Neil Breezes Through

[above, l-r: Neil with broken finger, me, Gardner Dozois; photo by Kyle Cassidy]

Neil Gaiman breezed through town last night, bringing autumn in his wake, as by a special arrangement with the Seasonal Powers he does every year. He appeared at the Gershman Y to promote his newest work, The Graveyard Book. I was on my usual rounds, walking up and down the earth, and noticed an hour beforehand a line a block long waiting patiently in the rain. So, yeah, the man is a rock star.

Neil is so popular, in fact, that the crowds showing up for signings have gotten large enough to make such events physically painful for him. (In Brazil, 2000 people showed up for a signing, and he signed from four in the afternoon until two in the morning. His arm swelled up to twice its normal size and had to be iced down afterwards. Nobody should have to go through that.)

So on this tour, he's trying something different. Rather than him doing autographs, there's a table of pre-signed books for sale. To make up for that lack of human contact, he first reads an entire chapter of his book, a different chapter at each stop, in order, and each reading recorded on video and then put up on the Web, so that by the end of the tour you can see and hear him read the entire thing, if you wish. (I think a lot of people will.) Then there's an intermission, during which the trailer for the film version of Coraline is shown, and somewhere backstage Neil sorts through questions members of the audience have written on 3 by 5 cards. And finally he comes back and answers as many of those questions as he can in the time allotted him.

How did it work out in practice? Pretty damn brilliantly. It will surprise no one that he's a first-rate reader but -- trust me on this -- it's a lot harder than it looks. And he had the audience. They laughed at all the right places, they were tense at all the scary places. They were rapt. You can find the link for the video at Neil's blog.

As for the question-answering . . . I can't say Neil has the timing of a stand-up comedian, because that's not what he was doing. He was being more of a stand-up witty-and-charming-and-not-at-all-stuck-up-or-pretentious-ian. And, oh man, the audience ate it up. I was there with three young friends and they were perfectly satisfied with the experience.

Afterwards, Neil went out to dinner with a few of his pals, myself included. He said that for him the best part was answering the questions, because he never knew what was going to be asked, which made the experience fresh and interesting for him every time. So if anybody's wondering what he's really like, after the show's over . . . Well, he's pretty much the same as the guy you see on stage. You'd like him.

And as always . . .

I've updated Poem du Jour with another Billy Collins poem and one by Czeslaw Milosz I covered on learning that he had died.

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How To Get A Good Illo For Your Story

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One of every writer's pet peeves is how difficult it can be to get a good illustration for your work. Granted, sometimes you luck out, the way Lucius Shepard did with the cover James Gurney painted for the issue of F&SF containing "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule" or the way I did with Stephan Martiniere's painting for The Dragons of Babel. More commonly, though, you get a clunker like . . . well, discretion stills my tongue.

Which is why I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art here in Philadelphia and bought their poster for the really quite terrific R. Crumb show (which continues into December and is absolutely free -- so if you're local you have no excuse for missing it). Then I took it home and wrote the following story, or rather vignette, for it, and copied the story onto the poster itself. Which I then framed and leaned against the wall in my office.

So now I feel better.

Here's what I wrote:

The Three Graces

The three Graces met for drinks in the West Village, as they did once every other year in October, when the city looked its best. This year it was in Zanzibar Blue, Le Wine Bar having faded into that same fog of nostalgia and failing memories which had swallowed up a long line of watering holes all the way back to Tangerine Dream, their original place back in the Sixties when they danced together.

“Here’s to kick-ass old women!” said Grace Zagajewski. The Graces clicked their drinks – two Manhattans and a chardonnay – over the center of the table.

Then Grace Harrelson dug through her purse. “I was going through Richard’s things after he died, and guess what I found.” She carefully unfolded a telephone pole flyer for “Psychedelicious,” their last off-off-Broadway show together. “Remember this?”

“How could I forget?” Grace Feinstein said. “Bad choreography, pretentious Moog synthesizer music, a malfunctioning fog machine, and we were all as naked as jaybirds!”

They all but collapsed in laughter. “It’s funny now, but we took it so seriously then,” Grace Harrelson said. “We were going to knock Martha Graham off of her perch.”

“That was when you met Richard,” Grace Zagajewski said. “He came to every performance and he never looked at Grace or me. Not once. And we looked pretty good back then, too.”

“Oh God we were perfect then.”

“We were.”

“More than perfect.”

“Ah me," Grace Feinstein said. "Where did all the years go?”

“Most of them I spent on men and drugs and booze and partying. The rest, I fear, I wasted.”

“I gave them all to Richard. I know you never liked him . . .”

“Never liked him? You have no idea how Grace and I envied you. When I think of all the chaos I’ve been through, the divorces, the affairs, the scenes, I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”

“I’d trade places with Grace. She stayed true to her muse. She’s still an artist.”

“I’m a teacher, dear. It’s not the same thing.”

“It is! All I have now are the place in Queens, the condo in Denver and the grandchildren. I love the little buggers, but . . . I just wish I could have stayed with dance, like you did.”

“Hah! You forget what a grind it is – and how drab. Frankly, I envy Grace’s chaos – all those adventures, all that freedom.”

They all laughed in a complex blend of emotions that had taken a lifetime to distill. Wiping the tears from her eyes, Grace flagged down their waiter and ordered a final round of drinks and the check.

“I don’t suppose we were really as pretty as we thought we were,” Grace said wistfully. “But we were young and so of course the boys wanted us. My students are all so muscular – they have abs like oak boards. You could hammer a nail into them. By today’s standards, our bodies were soft and pudgy.”

“Are you nuts?” Grace drained her drink to the dregs. “We were gorgeous!”

-- Michael Swanwick
9/26/08

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Society's Child

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I've had a fascinating life

Had a husband and a wife

But you will truly be amazed

at just how humble I have stayed

-- "My Autobiography"

I've been reading Society's Child, Janis Ian's autobiography, because . . . well, because whenever somebody I know personally writes an autobiography, I read it.  And the short version is that if you have any interest at all in Janis Ian, then you want this book.

Janis was famous at thirteen and a has-been by seventeen.  She won Emmys.  She sold out Carnegie Hall.  She was good pals with Janis Joplin.  Racists hated her.  As a teen, she used to jam late into the night in small clubs with Jimi Hendrix.  So she's got that fantasy identification thing going on here.  But a lot of bad things happened to her as well.  There were times when I wanted to reach into the past and grab people and shake them.  For God's sake, what were they thinking?  She was only a child.

The book ends with the lyrics of her self-mocking song about writing an autobiography.   (You'd have to be formed by the ideals and nonsense of the Sixties to understand why this was necessary.)  But with all the ups and downs -- and it's a real roller coaster ride -- Janis really has led a fascinating life, and in Society's Child she manages to convey the essence of how it felt to her.

It does make me feel a little dowdy and ordinary reading it, though.  I can't help remembering the time, years ago, when Jack Dann told me how he felt after reading Thomas Mann's autobiography, wherein, Jack said, Mann was forever going to India to study under a famous guru or to Africa to meet somebody important.  "When I write my autobiography," Jack said glumly, "it's going to read:  'And then I went to Disclave.'"

Oh, and also . . .

There's quite a nice interview with Michael Andre-Druissi about his Lexicon Urthus at Ultan's Library, self-described as "a resource for the study of Gene Wolfe."  I recommend it.

And as always . . .

I've updated Poem du Jour.  This time it's a rather better poem by Carl Sandburg.

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Favorite Closing Lines

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It was a social weekend -- Purdom's Rangers on Saturday and tea on Sunday at Greg and Barbara Frost' s house, along with Jason Van Hollander and his wife Terry.    But despite the above photo, of myself and the Dean of Philadelphia Science Fiction, the great Tom Purdom himself, I'm not going to blog about any of that.

I just got a tattered ex-library copy of Mervyn Wall's The Return of Fursey in the mail this morning, and it ends with one of the best final sentences for a comic novel I've ever encountered.  After the sort of hugger-mugger that makes a man glad he lives in our gentle and welcoming world rather than in fiction, Wall pulled the metaphoric camera way, way back for a long shot over the centuries:

"Last spring I walked the road from Clonmacnoise to Cashel, and then from Cashel to The Gap.  Fursey and the others are still there, trampled into the earth of road and field these thousand years."

Man, isn't that lovely?  Doesn't it just break your heart? 

I can't think of a better ending for a comic novel.  But I'm willing to entertain the possibility.  Can anybody here one-up Wall?

And as always . . .

. . . I've updated Poem du Jour.   Billy Collins Rides Again!

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Zombies!

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My contributor's copy of The Living Dead (Night Shade Books; edited by John Joseph Adams) arrived in the mail yesterday, and it looks pretty good. Better than pretty good, actually. It's got Kelly Link's "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and Andy Duncan's "Zora and the Zombie" and a collaboration I'd somehow managed to miss between Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg. Plus all the usual suspects. If you're interested in zombies, you want this book.

And, as it turns out, you should be interested in zombies. I was stuck on a zombie panel at the last Boskone and it turned out to be extremely informative. George Romero created not only a new monster but something perilously close to a new archetype. Which turns out to be an almost inexhaustable metaphor for pretty much anything you want. So . . . a surprisingly productive corner of the genres.

I found a clip of the panel at YouTube. Unfortunately, it was something like my fourth program item in a row so by that point I appeared to be channeling Woody Allen's stuttering, staccato delivery. Also, I'm eating my supper as we talk. I mean, really, dude. That's just plain bad manners.




And, as always . . .

. . . Poem du Jour has been updated. This time, it's the poem that killed Ossip Mandelstam. Poetry is not for sissies!

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Your Own Private Hindenburg!

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The latest issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction arrived today, and in it David Langford praised the short fiction of Frank Key. So I went to check him out, and on his website, Hooting Yard found a link where the above cut-and-fold cardboard Hindenburg can be downloaded!

Is it possible that these things are being invented and placed on the Web by America's enemies to decrease our productivity? Just wondering.


And as always . . .

Poem du Jour has been updated. This time, John Donne Conquers the Universe!

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Troupers and Fashion Plates

(photo courtesy of Leslie Howle)

Friday, I went to the PSFS meeting to see their guest speaker and my pal, Connie Willis.  A friend took my photo with her but unfortunately is having trouble uploading it, so I'm posting the above photo instead.  It was taken at Denvention and shows me with David Hartwell (center) and L. E. "Lee" Modesitt (right).  Taken singly, we're all remarkably dressed.  But in aggregate, we form a fashion movement.

Connie's talk was of course well received.  Ironically, the part that everybody loved most was when she asked for recommendations of horror movies and listened politely and wrote down titles while everybody described their favorites.  I'm going to do that in lieu of a speech someday -- just interview the audience for an hour.  I betcha they'll be talking about what a great speaker I was for years after.

Connie flew in for the speech from Colorado and was sidelined for hours on the runway in (I think) Cincinnati.  So she spent all day in an airplane.  Then, after her appearance, she was going to go back to her hotel, and catch a plane home in the morning.  Imagine what you and I would be like under the circumstances!  But Connie was charming, gracious, bright, even bubbly, and the pleasantest imaginable person to be with for the duration.  It was only in a whispered aside in private that she revealed that the experience with modern aviation had been hellish for her. 

I'd say that Connie was the Iron Woman of science fiction, only that carries negative connotations.  The mot juste for Connie is trouper.

Connie is a real trouper.  Higher praise than which there is not.

And as always . . .

I've updated the Poem du Jour.   This time with an extremely rude poem.  Decent folks will want to avoid it.

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