Lara of _There_are_Doors_

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 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