{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/11",
    "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": "usenet",
  "thread": {
    "id": 11,
    "subject": "shadow of the torturer and thomas co - (nf)",
    "messages": 4,
    "voices": 4,
    "first": "1983-06-21T21:14:58+00:00",
    "last": "1983-06-29T20:17:22+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<244@packet.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "cfv",
        "address": "cfv at packet.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1983-06-21T21:14:58+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: shadow of the torturer and thomas co - (nf)",
      "in_reply_to": "<417@hpda.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I seem to have had a similar response to SotT.  It took me about  3  months\nto  finish  the book, but the first quarter of the book took all but 4 days\nof it.  It was not that I didn't like the book, but it is an  involved  and\nthought  provoking book and you have to be in the proper frame of mind.  If\nyou don't feel like involving yourself in the book, it just  doesn't  work.\nI  have  a  similar response to movies: some days I feel like Fellini, some\ndays I feel like the Marx Brothers.\n\nOne thing that I noticed (someone out there want to back me  up  on  this?)\nwhen  reading  it  was that the feel of the New Sun books was very close to\nthe works of Kafka.  As it turned out, I was reading some of Kafka's  short\nworks  about  the time I read SotT, so it might just be a reaction to that,\nbut it almost felt  like  he  was  using  a  work  like  The  Castle  as  a\nphilosphical base.  There is also a lot of classical literature entertwined\ninto the fabric of the story, especially the Greek and Roman mythologies.\n\nI haven't read the Covenant yet. Maybe I should... Is it really a good work?"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<2308@uiucdcs.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "marick",
        "address": "marick at ccvaxa.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1983-06-24T08:52:54+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: shadow of the torturer and thomas co - (nf)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "There will be another book by Wolfe set in Urth.\nIt will, I believe, be a group of short stories.  One Urth\nstory will appear in the World Fantasy Convention program book."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<417@hpda.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "bvi",
        "address": "bvi at hpda.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1983-06-27T06:34:29+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: shadow of the torturer and thomas co - (nf)",
      "in_reply_to": "<2308@uiucdcs.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hmmm... No, the only correlation between Donaldson and Wolfe that I share\nis that they're both hard to get into.  However, whereas I *forced* myself\nto finish the 1st Donaldson book, and had absolutely *no* interest in \nreading any more in the sequence, I found I couldn't put Shadow of the\nTorturer down once I got about 1/4 of the way into it.  It does take a \nbit of getting used to, because Wolfe writes in a deliberately obscure\nmanner that forces you to use more imagination than most other SF books.\nI found that Severian and the whole culture portrayed in the book \nfascinating; I finished SoT in one sitting and ran out the next day to\nbuy the other three books, which I finished post haste.  I only wish\nthere were more!\n\nBeatriz Infante"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<214@ucbtopaz.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "fantods",
        "address": "fantods at ucbvax.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1983-06-29T20:17:22+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: shadow of the torturer and thomas co - (nf)",
      "in_reply_to": "<417@hpda.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Donaldson I can't read, Wolfe I can.  Donaldson uses language to\nobscure and deflate everything--Wolfe seems to somehow make everything\nmore complex and resonant, ecstatically precise.  I admit that I\ncouldn't really identify with Severian very much, but I was carried\nalong by other things.\n\nAnything I read by Poul Anderson seems to be a pastiche of greatness,\nbut never quite achieves greatness.  Please send me examples of his\n\"great\" stuff.  I probably missed it while I was plowing through\none or another of his titles picked out at random.  He has a lot of them!\n\nRichard"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}