# Digest urth.v019.n028 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 21 Oct 1998* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *21 Oct 1998, 08:02* > Northanger Abbey, actually. (Sorry.) ooopsie! > From: John Bishop > Subject: Re: Lara of _There_are_Doors_ > ...Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might be > who survived into the Christian world... > This was only a phrase to me until I saw the July 9-24 > issue of "Rolling Stone", which featured Madonna on the > cover as a blue-eyed blonde. "Aphrodite!" I said to myself, > or Wolfeanly, "Lara!". > > There was the beauty--the desirable beauty--combined with > intelligence and power, and a kind of super-human aloofness > which tells you that you can desire but you can't hope to > dominate. There was the mutable Idea of creative female > power: reinvented as a blonde, a brunette, as Marilyn Monroe > or the girl next door. There was the immortality of a > creature outside our moral rules. Given Wolfe's age, Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola in "The Blue Angel" is probably more along the lines of what he was thinking of. Madonna is only a brassy imitation. -alga ---