{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2439", "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": 2439, "subject": "PEACE: In the office?", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-11-03T13:48:04+00:00", "last": "2000-11-03T13:48:04+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2000-11-03T13:48:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: In the office?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l wrote:\n<>\n\nActually, I'm not sure that _any_ of Part 5 takes place in the LAD office.\nIn the frametale he left the LAD office and went to Mab Crawford's kitchen\n(186-187). He was trying to find his way back to the glassed-in porch with\nthe fireplace (162, 201), but didn't. Instead: \"But I carry my notebook and\npen with me, and write, sometimes, in the corridors, and sometimes in\nstrange rooms.\" (201) (BTW, the pen had been a pencil before, page 187.)\nThen he finds his old apartment in the Commons (201), the last place he\nspecifically mentions being in the frametale. The conclusion of Part 4 and\nthe beginning of Part 5 are told in a straightforward manner (except for his\ncomment to Sherry about having had a stroke). Once Miss Hadow leaves his\noffice and he closes the curtains, he _thinks_ that the plant is an\nillusion, but when he leaves the office she is still at Birkhead's desk\n(227). Dan French is there with the reporter, they tour the plant, Den and\nDan go back to the office, Dan tells the Sidhe story, Den wakes up dead, Dan\nis gone, Aunt Vi's voice is on the intercom, end of book. He never got back\nto the frametale office, or any other museum room he had already been in,\nfor that matter.\n\n Part 5 seems to me the most realistic section of the book. There are\nonly two places where anything odd occurs (relatively speaking ), the\nsecond of which is the last paragraph. The other oddity is that Birkhead was\nthere before he read Charlie's letter, but was gone when he finished it. It\nwouldn't have happened that way in real life. There is a 10 to 12 year gap\nthere. If the letter ever existed, and was addressed to Weer and otherwise\nauthentic, he would have been reading it circa 1963-64. When Miss Hadow\nanswered his summons it would have been 1974-75, when both Birkhead and Weer\ndied. That the next letter in the pile was nailed down and was addressed to\nSmart (from Peacock, who had been dead since the 1930s), indicates something\nodd is going on, but it didn't take place in either his real office or the\nduplicate one. Weer got rid of Smart's desk when he became president, and if\nhe ever had a duplicate office created at home, Smart's mail wouldn't very\nlikely be on it.\n\n If Birkhead was at her desk when he returned from his visit to Van Ness,\nthen the reminder note on his desk in the last paragraph and the doctor\nvisit for that afternoon that he mentioned to French, could _not_ be\nreferring to the follow-up visit requested by Van Ness for later in the day\nafter his last patient, at least a decade earlier. If, in real life, Weer\never had occasion to undergo psychological testing by Van Ness (how many MDs\nhave such props to hand?)--then when, why? If he never took such tests,\nwhence his familiarity with them, and why did he mention them in his\naccount, especially as they seem to have been administered in consequence of\nan imaginary visit to a dead doctor for a stroke he hadn't had yet? Are\nimaginary people always so judgemental?\n\nRoy" } ] } ] }