{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/836",
    "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": 836,
    "subject": "Hari Mau's Mission",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-06-08T20:15:20+00:00",
    "last": "2000-06-08T20:15:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0350@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigelprice1 at compuserve.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-06-08T20:15:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Hari Mau's Mission",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Timothy Reilly asks:\n\n        one point of detail - how do we know Hari Mau \n        was searchoing for Silk on the Whorl? - my \n        impression is that he was doing so on Blue only.\n\nGoodness, what was it I said?  Oh, yes:\n\n        The people of New Viron recognise the need for a ruler \n        to lead their town, and commission Horn to travel to the \n        Whorl to find Patera Silk, the Calde of old Viron, so that \n        he can become the Calde of New Viron too. Although we \n        do not know the full circumstances, it is clear that Hari Mau \n        and some other men from Gaon have also returned to the \n        Whorl in search of Silk, so that they can install him as their \n        Rajan. Mistaking Horn for Silk, they kidnap him, and return \n        to Blue and make him their prince. But the real irony is not \n        so much that Horn’s mission is frustrated by those carrying \n        out an apparently identical mission on behalf of another \n        settlement, so much as the fact that Horn has indeed become \n        like Silk, and may even be Silk in some way which has not \n        yet been fully explained.\n\nYes, you're right, I should have provided some references and\njustifications for those assertions. When I read Timothy's comment, I\nstarted reading backwards through OBW, jotting down the page numbers where\nHorn refers to the circumstances of his kidnap from the Whorl. I got about\nhalf way through the book, and it was late, and I was tired, and I thought,\n\"I wonder if anyone else has already answered this query?\", so I logged on\nto have a look.\n\nAh, I might have guessed!  Thank you, Mantis!  Yes, I agree entirely about\nthe five time frames, and make reference to the different strands in my\nreview, though not in such a clear and systematic fashion as your\ndescription.\n\nYes, that's the sort of answer I would have given, along with quotations\nfrom the passages where the narrator refers to the fact that the people of\nGaon believe that they really do have Silk as their ruler, and tell\neveryone else about it too. Have a look at...\n\nP308:   'Because I could not leave Pig blind, these people were able to\nbring me here, and so ended any chance of success I might have had.'\n\nP40:    'If it had not been for our book, Marrow and the rest would have\nchosen someone else, beyond argument. As it was, our book - The Book of\nSilk, or as others would have it, The Book of the Long Sun - spread over\nthis whorl more rapidly than Nettle and I had dared hope. Silk -\n\n        '\"Silk has become an almost mythic figure,\" I began to write. The\ntruth is that he has become a mythic figure. I hear rumours of altars and\nsacrifices. Disciples who have never seen him promulgate his teachings. If\nit had not been for our book, Hari Mau and the rest would have chosen\nsomeone else, or no one.'\n\nSo: Silk is widely revered on Blue. The last sentence I quote could mean\nthat Hari Mau and co chose the narrator because he was the *author* of the\nbook, but other passages suggest that it really was because they thought\nthat he was Silk. Compare...\n\nP309:   'When I came here I was a prisoner - a prisoner who was respected,\ntrue. I was treated with great kindness and even reverence by Hari Mau and\nhis friends, but I was a prisoner just the same. I knew it, and so did\nthey.'\n\nPresumably, Hari Mau and friends treated Horn \"with great kindness\" because\nthey thought he was Silk.\n\nP234:   'Hari Mau and the rest will not even believe that I am who I am,\nand I have known that I would not be believed ever since I wrote about the\nleatherskin.'\n\nI interpret this to mean that Horn has told Hari Mau that he is Horn, but\nthat Hari Mau persists in believing that he is really Silk.\n\nCompare p1721:  'Nor would the people allow me to leave if they knew who I\nreally am.'\n\nAnd on the same page:   'Silk (I mean the real Silk)...'\n\nP146:   'Ambassadors from a distant town arrived today. It is called\nSkany...They had been told that Silk was here, \"ruling Gaon,\" and wished to\ninvite me to rule Skany as well.'\n\nIt's not that they heard that the author of The Book of Silk was the ruler,\nbut that Silk himself was.\n\nThere's another passage - I can't find the page - where Horn refers to the\nfact that he's the only person in Gaon who doesn't know where Silk is, and\nI interpret this as a reference to the fact that the populace think that\nHorn is Silk, and, knowing where Horn is, think that they know where Silk\nis, whereas Horn, who knows he is not Silk, doesn't know where the real\nSilk is.\n\nOr something like that!\n\nThe clues seemed to add up, although I admit that the details of Horn's\nabduction are still vague. There are those references to Horn clearing the\ndead bodies out of the sewer on the Whorl as well. I gues we'll have to\nwait for \"Return to the Whorl\" to find out what that was all about.\n\n(As for the mythic \"Nick Price\", Potto and I seem to have been equally\nhorrified by the conflation. Jonathan called it \"Frankensteinian\" and\nshivered at the thought. To make matters worse, Nick Gevers tells me that\nthere really is a \"Nick Price\", and that he's a Zimbabwean golfer. Perish\nthe thought! It's like trying to imagine Baldanders striding out onto the\nlinks...)\n\nNigel Price\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}