{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2593",
    "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": 2593,
    "subject": "Digest urth.v030.n092",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-04-20T09:58:35+00:00",
    "last": "2001-04-20T09:58:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0322@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "akt",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-20T09:58:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v030.n092",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Adam asked:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "on 4/15/01 6:36 PM, akt at attglobal.net at akt at attglobal.net wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "But the fascinating thing, for the few of us who have been\nfollowing John Crowley's Aegypt series, is that the *author*,\nespecially\nin -Daemonomania-, appears to be unreliable, in a *third-person*\nnarration."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Since Ranjit has given us permission to discuss Crowley here, could\nyou tell\nus what you're referring to?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Sure. Actually, if you still have the chapbook you were proofing, it's\ntaken up a bit in the interview. But here goes. The device of the\nunreliable narrator is nearly always (maybe always) found in\nfirst-person narration, and it is useful for indicating that the\nnarrator is deluded (Eudora Welty's \"Why I Live at the P.O.\") or an\noutright trickster (Agatha Christie's -The Murder of Roger Ackroyd-) or\nperhaps has changed personality (Marsh in 5HC or Horn/Silk; Wolfe is\ndevoted to this device, uses it everywhere). The Aegypt series is\nwritten in third-person from various points of view, mainly that of\nPierce Moffet, who may be a deluded soul but is not attempting to delude\nus. John Crowley, though, is playing tricks with reality, especially in\nthe third book of his series. Maybe the clearest example is when Pierce\nreminds Spofford (a shepherd) of how they first encountered each other,\nSpofford with his hat and crook. Spofford says, no, he doesn't use a\ncrook, never has owned one. So we curious readers page back to the first\nbook of the series--uh-oh, Spofford had a crook! In another place,\nPierce has a sort of daydream of a kind of porn-movie orgy that he\nreally did go to some time ago and imagines his current girlfriend Rose\nas the (masked) central figure of the movie. And then Rose herself seems\nto remember the scene. Was she there before Pierce put her there? At\nanother point, the author himself seems to appear, at another we readers\nalso seem evoked. Etc.\n\nThere is method in this madness. Underpinning the series is the notion\nthat history, or reality, is not straightforward, that there are points\nin time when we can actually change things. One of these crux periods\nwas the early Renaissance when alchemy was still thought to be part of\nscience (Bruno and John Dee illustrate this) and another is the present\n(the countercultural 70s), a period when quite a lot of people,\ncertainly the sorts of people that JC is writing about, felt that they\nwere on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius, or whatever. JC posits that\nthese crux periods are blown in and out by enormous winds that seem to\nfray the fabric of reality. Thus he wants to show that fabric being\nfrayed, and he does this by changing \"history\" or his story. This\nhappens mostly in the third book, -Daemonomania- because by then we are\nmuch further into the crux time. By the fourth book, which will take\nplace in our own time, 2003 or so, this crux will be long over for the\ncharacters.\n\nDoes this explain? If you haven't read the books, it probably doesn't.\nThis is not a literary technique that should be messed with unless you\nknow exactly what you're doing, and even then it's risky. The risk is,\nas with other post-modern techniques, that readers will get fed up with\nyou and your artful ways.\n\nSomeone asked what a chapbook was. I've discovered that quite a lot of\npeople don't know, so here's the OED definition; the word dates back\nonly to the early 1800s: \"A modern name applied by book-collectors and\nothers to specimens of the popular literature which was formerly\ncirculated by itinerant dealers or chapmen, consisting chiefly of small\npamphlets of popular tales, ballads, tracts, etc.\"\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}