Subject: (urth) DOORS: Klamm, Green

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 06:12:50 +0000

Fanny's account of Lara being Klamm's "stepdaughter" wasn't true; that was
just a popular cover story put out to satisfy public curiosity about why
such a desirable young woman should be seen so much in the company of an old
man. Green figured that out and told Klamm so, which Klamm admitted, in so
many words. (300) Klamm was never married; there was no ex-wife, or if there
was, that woman was Lara. The "favorite student" (141) the former wife was
said to have been when Klamm was at the university, the wife, the ex-wife,
the stepdaughter, were all Lara at different stages of Klamm's life. She
assumed different roles as he aged.

Klamm had been Lara's lover when he was young man, when he was "younger
than" Green (301), who was about 35 at that point. Let's say that Klamm was
her lover when he was in his twenties. How old is Klamm? Though still in
government service, he is described as a "crag-faced old man" with "cheeks
pulled flaccidly downward by the weight of years". (96) I think he's in his
seventies. Like Green, Klamm was a Visitor. (302) So, for close to fifty
years Klamm had been living in the Otherworld; that had to be the case for
him to have worked his way up from a non-English speaking foreigner to a
Cabinet level position. No matter which of the time-rate ratios put forward
recently is used, that means that Klamm had to have crossed over from our
world 400 to 700 years ago! He was Lara's lover before Captain Billy. He
called Green Herr K only because Green reminded him of himself when he was
young.

I think I can explain the confusion early in the book about the buck-toothed
doctor not seeming to know Green's name until prompted. The doctor wasn't
lying either, later in the book, about having seen Green more times than he
remembered. The day he came in looking for Lara was the first time Green had
been to the clinic in some years. He had been there a number of times before
years ago, back when he had his breakdown after his mother died. The doctor
recognized him by sight, but couldn't remember his name until she correctly
mistook his explanation of viridian as his name. Then she remembered.

Green didn't consciously remember having been to the clinic before because
he was suppressing the memory of having been a mental patient, because he
thought such a man to be unworthy of Lara. He was right about Lara lying
when she said that they had met at the doctor's office. She had picked him
up in the park. (267-68) Remember the account he gave North of Lara: "We've
been living together for the past few days. With no job, Lara couldn't pay
her rent." (40) If she had been a receptionist, then she had a job. Not
having a job was just another lie she told to rationalize her living with
him for a while. She changed her hair and eye colors to muddle the issue.

Lara introduced Green to Klamm as her "friend Adam K. Green". (293) I don't
know where she got the "Adam K." part, but I doubt that was his real name.
It was her half-hearted attempt to spare the feelings of her former lover by
calling a newer lover just a "friend". As Green himself told her, "I think
you like _Billy_--like the name." (280) Herr Klamm was "Adalwolf Wilhelm
Klamm". (293) The captain was "William Hurst". (278) She didn't want to rub
it in Klamm's face that Green was another in a long line of Williams.

-Roy

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 18:41:19 +0000

Once again I find my recent investigations put me on the same page with
Roy.  I agree with everything (Klamm is a visitor; Klamm is Lara's
ex-lover, and he isn't dead; Klamm is in his seventies) except a few points.

>No matter which of the time-rate ratios put forward
>world 400 to 700 years ago!

No, because one of my timeflow plans involves a ratio reversal which, over
time (8 years, 10 years?), cancels out the differences.  For instance,
let's say that in Otherworld Winter the ratio is 11:1 (11 e-days for 1
o-day) and in O-Spring the ratio is 14:1 (14 e-days for 1 o-day).  This is
given in the text.  Now with simple symmetry, we could try O-Summer as 1:11
(the "opposite" of O-Winter) and O-Autumn as 1:14.

>He was Lara's lover before Captain Billy. He

I think he was Lara's lover after Captain "Blaze-Away Billy" William Hurst.
(It would be neat if we could find a text with Captain Billy in it . . . I
tried the footnotes for FLASHMAN, but no luck there.)

MORE ON KLAMM

Using Adam Stephanides's tip that Klamm comes from Kafka's THE CASTLE
(thanks, Adam!), I poked around on the internet.  Klamm is, in fact,
involved in a love triangle with K.: Klamm's mistress is Frieda; Frieda
becomes attracted to K. and moves into his apartment; they become engaged
to be married; K. catches his assistent "playing" with Frieda so he sends
him away; the assistent spies K. interviewing Frieda's rival, reports to
Frieda, Frieda breaks off the engagement with K. and moves in with the
assistant (whose name begins with "J"; which is funny because K. on the
telephone calls himself Joseph).

So anyway, on the Kafka track, Lara = Frieda. (And I think that the Castle
itself = Overwood.  Not to be the bummer here, but one scenario for the
conclusion to THE CASTLE is that K., on his deathbed, finally gets
permission to visit the Castle he has been trying to get to for the entire
novel.)

THE CASTLE was published in 1926, iirc, and that is where in time I posit
that Klamm crossed over.  Captain Billy was sailing in the 19th century,
sometime after 1840.

GODDESS             LOVER          DATE
Cybele              Attis          ???
 |                    |             |
La Belle Dame       (a knight)     medieval times
Leucothea Fitzhugh  William Hurst  1840+
(L?) Frieda         Wilhelm Klamm  1926
Lara Morgan         "Green"        1984+

(The alphabetic progression in the goddess's name from "LF" to "LM" is
clear in the text.  I'm not sure if "LG," "LH," "LI," "LJ," and "LK" are
implied between these two posts or not.)

Anyway, looking at it this way we can see a pattern closer to the natural
life-span than 700 years for Klamm.

(So far we've done a good job of keeping the Arthuriana out of the mix: we
deserve a prize of some kind!  But now let us go ahead and say, yes, "Lara
Morgan" is to "Morgan la Fey" as "Overwood" is to "Avalon.")

(The connection between Captain Billy and Green: aside from his attraction
to the desk, there is also Green's fantasy about writing the letter just
prior to some sort of ship action [was that the Captain's death?], and long
before this is the first few pages of the book, where Green fantasizes that
he is in a small boat at sea with Lara.)

SOLAR HERO
Since my timeflow pattern above may have tipped my hand, I might as well
come out with it: Green shows signs of being a solar hero.  He was "born"
in Otherworld in January (the old sun dies at the winter solstice, near the
end of December).

William North is identified with the direction North, not only because of
his name but because when they are driving, Green notes the choice North
makes is North.  North is the direction of ice and Winter; Winter is the
opposite of Summer, when the Sun has travelled as far North as possible.
(The Otherworld is in the grip of a Winter which seems like an ice-age to
us, fwiw.)

The fight between North and Green thus becomes the seasonal battle between
Winter and Summer, Darkness and Light, at the vernal equinox.  The young
sun has grown strong enough to do battle with the forces of darkness and
emerge triumphant.

I mentioned before that Graves has his own calendar, which Otherworld does
not seem to be following.  But North might be following it: in his
confession he says he killed Applewood on January 21st (294).  This date
might not ring any bells for our calendar senses, but it is the first day
of the second lunar month in the Graves calendar: the month of Quickbeam
(Rowan).  Four months after this (i.e., the time of the boxing match) is
the deadly month of Hawthorn.

This seasonal theme is not the pattern associated with Attis, but with his
other forms Adonis (Aphrodite vs. Persephone), Tammuz (Ishtar vs.
Ereshkigal), and Osiris (Isis vs. Set).  In these myths, Winter is
explained as the goddess in mourning and Summer is the goddess happy with
the return of her lover.

Anyway, North pulls his guns and tries to kill Klamm, according to one
perspective.  This is the traditional "golden bough" scenario, where the
new comer tries to kill the old priest in order to become the new priest.
But North is a bit flummoxed by the recent revelation that Lara knows Green
and Green loves Lara, so he shoots at Green and ends up being killed
himself.

BACK TO KLAMM
Klamm's reward for Green is all the cryptic knowledge he reveals and a safe
place in the "temple": I think he is saying that Green should settle in
with Fanny and then maybe later the goddess will visit him.  But no, even
while Green is not going to kill his predecessor (atonement with the
father? breaking with the bloodrites of the past?), still Green is not
going to fall for that "bait and switch" routine -- he leaves the temple to
go to the Forbidden Zone, the land of the goddess.  To me this looks like
the choice between a long safe life (like Klamm has had?) or a short
glorious-like-the-Sun life.

SELF-MUTILATION
There are several cases of Otherworld cultural tidbits that wash over to
Earth: the seductress parade, the bridegroom in black (198), and perhaps
even the genital mutilation that Attis is famous for (280), because it
would seem that self-castration would be a method for O-men to avoid coital
death.

(The file on North mentions that he is a self-mutilator, fwiw.)

=mantis=

P.S. Some hurt Lexicons up for auction on eBay.

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 15:02:02 +0000

on 1/27/03 12:41 PM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis at siriusfiction.com

> tried the footnotes for FLASHMAN, but no luck there.)

Captain Billy's Whiz Bang? <g>  This was a popular American humor magazine
of the 1920s and 1930s, though far less sophisticated than the New Yorker;
see http://www.compedit.com/whiz_bang.htm if you're interested.  Actually,
for Wolfe to have deliberately inserted the allusion to CBWB seems like the
sort of "joke" Wolfe would enjoy.

> (thanks, Adam!)

Incidentally, I've been rereading THE CASTLE, and I wasn't quite correct
when I said that there are no indications that Klamm took any interest in
K.'s welfare.  K. receives two letters from Klamm in which Klamm claims to
take a personal interest in him.  OTOH, in one scene Klamm goes out of his
way to avoid meeting K. face-to-face, and K. is repeatedly told that such a
meeting is impossible.

> (And I think that the Castle

Iirc, Max Brod (Kafka's friend and literary executor, though now regarded as
an unreliable interpreter of Kafka) said that K. on his deathbed was to
receive permission, not to visit the Castle, but to settle in the village.
Other similarities between THE CASTLE and TAD: in both, the main character
goes to a strange place and tries to establish himself there, and in both,
this "establishment" is linked to a woman.  OTOH, in TAD Green wants to get
established to be near Lara; while in THE CASTLE K. seems to value his
relationship with Frieda primarily because he thinks it will help him get
established.  Also, the "twitter of bird-like voices, the voices of Japanese
children, or of music boxes tuned to speak" (42-3) that Green hears when he
phones his apartment is very similar to what K. hears on the phone line to
the Castle.

> that Klamm crossed over.

That's right; but Kafka abandoned work on it in 1922, which might be another
possible date.  (It was published, unfinished, after his death.)

--Adam

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 16:36:12 +0000

Adam wrote ...

> Captain Billy's Whiz Bang? <g>  This was a popular American 
> humor magazine of the 1920s and 1930s, though far less 
> sophisticated than the New Yorker; see 
> http://www.compedit.com/whiz_bang.htm if you're interested.  
> Actually, for Wolfe to have deliberately inserted the 
> allusion to CBWB seems like the sort of "joke" Wolfe would enjoy.

Aside from the well-known "The Music Man" reference, there's
another thing that might be of interest ... a subtle joke 
known to some comix fans, perpetrated by C.C. Beck and the
Dell comix group back in the '50s, when they created CAPTAIN
Marvel. BILLY Batson, in the pages of WHIZ Comics, would say 
the magic word "Shazam!" to become the Captain with a bolt
of lightning that usually included the sound effect: BANG.

Yes, Beck confirmed years ago that this was deliberate...

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 05:07:15 +0000

> Yes, Beck confirmed years ago that this was deliberate...

Neat!  I'm a fan of Beck's Captain Marvel, but I never noticed that.

Actually, Captain Marvel was published not by Dell, but by Fawcett -- which
got its start with Captain Billy's Whiz Bang; Capt. Wilford H. Fawcett was
the original "Captain Billy."  So the joke has more of a point than you
thought.

--Adam

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From: Tami Whitehead <razorkittee at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 05:53:16 +0000

Hang on True Believers, 
Make mine Marvel!!

Your intrepid razorkittee
Tami

--- Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> wrote:
> http://www.urth.net/
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urth-request at urth.net

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 16:44:04 +0000

Adam S wrote:

> Actually, Captain Marvel was published not by Dell, but by 
> Fawcett -- which got its start with Captain Billy's Whiz 
> Bang; Capt. Wilford H. Fawcett was the original "Captain 
> Billy."  So the joke has more of a point than you thought.

Oops ... and I even knew that. If I recall correctly, when 
Detective Comics Comics began publishing revisionist tales 
of the Big Red Cheese, in the late '70s, they memorialized 
the original publisher by placing his adventures in "Fawcett 
City."

The rest of this note is kind of a reply to Razorkittee's
"Make Mine Marvel!"

While I was always more a fan of DC's comics than those of
Marvel-in-the-Stan-Lee sense, the whole Captain Marvel 
business remains kind of a sore spot after fifty years ...
for those who don't know, DC sued Fawcett, claiming that
Captain Marvel was too similar to their leading trademark
character, Superman, and succeeded in putting Fawcett out
of the comic business completely. However, Marvel is not
entirely innocent here either ...

In the 60 and early 70s, two comics companies came up 
with new characters by the name of Captain Marvel. 

One of these, if I recall correctly, and I'm sure someone
will correct me if I'm wrong, was Dell, whose Captain
Marvel character had the particularly weird power of 
splitting his body up into separate parts, which would 
then act independently to beat up the bad guys. His only
resemblance to CM-Classic was the shouting of a magic
word -- "Split!" rather than "Shazam!" -- to activate
his power.

The other was Marvel, who created Mar-Vell, a Kree 
warrior who eventually became a defender of Earth. 
In the '70s, he became the exclusive property, as it
were, of Jim Starlin, who used him as the first foil 
for one of the great comics villains, Thanos, who
sought to gain the love of Death* by presenting her
with the Universe as a gift.

-----
* Not Neil Gaiman's Death, a much simpler and more,
  well, elemental non-character.
-----

Captain Mar-Vell eventually achieved the interesting
distinction of being one of only two Marvel characters
whose death was so important to the "meaning" of the
Marvel universe that they have vowed never to bring
him back: he died of cancer, and nothing the super-
science of the various Marvel genius characters could
do could save him. Like Ben Parker, whose death taught
his nephew Peter that "With Great Power Comes Great
Responsibility," Mar-Vell's death was hammered on to
show that Super-Heroism Has Serious Consequences.

The Marvel group eventually created another character
with the CM name (incidentally, they'd also created
a rather pointless "Ms Marvel," during a period when 
they seemed to be creating cross-sex versions of many 
of their major characters [Spider-Woman, She-Hulk,
etc.] as some kind of trademark-protection deal), a
black woman from New Orleans who can turn into a beam
of light.

But anyway, about Marvel and the Big Red Cheese.

There was a British knockoff of the character, who
went by the name Marvelman. I have not been able
to verify the following: Marvelman was created by
Fawcett's British partners to continue the series
with the serial numbers scraped off, when Fawcett
ceased publication. Marvelman eventually ceased
publication in the early '60s.

What is clearly true is that in the late '70s, one 
of Britain's hot young comix writers, Alan Moore 
(WATCHMEN, V FOR VENDETTA, FROM HELL, etc.) began
publishing a radical new version of Marvelman, an
examination of the superhero as either god or
uebermensch or ... well ... _something_. It's one
of his finest pieces of work, and when he stopped
writing it, Neil Gaiman took it over and into yet
another radical direction. 

ANYway, Marvel successfully forced them to change
the name. So if you want to find out what Alan 
Moore did with the basic concepts of the Captain
("Shazam!") Marvel character, you need to look for
back issues of MIRACLEMAN.

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