{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4840",
    "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": 4840,
    "subject": "\"Tracking Song\" and other stories",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2007-06-06T22:33:36+00:00",
    "last": "2007-06-06T22:33:36+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<39ed084f0706061533p5d1e4c8ak5b6978121ca55f17@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Matthew Groves",
        "address": "matthewalangroves at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2007-06-06T22:33:36+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Tracking Song\" and other stories",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Joshua writes:\n\"Caves also pop up in Fifth Head. My memory of Fifth Head has degraded\nsomewhat, but I think that the mythological abo (Sandwalker?) made a\npilgrimage to one in \"A Story.\" This cave is a thematical doppleganger of\nAunt Jeanine's basement room in the first novella.\"\nAnd Transentient adds:\n\"Wolfe often has his characters grope around in complete darkness.\n\"A significant portion of one of the books in Long Sun is spent by a motley\nassortment of characters wandering around in completely lightless caves. One\nof them naked the entire time.\"\n\nYes, I should have noted both those occurrences, as well as Horn's cleaning\nthe sewers on Green, and probably many others.\n\nToward a list of criteria of the underworld type-scene:\n- There is a cave, underground tunnel, labyrinth, and/or undercity;\n- The theme of blindness (or at least groping in darkness) is often present;\n- There are always small-man, half-man, or man-animal residents in the\nunderworld;\n- The protagonist is often trespassing there;\n- The protagonist is initially harrowed by the denizens of the underworld.\nHe is always explicitly or symbolically on trial, and/or he achieves a sort\nof d?tente with its denizens, winning them over to his side.\n\nThere are more common threads, I'm sure.\n\nDan'l writes:\n\"Yes, there are quite a few running images and themes in GW's work [...]\n\"One I push at that nobody else seems to see or agree with: the embedding of\nnon-Christian cosmologies into a larger Christian cosmology, which itself is\nfrequently ambiguous.\"\n\nWell, I don't know on what basis others may disagree, but for what it's\nworth this seems to me like a central project of Wolfe's. (I say this as an\natheist and a Wolfe fan-boy.)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}