{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5573",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5573,
    "subject": "Pirate Freedom",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2010-03-25T22:02:33+00:00",
    "last": "2010-03-25T22:02:33+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<e8e9702e1003251502o10285c57w4c418b55ff8d8d59@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "James Wynn",
        "address": "crushtv at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2010-03-25T22:02:33+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Pirate Freedom",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Finished Pirate Freedom. Now I can get on to The Sorcerer's House.\n\nGoing through the discussions from 18 months ago I only have this to add:\n\nDiscussions of the Catholic/Christian morality in Chris-as-pirate are\nquite beside the point. PF belongs on the shelf next to The Wizard\nKnight for more reasons than chronology. In TWK, Wolfe's primary\nimpetus IMO was to take the case --as an attorney might--for the\nchivalric ethos. For example, \"What's the deal with To-The-Death\ndueling over an insult to one's reputation? Isn't that a little\nextreme?\" Able's argument in The Wizard was actually quite compelling.\n\nHere Wolfe makes the case for 17th century pirates -- basing his\ndefense on the New World politics at the time. If you blanched at\nChris' justification for taking part in the slave trade, I recommend\nto you \"Democracy in America\" (1832) by Alexis de Toqueville where the\nFrenchman argues quite convincingly that the institution of slavery\nperniciously enslaves (and impoverishes) the culture that engages in\nit...making it all but impossible an individual citizen to act piously\nin that regard.  By the same token, Wolfe argues that the entire\neconomy of the New World at the time was based on rank piracy from the\nSpanish crown down to the Spanish farmers. In becoming a pirate, Chris\nessentially goes to war against the status quo...or at least the most\nsignificant status quo that he encounters: The Spanish.\n\nAlso, Wolfe very adroitly shows what other historians have noted:\npirate ships were the only true democracies in the world at the\ntime.This in itself is an assault against the politics of the time\nthat I believe honestly inclined Wolfe to the pirates' case.  I'm\nreminded what i heard Wolfe say last year:\n\n\"The form of government I favor is Democracy. America is not a\ndemocracy. It is a republic. That means that every so often we choose\npeople to rule over us. And once we have, you can bet THEY KNOW IT.\"\n\nAt no time, does Wolfe let us forget the type of people who became\npirates. He shows most of them them as drunks and reprobates. Violent\nmen who sold their lives cheaply and thought as little of the lives of\nothers. Of course, he also shows that the system they parasited\n--although filled with more respected \"Christians\"-- was every bit as\ncruel and callous. He also portrays the position of English privateers\nwho saw themselves as patriots.\n\nFor half a chapter, there is some post-911 lecturing in Chris'\nreflections on the assault on Maracaibo and on harsh treatment/torture\n(here Chris' pirates alternately playing analogous Islamic terrorists\nand then the CIA). I can certainly understand it if anyone found the\nnarrator's arguments uncompelling, but Wolfe's sympathies cannot be a\nsurprise to anyone.\n\n\nOn the issue of time travel:\n\nIt is not likely that Wolfe intended to rationalize Chris' time-travel\nany more than Baum attempted to rationalize Dorothy's trips to Oz. I\nwhen I began reading the novel, I assumed the monastery was a ship\nthat casually sailed through Time in the same way Chris's ships moved\nfrom port to port. The ending shows that is not so. The Time travel is\nsomething directly connected to Chris (to which his future self is\nable to hitch a ride). Maybe it is God, or maybe it was his Father,\nbut primarily it is just a way to get a modern narrator into that\nworld and to bring him back to report to us.\n\nJ."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}