DOORS: The Hero, The Otherworld, The Ending

cilluff1 at optonline.net · 16 Jan 2003, 14:41 · from urth-v0301.mbox · original

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From: "cilluff1 at optonline.net" <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) DOORS: The Hero, The Otherworld, The Ending
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 09:41:36 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0301-2664 at digest.urth.net>
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Adam wrote:

<<Klamm calls the hero "Herr Kay" because Klamm is a character from Kafka'=
=3D
s
THE CASTLE, and the protagonist of that book is always referred to as K=3D2=
E=3D
  I
don't know why Klamm says K=3D2E "was myself also," though=3D2E (303, hc)  =
Nor=3D
 do I
know why he calls K=3D2E "an old friend": in THE CASTLE Klamm never speaks =
t=3D
o
K=3D2E, nor is there any hint that Klamm has any personal interest in K=3D2=
E>>=3D


The Kafka reference is straightforward, you are certainly right there, but=
=3D

Wolfe must have had something else in mind other than a thinly veiled (if
veiled at all) reference to someone else's story=3D2E  Without a doubt the
names are an homage, but I think it doesn't go far enough simply to detect=
=3D

references to others' works in Wolfe's stories, and simply because it is a=
=3D

reference to Kafka doesn't mean there is a reason within TAD's universe fo=
=3D
r
why Klamm calls him Herr Kay, or that TAD's Klamm is little more than a
transplant to TAD's universe of Kafka's Klamm=3D2E =3D20

<<<Mantis's suggestion that Klamm is modelled on Kissinger is an intriguin=
=3D
g
one, which hadn't occurred to me; but I would imagine Wolfe would be likel=
=3D
y
to loathe Kissinger, both for being "soft on Communism" and for his amoral=
=3D

approach to foreign policy (the polar opposite of the Narrator's
"statecraft" in TBOTSS)=3D2E>>

Well, that critcism assumes that GW views Klamm sympathetically as he woul=
=3D
d
not if Klamm=3D3DKissinger=3D2E  Kissinger is soft on communism, and Klamm =
is =3D
soft
on the matriarchal, paganist society of the goddess: perhaps GW views both=
=3D

as, and intended both to be, unsympathetic, soft characters=3D2E  =3D20

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