{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/994",
    "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": 994,
    "subject": "Who am I? (was: Hues, HORARS: II)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-16T00:16:43+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-16T00:16:43+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0018@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William H. Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-16T00:16:43+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Who am I? (was: Hues, HORARS: II)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Anyone up for making a list of Wolfe stories where the narrator is\nmistaken about his own identity?  Off the top of my head:\n\n\"HORARS\"\n\"The Other Dead Man\"\n\"Checking Out\"\n\"The Changeling\"\n\"Tracking Song\"\n\"Forlesen\"\n\nLatro\nBoth Severian and Silk to some extent\nMaybe Weer in PEACE"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think you are going to have to change your specifications if you want to\ninclude all the stories you mention. How about: a list of Wolfe stories\nwhere the protagonist (who may also be the narrator) is mistaken or\nconfused about his identity (and where it may be impossible to tell from\nthe text unambiguously what the protagonist's true identity is) and where\nidentity can mean either personal identity or something more general such\nas whether the protagonist is dead or alive, human or nonhuman.\n\nHey, isn't that all of them?!? 8->\n\nIn HORARS whether the protagonist is a HORAR or a human surgically\ndisguised as a HORAR is left at least slightly open.\n\nIn \"The Other Dead Man\" and \"Checking Out\" the protagonists know who they\nare, they just don't know that they are dead.\n\nIn \"The Changeling\" it's hard to know who is mistaken about the narrator's\nidentity.\n\nIn \"Tracking Song\" as far as I can see, it is more a case of loss of\nidentity than being mistaken; Cutthroat is never quite sure who he is (and\nneither are we).\n\nI am assuming you are including \"Forlesen\" because either you think the\nprotagonist, Emanuel Forlesen, is dead and doesn't know it which is\ncertainly possible and even likely, but not, I think, certain or you think\nhe has been given a wholly false identity, which may be true but there is\nlittle or no support for this in the text.\n\nLatro, again, is a case of lack of (personal) identity due to lack of\nmemory. Severian and Silk know who they are but not what they are; at least\nat first. I think that Alden Dennis Were is perhaps the least ambiguous of\nall of Wolfe's \"dead and doesn't know it\" narrators, although this fact is\nanything but obvious in PEACE.\n\nYou have left out the grand-daddy of all of Gene Wolfe identity confusion\npieces: _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_.\n\nI also nominate:\n\n\"Melting\"\n\"The Eyeflash Miracles\"\n\"The Packerhaus Method\"\n_Free Live Free_\n\"Three Fingers\"\n\nAnd possibly:\n\n\"The Death of Dr. Island\"\n\"Sightings at Twin Mounds\"\n\"A Solar Labyrinth\"\n\"In the House of Gingerbread\"\n\"The Last Thrilling Wonder Story\"\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}