{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/441",
    "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": 441,
    "subject": "notes from abroad",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-09-12T16:10:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-09-12T16:10:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0007-0590@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-09-12T16:10:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) notes from abroad",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #2372125 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\n(Rostrum, FWIW I'd go along with vizcacha's Cordwainer Smith\nreading plan, 100%.)\n\nHey, I've received a letter from G.E. Brain, a new correspondent\nin England, responding to Q&D and AE& chapbooks.  Here are a couple\nof points:\n\n\"Aer -- also Gaelic spelling of the old Scottish town of Ayr -- where\nGW's mother's family came from originally.\"\n\nThis is surprising to me but it sounds plausible since I know Gene\nWolfe's mother's name was Mary \"Fannie\" Olivia Ayers Wolfe (as given\nin LETTERS HOME).  (Again: watch for characters named Olivia; like\nthe aunt in PEACE and the sleeper in the Whorl.)  I vaguely remember\nan interview somewhere in which Gene Wolfe talked a bit about his\nfamily (a Faulknerian Christmas scene comes to mind); I also figured\nthat G.E. Brain got some info from CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS, but when I\nlooked in CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS again I didn't find any real info about\nmother's family.\n\nSo, does anybody have any other leads on this?  Granted, the name\n\"Ayers\" looks like it could come from a town in Scotland, but the\nsurname reference book I looked into mainly dealt with this name's\nlegendary (i.e., spurious) origins without mentioning a town at all.\nMaybe somebody remembers which interview it was that I referred to\nabove?\n\n\"Cant -- early 18th century slang (no entry)\n      some -- Rhyming slang -- `lily' = short for `lily white' = right\n      cf cockney rhyming slang in London;\n      come from Romany;\n      some still in common use in UK\"\n\nWhat I like about this note is that I already had several pieces but\nI couldn't figure how \"lily\" could equal \"true\": I knew that cockney,\nin addition to rhyming like a catachrest with an attitude, tends to use\ntwo or more words for one (\"brahms and lizt\" = pissed = drunk for\nAmericans; \"trouble and strife\" = wife; you can see the pattern\nhere--the two words are a natural pair, but the first word is what we\nmight call in armchair linguist mode the tenor clue, and the last\nword is likewise the rhyming clue); I could also see that \"lily\" could\nbe an allusion to white; but I didn't think of it as a contraction of\n\"lily white,\" nor make the decision that \"lily\" wasn't some Romany\n(aka \"Gypsy\") derived word; and it isn't \"true,\" it is \"right.\"\n(Probably somebody around here tried to tell me all of this before.)\n\nLily white means right.  That's lily!\n\n(Cordwainer Smith tidbit: my local library files THE BEST OF\nCORDWAINER SMITH under the author's birth name rather than pen name\n\"Cordwainer Smith.\"  Okay, who is the smarty pants who did that?  Do\nwe search for \"Mark Twain\" under Clemens?  NO!  Gimme a break!\n\"That's it--disband the guild!!\"  Then again, filing in a Chinese\nlanguage library under the Chinese characters of his name, which he\nknew and used, now =that= would be kind of cool!)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}