{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/583",
    "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": 583,
    "subject": "Delage and Henry James",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-09T20:48:45+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-09T20:48:45+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0123@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-09T20:48:45+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Delage and Henry James",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Sat, 9 May 1998 Peter Stephenson wrote:\nthe way it is.  I continue to read the story the way I first did: that\nthere is some `non-obvious' supernatural explanation, that the narrator's\nreality is warped in some way that he simply doesn't ever see Suzanne.\nThe whole universe is conspiring that they don't meet --- even by \nbending the laws a bit.  That's what I find chilling.  I think\n(please contradict) this is the naturally Borgesian explanation."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I don't know how Borgesian it is, but there's a story by Henry James\nwhose title I forget based on that very premise: that (as best I can\nrecall) there are two people who somehow never meet, despite their\nmoving in the same social circles and having numerous opportunities\nto do so.  The kicker is that after one of them dies, the deceased\none's ghost frequently visits the other, and they more or less fall\nin love.  I don't know if this is relevant to Wolfe's story or not;\nI suspect not (and I certainly don't believe that Suzanne Delage is\ndead and the girl the narrator meets is her ghost!).\n\nAfter I wrote that last sentence, I suddenly realized that there was\nindeed \"evidence\" for this.  We are told that Suzanne could not be\nphotographed because of an epidemic of Spanish influenza.  I don't\nhave the story with me, but it seems possible that this could well\nhave been the 1918 epidemic, which did kill a lot of people.  And\nthe narrator certainly seems to be in love with the \"daughter.\"  But\nI still don't believe it.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}