yahya\nand the Marid.\"\n\n===\n\nNow then, Julius tells this tale and Olivia apparently hears: \"I am a great\nwizard.  I hold the secrets of tranformation and transmutation.\"  She\nselects him to be her husband.\n\nWe know that Den has told this story to people twice: the second try is\nwith Bill Baton, the ad agency man.  But the first time was to Margaret\nLorn, on that seemingly fateful picnic they had, alone together on the\nbanks of the river.\n\nAh, Margaret Lorn!  When she puts down the \"Life\" magazine in the doctor's\noffice during Den's astral visit, she does so with contempt against Den.\nWhat ever happened?\n\nHere is a possibility, perhaps too simple for consideration.  We know that\nyoung Den is a bit of an anti-social geek, for example his use of the\nNapoleon factoid to test people through making them uncomfortable.  He\nrelishes quirky, disturbing things.\n\nSince Den seems to think that he will marry Margaret, perhaps he thinks he\nis following a sure-fire plan by using upon her the same courtship song\nwith which his brilliant uncle won his beautiful aunt: the story of Mr.\nTilly.\n\nHere's the punchline: I'll bet Margaret heard a ghoulish, disturbing story,\nwith a message of misogyny and double-murder.  Where Olivia the adventuress\nheard \"power,\" perhaps (\"good girl\"?) Margie hears \"wife torturer, wife\nkiller.\"\n\nJust a thought.\n\nNext story.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}