{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/869",
    "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": 869,
    "subject": "Suzanne Delange & Snow White",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-28T18:12:52+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-28T18:12:52+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0033@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-28T18:12:52+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Suzanne Delange & Snow White",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Just got done reading SUZANNE DELANGE for the first time and thought I\nwould post my thoughts.\n\nTo me it seems a rather straightforward retelling of Snow White.\n\nNote how Suzanne's daughter (who's the very image of her mother) is\ndescribed: \"Her hair was of lustrous black, and her complexion as pure as\nmilk.\" She has \"virginal breasts half afraid to press the soft angora of\nher sweater\" and has \"an air, at once insouciant and shy, of vitality\ncoupled with an innocence and intelligence that was hers alone.\" The\nphysical description and images of innocence, I maintain, both recall Snow\nWhite.\n\nThen there's the name Suzanne, which means \"lily.\" Compare lily white/snow\nwhite.\n\nWe also have \"the dazzlingly beautiful [girls] whom we, in those naive\ntimes, called 'queens.'\"\n\nThe evil queen is the neighbor of our narrator, who hates Suzanne Delange's\nmother  (surely, Suzanne's mother resembles her the same way Suzanne's\ndaughter resembles Suzanne): \"There lived directly across the brick-paved\nstreet from us, a bitter old woman, a widow, who for some reason never\nexplained to me detested Mrs. Delange.\" \n\nThen there's the yearbooks saved for our narrator by his mother, who also\nhas collected a variety of Americana having to do with antique cloths. \n\nThe first mention of photographs reveals a number of them have been cut\nout--including Suzanne's and our narrator's. I submit the mutilated\nyearbook represents the mirror of the evil queen, who destroys her speculum\nwhen she doesn't get the answer she wants to her \"Mirror, mirror, on the\nwall\" question. (Serendipitously, one of the high schools in my community\ncalls its yearbook the Mirror).\n\nThe next mention of a photograph involves Suzanne's membership in the pie\nclub. I submit this symbolizes the poisoned apple. (Remember our narrator's\nmother's obsession for Americana and especially that which was created\nduring times of conflict, i.e., the American Revolution and Civil War? What\ncould be more American than apple pie? And the conflict involved is the\ninternecine squabble of good vs bad queen.)\n\nBut the next mention of pictures reveals that Suzanne's is missing because\nshe may have caught Spanish Influenza, a disease also known as the sleeping\nsickness, because its victims often went comatose and never woke up. \n\nAll of these events recapitulate what happens to Snow White.\n\nAnd why doesn't our narrator remember Suzanne Delange? It's because he\nlacks the bona fides of true princeliness. Not only is he as he admits \"a\nsecond-string quarterback,\" but when he looks at Suzanne Delange's daughter\nhe mostly notices her sexuality, \"the virginal breasts\" and \"tiny waist\" he\nmight have circled with his two hands. In other words he's not noble enough\nto be her prince. (Might we not also assume his short two marriages failed\nonce the thrill was gone and he succumbed to sexual ennui?) And so being\nunworthy of the pure and innocent Suzanne Delange, our narrator is unable\nto resuscitate her with a kiss and she remains sleeping in his brain,\nunavailable to recall.  \n\nscolex/Robert Borski"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}