{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2474",
    "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": 2474,
    "subject": "PEACE: The Egg; Bah, humbug!",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-11-27T23:40:33+00:00",
    "last": "2000-11-27T23:40:33+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0135@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-11-27T23:40:33+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE: The Egg; Bah, humbug!",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Almost all of the stories in PEACE, imbedded or \"real-life\" ones, are\nunfinished, presumably because they are painful to Weer, one way or another.\nThe imbedded stories are analogies, evidently, of real-life situations which\nwere too painful for him to even begin to tell. Two of the real-life\nstories, the Tilly tale and Charlie Turner's letter, are ostensibly true,\nbut neither have anything to do with Weer's life, and Charlie himself, small\nas his role is in the two stories, is the only apparent link between them.\nThe events related in the letter are complete, but the letter exists in a\nvacuum; we don't know what came before, why Charlie, a minor character in\nSmart's Tilly tale, should suddenly appear in Weer's life forty years after\nhe first heard the tale. Neither do we know the relevance of the people and\nevents in the letter to Weer.\n\nThe Tilly tale itself is incomplete. We get a fragmented version of its\nconclusion from Blaine, but he is so wrong about everything else he says\nabout the tale that his testimony is hardly trustworthy. What was it about\nthe tale that was so unsettling to Weer that he couldn't finish it, even\nthough it was one of the longest segments of the book, and seemingly had\nnothing at all to do with his life?\n\nIs it the mere fact that the tale is, in some sense, a ghost story? Did Weer\nleave out Smart's finding of Mrs. T's pickled body because he knew himself\nto be dead too, just another ghost? Then why tell the story at all? After\nall, we didn't get even a hint of Macafee's or Blaine's stories, not to\nmention Eleanor Bold's.\n\nThen Charlie Turner shows up after Smart's death (whom Charlie has to thank,\npresumably, for forty years of continuing to be a hairy freak), and starts\ntelling Weer all about the travails of perfect strangers, and follows up\nwith a fractured Cinderella story that doesn't end happily-ever-after. What\nis the point? If a character in a ghost story I heard forty years ago\nsuddenly showed up in my life . . . well, I don't even want to think about\nit.\n\nI said that Blaine was wrong about most everything regarding the Egg Hunt\nand Smart's Tilly tale--but was he? Why did Wolfe put Blaine's account in\nthe book then? His testimony is the only instance in the text of an\nalternate account of something Weer related. Weer says, in effect, that his\nchildhood memories are suspect, that they may reflect things not as they\nwere, but as they ought to have been (19,20). Consider this: the Egg Hunt\nand the story telling at Macafee's 41st birthday party, both occurring in\nthe summer of his ninth year, together constitute nearly one-half of the\nbook. Read Blaine's brief account of them (173-175), especially regarding\nthe presentation of the Egg, then think back on Weer's account of the party,\nwhich he twice states was to be the occasion when Olivia was to give the Egg\nto Macafee (74,171). _Why was there not a single mention or hint of the\nfamous Egg at the birthday party_? It should have been the center of\nattention, but doesn't seem to have been there at all.\n\nWeer's mention of his malleable memory comes in the course of his account of\nthe Christmas he spent at Grandpa Elliot's. It concludes with his\nreflections on who switched his mother's and Mab's gifts, and why. As a boy\nhe thought his saintly mother had switched them, as a cynical teenager that\nhis grandfather had done it for sexual favors, and as an old man that he had\nbeen right as a boy. I don't think so. His cynical self was correct. Mab's\nbedroom was on the second floor (21-22). His grandfather's bedroom was on\nthe first floor (27). Christmas morning his \"grandfather came down\" to shave\nin the warm kitchen (25). Merry Christmas, Grandpa! Elliot was vain and dyed\nhis beard. The placement of his dead wife's picture shows that he wasn't\nexactly mourning her. If he had bought an expensive diamond-and-pearl\nnecklace for one daughter, he would have to have given his other daughter\nsomething of equal value, which doesn't seem to have happened. When the\nholidays were over his daughters would go back to their husbands; Mab was\nthere to keep his bed warm year round. Della, and even Den, were aware that\ntheir semi-formal housekeeper/employer relationship was a pretense, put on\nby Mab out of respect to Della for her recently dead mother. By recently\ndead, I mean that she died during young Den's lifetime, but when he was too\nyoung to remember her (25). I don't see saintly Della slighting her own\nmother's memory by endorsing her father's carrying on with another woman by\nexchanging gifts, even if she had known what the gifts were before Christmas\nmorning.\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}