{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2720",
    "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": 2720,
    "subject": "PEACE: Bobby Black, imaginary friend",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-07-11T11:11:05+00:00",
    "last": "2001-07-11T11:11:05+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0547@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-07-11T11:11:05+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Bobby Black, imaginary friend",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Adam Stephanides wrote:\nAt the time of the big PEACE discussion, I dreamed up a theory as a reductio\nad absurdum of the unreliable Weer: that nothing interesting actually\nhappened to Weer--he made up Bobbly Black, the egg hunt, the coldhouse\nprank, the treasure hunt, and all to conceal the fact that he led a boring\nlife.  It sounds like you've been seriously contemplating something like\nthis theory (which I'd actually be more willing to take seriously now than I\ndid then)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think that Bobby Black seems so real because his episode comes very early\nin the text (we have nothing to test it against), and the events around the\naccident are quite detailed (motive, method, perpetrator, follow up).\nLater episodes are contrastingly sketchy in one or more ways, in fact,\nthere seems to be a progression away from easily determined historicity to\nfull-blown fantasy, culminating in the Doris/Cinder-ella episode, such that\nit seems somewhat like a spectrum from history to fantasy.\n\nThe Bobby Black episode also doesn't have to solve a lot of things: because\nof its position in the text, it sets things in motion.  At the very least,\nthere is the sense of blood-guilt, and dread, and morbidity.  Some readers\nalso take it as the springboard for the flight of the parents to Europe\n(but this is not explicit in the text), which then leads to Weer being left\nwith Olivia and the rest of the story.  There is also the one conversation\nwith Doctor Black much later, where Weer tries to bend history by telling\nthe Doctor about the future (rather heroic, come to think of it, especially\nfor Weer).\n\nBut they may in fact all be equally fantastic.  The murder of an imaginary\nfriend could be used by the child to explain why his parents abandoned him\nand went to Europe, for example.\n\nIt is possible, but I'm not weighing it as my favorite.  It is part of the\nall-or-nothing danger in dealing with this level of unreliability, just as\nthe search for motive, method, et cetera, leads to its own thicket (witness\nthe coldhouse prank example I gave before; or who killed Olivia; or the\nstrange case of Mr. Tilly).\n\nOr to return it to you: if you feel that the Treasure Hunt is a fiction,\nthen how are you taking it?  Is it at all based on history, or is it pure\nwish-fulfillment, or a mixture?  Are you building a fort in the thicket\nyet? <g>\n\nNo?  Well here, then: consider the term \"gold-digger,\" a person who courts\nanother for his/her wealth.  If the Treasure Hunt is a dream, then \"Lois\"\nis very neatly identified as a literal digger of gold, so if there is a\nhidden truth behind this dream, then perhaps \"Lois\" entered into a\nrelationship with Weer believing that the family fortunes were still\nintact, that is, she was a gold-digger who then dropped him when she had\nevidence that there was no money.  Recall how lavish he was with his money\naround her (the restaurant, talk of buying rare books), and this idle\nthought begins to take on some force.\n\nMeanwhile, hey everybody: our imaginary friend Robert Borski has another\nWolfe essay in \"The New York Review of Science Fiction\" (July 2001), this\none titled \"Wolves in the Fold: Lupine Shadows in the Works of Gene Wolfe.\"\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nHas Moved To\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}