{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2520",
    "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": 2520,
    "subject": "twins and phantom-twins",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-12-21T17:59:15+00:00",
    "last": "2000-12-21T17:59:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0214@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-12-21T17:59:15+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) twins and phantom-twins",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Today I've been thinking of a pattern in Wolfe's fiction, that of twins,\nand most specifically a thing I am calling \"phantom-twins.\"  This is the\ncategory of twin-ness that is not biological, nor clonal/oedipal, nor even\nperceived by the two people so linked.\n\nIn 5HC, Number Five is to Maitre as VRT is to Dr. Marsch; both cases are\nquite similar, along the clonal/oedipal lines, an awareness shared by three\nout of the four subjects.  But when we compare Number Five directly to VRT,\nthat is, not twins by category but twins by some sort of psychic link\n(established in the test, mind you), then we have a case of\n\"phantom-twins.\"  They aren't aware of it, but the reader is.\n\nBranching out from this, we have the case of A.D. Weer and Crazy Pete: they\nmight be phantom twins.  (In some interview somewhere, Damon Knight said of\n\"The Changeling\" that \"the guy is dead but he doesn't even know it,\" which\nat first blush made me think he was confusing the short story with PEACE,\nbut then again, maybe not--certainly Crazy Pete is an \"unperson,\" and if we\nread that as a deadman/ghost, as Wolfe often likes to play, it has an\ninteresting effect on the story).\n\nIn PEACE there is a clear twin-ness in Den and Bobby Black; an almost\nclonal twinning between Olivia and Lois; a spooky sort of twinning between\nLois (Arbuthnot) and Louis (Gold), with their names like Agia/Agilus, and\ntheir hearts bent on similar mischief (involving disguise).\n\nAnother sort of twin is a theme-twin, like the two musicians in \"Bluesberry\nJam\" and its twin story, \"Ain't You 'Most Done?\"  Here the two meet and\ninteract and they can see their similarities and their differences.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}