{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2726",
    "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": 2726,
    "subject": "Take it - Take another little PEACE of my heart, now, babeeee",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-07-17T08:47:07+00:00",
    "last": "2001-07-17T08:47:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0554@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes",
        "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-07-17T08:47:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Take it - Take another little PEACE of my heart, now, babeeee",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It meseems that the logical conclusion of the current trend is to doubt \nwhether Weer exists at all.\n\nLook, folks, this is a weird book, but it ain't the X Files. \"Trust no \none,\" \"doubt everything,\" are not valuable hermeneutic principles. \nBetter to take things at their face value except where there's some \nspecific evidence in the text to doubt.\n\nThat Weer's unreliable is clear. But frankly I see no evidence to suggest \nhe makes things up out of thin air: he evades, elides, avoids, but his \nevasions, elisions, avoidances are themselves revelatory or there's no \npoint, from the PoV of a reader (or, by extension, a writer) in the whole \ngame. The truth is in there. (Sorry.)\n\nWhich is not to say that we can access a single linear, and consistent \n\"true account,\" but -- I know I've said this before, but I'm standing by \nit -- that some true account exists.\n\nPoint of comparison: the structure of a mystery novel. A mystery novel \nhas at least three -- well, I used to say \"three plots,\" but I've come \nto find the concept of \"plot\" less and less useful with time. Say three \n\"stories.\"\n\n     1. There is the story of what really happened (Professor\n        Plum did it, in the library, with a meathook).\n     2. There is the story of what seems to have happened. This\n        may be endlessly multiplied in the form of false clues,\n        red herrings, misinterpretations, etc.\n     3. There is the story (and this would be the traditional\n        sense of the word \"plot\") of the detecting protagonist\n        moving from #2 to #1.\n\nPEACE is kind of like that.\n\n     1. There is some sort of underlying fictive reality. I \n        have heard and entertained arguments that Mr Wolfe \n        did not in fact have such a fictive reality in mind. \n        Barring concrete evidence (and I'm not sure what\n        weight I'd put on interview data for this -- Mr Wolfe\n        _is_ a trickster), I hold that it does exist and that\n        Mr Wolfe knew what it was when he wrote the book.\n     2. There is the book. \n     3. There is us, reading the book and trying to make sense\n        of it -- trying to reach some reasonable approximation\n        of item #1. The book, item #2, is the sum total of the\n        practical evidence available to us; external data \n        (such as the abovementioned interview data) may be \n        useful, but only in a supplementary way.  \n\n((Hermeneutic principle #1 for, at least, me: The Text Is The \nText. Author's intentions _do_ matter, but, in the end, if, say, \nHerman Melville intended only to tell an exciting story about a \nboatload of crazies chasing a whale [and, no, I'm not saying he \ndid. Or didn't], that doesn't mean the more, ah, _numinous_ \ninterpretations of MOBY-DICK aren't valid.))\n\nNow, I suspect that everyone bothering to take part in this \ndiscussion is convinced, at gut level, that there is some kind of\nmeaningful item #1; otherwise this whole coinscription is vapidity \nat its finest.\n\nBefore jumping down my throat note what I am _not_ saying.\n\n1. I am not saying that PEACE (item #2) actually gives us enough \n   information to construct a unified and consistent item #1.\n2. I am not saying that, if we had access to the \"true\" account,\n   it would be something we would consider \"rational\" or likely.\n3. I am not saying that everything Weer says is true, or even that\n   it is true from his point of view.\n\n1a. I am saying that PEACE is the only evidence we have towards an\n   item #1, whether unified and consistent or not.\n2a. I am saying that the \"true\" account, whatever it is, is likely\n   to be internally consistent.\n3a. I am saying that everything Weer says is in some way revelatory\n   of item #1, though not necessarily in any obvious way.\n3b. I am also suggesting that the events Weer describes are likely \n   to be accounts, however inaccurate, of events that actually did\n   occur.\n\nObviously, this involves completely rejecting the \"Loop\" \ninterpretation, or at least its more blatant forms. I have not \nproblem with that; Wolfe isn't writing FINNEGANS WAKE. His choice\nof a dreambook is Proust.\n\n--Dan'l"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}