{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/21",
    "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": 21,
    "subject": "Some Gene Wolfe Trivia",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1984-01-23T09:25:17+00:00",
    "last": "1984-01-23T09:25:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<1025@sdchema.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "donn",
        "address": "donn at sdchema.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1984-01-23T09:25:17+00:00",
      "subject": "Some Gene Wolfe Trivia",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Re Borges and Wolfe (Bruce Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill):  Here is what Wolfe\nhas to say about Borges:\n\n\tLike the undines, Baldanders is a giant who is still growing.\n\tI took his name from Jorge Luis Borges's THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY\n\tBEINGS.  It isn't one of Borges's best books, but that has\n\tnever stopped me from stealing from it disgracefully.  (Anyway,\n\tsecond-rate Borges is still very good.) In his article on\n\tBaldanders, Borges credits the name to one Hans Sachs\n\t(1494-1576) of Nuremberg, then states, 'Some ninety years after\n\tSachs's death, Baldanders makes a new appearance in the last\n\tbook of the picaresque-fantastic novel by Grimmelshausen, THE\n\tADVENTURESOME SIMPLICISSIMUS (1699).'  Were Sachs and\n\tGrimmelshausen real?  Is there actually a such a book as THE\n\tADVENTURESOME SIMPLICISSIMUS?  I have no idea.  Borges is\n\tcapable of making up much better books and authors than anyone\n\tcan find in libraries; for examples, read 'The Approach to Al\n\tMu'tasim' and 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,' both of\n\twhich are to be found in his FICCIONES.  (If you do not get a\n\tcopy of that book, if you fail to read those stories, you will\n\tnever be sure that I am not making up Borges, a literary effort\n\tworthy of the Nobel Prize.)  [From THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER,\n\tpp. 46-47]\n\nWolfe's final parenthetical remark is of course trying to imply that\nBorges should get the Nobel Prize for inventing Pierre Menard...  I\nhave in fact heard of Grimmelshausen -- readers of John Le Carre may\nrecall that the book which poor George Smiley forgets at the club at\nthe start of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is an old edition of\nGrimmelshausen.\n\nRe THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN (Jeff Duntemann at Xerox, Wombat at UI):\nThe latest word I have on Wolfe comes from the January LOCUS.  The\narticle says that (a) Wolfe has finally quit his job as an editor of\nPLANT ENGINEERING MAGAZINE and is going to be a full-time writer, (b)\nhe has spent the last year or so writing a new novel entitled FREE LIVE\nFREE which has not yet been sold to a publisher, and (c) '... I've got\nthe fifth book of the New Sun in first draft, but I haven't done\nanything on it for months.  I plan to pull it out eventually and do the\nfinal draft.  Comparatively little of the book takes place in the Urth\nof the Commonwealth.  A lot of it takes place in space...  The\ntemptation is... to get away from [writing about Urth], because I know\nthe place pretty well and it's time to go and explore a new place.'\n\nIsn't LOCUS wonderful?\n\nOn the home front, I gave my younger brother a full set of THE BOOK OF\nTHE NEW SUN in paperback for Christmas, hoping he might like it but\nwithout much optimism, and to my surprise when I stayed at his\napartment in DC during the Uniforum conference last week, I found that\nhe was well into THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR and apparently enjoying it.\nWhen I left he was working on SotL on the couch while his friend was\nattempting THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER on a chair.  Will wonders never\ncease?\n\nReviews for THE MAN IN THE TREE by Damon Knight, COURTSHIP RITE by\nDonald Kingsbury, SOMERSET DREAMS by Kate Wilhelm, FEVRE DREAM by\nGeorge Railroad Martin, RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban, NO ENEMY BUT\nTIME by Michael Bishop, and others in a later posting."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}