{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2658", "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": 2658, "subject": "Copperhead again", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2001-05-20T04:50:36+00:00", "last": "2001-05-21T08:18:26+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2001-05-20T04:50:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Copperhead again", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Adam wrote:\n\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Besides, when Lilith was with Adam, they were still in Eden; what would he\nhave to \"groose\" about?<<\n[snip]\nSo while Lilith is a seducer of men, she does so in order to engender\ndemons, which Jane Doe has no interest in; conversely, we apparently never\nsee Lilith using her sexuality to stir up discord.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[snip]\n\nBut that Lilith (the one in Eden) couldn't! There weren't any other people\naround; not even Eve had been invented yet! \n\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Incidentally, Lilith left Adam not because she wouldn't have sex with him,\nbut because she wouldn't have sex with him on top: \"You will not never grunt\nover me\" indeed!<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[snip]\n\nThe minute I read that, I was sure I had read that assertion before, that\nsomeone (alga, I think) had posted it before, in another context. But when I\ntried to use Ranjit's search engine to find it just now, it wasn't giving\nany hits for *anything*, so I can't be certain. If the \"who's-on-top\"\nassertion is valid, then the \"grunt over me\" comment cements the Jane\nDoe-is-Lilith theory. It also doesn't hurt the idea that \"Dhoss bhoyes\" are\nCain and Abel." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I don't believe that if NP had been in office over a year, he would still\nbe referred to as a \"new President,\" even if he had been elected for the\nfirst time four months ago.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Agreed, which was what I was trying to point out in my first post on this\nstory. Regardless of exactly when or how he came to the office, he has been\npresident a minimum of six months, because there's no getting around the\nfact that he was already president when he went up that hill the previous\nautumn. There just aren't any good real-world arguments for referring to him\nas \"new\" after that much time in office, yet Wolfe went out of his way to do\nit. The best argument I have seen so far for calling him \"new\" is Nutria's,\nwhich is thematic:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Nutria wrote:\nIt seems clear enough that the gadget switched an earthly copperhead with\na parallel-universe Lilith, and then the NEW president with a NEW and\nunfallen Adam. Still president of the Garden, and the very image of God,\nthis unfallen Adam pronounces a divine curse upon Lilith.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nutria:\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The New President knows that Boone's note will say both that he murdered\nthe man (which has been covered up by Rance -- implied) and also will tell\nabout Jane Doe, so the note must be suppressed.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think Rance covered it up, which is why the NP said to him: \"I'm\ngoing to stay here, George, until this blows over a little. First the\nmurder, then this. Washington will be a zoo.\" Also, if Lilith was connected\nto the murder, then the victim almost certainly had to be someone close to\nthe NP, therefor too prominent for their death to be kept from the press.\nThis also casts doubt on the idea that Boone was the murderer, otherwise why\nwasn't he in jail, which he obviously wasn't?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I note some significant language on p. 3:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rance says, \"Find who, Mr. President?\"\n\"Who the HELL do you think?\"\n\"Jane Doe?\"\n\"You're watching her, or you're DAMNED well supposed to be.\"\n\"We are.\" Rance said.\n\"A HELL of a lot of good it did....\"\nI think that's all the profanity in the story, which makes its presence\nhere significant.<<\n\nThere's more: \"I was President, goddamnit, and he was trying to give me\norders.\" and \"By God, this President stuff can be fun once in a while.\", but\nI'm not sure of your meaning. Please elucidate." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Chronology: The spring trip back to the West, and the fall trip back to\nthe West to watch football (p. 7) happened during the year of campaigning,\nnot after the NP was inaugurated, yet that the NP was already president in\nthe fall when he met with General Martens.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The NP specifically states: \"I had been working hard. Not only *after my\ninauguration*, but for more than a year before it. . . . Spring came and my\nwife and I came back here; . . .\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "But I don't think we have to imagine a parallel world or a disaster in the\nUS. People burning things in Spokane is nothing more than the Los Angeles\nriots or the activities of environmentalists in Seattle -- nothing\napocalyptic.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That was my impression. I don't know when Wolfe wrote the story, but if it\nwas recent (say, this year), he may have had in mind the recent\ndemonstrations in Seattle you mention, but shifted them to Spokane to make\nan awful pun: \"Spoke Cain\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "More: I don't see any reason to believe General Martens pushed any buttons\nbefore he gave the gadget to the NP. He found it right away, phoned the NP\nimmediately, and the NP told him to bring it to him immediately.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The crash was in August. It was autumn when they went up on the hill, so it\nwas at least two months after the crash before the NP had the Changer.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at home.com" }, "date": "2001-05-21T08:18:26+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Copperhead again", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I wrote:\nI note some significant language on p. 3:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rance says, \"Find who, Mr. President?\"\n\"Who the HELL do you think?\"\n\"Jane Doe?\"\n\"You're watching her, or you're DAMNED well supposed to be.\"\n\"We are.\" Rance said.\n\"A HELL of a lot of good it did....\"\nI think that's all the profanity in the story, which makes its presence\nhere significant.<<" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:\nThere's more: \"I was President, goddamnit, and he was trying to give me\norders.\" and \"By God, this President stuff can be fun once in a while.\", but\nI'm not sure of your meaning. Please elucidate." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Oh, I just think it associates Jane Doe with hell and damnation, \nanticipating what is shortly revealed about her. The quotation you added \nlinks being President with God, which again seems significant in that the \nNP is the equivalent of Adam, the Image of God. Obviously, sometimes \nwriters put profanity into the mouths of characters simply to provide \ncharacterization; but sometimes they use it more thematically and \nsymbolically. (Think of the use of \"God damn\" and \"God damned world\" in the \nfilm \"Network,\" where the profanity is deliberate and virtually the theme \nof the movie.) It appears to me that Wolfe is using it deliberately and \nthematically in this story.\n\nJim Jordan" } ] } ] }