{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3428",
    "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": 3428,
    "subject": "Extended Meditation on Rorschach Novels (was RE: (urth) Coldhouse Banshee)",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-08-27T17:08:29+00:00",
    "last": "2002-08-27T19:32:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0208-1613@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-08-27T19:32:35+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Extended Meditation on Rorschach Novels (was RE: (urth) Coldhouse Banshee)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The question that I asked above then \nbreaks down, in this terminology, into three separate but\ndeeply interrelated questions, as follows: (1) For a given \nlacuna, or a given _type_ of lacuna, can we reasonably assume \nthat Wolfe himself had some specific content in mind? (2) If \nso, can we reasonably assume that he expected his readers to \nextrapolate something similar to what he imagined? And if not,\nwas he even aware of the lacuna when he wrote?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Is \"And if not, was he even aware of the lacuna when he wrote?\" your 'question\nnumber 3' or have your supplied us with a lacuna of your own? <G>\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0208-1614@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Andy Robertson",
        "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2002-08-27T17:08:29+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Extended Meditation on Rorschach Novels (was RE: (urth) Coldhouse Banshee)",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0208-1613@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "----- Original Message -----"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" <ddanehy at siebel.com>\nI looked a post about the coldhouse prank and the Banshee\nstory, and saw a correspondence I'd never seen before -- that,\nto the best of my knowledge, nobody had ever seen before. Did\nWolfe put it there? Consciously or unconsciously? How could we\neven know? Wolfe wrote the book thirty years ago; chances are\nhe doesn't know at this point."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Writing is like all other ways of dealing with reality.\n\nUltimately, you know, we write our own narrative of life:  we create our own\nbook, as we live,  perceiving this and ignoring that.   We form our own\nreality.\n\nWhich is why, I think, we are able to read books at all.\n\nWriting good stories is a matter of *subtracting* everything unnecessary\nfrom the tale.   But so is remembering.  So is understanding.  So is\nperceiving, even - in this whirlwind world we are endlessly forced to filter\nout all but the core elements of reality.\n\nAnd so a story that is written down may consist *only* of those core\nelements and may work very well.\n\nThis is how a thread of ink conjures up a universe.\n\n\n\nHow does Wolfe attain his unique effect?   By going just a little furthur\nthan others.\n\nIn his stories, the process of memory and storytelling (they are the same\nprocess, actually, they are the thing we all do)  has gone on a few steps\nfurthur, a few layers deeper.\n\nIt has become dream, metamemory, vision . . .   Wolfe.\n\nBut it is still organically  the same thing.  recognisably the same thing.\nIt feels right.  It is what we all do, all the time.\n\nAnd this is why he is so good.\n\n    hartshorn"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}