{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/780",
    "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": 780,
    "subject": "Puss in Boots; Three Fingers",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-14T13:48:46+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-14T13:48:46+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0013-0049@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-14T13:48:46+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Puss in Boots; Three Fingers",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "On Fri, 12 Jun 1998 William H. Ansley wrote:\nCarabas, sends you greetings.\"  And disappeared again.  The little animal\nhad a pointed snout and round ears, but its teeth were the even, biting\nteeth of a human being, and it smiled in its agony."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "To me, at least, the little animal is obviously Mickey Mouse (or possible\none of the other, similar cartoon mice with pointed snouts, round ears and\nsquare human teeth). "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Me too!  Of course, V.R.T. doesn't mention the pants or the gloves, but\nthey could have fallen off in the struggle."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Wolfe definitely has Mickey on his mind from time to\ntime; witness the story \"Three Fingers\" in _The Island of Doctor Death and\nOther Stories and Other Stories_."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've been meaning to post about that story for a long time, and you're\nmention of it has finally motivated me to shake off my inertia.  (Hence,\nthis is all from memory.)\n\nThe big question, of course, is \"What the heck is going on with the\nending?\"  I've come up with three possible answers, which I list in\ndescending order of probability.\n\n1) \"Michael Mauss\" is insane.  His keepers caught up with him and gave him\na sedative; everything else in the final scene is delusional.  The primary\nexternal evidence for this is that I once looked para-reserpine, the drug\ngiven to him.  I didn't find it, but I found reserpine, which presumably\nworks the same way.  Reserpine was at one time used as a powerful\ntranquilizer, especially for schizophrenics, IIRC (I don't know whether it\nwas still so used when Wolfe wrote the story).\n\nWhen I first developed this theory, I wasn't satisfied with it because I\nfelt that by this reading it wasn't much of a story.  Now I don't think\nso.  The point of the story, I now believe, is that Michael is insane but\nlives in a world full of magic and adventure, while his sane \"adversaries\"\nlive in a world of paunchy men and women in business suits.  It's another\nvariation of the theme of the individual vs. bureaucracy so common in his\nwriting.\n\n2)  \"Michael Mauss\" is sane and the \"Mickey Mafia\" really gets him, just\nlike it says in the story.  Supporting this is that hallucinations are one\nof the side effects of reserpine.  I don't like this because it leaves too\nmany questions unanswered.  Why would the Disney people dress up as Disney\ncharacters to catch Michael?  And why pretend they're going to kill him?\n\n3) \"Michael Mauss\" is really Mickey Mouse (and is also sane, as in 2)).\nSupporting this is that reserpine is now used as a veterinary\ntranquilizer.  This is a cute theory, and it's undoubtedly true in a\nmetaphorical sense.  But it's not literally true.  Aside from the\nobjections to 2), Michael is a human being, not a cartoon mouse.\n\nAny comments?  Any better ideas?\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}