{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3532", "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": 3532, "subject": "PEACE: Quantrill's gold", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-10-31T03:08:43+00:00", "last": "2002-11-01T10:36:52+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-31T03:08:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Quantrill's gold", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "mantis wrote:\nWell now you're wrong: the gold historically exists and has never been\nfound! (I know, you mean it was never where they were digging.)\n\nI will go further and say that even though the gold wasn't there, still the\nmeeting between Kate and Quantrill really did happen: when Weer sees Kate\nand Q it is as valid as when he sees Kate and Hannah. Ghosts are valid;\nKate has already been established as one of the more coherent ghosts of the\nnovel; any ghostly memory channeled via Kate is valid." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Kate really met Quantrill? The \"bearded man\" in the sectioned-off text on\npage 195 is presumably Quantrill. I don't know why it isn't written from the\nfirst-person point of view, as would be expected in a diary, but that\nsectioned-off text is from the diary. Lois had been reading to Den from it,\nas is clear from the italicized line at the top of the next page, where Lois\nsays: \"_So you see it has to be near the river. She mentions it several\ntimes_.\" That she was reading to Weer from the diary is explicitly affirmed\nwhen Weer confronted Gold with the blunder about Hannah having gone to\nBoston (200), which piece of information was included in that sectioned-off\ntext on page 195.\n\nWhy Weer didn't give the excerpt exactly as written (if he didn't), I don't\nknow. He evidently gave his Aunt Bella's article verbatim. Perhaps he just\nwrote down his memory of the mental image he created when Lois read the\npassage to him. Still, Kate's meeting with Quantrill never happened outside\nof that fake diary, afaik. Or have I forgotten something?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Furthermore, this means that Lou Gold, even while \"forging\" the diary, was\nin some sense channeling Kate. Seems outrageous, I know, but then the fact\nthat his forged Necronomicon somehow \"works\" is a pointer; as well as the\nfact that, as I've written above, Ghost Kate is already established in the\ntext." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Kate and Hannah I can believe; Kate and Quantrill is hard to swallow. Lou\nGold made up the whole thing about their meeting just to spice up the\nforgery. As Weer told Gold \"You shouldn't have included Quantrill's buried\ntreasure---\", because that was the bridge too far, the lie that led to his\nexposure as a forger, to the end of Weer's romance with Lois, to his\ndaughter's sexual blackmail and, eventually, to Weer's stroke when Sherry\ndied." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Why would a murderer mark the grave of his victim?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "While I argue against Weer murdering Lois, still, the text is clear that\nghosts can be pinned down and this is why Weer would use the stone: not to\nmark the grave (though it would do that as well) but to pin the ghost down\nso she wouldn't come after him. Like a stake through the heart of a\nvampire (iirc the old tradition of pinning them down rather than turning\nthem to dust)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What I meant was; if Weer had murdered Lois and buried her (and intended to\nget away with the crime), he wouldn't want to call attention to the fact by\nmarking the grave.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-10-31T14:53:04+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: Quantrill's gold", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:\nKate really met Quantrill? The \"bearded man\" in the sectioned-off text on\npage 195 is presumably Quantrill. I don't know why it isn't written from the\nfirst-person point of view, as would be expected in a diary, but that\nsectioned-off text is from the diary. Lois had been reading to Den from it,\nas is clear from the italicized line at the top of the next page, where Lois\nsays: \"_So you see it has to be near the river. She mentions it several\ntimes_.\" That she was reading to Weer from the diary is explicitly affirmed\nwhen Weer confronted Gold with the blunder about Hannah having gone to\nBoston (200), which piece of information was included in that sectioned-off\ntext on page 195.\n\nWhy Weer didn't give the excerpt exactly as written (if he didn't), I don't\nknow. He evidently gave his Aunt Bella's article verbatim. Perhaps he just\nwrote down his memory of the mental image he created when Lois read the\npassage to him. Still, Kate's meeting with Quantrill never happened outside\nof that fake diary, afaik. Or have I forgotten something?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is not the verbatim of the diary text. If you prefer, it is the image\nof the \"story behind the veiled text\" that Weer imagines as Kate reads it,\nbut I think it is too close in style to the intrusions of Ghost Kate\ninteracting with Hannah at the end of the banshee tale (where Hannah speaks\nin italics) to be anything else but a ghostly \"story behind the veiled\ntext.\"\n\nThe Boston detail is a difference, especially when Weer is so certain.\nOTOH, when teenager Hannah Mills presumably returned with mother and sister\nto the farm and discovered that bandits had been there, had locked up her\ndad and the hired man and maybe done something unspeakable to beloved Kate,\nwell that would understandably put a dampener on the whole trip, perhaps\neven to the point where the trip would not be mentioned by Hannah.\n\n(Plus, the moonlight tryst with Kate provides another solution to\n\"Quantrill's buried treasure,\" since afaik Q did not have any known\noffspring, but Kate certainly did.)\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-11-01T10:36:52+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: Quantrill's gold", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis writes, speculating Hannah may actually have gone to Boston:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Boston detail is a difference, especially when Weer is so certain.\nOTOH, when teenager Hannah Mills presumably returned with mother \nand sister to the farm and discovered that bandits had been there, had \nlocked up her dad and the hired man and maybe done something \nunspeakable to beloved Kate,well that would understandably put a \ndampener on the whole trip, perhaps even to the point where the trip \nwould not be mentioned by Hannah." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But Hannah herself says (p. 10, Orb) \"I never in my life been a hundred \nmiles off from that little house, but it's gone now, and I never saw it go.\"\n\n-- Stone Ox" } ] } ] }