{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1468",
    "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": 1468,
    "subject": "silk/horn narrator",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-08-08T09:31:47+00:00",
    "last": "2001-08-08T09:31:47+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0912@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-08T09:31:47+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: (urth) silk/horn narrator",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Tue, 7 Aug 2001 Binah at aol.com wrote:\nSorry if this is a tired old subject, but I'm new to the list. "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Welcome!  You may not be aware that there is also a list specifically for\nWolfe's Long Sun and Short Sun series.  It was established as the books\nwere coming out to keep people in the urth list from seeing spoilers.  \nNow that the series is complete, I imagine it may get folded into the\n\"urth\" list, but for now most of the discussion about the Short Sun books\nhas been on this list:\n\nwhorl at lists.best.com\n\nI'm \"crossposting\" this to that mailing list; if you'd like to continue\nthe discussion, it might be better to restrict it to the \"whorl\" list."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I assumed that the narrator of Return to the world ( aside from the editors) \nwas an amalgam of the minds and souls of Horn and Silk- similar to the \ncombination of Rose and Marble after Rose's physical death. I understand that \nMarble is a synthetic being, but I feel that Wolfe advances a kind of \"Blade \nRunner/ A.I.\" type ghost in the machine philosophy with Marble and her \ndaughter.  Couldn't the narrator be a composite like soul with Silk asserting \npredominance at the close of Return?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This is controversial, of course, but my take is similar to yours.  That\nSilk's soul had \"died\" - i.e. that he was overwhelmed by despair, and that\nHorn's spirit joined Silk's in some way long enough for Silk to heal, and\nthat Horn's spirit possibly finally dies once Silk has healed (i.e. once\nhe can admit to himself that he is Silk and that Hyacinth is dead).\n\nNote how Horn's lecture on the benefits of hybrid corn at the very\nbeginning of On Blue's Waters seems to forshadow this.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}