{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/822",
    "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": 822,
    "subject": "V.R.T., Marsch, and \"A Story\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-17T20:18:08+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-17T20:18:08+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0014-0037@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-17T20:18:08+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) V.R.T., Marsch, and \"A Story\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Wed, 17 Jun 1998 alga wrote:\nDo we think that \"A Story\" was written by Marsch alone or\nby the JVM/VRT amalgam? If it were placed last in the sequence, surely the\nlatter. As it is, still probably the latter. But it's still a kind of fairy\ntale, not anything we can really rely on."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm morally certain it was written by V.R.T. (See below on the \"amalgam.\")\nAs you and others have pointed out, Marsch is far too insensitive,\nespecially regarding the Annese, to write anything like it.  The only\nproblem is that I recall reading an interview with Wolfe in which he says\nMarsch wrote it.  I don't remember where but I remember him saying this\ndistinctly, because I already thought at the time that V.R.T. wrote \"A\nStory.\"  Maybe Wolfe meant only that the person calling himself Marsch\nwrote V.R.T.  Or maybe he'd briefly forgotten that V.R.T. wrote \"A Story.\"\nIf all other lines of defense failed, I would have to say that while Wolfe\nmay have meant to have Marsch write \"A Story,\" in the story Wolfe wrote\nV.R.T. wrote \"A Story.\"  (I keep meaning to read the famous essay be\nWimsatt and somebody attacking the \"intentional fallacy.\")"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I don't think Veil's Hypothesis could possibly be true by evidence of VRT\nhimself. Assume that he really is half-abo, and that in some way I can't\npretend to understand, his personality has merged with that of JVM. Perhaps,\nlike his mother, he can change his appearance--that thick black beard would\nhelp--but he also seems to have absorbed a good deal of JVM's learning,\nvocabulary and curiosity (he knows what Mr. Million is, for instance, a\nmachine and tool if ever there was one, and about clones), and I find it\nhard to believe that, as #5 accuses, he learned everything from books on\nSte. Anne."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I hadn't seen this thoery of V.R.T. merging with Marsch before, but I have\nto stick to my belief that V.R.T. is just impersonating Marsch in the\nordinary way, perhaps aided by his shape-shifting abilities if he has\nthem.  I don't find it implausible that he learned all his anthropology \nfrom books on Ste. Anne and St. Croix; he had three years in the\nwilderness to study Marsch's books, and could read more in the libraries.\nIn particular, his knowledge of \"anthropological relaxation,\" which\nanother poster had cited, could have been picked up in the local library\nafter he's realized what the Wolfes are.  His learning doesn't have to be\nvery deep.  Who does he have to convince?  A dilettante who may have\nceased following the literature years ago, some moderately-informed laymen\nwho have access to the same sources he does, and the anthropological\nfaculties on the sisterworlds, which are bad (this is by V.R.T.'s own\ntestimony, but there's no reason to doubt it) and are no doubt already\npredisposed to be impressed by the visiting professor from Earth.   And\nIIRC it was never claimed that Annese couldn't intellectually comprehend\nmachines and tools, just that they couldn't make or use them.  \n\nWhat convinces me that V.R.T. has not merged with Marsch, aside from the\nlack of any indication that any Annese have this ability, is the drastic\nchange in personality evident between Marsch's real journal entries and\nV.R.T.'s entries.  It's so great that, with the benefit of hindsight, it's\nhard to see how anyone could have doubted that V.R.T. replace Marsch.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}