{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1330",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1330,
    "subject": "The Return of Horn",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-04-09T23:02:43+00:00",
    "last": "2001-04-09T23:02:43+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0559@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-09T23:02:43+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) The Return of Horn",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here's another theory.\nAdam and Nutria said"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "But there are  ways of indicating that the protagonist is both Horn and Silk\nwithout using amalgams like \"Silkhorn.\"  And while the editors' suppression\nof any name but \"he\" leaves the protagonist's identity ambiguous in\nretrospect, it doesn't read that way at the time.  Since \"Horn\" protests\nthat he is Horn throughout, and since the third-person sections give us \n(we\nthink) access to \"Horn's\" mind which seemingly bears out his claim, weaccept \nhis claim at face value (at least I did).  So the failure to identify\nthe protagonist is deceptive in effect.  And I have a hard time believing\nthe editors wouldn't have recognized that and taken steps to correct it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 4,
          "text": "--Adam"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "        though this has been discussed to death, you do bring another\nslant to it. Wolfe is more than capable of tricking us and reversing our\nexpectations at the end of this trilogy. But are the editors of the 3d\nperson sections? Why would they do this? As you note, such tricking makes\nlittle sense. I persist in suspecting that the Narrator is really mainly\nHorn, though in Silk's body, and that this is who he continues to be. But\nat this point, I'm reduced to little more than a suspicion, because of the\neffective way everyone here has beaten me up over this.\n        And I'll bring this up again, since nobody commented on in when I\nbrought it up the first time. I cannot find the place, but at one point the\nNarrator, having been accused of being Silk for the nth time, looks for a\nscar he expects to find on Silk's body, and claims not to find it, thereby\nreassuring himself that he is not Silk. Of course, it is pretty clear that\nhe is in Silk's body, and is partly Silk; but he himself thinks he has\nreasons to dismiss the views of everyone around him.\n\nNutria the Nut"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "On the contrary, I think the editors do have a valid reason to say that in \nfact SILK returned instead of their father HORN in some unknown jokers' body.  \nTheir father is a failure without the return of silk, and the people (if we \ncan assume the TBSS will serve for common propoganda like TBLS) will be more \nlikely to live in peace if they thought Silk really did come back for them and \nfound them wanting.  They have something to strive for.  If it was only Horn \nin a weird man's body (or worse, some inhuma impersonating a dead man he met \non Green [who subsequently betrays the other inhumi and must be hunted down]), \nthen he was a true failure.  Children won't let their parents be failures if \nthey can help it, especially if they are already semi-legendary.  Why not lie \nin the sections they compose?  Why not hide the true identity of the weirdo \ncoming in, and lend credence to his claims.  \"Sure, he was our father. And he \nwas Silk, too! What a true hero Horn was.  He didn't fail us!\"  Even though \nSilk is conveniently gone.\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}