Lara of _There_are_Doors_

John Bishop · 20 Oct 1998, 16:59 · from urth-v0020.mbox · original

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From: John Bishop <jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com>
Subject: (urth) Re: Lara of _There_are_Doors_
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 16:59:21
Message-ID: <urth-v0020-0083 at digest.urth.net>
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In his interview, Wolfe said that he saw Lara as what a
pagan goddess might be like if paganism had survived to
the modern era.

    ...Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might be
    who survived into the Christian world...

                 http://world.std.com/~pduggan/gwjbj2.html#fem

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=20
creature outside our moral rules.

I don't mean to imply that the real Madonna is either a
goddess, a Nietzchean super(wo)man or a living icon; I do
mean to say that I now understand how Lara could dominate
the world of _There_are_Doors_, and how her image might
vary, and how there is a mental niche into which Lara could
fit (and part of which Madonna is now exploiting with great
skill).

Am I just a nut for blondes, or does this make sense to anyone?

	-John

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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