{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3554",
    "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": 3554,
    "subject": "Free Live Free Revisited",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-11-09T23:05:58+00:00",
    "last": "2002-11-10T07:35:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0211-2069@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Barach",
        "address": "jbarach at telusplanet.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-11-09T23:05:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Free Live Free Revisited",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yesterday night (well, early this morning), I finished reading Free Live Free\n(for the first time).  I noticed the frequent references to both Oz and Popeye\nin the book, though, if I remember correctly, it's only in connection with\nBarnes that Popeye references show up.\n\nThe book did remind me a bit of a Chesterton fantasy.  It's been a while since\nI read The Man Who Was Thursday or The Ball and the Cross, but I recall that\nthe latter had an episode in an asylum, too.\n\nThe similarity may simply be that the book starts with some fairly normal\nevents and people and then moves through some bewildering episodes toward an\napocalyptic conclusion, by which I mean a conclusion where there's a\nrevelation of what has really been going on all along in the world and in the\nlives of the characters.  (I suppose, to some degree, though, you could say\nthat that's the plot-structure of a great number of novels....)\n\nAnyone else feel a sense of Chestertonism here?\n\n\n\nSPOILER\n\n\n\nI noticed in the archives that there was some question about the location of\nthe gizmo, which is said to be \"in a wall\" and (I think, though I can't find\nthe reference now) \"under a sign.\"  At the very least, a sign is mentioned in\nconnection with it.  Barnes recognizes it on the last page of the book.  The\ngizmo is a wall, all right.  It's the door and the sign connected to it says\nFREE LIVE FREE.  At least, that's how I understood it.\n\nJohn"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0211-2070@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-11-10T07:35:04+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Free Live Free Revisited",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0211-2069@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "John Barach wrote:\nI noticed in the archives that there was some question about the location\nof\nthe gizmo, which is said to be \"in a wall\" and (I think, though I can't\nfind\nthe reference now) \"under a sign.\"  At the very least, a sign is mentioned\nin\nconnection with it.  Barnes recognizes it on the last page of the book."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "gizmo is a wall, all right.  It's the door and the sign connected to it\nsays\nFREE LIVE FREE.  At least, that's how I understood it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Correct, the gizmo was built into the back (kitchen) door of his house. Note\nthe morning glories visible outside that door when he swept the kitchen\nfloor near the beginning of chapter 6. The sign reference is at the end of\nchapter 7. Since the sign read FREE LIVE FREE, which was the bold print in\nthe newspaper ad, I don't think those words were put on that sign until\n*after* the old man was murdered. That is, an earlier, younger iteration of\nFree, the general, \"deserted\" and went to the frontier of the early 19th\ncentury, three days after the murder. The sign was weatherworn when Barnes\nsaw it because it had been painted some years before he saw it, by the\ngeneral, when he put the gizmo in the wall when he left the frontier for\ngood in 1819. The reason old Free told Barnes he wasn't sure if Barnes would\never see that sign is because the 'trials' the four boarders would be\nsubjected to wouldn't take place until after he (Free) was dead. He couldn't\nbe sure of the outcome, even though his younger self had set up those\ntrials, because they hadn't happened yet, and the sign wasn't on the back\ndoor when the boarders were living there, either, because the general\nwouldn't desert for the frontier until a week after they moved in, using the\ngizmo in the back door, which wouldn't be there until he put it there when\nhe left the frontier, about twenty years older than when he arrived. That's\nall clear enough, isn't it? <g>\n\nEven with the aid of the chronology at the end of my edition, the time\ntravel stuff is riddled with paradox.\n\n-Roy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}