{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2434",
    "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": 2434,
    "subject": "PEACE: Doris dons a second veil, vanishes completely!",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-11-01T17:03:18+00:00",
    "last": "2000-11-01T17:03:18+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0078@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-11-01T17:03:18+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Doris dons a second veil, vanishes completely!",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Back to Doris, the Cinderella electric.\n\nOne of the few clues I thought we had about Doris related to the sepia"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "tinted photograph, so I wrote:\nWho is the woman in Den's life who looks like Carole Lombard?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "And Roy pointed out the timeframe, which, together with his EZ Timline,\neliminates the main candidates for Doris's secret identity:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Ah, a coup!  Teenage Doris is neither Sherry (who would be 20-25 in 1963),\nnor Sherry's hypothetical daughter (she would be too young; 3-8?); the\nDoris mystery deepens!"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "But further private counseling with Roy points up my mistake about the\nphotos: I thought that one had a trio (Doris, the giant, and a second man\n[who is not Charlie Turner]), and the other was a risque photo of Candy.\nBut no: the photo with the giant has only the giant and the second man;\nthere is no photo of Doris; the photo of Candy is the one that looks like\nCarole Lombard (and since Candy is Doris's half-sister, then it becomes\ndicey trying to factor a family resemblence).\n\nWe have no idea what Doris looks like.\n\nI had also somehow thought that Den had seen a photo of Doris at dinner,\nbut no, that doesn't seem to be the case.  Since Den has not seen her, then\nher age and her circumstance (sudden orphan; her mother had died long\nbefore; her father just died), possibly the town she joined the carnival\n(Hattiesburg), these are the points that get Den interested.\n\nThe sepia of the photos causes all sorts of trouble.  I assumed it to be\nreal, meaning that the photos are several decades old; but Dan'l pointed\nout to me some time ago that \"old-fashioned\" photos have long been a staple\nof carnies (a \"forgery\" that puts doubt into the real-time placement of\nsuch artifacts).\n\n(BTW I love that table, Dan'l: yay, Gilbert!  Maybe we should make one for\nstories and morals?)\n\nThe trail is so cold.  The Doris thing could be a complete red herring.\nOTOH, Roy and I agree that the mysterious second man in the photo with the\ngiant is probably Julius Smart (or maybe Mr. Tilly): if this is the case,\nthen the timeframe 1963 is wildly at variance with the people (circa\n1923?).\n\nWe may have another case of a cross-time haunting: similar to Aunt Bella's\n\"Ghost Chaser\" article, and similar to how ghost-of-the-future Den is\nhaunting us as we read the book. (The \"lesson for Den\" moral of the Ghost\nChaser story seems to be \"time is fluid for hauntings\"; this is what I mean\nabout the idea for a table for stories and morals.)\n\nBecause the thing of it is this: Den is writing.  Part of the moral of the\nLou Gold episode seems to be \"a writer is by nature a forger.\"  Which shows\nup in the way that Den forges Lang and ARABIAN NIGHTS tales in order to\ntell things that he cannot otherwise write down, and even then he veers off\nwhen things get too painful.\n\nOn the one hand, Den's forgeries amount to attempts to influence his\nyounger self, either literally (through time travel) or the inner child\nstill carried within.  OTOH, they are abortive genre switches, such as Adam\nhas shown are carried out to completion in each of the five sections: the\nwriter Den is struggling to find his way through the maze.\n\nDen is writing, and by this he seems to enter fugue-states where he\ncontinues writing what is going on (like those Lovecraft stories where the\nvictim gets to write his own scream at the end \"Aaiaieieie . . .\" <g>  Hey,\nnotice that Lovecraft reference early on?  In first talking about the new\nraces in section one, Den mentions \"the blind idiot god\" in a line that\nreminds me of Lovecraft; long before Gold's lecture on Lovecraft in section\nfour).  One of the things I love about PEACE is the way that certain things\nare crossed, blended, confused: for example, \"writing\" as Den is practicing\nit, is also a lot like reading.\n\nThis confusion is best illustrated by Olivia's last line, a line that\nshould come when he is =reading=, not when he is writing. But for Den, the\ntwo are not dissimilar: he is reading his own book as he is writing it.\n\nSo what is it about Doris?  What happened back in the '20s?\n\nWell, for that matter: how did it come about that the daughters of Mr.\nEliot (are they twins?  They're names seem like it.) =both= came to\nCassionsville (from the South)? <g>  That is, Den's mom and her sister.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}