{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/592",
    "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": 592,
    "subject": "Venus not in RAW",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-12T02:30:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-12T02:30:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0142@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-12T02:30:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Venus not in RAW",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "What a lot of activity has been going on.\n\nWell, I've been away.  And in my awayness I found opportunity to skim\nthrough the Illuminatus! trilogy, because I was fairly certain that\nit really =was= in there that I first read the curious detail(s) about\nhow the statute \"Venus di Milo\" was a modern fake, a tale also a part\nof PEACE.  I remember first making this claim about ten years ago, when\nboth works were more freshly read.\n\nI couldn't find it.  More's the pity--it really =should= be in there,\nsince it fits ILLUMINATUS! so well.\n\nWell then, if not RAW (and it could not have been any other RAW since\nthat was all I'd read by the time I read PEACE, or so I think), then\nwho?  Think, think: something Mediterranean, perhaps Greek; mysterious;\ngnostic and/or illuminated, to a greater or lesser degree; about\nconspiracy of one kind or another . . .\n\nMight it be THE MAGUS?  (Spooky that alga recommended this recently.)\nSo I skimmed through that one.  Skimming ILLUMINATUS! was depressing\nenough--it made me want to re-read it, and yet here I'd just ruined\nthat for the moment by skimming.  Skimming THE MAGUS was even worse .\n. . what a book.  It made me ache, but again, desire to re-read\nthwarted by the action of skimming.  And still no Venus-the-fake.\n\nWhere, where?\n\nTHE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET seemed like a long shot.  It was.  Another\nre-reading ruined for the season.\n\nWhere could it possibly be?  ZORBA THE GREEK?  Didn't have a copy on\nhand.  Search abandoned for the moment.\n\nBack to THE MAGUS.  Peter Wright's essays play big on the \"Godgame\"\nof THE MAGUS, and while I knew he was (W)right, I was not remembering\nhow very right he is.  Wolfe has mentioned THE MAGUS in an essay,\nand/or an interview, I can't remember at the moment exactly where.\n\nBut gee, reel back your reading history fifteen or twenty years, see\nwhat you find, wonder how they shaped your life at that time, how\nthey formed the dramas of those days, how they plotted the curve of\nyour adventure.  How often they quote from the same authors!  You\ncome back to the room of your own head and find that it has been\nrented out to folks who begin their chapters with quotes from de\nSade--oh brother.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}