Subject: (urth) DOORS revisited

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 23:28:58 +0000

I just finished reading a lot of discussion that went on here around the 
beginning of the year - I finished reading it for the first time a few weeks 
ago - and I wanted to bring up a few thoughts and questions which I wasn't 
sure about. They may have been covered at some other point, but I haven't 
found them.

The question that really hangs over my head at the moment has to do with the 
scene near the end, during the boxing match. When North pulls his guns, 
Klamm dives for cover and Lara shrinks back; Green remarks that he doesn't 
know why they're doing that, since North's guns are clearly pointed at 
*him*. Everyone else in the book makes the assumption that North was gunning 
for Klamm - the obvious political target. Here on the list I also see the 
possibility that North was attempting a shot at the goddess. But why does 
Green believe North is trying to kill *him*? And is he correct in this 
belief? The first way that I read it was that Klamm and Green were, in a 
way, the same person and that this was being reflected by a muddling of the 
narrative from two points of view. However, this is completely a shot from 
the hip and I'm not at all comfortable with it.

A second, smaller question: is it generally agreed that Klamm is meant to be 
Kafka himself? I seem to recall seeing it here but cannot find the post that 
mentions it. There is some indication of this, details of description, 
Klamm's gardening, and his identification with K., etc.

All in all I find myself nodding in agreement with Stone Ox and Mantis as 
far as how they were breaking things down. I do disagree on the general 
tendency to see Fanny in a negative light. Ultimately I don't think even 
Green thinks poorly of her, he admittedly likes her quite a bit. (The scene 
where he first meets her in the coffee shop was striking to me, and in a way 
foretold the ending.) He just doesn't like her *enough* - she's not the 
goddess. A fairly perfect echo of the same kind of decisions he was making 
that had him depressed and visiting the Mental Health Center in the first 
place.

If there was a bait and switch going on, it was one being set up by Klamm. 
Perhaps not a deliberate trick, but Green is able to recognize that the path 
Klamm is laying out for him is the one that Klamm himself took at some point 
in the past. Klamm ultimately, for the sake of being close to his love even 
a little, somehow made the shift from god/lover of the goddess to being her 
high priest. Green sees where this path leads, and rejects it to go for the 
whole deal.

Speaking of priests, while doing a little research I found some interesting 
tidbits about the priesthood of the goddess. The most commonly known bit is 
that they mutilated themselves in the manner of Attis, rejecting earthly 
lovers to devote themselves entirely to the goddess. Another item I found, 
however, about the priests of Attis (the "Galli") who were quite similar was 
that they carried an "image of the goddess" with them (or around their 
necks) - reminiscent of both the dolls and the "mail" charm Green carries 
around his neck (which if I recall correctly was vaguely human shaped).

I'm right now following up on a vague memory I have of a myth in which 
Attis/Dionysus/etc. was both male and female (either in a figurative sense 
or literally hermaphroditic, I am not sure). If there turns out to be 
anything to it, then I'd make the tentative association that "Adam K." would 
be "Adam Kadmon", but that's just opening too large a can of worms for me to 
deal with at the moment.

Any help y'all could give me in puzzling this out would be most appreciated.

Regards,
Civet

--
"Indeed it is hard to grasp why it hasn't already given birth... to its 
hero, that demon who will stage without scruple that horrifying play that 
reduces the whole age to laughter and to unconsciousness of the fact that it 
is laughing at itself." -- Soren Kierkegaard

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