{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1218",
    "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": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1218,
    "subject": "Lara of _There_are_Doors_",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-20T16:59:21+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-20T16:59:21+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0020-0083@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Bishop",
        "address": "jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-20T16:59:21+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Lara of _There_are_Doors_",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In his interview, Wolfe said that he saw Lara as what a\npagan goddess might be like if paganism had survived to\nthe modern era.\n\n    ...Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might be\n    who survived into the Christian world...\n\n                 http://world.std.com/~pduggan/gwjbj2.html#fem\n\n\nThis was only a phrase to me until I saw the July 9-24\nissue of \"Rolling Stone\", which featured Madonna on the\ncover as a blue-eyed blonde.  \"Aphrodite!\" I said to myself,\nor Wolfeanly, \"Lara!\".\n\nThere was the beauty--the desirable beauty--combined with\nintelligence and power, and a kind of super-human aloofness\nwhich tells you that you can desire but you can't hope to\ndominate.  There was the mutable Idea of creative female\npower: reinvented as a blonde, a brunette, as Marilyn Monroe\nor the girl next door.  There was the immortality of a \ncreature outside our moral rules.\n\nI don't mean to imply that the real Madonna is either a\ngoddess, a Nietzchean super(wo)man or a living icon; I do\nmean to say that I now understand how Lara could dominate\nthe world of _There_are_Doors_, and how her image might\nvary, and how there is a mental niche into which Lara could\nfit (and part of which Madonna is now exploiting with great\nskill).\n\nAm I just a nut for blondes, or does this make sense to anyone?\n\n\t-John"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}