{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3538", "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": 3538, "subject": "PEACE: tryst, diary, gold", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-11-01T18:05:16+00:00", "last": "2002-11-01T21:11:24+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-11-01T18:05:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: tryst, diary, gold", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy quoted me and wrote:\nThat 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.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Kate never read from the diary; Lois did." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right, I meant \"Lois.\" (Or are you just giving me a hard time?) " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Kate *couldn't* have read from the\ndiary for some very good reasons, chief of which is the fact that *the diary\ndidn't exist until Lou Gold wrote it* in the 1950s. Secondly, Kate never\nkept a diary. She couldn't have, because she couldn't read or write. As Weer\ntold Lois, the old Kate was \"illiterate, or nearly so\". (167)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right, the diary is a forgery by Lou Gold." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy quoted me and wrote:\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." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This all presupposes the contents of the forged diary were true." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, not at all: it presupposes that the tryst (that is, the non-verbatim\nversion of the story in/behind the diary entry that we get from an\nomniscient/third-person point of view) is true. As true as Hannah talking\nto Ghost Kate about Den and the mysterious other: which is to say,\nabsolutely true.\n\nAs you keep pointing out, the tryst material is hardly \"the content\" of the\nforged diary: there is the stuff on how she got the diary, and so on, and\nso forth. The tryst material is a tiny fraction of the whole.\n\nAside: If the tryst (section 4) is true, and if Kate had Q's child (we know\nshe had offspring), then the appearance of Dan French (as Q's biological\nheir) in section 5 is parallel to the appearance of Charlie Turner in\nsection 4 (having been a minor character in Tilly's \"tall tale\" of section\n3)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:\nOr are you suggesting that the fictional account Lou Gold authored in the\n1950s somehow *changed the course of history in the 1860s*? That just\nbecause Gold wrote it that way in his forgery, that Hannah, who died before\nGold ever even heard of her, who had never in her life \"been a hundred miles\noff from that little house\" she was born in (10), had the facts of her life\nchanged, posthumously, so that she *did* go to Boston and Quantrill *did*\ncome to the Mill farm?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, you are avoiding what I wrote (I quote myself):" }, { "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": "That is to say: Gold is a necromancer (however accidentally it might be).\nHe did manage to get it right with regard to the tryst because Ghost Kate\ninfluenced him.\n\nBoth Roy and Stone Ox take me to task for the fact that Hannah claims to\nhave never been 100 miles away from the house. I stand by my point: a\nteenage girl returning to her family farm to find such horrible things had\nhappened in her absence would very likely feel conflicting relief (that she\nhad not been there), guilt (that she had not been there), horror (what the\nbandits would have done to her, her sister, and her mother if they had been\nthere), shame, and compassion (tend to those who suffered). To put it into\nmodern terms, suppose the mother and daughters had gone to DisneyWorld and\ncome back to find their farm had been raided and their nanny had been\nraped: how likely is the teenage girl to blather on and on to the nanny (in\na rural area with no neighbors, no telephones, etc.) about what a great\ntime she had experienced at DisneyWorld? She will say nothing about it,\nand the whole family will try to put it =all= behind them: DisneyWorld and\nthe raid, two events linked together because they were contemporaneous.\n\n=My Position=\nDiary: forged\nTryst: real (Ghost Kate)\nBoston trip: real\nQ's Gold: not there\nLois: not murdered\n\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-11-01T21:11:24+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) PEACE: tryst, diary, gold", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "mantis wrote:\nFurthermore, this means that Lou Gold, even while \"forging\" the diary, was\nin some sense channeling Kate. Seems outrageous, I know, but then the\nfact\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": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That is to say: Gold is a necromancer (however accidentally it might be).\nHe did manage to get it right with regard to the tryst because Ghost Kate\ninfluenced him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "=My Position=\nDiary: forged\nTryst: real (Ghost Kate)\nBoston trip: real\nQ's Gold: not there\nLois: not murdered" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I take it that we agree that Kate never kept a diary?\n\nLet me see if I understand you correctly. I don't understand your emphasis\non the importance of the tryst, but we agree, I think, that it *was* a\nconsensual sexual encounter, not rape. Whiskey loosened the tongues of the\nseven men and Kate overheard them talking about what they had been doing\ndown by Sugar Creek to get their boots muddy. Later, when one of the men (I\nthink Quantrill himself to have been the least likely of the seven)\nencountered her alone, she took \"him to the haymow, and bribed him with such\ntalk as she knew how to make, and kisses and more. She was not that ugly a\nwoman by moonlight.\" She used sexual bribery in an attempt to pump him for\nmore detailed information than she had overheard earlier about what they had\nburied in the creek. Am I right so far?\n\nWhat was it that so peaked her interest that she was willing to trade sex\nfor information about it, if it wasn't treasure? If it was treasure, then\nwhy is your position (above) \"Q's Gold: not there\"? Wasn't that the whole\npoint of the tryst? Wasn't it to stash his gold that Quantrill ever came\nnear the Mill place in the first place?\n\nI'm not trying to be difficult; I just don't understand.\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }