# John Crowley committee, re: ES: why? *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 21 Apr 2001* > 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. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *21 Apr 2001, 17:52* Adam wrote about ENGINE SUMMER, including this bit: > The other clues fit in with the suspicion aroused by this one. Near the > start of the fifth facet of the second crystal, Rush asks "Do you know this > story better than I do?" and the angel replies: "Go on. It's not for my > sake you tell it." At first this seems to have an obvious meaning: Rush > tells the story for the sake of the city of angels as a whole. But on > further thought, this doesn't really work. If the angel knows Rush's story, > then so does the city. If the angel is talking about how _this_ Rush will > tell the story, then she doesn't know this either. So for who else's sake > could Rush be telling the story? In light of the preceding clue, I submit > that the answer is Rush himself; and ultimately Rush's host, who will thus > be able to prolong his "possession" by Rush. There is also the obvious metafictional answer: it is not for the angels, nor their city, but only for the reader of ENGINE SUMMER. This ties in with the large and complex "reader/text" mode (where Rush is like a text and the recording angel is like a reader; and they are all fictions in a story, trying to work out another story, for a reader who is above and beyond them). Unfortunately this has a side-effect of implicating the real reader with the torture. "Why are you torturing me?" "To entertain the reader. Look, it is working--she smiles!" =mantis= Sirius Fiction Catalog and errata sheet at http://www.sirius.com/~mantis/ --- ### Adam Stephanides *22 Apr 2001, 22:03 · follows Michael Andre-Driussi* Hello, Michael: You seem to have sent two posts to the urth list, identical in text, but one with the above subject line and the other with the subject line "Re: ENGINE SUMMER: why?" Did you accidentally send out the wrong post? I would like to hear more about this "John Crowley committee"! --Adam ---