There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe: a dark story but a good therapy (and vice versa)

For this topic, I feel obliged to return to my home-made English because I suspect there are little more than zero French speaking readers of this novel, which is a pity but not really a surprise. So sorry for the couple of folks who may disprove my assumption.

At the outset, I must advise you that it should be wiser to read this article after rather than before reading the novel if you intend to give it a try, of course. In short, spoilers ahead.

There Are Doors is a very underrated book by a very underrated writer named Gene Wolfe. As a matter of fact, it seems the greatest fan of TAD was Wolfe himself (he said in an interview that this book was his favorite with Peace). On this particular point, I perfectly understand his feeling which is not shared by his readers, even among his handful of fans. Not only I understand but I know the reason why. You are usually told that fictions are some tools for writers to get a special catharsis. But usually, it’s just a lie, or if you are kinder than me, an urban legend.

It is not the case, here. TAD is a true catharsis and I am going to show you how and why.

 

I read for the first time TAD in my youth, indeed one of the first Wolfe’s books I read in my life. I liked it very much. In this time, I didn’t care of the deeper meanings of this story, I only appreciated the characters and the stunning cascade of strange events. I read it a bit like a sad Alice travelling underground, trying to catch up the white rabbit, in spite of all the crazy things that happen to her. Here, the rabbit is a woman named in our world Lora Masterman whom Green—the sad Alice—does believe to be a goddess. The sadness of the main character didn’t bother me much because of the remarkably poetic imagination of his adventures. It was for me like a Kafka’s story where the darkness is overwhelmed by the humoristic, poetic or comic tone. Naturally, like any reader of this story, I thought the hero or rather the anti-hero was mad. And to be sure, he is mad as a hatter, or more precisely, as a march hare (the story begins in march). The only thing I regretted in this novel was the end which seems to me very desperate, very dark, without fair-play for the protagonist as well as the reader. As Lautréamont said about a famous poet, we see here a man who happily rolls down the slope to nothingness (in French: l’écrivain qui roule vers l’abîme en poussant de petits cris joyeux).

Recently, I reread the book. My first impression remains the same: TAD is one of the best novels written by this author, thus one of the best novels published at the end of the last century. The change is that I’m a little more reflexive than then and like any reflexive person, I like to understand what I read, especially if I liked it much. So I made some extra efforts to perceive the meaning hidden behind the scene. Also, I have a better knowledge of Wolfe’s work and I know he is the kind of fictionists who usually prefers to hide the deeper meaning of his stories in some dark places, or even in plain sight but it amounts to the same thing: generally you don’t see it at the first reading. And I succeeded in this. I do believe I succeeded.

First, it is plain that the events happening in the other world, Overwood or whatever its name, only happen in Green’s head. The book is written in the third person but tightly and only through Green’s eyes. So, it’s not very different from a first person narrative. What is the interest of writing a fiction whose every event, every character may be a forgery or an illusion? None. There would be no sense at all. But Wolfe, this hugely talented storyteller, doesn’t make this great mistake as you can guess. There are real events and real characters, but more or less (rather more than less) distorted by Green. The periods when Green is back to C One, the real world, our world, inform us that he is back in his good sense and in these periods, what he sees is very close to reality. He is not healed but he seems in good way to recover. So, Lora Masterman, his doctor with buck teeth, the old woman who buys the desk, the manager of the store, by instance, are real persons. You have no reason to doubt it. In fact you have to believe it or you should better stop reading. Conversely, the moments when Green enters the other world, Overwood, where mating means death for males and where there is a goddess named Lara Morgan, you know Green is going full crazy. I suspect Green, as a great story teller, is perfectly able to make up all the characters and events and scenes which we are told in Overwood from films, dreams, remembrances or actual persons he meets. In particular, it seems very clear that North is a complete forgery. Because North is his perfect antagonist, his opposite pole: he is tall, strong, rude, harsh, violent, arrogant, smug, very active and very manly in addition to be mad; he is the archetype of what the woke libels as toxic masculinity. Green is short, passive, kind, weak, emotive, with no self-assurance. There is evidence in the text of this split personality: at their first meeting, North is sleeping and murmurs “mama” in his dream. A man like North is very unlikely to say this sort of thing, even in his sleep. But Green is. Green is still a mama's boy. Green projects himself through North because of his manliness, and more deeply because he thinks a (super)woman like Lara wants a (super)man like North. So, North is Green, a super Green.

North is not the only character made up by Green. Walsh, the mad boxing manager is certainly another fantasy (the best clue can be found in the penultimate chapter: see below). I strongly suspect mama Capini to be unreal while “her” restaurant is real. She is a projection of Green’s late mother, the person the most important for him. It is possible that the old woman plays the same part in this story, although we know she is real, because her gift to Green is very fishy. In general, a sane person doesn’t give such a precious thing (three thousands of dollars) to a stranger but a madman may believe it. Thus, I think he dreamed the gift of the ancient desk. It is no more real than Tina, the thinking doll, actually a sort of fairy. So we have maybe the craziest scene of the book: a man who tells a false story of or about the brothers Grimm to an imaginary person named Tina while he is struggling with a non-existent desk. By the way, I remark that Wolfe, without putting it clearly, make a real good story-teller of his main character because we, readers, know that there is not such a tale in this world and he had to make it up. And this is new evidence that the rest of the strange events are also his inventions. So, in this regard, Green is Wolfe, the Great Narrator.

Klamm is a projection of the absent father, a very powerful man like North, but in a different way. Klamm is distant but rather kind and protective with Green. Klamm is caring of him, contrary to Green’s real father who is still alive and had no relation with his son for more than ten years (Green is likely the only child of a divorced mother). However, I think Wolfe made one of the small mistakes of the book in the name of this character. Indeed, we hardly see how a man like Green, who has no book except the few his mother read for him, children books, could have heard of Klamm, the mysterious antagonist of Kafka’s last novel. That’s not at all the same level. But it’s also a new sign that Green is Wolfe in some regards.

The end of the story: it is very sad, very dark indeed, without a hope left. When Green meets again with Lora, the real person, he is struck by lightning in every sense. He realized that the woman will never come back to live with him, that he has never been a real partner in her mind, just a big mistake from her pity to him. So he was left with only one option, he thinks: come back to the other world, where Lara could take him as a dog or a slave at least. And he knows his come-back will be definitive this time. The madness will be complete and irreversible. It is like a suicide. In fact, we have a good piece of evidence it is literally a suicide: the title of the penultimate chapter when North is shot dead by Walsh is justly “Main Event”. So the main event of the novel is the suicide of Green since North is nobody except Green: how to be clearer! Therefore, when the sirens are ringing out in the last lines, it is probably the cops who have been called after the gunshot (I assume here that even an obvious lunatic like Green can get a real gun in the real America).

Now, why is Wolfe so pitiless with his main character? Such a gifted narrator like Wolfe, plus a charitable catholic, could have saved Green, at least his soul from the ugly despair. After all, Green is the good guy in this story. He is kind, we are told, and we are willing to believe it. What’s his crime? His crime is briefly alluded to in the course of the narration, and by no other than himself: he has no pity for others but only for him. He is a much too self-pity man. And self-pity is not a small flaw. Although it doesn’t count among the deadly sins, it should. It is as serious as hubris. North is a bad guy but at least he is a fighter. Life is an almost permanent fight, first and foremost, against oneself. Green refuses the fight. And by refusing the fight, he refuses life. You can say it’s not his fault, he’s sick, he’s a poor lonely man, he’s a blues man with no music. Yes it’s an excuse but that’s not a valuable escape from his fate. There is no escape in real life other than by yourself. Wolfe says: don’t rely on others, on pity, on pills or psychobabbles to save you. In the end, you are the only one who can save yourself. A saying comes to mind: God helps those who help themselves (aide-toi et le Ciel t’aidera in French). Green refused to help himself because of his excess of self-pity. In the view of the writer, he therefore deserves a new circle in Dante’s Hell, one that was not included by the author, regrettably.

I take a step further. In the end, Wolfe kills the Mister Green that is in him. That’s the therapy. And judging by his strong praise pronounced many years after the release of the book, the catharsis has succeeded.

Poor Green. He was the kid offered in sacrifice by Wolfe to God. Sometimes, we have to.

In the end, I come to the conclusion that TAD is in fact a very dark therapy but a very good story, one of the most perfect by Wolfe.

Some other articles I wrote about Wolfe (you can also check the sites entirely dedicated to this author referenced to the left, above):

In English:

About Starwater Srains

About Stories From The Old Hotel

En français:

Sur Le Livre Du Nouveau Soleil

Sur l'auteur

Les Dystopiques de Gene Wolfe

Sur Lovecraft, Borges et Wolfe