{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3759",
    "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": 3759,
    "subject": "DOORS: Goddess vs. Christianity",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-01-15T19:57:50+00:00",
    "last": "2003-01-15T19:57:50+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0301-2662@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-01-15T19:57:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) DOORS: Goddess vs. Christianity",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Roy wrote:\nYou have noted Graves' position vis-a-vis earth and sky; needless to say,\nGraves' sympathies were with the goddess. Wolfe's, needless to say, are with\nthe other side. That being so, North, the wannabe goddess-killer, would be,\nin effect, in the service of the God of the Bible. Green, following the\ngoddess, would be lusting after the very sort of figure that the Old\nTestament prophets were forever railing against."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Right."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "That would make North a good guy, Green a bad guy, in Wolfe's cosmology,\nwouldn't it? How can this reading square with Wolfe's known religious views,\nand his own opinion that THERE ARE DOORS is his best book?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It is a pagan-sympathetic novel, even more so than the Soldier books set in\npre-Christian times.  In that interview that Nutria performed, Nutria made\na sketch or two at linking the Otherworld with Christianity (for example,\nthe Italian restaurant as representing the Roman Church), but Wolfe said\nno, it was a pagan world, and I read it that way.\n\n(Interview at http://www.op.net/~pduggan/wolfejbj.html)\n\nThe novel is full-bore Graves, if you like, and for the purposes of this\nnovel Wolfe adopts that point of view.  What surprises me is how, in the\nprocess, he kind of beats the stuffing out of Chesterton, another Wolfe\nhero (just as Graves would likely launch at such a thunder-god booster).\n\nLikewise we can turn to politics.  Wolfe is on record as saying he is a\nRepublican (but with additional nuances we need not get into here).  As a\nRepublican, though, he can still be appalled by Oliver North and/or Gordon\nLiddy and/or Richard Nixon.  William North was originally patterned after\nOllie North (says Wolfe in the interview) but later found a true source in\nGordon Liddy.  William North is a frightening character who speaks of Nixon\nin rather zealous tones, yet this does not mean that Wolfe had left the\nRepublican party.\n\nI have always thought that Herr Klamm was patterned after Henry Alfred\nKissinger.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}