From: "Kevin J. Maroney" <kmaroney@crossover.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Several things...
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 11:42:43 

At 04:15 PM 1/1/99 -0500, Alex wrote:
>	Has anyone ever noticed that THERE ARE DOORS is very close to 1st
>person?  If you replace the word "he" with "I" you have something almost
>indistinguishable from 1st person.  Green is always (as far as I can tell)
>referred to as "he".  
...
>Any ideas on what this means?  

I have the feeling--based on only one reading of the novel; Wolfe's
contemporary fantasy novels don't inspire me to re-read them---that "Mr.
Green" is not his name. If I recall correctly, the only source for that
name was a mental hospital, and as you point out, the narrator strenously
avoids calling him anything other than "he". 

Alternately, it may be the case that Green is the first-person narrator of
the novel but, due to mental disorders, is disassociated from his own
identity to the point where he views events happening to himself as
happening to a third party.

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html

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