{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3757",
    "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": 3757,
    "subject": "DOORS: Overwood as Avalon",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-01-15T05:27:15+00:00",
    "last": "2003-01-15T05:27:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0301-2659@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-01-15T05:27:15+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) DOORS: Overwood as Avalon",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Shell quoted me and wrote:\n<<In making this choice, while he is being true to himself and his dream, he\nis also paradoxically conforming to Overworld: where men die for Love.>>\n\nI'm not sure why he would die.  He can have sexual relations with a woman\nand live even in the other world -- Fanny herself remarked as such.  So why\nwould it be death to follow the goddess?  I have only read TAD once but\nmust have missed that part, I trust your keen eye to have picked it up but\nwhere is this reference?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In the big \"White Goddess\" pattern of Robert Graves, the goddess has a\nplace out west (direction of sunset, i.e., place where sun dies) that\nmortals cannot visit.  It is appleland, because apples are hers (they are\nhers probably because of the five-pointed pattern of the seeds in an apple\ncore -- note the five-street intersection that plays such an axial role in\nTAD), it is the Hesperides, land of golden apples, it is Avalon, and\nothers.\n\nThe hero first hears about Overwood from the doll surgeon.  Then he asks\nthe red faced man (a drunk?) and he mentions Marea as the town nearest\nOverwood, suggests the hero get a map at the place across the street.\nGetting the map, he tries to buy it, but the bills (hmmm) are seen as\ncounterfeit and he is chased.  In retrospect it shows that men who ask for\na map to Overwood are going to be arrested, maybe \"for their own good.\"\n\nAnyway, later on (ch 6) he is talking to Eddie Walsh about Joe Joseph, the\nfighter, and how Joe is under pressure from his wife Jennifer.  Walsh\nadmits he sometimes wishes that Jennifer would get hit by a truck, but also\nknows that if that happened it would be even worse for Joe.  The hero says\n\"[Joe] Might kill himself\" and Walsh says \"Not with liquor . . . [he would\ngo] Out west someplace.\"  The hero, fishing for clues, asks \"Somewhere\naround Manea?\" and Walsh says \"Yeah.\"  This establishes that Overwood is\nthe place where heartbroken men go to crawl in a hole and die.\n\nIn the next chapter (ch 7), North tells him: \"There's a big place out west\nthat's sacred to her [the goddess] -- ten thousand square miles . . .\nNobody can live out there.  Nobody's even supposed to go into it.\"  This\nsuggests that Overwood has some sort of death-dealing police force.\n\nWhen the hero was trying to avoid police, he joined a parade.  When the\npretty woman on the ice float gestured for him to come through the rosey\narch into her camper hut, he did.  Then he had to flee for his life, and he\ngot a concussion and woke up in the hospital.  In the hospital he had a\ndream/vision of a rosey arch and the goddess, and he was filled with dread\n(ch 7).  He has learned to read the signs of this strange world.  Later on\nhe is looking at his stolen map of Overwood, and among other locations on\nthe map he sees \"Goddess's Pleasure Garden, and there was a gray stone arch\nin the center smothered in flowers.  Recalling that arch from his dream, he\nshivered.\"  Overwood is a place of death.\n\nFinally, note that one of North's names is \"Ted West.\"  (As for what his\nreal Visitor World name is, his tatoo \"RN\" makes it seem like \"Richard\nNorth\" might be the real one.)\n\nIt seems like Overwood is in California.  Or maybe Hollywood?  Or outside\nof California, maybe \"Sierra Madre,\" since it seems to be in the mountains\n(and madre is \"mother\").\n\nAnother piece of the Graves \"White Goddess\" deal is that there is almost\nalways a triangle: the goddess and two men who are fighting each other for\nher.  IIRC the men are symbolically represented as a star and a serpent.\nSometimes one wins, sometimes the other wins; she gives birth to a\nreincarnation of the loser and it cycles 'round and 'round again.  So I\nwould not be surprised if in Wolfe's version for TAD the one is always\nnamed William and the other is named Pat Garrett -- er, Adam.\n\n(Having writ that, still I must stress that someone trying to kill the\ngoddess herself is not one of the rival twins -- that would be the thunder\ngod coming in from the hinterland trying to break up the urban ordered\nuniverse.  The bringer of the patriarchy, in other words.)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}