Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Writing

Words Don’t Matter

The message being put forward, especially by the Right, in the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona, is that it is absurd to blame the rhetoric of violence and hatred for the actions of anyone, let alone Jared Lee Loughner. Words don’t matter. The man is a loon, his actions cannot be laid at the feet of anyone else. Taken far enough, by this reasoning he acted in complete isolation from all influences. Maybe so.

But really—words don’t matter?

In 1774, Goethe published his novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, a seminal work in the so-called Sturm und Drang movement. It was a bestseller. Napoleon himself declared it an important work. It is intensely romantic, in many ways Gothic, and it ends with a suicide. The book had such an impact that it affected fashion, mood, language—and sparked a rash of suicides in imitation. Many young corpses were found with copies of the book on the bodies.

But words don’t matter.

Charles Dickens was so popular that upon arrival in New York for his American visit, throngs gathered on the docks demanding to know the fate of Little Nell. They were so caught up in the narrative that they suffered true anxiety over her fate.

But words don’t matter.

Salman Rushdie lived in hiding for years after publication of his novel The Satanic Verses because of the presumed blasphemy in the book. He was under death threat for writing about something that is, in fact, recorded in history and mentioned in the Koran.

But words don’t matter.

The oratory of Adolph Hitler spurred his country into a manic frenzy of conquest and murder and made many of his countrymen proud. Later, many could recall little of what Hitler actually said, but whatever it was, they knew it was true. He ordered them to burn books that might have presented an alternative argument, as most dictators ban anything written that might offer criticism of their programs. It is vital to silence the opposition, more important sometimes than anything else.

But words don’t matter.

For centuries the Catholic Church maintained an Index of forbidden books, books which they feared might turn people away from the church—which you would think, if they were right about being the only true church, could not happen.

But words don’t matter.

Attempts to ban certain books from libraries are common. Something in “those books” must, according to the arguments, be kept from people because it might do them harm. Now we see an attempt to produce a new edition of a beloved classic with a certain word expurgated, because it is a hurtful word, and some people would like to erase history and pretend that word no longer exists.

But of course, words don’t matter.

Abraham Lincoln, when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, greeted her by saying “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

But words, of course, don’t matter.

People dedicated their lives to the cause of liberation, many after reading the Declaration of Independence, which has come to be almost a national prayer, more important to some than the constitution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man led to the overthrow of a monarch and the subsequent bloodbath that was the French Revolution.

But we all know, words don’t matter.

Daily the Supreme Court hears debate over laws and how they accord with the constitution, arguing constantly over what the words mean and what they intend and how they may be interpreted, and rights rise and fall accordingly.

Yet words don’t matter.

How many times have we heard someone say “That book changed my life!” How often has a book or a poem or a story brought us close to tears? How many characters mean more to some people than the flesh-and-blood people in their lives?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth. When a set of words results in a good thing, no one takes offense, no one dismisses it as meaningless, no one shies away from taking credit if the words were theirs. But when something bad results, suddenly words don’t matter, we can’t lay responsibility on the author or the text. Under certain circumstances, we have laws that address the negative effects of certain words—we call them libel or slander.

The problem is that we’re terrified that if we admit to the real power of words, someone might try to take them away from us, and we’ve all seen how that goes. It’s worse than the problems such actions would redress, because it shuts out the possibilities of dialogue, of wonder, of betterment, of beauty. Which is why the solution to bad words is more good words. Cast a wide net, gather in a multiplicity of words, taste them all.

If, as the Right claims, words don’t matter, attempting to distance themselves from the consequences of something like Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting, why do they hasten to label the shooter a liberal? Why bring up what he has in his own library? If words don’t matter, it would be just as telling if he had nothing but a collection of old Archie comics and a set of Oxford Companions. Words don’t matter, so what if he has a copy of The Communist Manifesto?

If words do not matter, then we should be able to say anything and see no effect at all on anyone. No one would get angry. No one would get sad, or hurt, or embarrassed, or baffled.

But no one would be enlightened or delighted or assisted or reassured or inspired, either.

Can’t have it both ways. You can’t take credit for words doing great things and then pretend they can’t do bad things.

But the only way to counter the negative effect of certain words and not destroy ourselves is to listen to other words, better words, words that tell the truth, words that aim to educate. The conversation must go on, but we have to listen. But we also have to own up to our expectations and our understanding and acknowledge that if we seek to influence with our words, sometimes that influence will go awry.

Unless, of course, words really don’t matter. Then, what is it we’re all doing?

January 19, 2011
Other Buzzzzzzzz

I am not going to go see the new Green Hornet movie. I knew that long before its release, when I heard Seth Rogen had been cast as the Hornet. I just knew it would be a waste of everyone’s time, money, and sentiment.

I’m sorry. Hollywood has been doing superhero movies now for decades and they’ve gotten a few of them pretty right. Except for a ridiculous semi-musical romantic interlude, the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve was fine. Mostly this was due to Reeve and co-star Gene Hackman (who can save just about any movie), but they treated the material lovingly the whole way. Subsequent versions, not so much. In fact, by the fourth outing as Superman, Reeve must have been a bit embarrassed. Clearly, the problem with sequels is that we’re dealing with material that was born to be a serial, and the best medium for that is television, not big budget cinema. That said, a few of these aren’t so bad. It helps not being immersed in the comic books to begin with (for instance, I was able to enjoy all three of the primary X-Men films without getting all worked up over the liberties taken by the studio that incensed many dedicated fans—except for a Baker’s Dozen back when I was 13 or 14, I did not follow the comics), but I can more or less enjoy many of these outings. Have to admit, though, to date the Marvel franchise has fared much better.

But the Green Hornet is another matter and one of the things that Hollywood so often forgets is that the material must be taken seriously!

These were the guys I grew up with. Brit Reid and Kato as played by Van Williams and Bruce Lee, 1966 to 67. The car especially, Black Beauty, really rocked. Now, I saw these in first-run and haven’t seen them since, so doubtless they have dated and dated badly. But my imagination took the original viewing and went amazing places with it, and that is the problem with a lot of these films.

No doubt the film-makers took a cue from the Iron Man movies. There is a lot of humor in those films, but—the films are not humorous. Tony Stark is funny, but funny within context—and with a lot of credit going to Robert Downey Jr. for just doing a tremendous job in the role—and that’s something film makers fail to grasp time and again.

For instance, the best Three Musketeer films ever made were the Salkind productions in the 70s with Michael York and Oliver Reed. Great films. And funny! But funny as a consequence of the action within context—the characters themselves were not jokes, they were serious. Much later, a third film was made, Return of the Three Musketeers, with the same cast, but something had been lost—they were turned into buffoons in order to artificially inject humor rather than letting it arise from the context, and it is painful to watch.

Long ago now Tim Burton made a Batman movie and cast a comic actor, Michael Keeton. A lot of people probably moaned, fearing the worst. But Burton treated the material seriously and Keeton played it straight. Likewise in the sequel, but when Burton lost control Keeton bailed, and good for him, because the studio starting injecting jokes, much as had been done with the James Bond films, and taking the premise much less seriously, until they produced a truly foul film (one of the few I have been utterly unable to watch more than 15 minutes of).

Keeton, however, had done serious films before. He had a reputation as a comic actor, but more in the line of Jack Lemmon than Seth Rogen, who has gone from one slapstick dumbshit vehicle to another, and apparently the studio opted to play to his strengths in that regard here.

I don’t like movies or television that rely on stupidity to carry the story. That’s why I no longer watch most sitcoms. Stupid is not funny to me. The great comics knew that good comedy was not to make fun of people’s stupidity but to derive the humor from stupid situations. Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp was not stupid. Lucille Ball’s character was not stupid, either, she simply never knew enough to follow through effectively on her schemes, and the situation tripped her up.

That said, superhero stories walk a fine line between significance and the absurd. I mean, really, these people are improbable at best. It is all too easy to paint them as ridiculous or such utter fantasies that no real drama could result from their stories. It’s difficult to write sympathetically, not to say powerfully, about people who are so much more than average. And the scenarios!

But that’s what makes them iconic, because they achieved that balance and then some. So you have to be careful when translating them from one medium to another. In this instance, they clearly didn’t get it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled day.

January 14, 2011
That Book Is Finished…2010

I read, cover-to-cover, 72 books in 2010. I’ve read more in other years and considerably less in still others. It’s an average of six books a month, which, given all the other stuff I read (and write) is a fair amount.

The last one was Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, which I’d been putting off. I love Ian McDonald’s work, but I am way behind. I, at least, cannot read him quickly. His lines are such that require attention, appreciation. I have half a dozen others on my shelf to get to.

Among others of note, I read Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay, which so wonderfully captures the essence of an age that I can’t recommend it too strongly, especially to all those mothers poised to toss out their children’s comic book collection when they aren’t looking (although such parents might be disappearing by now). I also finally got around to reading Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, which can be heart-rending.

I found an obscure book called Faust In Copenhagen by Gino Segri, which recounts the history of the physicists gathering at Neils Bohr’s house before WWII, and explores the relationships between the 20th Centuries greatest physicists.

It was a big year for mysteries. I read a string of Ross McDonald, who I consider an underappreciated master—all the strengths of both Hammett and Chandler, few of the weaknesses. Laurie R. King and Rex Stout. I read a few older SF novels I’d either never picked up or had forgotten.

Oh, yes, and the brand new biography of Robert A. Heinlein by William Patterson. Not to be missed.

2010 was also the year I decided to reread all of Dickens. Didn’t make a huge way through, but I will be continuing that in 2011.

2011 will probably be an apparently low reading rate year. I intend to read some very fat books waiting for me. I have two large Thomas Pynchon novels I want to get through, more Dickens, the newest Iain M. Banks, and I have some large history books I need to get through. (Right now, though, I’m reading a Cara Black mystery, Murder on the Isle de St. Louis—so much for fatness.)

I also have a couple of my own novels to finish, so that will require research, especially for the second book of my alternate history. I’m going to have to schedule things carefully as I may find myself back in day job la-la-land.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year’s party last night and that 2011 will be magnificent for everyone.

January 1, 2011
Reading and Lists

By now, I’m sure, many if not most people on FaceBook have encountered the so-called BBC list of books “everyone should read” but likely haven’t. It’s an interesting meme, both for what is on it and for what is not, but also for the apparent idiocies it contains. For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is listed and then, separately, The Complete Works of Shakespeare. What, is Hamlet suddenly no longer part of the Complete Works? Also, the first book of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series is listed and then—again separately—The Chronicles of Narnia.

Aside from the obvious lack of editing, this raises the number of books (or, in the case of Shakespeare, “books”) quite a bit above 100. So the question is, did the BBC actually have anything to do with it?

Well, yes and no. Here is a good explanation of both where the list came from and how memes like this get going. Note that there was a list which was then opened for voting from BBC viewers. An amended list, comprised of an amalgam of lists, ended up making the rounds via the internet and primarily on FaceBook. As these things go, this one at least has the virtue of getting people thinking about and talking about reading, which I count as a good thing.

But it does open the question about canons and reading lists and what counts as “worthwhile” reading. Part of the BBC meme is the assertion that “most people” have only read six of the listed titles. (My own score is slightly north of half—I haven’t read the Harry Potter novels, nor most of Shakespeare, and several of the more recent novels listed are not even on my radar [Dan Brown? Are they serious?] ) Going down the list caused me to look at my own shelves, wonder why I hadn’t read some of these books, and perhaps look to acquiring others.

As a list of noteworthy books it would be good for more people to have read, it has its flaws, but it’s not terrible. It did, however, get me pondering what I would include on my own such list and why. So I came up with a syllabus and posted it. To my delight, it attracted a lot of comments and may eventually become its own meme. (Is that one of the great ambitions of the modern age? To have one’s own meme?)

My list is composed of those works of fiction which, in my estimation, would act as a solid ground upon which to build an even greater reading life. These books—to me—embody eras, styles, concerns, and show a history over time of the evolution of the novel, not to mention offer what are, in my opinion, some of the richest reading experiences possible without utterly exhausting or discouraging the less than wholly committed. By that, I mean people who read but may not have read in the classics or who may not read for the highest aesthetic reasons or who have limited experience with what Harold Bloom calls Deep Reading. For this reason, I did not include works like James Joyce’s Ulysses, which I feel rests at the far end of a bell curve of difficulty. There are other novels that fit this category which, if anyone goes through the rest of the list would still be there to offer an even greater experience. I did not, for instance, include Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which is arguably his best, certainly his most famous. I did include his V. because I felt it to be essential to that period of American literature (along with William Gaddis’s The Recognitions). I likewise did not include Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany for the same reasons.

My view in creating this list was to represent the best writing at its most entertaining. The challenge of “deep reading” is a different kind of pleasure. For my part, often in the past I’ve cracked a book I was simply not ready for. I read Ulysses when I was 18. I assure you, it was a ghost-like experience—there was the sense of passing through something, but what it was I could not grasp. I reread it, in a group setting, a few years ago and discovered a rewarding experience. There have been other novels with which I’ve had the same realization. Some works you have to build up to.

My choices, of course, elicited curious responses and quibbles, as all such lists will—and should.

One of the statements by which I live concerns book burning, which I consider an odious practice, just shy of genocide. A book—especially a novel—is not A Thing in the sense of other objects. A book, once engaged, is a life relived through access. Someone put an essential part of their being into the making of the book, it reflects that person’s ambitions, desires, fears, hopes, loves, passions. To destroy it is to kill them again. It is a kind of murder. Reading, to me, is not an avoidance of people, like many of my peers as I grew up tried to tell me, but an engagement with a person not present but who has left something of him or herself for me to know. Seen like that, close reading of so-called classics is an act of regeneration—indeed, resurrection. Bringing the characters to life allows the author a chance to tell what was important to him or her at that time, to have a conversation of a special sort with someone impossible to know any other way.

The writing of a story is a process of encoding the imagination, which is in many ways the distillation of who we are. When someone picks it up and reads it and experiences the imagining encoded, that distillation opens up and suffuses the reader.

I could compose a few more lists like this one, each with books that would tell a story of lives and adventures, customs and tragedies, dreams and loves, and be just as valid. The whole purpose of such lists, though, should be seen as presenting opportunities. Read these and find friends, learn about strangers, let someone live again for the space of a few hundred pages. They are gateway documents, in no way proscriptive. Just because something isn’t on such a list doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be or couldn’t be on someone else’s list, and certainly doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be read and valued. Doing this has me thinking about some of the books I still haven’t read.

Interestingly enough, I’m currently reading a novel I really ought to have read 40-plus years ago. Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin. It’s one of those “seminal” novels we hear about, a novel that encapsulated something for its time and did what it did better than most. It’s set in a time long after the Earth has destroyed itself and concerns the life of a girl growing up aboard a starship. She is 12 years old when the story opens, two years from the Trial—a period she must survive in order to become An Adult, a rite of passage—and told from her perspective as she approaches the trial. (I’m enjoying it, which is a bit surprising, because it really is one of those novels one should read at the “proper” time of life–great for teenager, not so much for a 56 year old. Still.) I came across a brief discussion in the book of old novels, which the main character reads and enjoys—and then observes that no one writes novels anymore, as if living on a starship has somehow fulfilled the need novels once filled. This surprised me, especially coming from a writer who clearly knew what he was doing. The need for story will never pass. Even in places and times when storytelling has been suppressed and denigrated, it thrives. Because it is not the novelty of the story that matters, though this is an important feature—it is the preservation of lives and imaginations. Stories about certain Things may well pass from our interest, but story itself is as integral to being human as the need for other people.

December 3, 2010
Artistic Purity and the Real World

The writing world is a-buzz of late with the story about James Frey’s “new” marketing idea to rope writers into a contractual arrangement that makes indentured servitude look like an intern program over a summer between semesters. The fact that some writers have actually signed these contracts is both telling and sad. John Scalzi, over on Whatever, made the (radical!) suggestion that MFA programs (because the lion’s share of these hapless dupes come directly from them) teach a semester in the business of writing for part of the egregious sums colleges and universities charge for degrees. This is a sensible suggestion. In my experience, talking to writers from high school on up, one usually finds the attitude that writing is a holy calling and the business end of it is either not recognized or disdained as somehow sullying of the noble act.

A rebuttal to Scalzi was published here by Elise Blackwell, director of the MFA program at the University of South Carolina, who claims that MFA programs are there to protect young writers, to give them breathing space so they can write without worrying about anything else. That, in fact, MFA programs are about “literature” and not business.

My personal reaction to this is: bullshit. If you’re that concerned to coddle delicate artistic sensibilities, put the business semester in their last year, presumably when they’ve got what chops they’re going to get. I can appreciate and sympathize with the belief that concerns over money can be deadly to creativity. While working on the book, outside concerns not directly related to the art can distract and sometimes destroy the flow. Desperation can be hugely debilitating.

But sending someone out into the world of publishing unarmed almost guarantees years of exactly that kind of desperation. The reason to be savvy about the business is so you can protect yourself over time, learn how to not be raped by people without MFAs but rather with MBAs whose job it is to get the work from you without paying you what it’s worth. As they say, knowledge is power, and to defend a refusal to teach what is necessary at the place where such things naturally ought to be taught is questionable ethics at best, criminal neglect at worst.

A lot of this comes down to the old dichotomy between Art (capital A) and Commerce. Frankly, I think it’s a false dichotomy. It’s a nonsense wall erected between two fields that are inextricably linked in the real world. You want your art to be widely distributed, recognized, appreciate by many and, more importantly, survive your death? Then you had better sell a lot of it. Plant your meme in the social consciousness like a stake in the heart of a vampire (which is a more pertinent metaphor than you might at first imagine) and work that network for all it’s worth. Nothing is guaranteed, so becoming a bestselling author does not automatically bring immortality (whatever that means), but it does mean you can continue to do what you presumably love to do.

(Not even oblivion is guaranteed for not working the system. The famous example—and, I think, a fatal one to bring up to young writers—is Moby Dick, which sold abominably by any standards and resulted in Herman Melville eventually giving up and working the rest of his life in a customs house, but the book somehow refused to die and is now heralded as a Great American Classic. True, this can happen, but it didn’t get Melville anything he could use during his lifetime.)

I sympathize with writers who turn their noses up at the business. I hate it myself. I want to write stories, not worry over spreadsheets and marketing campaigns. I am not good at that end of it and we all play to our strengths when allowed. But I have paid for my negligence. Like it or not, the writers who do consistently well are those who promote, who understand contracts, who know how to say No to a bad deal, who work hard to get their books the best exposure, which means dealing with the business. Many of them, true, have signed with agents or lawyers who dine regularly on the livers of publishers and distributors and who walk into the fray as part of their 15%. But that doesn’t mean the writer shouldn’t know some of what’s going on.

From time to time I have had conversation with students in MFA programs or who have been through them. To be fair, most of them really had no long term desire to be a writer. It faded. One of the benefits of something like Clarion is that in short order you can find out if this is really what you want to do. Not always, but it helps. No doubt most people who enter MFA programs are sincere in their love of their chosen art, but that doesn’t always translate into career ambitions once the actual slog begins. Still, you would think certain basic ideas would be common coin in environments purporting to teach a life skill. I have always been dismayed by what these folks have not been taught, not least being the business end of the writing life.

However, part of what I wanted to talk about here is this notion that somehow there is a vast chasm between true art and commercial fiction. This is a post-Marxist critique of economics that has badly infected the academy. In high school once I got into a heady argument with my art teacher (I only took one year of art) who extolled the brilliance of Van Gogh. Now, I admit here I’m in a tiny minority in this, but frankly I’ve never seen that brilliance. To me Van Gogh is on par with a…well, I find nothing to love in his work. It strikes my eye as ugly. Learning that his brother was unable to sell his canvasses during his lifetime leads me to believe that his contemporaries displayed more honest reactions than our hagiographic reappraisals of someone whose present fame did him no good while he was alive. So, being the bigmouth I was (and still often am), I challenged that notion. He asked who I considered a great artist. “Norman Rockwell,” I said. He sneered. Of all the things he might have said that would have been educational on the topic of art itself, what he did say dismayed me then and angers me now. “Rockwell is a capitalist.”

Huh? What does that have to do with his ability?

I see now what he meant—that Rockwell’s concern with money led him to paint what the market wanted and not, possibly, what he wanted. And by contrast that Van Gogh’s singular vision ignored what the market wanted so he produced only what his “singular vision” dictated.

I think Van Gogh would have loved to have had half the popular success Norman Rockwell enjoyed.

Either way, it’s a bullshit answer. While we make the art in our heads, alone, in garret, hovel, basement, office, or studio, the other part, the thing that makes it whole, is its dissemination. People have to see it, read it, hear it for it to complete itself. The greatest artist in history may be a hermit on a mountain in central Asia, but no will ever know, nor will he/she because the Other Half doesn’t happen.

Like it or not, we all do art with the public in mind, because it is the public—that vast country of human interaction and creation that we come from and live in—that feeds us the ideas, the inspirations, the causes, consequences, and catastrophes against which or with which we react. That reaction prompts the impulse and the work of interpretation begins and we shape our vision of the stuff that world out there gives us. If we do it well and true, it speaks back to that world. To condemn that world in terms of commercialism is to miss the whole connection, ignore the cycle.

It is also true that works wholly tailored to some momentary notion of What The Public Wants are almost always doomed to be ephemeral, often crass, betrayals of any higher value that might transcend trend and fad.

So you work at it. That what you do. Find the truth in the thing and tell it (but tell it slant…)

That in no way means you have to be ignorant of contracts. On the contrary, if you want it Out There in the best way possible, you better know contracts very well.

So to the MFA programs that insist on putting up that wall between the real world and the artist’s tender psyche—-get over it. You’re handicapping your students, sending them out to be victims of the James Freys of the world. Believe me, they are not ignorant.

November 20, 2010
The Celebration of the Book, 2010

I’m taking some time to put on my President’s hat and talk about our upcoming event.
We’re a week away from the Celebration. October 23rd at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

If you’ve been reading this blog any length of time, then you know about my involvement. For the last 8 1/2 years I’ve been working for it, trying to make it better, five of those years as president. We’ve done some pretty cool things in that time.

The Missouri Center for the Book has, like most such organizations, been undergoing some ups and downs the last few years. We have been reorganizing in order to be a more vital part of the literary and reading community in Missouri. Among the things that we have done over the last few years is the establishment of the Poet Laureate office for the state. We are instrumental in running the program and selecting the candidates for the post every two years. The program has been very popular. We also continue to run the state Letters About Literature Awards for students. Every year we send representatives to the National Book Festival.

And we put on our annual Celebration.

There are more things we’re planning for the future, but the Celebration is our signature event. Public participation and support are essential. While we are technically a state agency, we receive no direct financial aid from the state, and must rely on people who appreciate what we do for support. This year’s Celebration is important for a number of reasons, but mainly public participation will determine what kind—and whether—we will have one next year.

So I’m asking people to come. Money is fine, we can always use money, but we’d like to see a crowd this year. We’d like to see you. There’s nothing like a roomful of warm bodies appreciating what’s on stage to keep something like this going, to keep it alive, to keep it relevant.

Soon we’ll be launching our new website, which will have blogs and discussion boards, and we can draw the whole state into a wonderful conversation about books and authors. But even a healthy internet presence and participation by a big online community isn’t the same as people walking through the door, sitting down, and listening to our authors and presenters.

So plan a weekend, show up. And next year, we’ll do it again.

October 15, 2010
A Plague On Both Houses…With A Pastoral Addendum

Listening to election news lately is like keeping track of a Roller Derby game. They keep going around the same circle, bumping into each other, occasionally shouting unsubstiated things—at each other and the audience—and by and large just getting in each others’ ways. If you like that kind of sport, it can be entertaining. Otherwise…

So I’ve been working on new fiction and playing with photoshop and basically tuning it all out. As much as I hate to say it, I already know that I’m not going to vote for any Republicans, and most of the Independents are seemingly farther right. As much as I agree that spending is out of control, voting for the Republicans right now also brings a whole bunch of other nonsense into play that I just can’t tolerate. (I know, I should be tolerant, but after a while, stupidity is unsupportable, in the name of anything.)

What we seem to be seeing a lot of right now is some kind of principle that should have a name, basically a principle that half-measures are worse than leaving something alone. The health care “overhaul” is unpopular. Some of it deservedly so, but polls are showing that people are cherrypicking it—there is a lot that they like, but the total package sucks. So they think. Of course, premiums were heading no where but up, so most of us are about to end up without health insurance anyway, so you would think the cry would be for more controls, not less. (Is anyone still so naive as to think that deregulation is a good idea? Don’t most people understand that the current economic fiasco is the direct result of NO REGULATIONS on key parts of the financial sector? How is it they can come up with a thesis that says less will work any better?) But it is fair to say that the compromises that resulted in the current law hamstrung it so badly that it may well be worse than nothing. If Obama had forcefully backed single payer…

Of course, that scares people of a certain mindset even more. Single payer! That’s Socialism! Well, somewhat. And so what? If the end result is to provide good health care for as many of our people as possible…

But there’s no point going over this again. People may not say it, but they act as if they would rather die bleeding in the street than have the government in any way involved in their (nonexistant) medical care. If we got the way the Republicans want to, that’s pretty much what will happen.

Mind you, if people in general were willing to say “Let them die” if they can’t pay for their own health care, then there would be some spine to the Republican position. But we’re not. We take of people when we find them in serious straits. And pass the cost on to those who can. Increased premiums. Why isn’t this seen as a form of Socialism, only privately funded? Why do we think Big Business has more moral authority in this than our elected officials?

Be that as it may, I don’t much care right now. I’m listening to all the campaigns and feeling more and more like Mercutio. They either haven’t the brains, haven’t the guts, or haven’t the ethics to represent me. But I will vote. Oh, yes. I believe that if you don’t vote you don’t get to bitch. And I intend to bitch.

Meantime, I’m playing with fiction and photographs. After such a bit of spleen, here’s something more pleasant to contemplate. Enjoy.

October 7, 2010
On The Road Part Two

A quick follow-up to my abbreviated MadCon report just past. Harlan Ellison arrived at the hotel Thursday evening, around eight o’clock. Only a few of us were in the lobby. Allen Steele, Peter David, Donna, and myself. Peter David’s wife Kathleen and their daughter (who Harlan “terrorized” to our surprise and her later delight). From that point on it became a really good experience. All the rumors that had been floating around about Harlan’s imminent demise proved exaggerated. Though he didn’t look his best—clearly he has been ailing—and he arrived wearing a sweatshirt and pajama bottoms (Pierre Cardin, as he repeatedly joked, since he wore them all weekend), as the weekend progressed he came more and more alive.

I have a couple of photographs of Harlan. I will not post them. Harlan has developed a deep antagonism toward the on-line postings that pass for “news” on the internet. He loathes the practice of recording and uploading on the spot. Someday, maybe. The pictures are for Donna and me.

But I do have a shot—a bit blurry, not great—of one of my panels.

From left to right, that is Gene Wolfe, John Krewson (of the Onion), Allen Steele, and Yours Truly. I believe this was the panel on how we all got into writing science fiction in the first place. Or just writing.

Saturday morning Donna and I drove down to the capitol, downtown Madison, for their semi-legendary farmers market. It was brisk, but a bright, lovely morning, and we walked around among all the vendors. I have a couple of shots from that, but not yet ready to post. They will likely end up in my Zenfolio portfolio.

On the way home, however, we stopped a couple times to take shots of the sunrise. We left the hotel at 4:15 AM and drove south into a wonderful morning. At one of the first rest stops, I shot this.

Not the greatest work of art ever produced, but there are elements of it I quite like. I may work on it further.

Anyway, it was a fine trip, in the best company. Maybe I’ll say more. Later.

Or maybe not.

September 29, 2010
On The Road

Tomorrow morning, probably before the sun is up, we will be on the road to Madison, Wisconsin. We’re going to attend a little convention called MadCon 2010. When you click on the link you will see a note explaining that the guest of honor, Harlan Ellison, will not, due to illness, make it. Well, that’s changed, apparently. Harlan says he is feeling up to it and will be getting on a plane tomorrow and will appear.

Last time we saw Harlan was in 1999, at a convention called Readercon (which is a genuinely spiffy excellent convention because it is ALL ABOUT BOOKS—no movies, no anime, no costumes, none of that, just BOOKS) and he was in great form and we had a marvelous time.

By a series of odd coincidences, about two years ago, I became better acquainted with Harlan. We’ve spoken on the phone and written to each other a few times and while it would be the height of hubris for me to claim that we are friends, we are at least on first name friendly terms. (It’s funny how, with certain people, sometimes you seem to have to “save up” stuff to talk about before calling them, because what you very much want not to do is bore them. I’ve never quite known how to recognize the point past which that concern no longer matters.) I wrote a piece about the documentary, Dreams With Sharp Teeth, both for this blog and cross-posted to Dangerous Intersection. I was impressed with the film and have always been impressed by its subject, so I took a few minutes to alert others to its existence.

Much to my dismay, Harlan got word to me that he had seen it and wanted to thank me personally. I called him, we talked, we’ve conversed on occasion since. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for over a year.

Naturally, when word came down that he might not make it, we were bummed, but still intent on going. The news today is heartening, to say the least. I will write about it when I get back.

I’m doing some panels at the convention, a couple of them with a good friend, Allen Steele, with whom I’ve done far too few panels since we met way back in the early 90s. Others will be there that I look forward to seeing again or meeting for the first time. (The estimable and excellent Gene Wolfe will be there.) But even so, I’m going as a fan. Harlan’s work has meant a very great deal to me. He is unique. Worth a read, to be sure.

So till next week sometime…adieu.

September 22, 2010
Robert A. Heinlein: Grand Master

I finished reading William H. Patterson’s large new biography of Robert A. Heinlein yesterday. I knew I wanted to write something about it, but I gave it a day to simmer. Frankly, I’m still not sure what to say other than I was positively impressed.

Basically, Patterson achieved the remarkable goal of demythologizing the man without gutting him.

I’ve read any number of biographies of famous (and infamous) personalities which tended either to be hagiographic (and therefore virtually useless as any kind of honest reference) or a brutal airing of personal failings in some sort of attempt to drag the subject down to “our level” and resulting in a catalogue of reasons to think ill of the person under study. (This is one reason I tend to urge people that if they like an artist’s work, read it all if possible, see it all, listen to it all before finding out about them as human beings. Too often the person, depending on the book, spoils the work for many.)

Patterson has done something useful for aspiring science fiction writers. (Hell, for any kind of writer as far as that goes.) Heinlein’s reputation casts a long, dark shadow across the field. He is one of the pantheon of timeless Greats and in many ways the most intimidating of the lot. It is, I think, useful to know that he had just as much trouble getting started—and staying started—as any other decent writer. (Harlan Ellison has observed that the hard part is not becoming a writer but staying a writer, that anyone basically can get lucky at the beginning, but over time the work simply has to stand up for itself.)

The legend has been repeated ad nauseum, how Heinlein saw an ad for a short story contest, wrote a story, then decided to send it to Astounding instead of the contest because Campbell paid better, and it sold. That story was Life Line. From there, up was the only direction Heinlein went.

The reality is much more as one might expect. True, he sold that first story to Campbell and sold more, but not without rejections getting in there and Campbell making him rewrite some of the pieces and not without a lot of wrestling with reputation and deadlines. Writing is hard damn work and this book shows what Heinlein had to go through. Yes, he was better than most, but he wasn’t teflon. And he had to learn, just like any of us.

Reading about time spent living in a four-by-seven foot trailer on $4.00 a day while he sweated a new story makes him suddenly very human.

But also very admirable.

The other problem with Heinlein is that he did codifying work. There were time travel stories, generation ship stories, alien invasion stories, and so on and so forth before him, but he wrote a number of stories—all lengths—that more or less set the standard for how those stories should be done. He wrote “defining” stories, and for a long time people gauged their work and the work of others by that gold standard.

One gets tired of having such a bar hanging over one’s head all the time and naturally a reaction emerged over time that was as nasty as it was inevitable, casting Heinlein as the writer to work in opposition to.

By the time I discovered Heinlein, during my own golden age at 11, 12, and 13, he was already being touted as “the Dean of Space Age fiction.” In my reading he was up there with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, the other two giants. It was as if he had come right out of the box that way, never having been anything else, never having had to climb up any ladder of success, never, seemingly, having had to learn anything. One of those people who simply appeared, complete and omnicompetent, already polished and important.

And for a long time I didn’t like him.

Which was odd, because years later I noticed that I had read more novels by Robert A. Heinlein than any other SF writer. By choice, obviously, since no one was making me do that.

The reason for the dislike was bound up with the actual process of reading one of his books. Later, I was happy to recall the story, the characters, the message, but while reading it—and being unable to put it down, whatever it was—I disliked it intensely. I realized finally it was because, unlike so many others, he made me think. He had a gift for portraying the process of figuring things out and would take you through it, and make you question assumptions. It was work to read one his books, but it was also work I couldn’t seem to get out of.

Later in life I was very grateful for that.

Past the legend and the success, though, came the controversy. He broke ground, tilted at windmills, said things that shook people up. Sometimes the people he made uncomfortable were those you thought should be uncomfortable, you agreed with him, and it was delight to see them lampooned so effectively. But other times he made you uncomfortable and that wasn’t so much fun.

Sometimes he fell flat on his face. (I wonder how many other novels by such popular writers are so universally derided as I Will Fear No Evil.) But the impact of the fall was proportional to the chance he took with the work. The trajectory was pretty damn high. When he missed the impact would leave a big crater.

By the time I was beginning to try my own hand at writing SF Heinlein had become the Great Target. Just about any group in SF that had a grudge or an axe to grind could take aim at Heinlein and bitch about his politics, his solipsism, his sexism, his pedantry, his arrogance. And while I could see where many of these arguments were coming from and where they were going, I always thought they missed a big point. There wouldn’t be many of these arguments if he hadn’t opened the field for the debate.

Maybe that’s crediting him with more influence than he deserves. It’s still difficult to judge. But people still get worked up to a froth over Starship Troopers and its presumed fascism or Time Enough For Love and its self-indulgent solipsism or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and its political demagogy or…

To put it in perspective for myself, Heinlein was the first author I read who made me question gender inequality. I never read his women as subservient to anyone. They were all, to my mind, their own people, fully realized, and free. He was the first author I read that pointed out clearly that political cant is a disease of all political ideologies, left, right, or center, and that they should all be mistrusted. He was the first author I read to make it clear that ethics and morality, personal loyalty, and conscience are stateless and should transcend parochialism and provincialism.

Later, in discussion with people who took a less generous view of the man and his work, I could see and acknowledge that he had failed to support his own theses quite often and occasionally seemed to work against his stated ideals. Fine. He told stories. Sometimes characters take over (actually quite often) and do things on their own. Sometimes a conscious set of ideals have to work against in-grown proclivities. Everybody has to work hard to transcend personal prejudice. And Heinlein showed that, too.

Was Robert A. Heinlein the greatest SF writer ever? No, I don’t think so. But then, there’s no such thing as “The Greatest” anything. He was one of the very best. Was he even the most important? Well, taking the Beatles argument, a case could be made—that argument being that while the Beatles were not in any single way the best band ever, what they did opened the field and sort of gave permission for others, who were often much better, to do what they did. Heinlein fits that description and fits it handily. So what if some of his work is dated or quaint or embarrassing archaic?

Reading Patterson’s book restores context and without that it is difficult at best to make an honest judgment of anyone. Against the times in which Heinlein lived and what happened to him during the course of a life lived according to a different set of cultural expectations than ours, we see just how extraordinary much of Heinlein’s work truly was. He ceases to be a relic, a holy icon, and becomes a talented, intelligent writer who did some damned good things. Flawed, occasionally incomprehensible and from time to time a bit intolerant, the man emerges from the shadow of the legacy and the legacy itself becomes more relevant, because it begins to make a larger sense.

This volume only takes us up to 1948. The year he married his third wife, the one who became almost as legendary as he was, two years before the film he worked on that set a standard for “realistic” science fiction in cinema, before the decade that saw his rise to an enviable prominence within SF and even in the larger reading world. Patterson has done a remarkable job of telling a coherent story comprised of a dizzying array of facts. A handful of writers at the time more or less made science fiction—Asimov, Clarke, de Camp, Sturgeon, Van Vogt, and Heinlein. Heinlein remains the most controversial. This book goes a long way toward explaining why.

I can’t wait for volume two.

September 9, 2010