{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3412",
    "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": 3412,
    "subject": "PEACE: Picnic and Dream",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-08-19T20:09:14+00:00",
    "last": "2002-08-19T20:09:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0208-1577@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-08-19T20:09:14+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Picnic and Dream",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Many of the problems associated with the story of Doris would disappear if\nCharlie Turner's letter didn't exist. There is no reference to Doris outside\nthat letter. The letter, too, would cease to exist if Charlie wasn't real.\n\nAmong Weer's musings about the almost magical powers earlier generations\nconferred upon the state of virginity was \"the ability to entrap unicorns,\ndescry the future, see the fair folk\". As we all know from folklore, maidens\nwere able to catch a unicorn by getting it to place its horned head in her\nlap. (No, I'm going to leave Freud out of this!) Along the same lines, Wolfe\nhas reinforced the notion of virginal majesty by having Silk fear to lose\nhis, and with it the potential to see a god in a glass.\n\nIn the dream Den had the night following his picnic with Margaret (at which\ntime he had told her Smart's Tilly tale), the dog boy was \"hiding from a\nbeating\", \"yelping\" when Den kicked at it, and \"snarling\". Den was clearly\nnot sympathetic to young Charlie. Among the dog boy's offences, he was\nhumping Den's leg and was generally a distraction from Den's amorous pursuit\nof Margaret. Den did not \"make it\" with Margaret on that picnic, as his\nfrustrations in the dream would seem to indicate. But Wolfe goes even\nfurther to reinforce Margaret's virginity by having her not only be\nsympathetic to the dog boy, but actually having her hold _\"his head in her\nlap\"_.\n\nI am suggesting that this may be Wolfe's way of letting the reader know that\nCharlie is no more real than a unicorn.\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}