A City and Its MIrror

.

My contributor's copies of The Cascadia Subduction Zone arrived yesterday.  This is a feminist genre literary quarterly and normally I wouldn't dream of writing for such a journal because I am very suspicious of men who proclaim themselves feminists.  I mean . . . they do tend to be loud and overbearing guys, don't they?  Though I'm sure there must be exceptions.

But Nisi Shawl is the reviews editor and she hit me up for an article on the poet and novelist Hope Mirrlees.  And because Nisi is a good friend, it was hard for me to say no.  So, in addition to a long article and very good article by Mark Rich on C. M. Kornbluth as gender-egalitarian, six detailed book reviews, a poem by Gwynne Garfinkle, and artwork by Luisah Teish, there is my own "Two Eleusinian Mysteries - Lud-in-the-Mist and Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees."

Years ago, I wrote a slim book-length study of Mirrlees titled Hope-in-the-Mist: the Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees.  Anyone who's read that will be familiar with most of what I wrote in this article.  But I did have a good observation about Paris: A Poem that came long after its publication, which is included here:

Let’s go back to that first line, however, “I want a holophrase.”  A holophrase is a single word that expresses a whole phrase or combination of ideas.  Right at the outset – but I wager no first-time reader ever picked up on this – Mirrlees forthrightly declared her intention: to fill that want.  The rest of the poem is the process of creating a holophrase by a seemingly random but actually cunningly constructed ramble through the streets and museums of Paris, encountering its layers of history, the “grand guignol” of Catholic ritual, the fresh social wounds of the Great War, the politics of the time, high and low culture, the taxicabs, the smells, the whores, the ghosts . . . and many, many things more.

It is so very typical of Mirrlees that this  "want" -- both lack and desire -- that the poem sets out to fulfill and which has gone unnoticed for most of a century is declared forthrightly in the very first line of the poem.  Which is not titled Paris and then subtitled  A Poem but is properly titled Paris: A Poem.  Because what Mirrlees was saying is that Paris is a poem.  To establish which, she created a holophrase incorporating all of the city, so that it became figuratively A Poem: Paris.

I just thought you might like to know that.

*

Singing, "Oh no, William and Mary Won't Do"

.

I went back to my old school this past weekend, my first homecoming in 41 years.  And a strange experience it was for me.  I wandered through the campus and environs like a ghost, picking out spots where this and that had happened:

The patch of ivy in front of the Colonial Williamsburg offices, where Ann and I lay kissing until somebody came out to chase us away because we were depressing the office drones.

The music building where Crazy Tom got busted coming out of his cello lesson.

The Wren Building, where Richard Nixon slipped in the back door to avoid the protestors out front for a televised meeting with young Republican students shipped in from other colleges, then sneaked out a side door to avoid seeing the protestors then at both front and back of the building.

The President's House, where I went caroling with a group of friends, in the futile hope of getting a glimpse of the president of W&M, whom none of us had seen since freshman orientation.

Bryan Hall, where we were cursed at by the dorm's occupants.

The foot of the Sunken Gardens, where the Group Mind, fueled by a great deal of LSD, went to look at the alligators.

The life sciences building, where we used to ride on top of the elevator.

The very spot (close by the statue of Thomas Jefferson) where, shortly after graduation, I took the last thirty-seven cents I had in the world and threw it as hard and far away from me as I could, because it was the only worthwhile thing that could be done with thirty-seven cents.

The Earl Gregg Swem Library where I worked for two years, and whose stacks I haunted in order to learn all that the rest of the college could not teach me.  And which contains not a single one of my books.

The brick walkway where, to her lasting astonishment,  I picked up Sally, spun her around in the air, kissed her, and set her down again.

The patch of grass where, during an antiwar vigil, in an uncharacteristically private act of conscience, I burned my draft card.

Old Dominion Dormitory, which once seceded from the student union.  I came home one night to find it surrounded by very angry policemen because Turtle -- who barely evaded capture and arrest -- had painted FUCK THE PIGS in very large block letters across the roof.

Crim Dell, an inexplicably beautiful pond crossed by a wooden Japanese bridge, right in the middle of the campus, where I would go whenever I was heartbroken and needed peace.

Phi Beta Kappa Hall, where I worked as a stagehand for the production of Cabaret starring Glennie Wade -- now rather better known as Glen Close.

By the end of the day, I was feeling . . . not alienated, exactly, but isolated.  Distanced from the happy boisterous homecomers whose college experience had apparently been so much more what it was advertised to be than was mine.  But then, in the evening, I went off to the Clarion Hotel, where something like twenty-five of my old friends, most of whom had participated in none of the homecoming events, were gathered.  We reminisced about old times, remembered the dead, reconnected, and, ultimately, parted.

And I felt much, much better.


Above:  Old Dominion Dormitory, universally known as O. D.  Dorm.  Not that anybody OD'd there, to my knowledge.  Though a young woman of my acquaintance, in an act of vengeance upon the male sex, one evening did pass from room to room, giving everybody on my hall a case of the crabs.  Luckily, I out of town that day.

*

I Just Wanted To Say . . .

.

Lou Reed is dead.

Don't forget to dance on his grave.  He'd do the same for you.

.

The Season Of The Witch Is Upon Us

.

Every year at this time, I stroll two blocks up Ridge Avenue to Gorgas Park.  There, I get out the two rubber stamps I had made, one reading AUTUMN and the other DEATH, and stamp the fallen leaves with them.

Such is but one of the many duties incumbent upon a fantasist.  I hope that yours are as pleasant as mine.


And as always . . .

I'm on the road again, off for a weekend of strange adventures.  If any of them seem suitable, I'll share them on Monday.

Immediately above:  Memento Mori.  Remember to die.  Because if you've never died, you haven't yet led a rich, full life.  Both photographs by Marianne Porter.

*

What To Do With Your Failed Stories

.

I've just spent a day looking through a small fraction of the stalled, interrupted, and incomplete stories in my files, trying to decide what I want to put my hand to next.  And it put me in mind of a couple of questions that new writers rarely think to ask:

What should I do with all the failed stories I've accumulated over the years of trying to learn to write?  Should I throw them out or what?  

And the answer is:  Keep 'em. 

Yes, you'll probably write twenty new stories for every one that you resurrect from the mouldering heaps of paper that infest your writing space.  But there are two reasons to keep your failed fiction.

The first is that there's something in each story that spoke to you strongly enough for you to make the attempt.  You didn't have the chops to bring that thing out at the time.  But as you grow stronger and craftier as a writer, what isn't clear to you now will become obvious to your older self.  Those endless leaves of prose will form a thick, rich compost from which new flowers can grow.

The second is that I knew a writer who cleared away all his old paper . . . and then stopped writing for several years.  The writer's subconscious is always looking for excuses to not write.  Don't make it easy for the little bastard.

That's all.  Except to say that with electronic storage as cheap as it is now, there's no reason for your desk to look as cluttered as mine.  I've heard tell there's a thing called the "paperless office."  You should look into it.

It's probably too late for me.


Above:  Yes, that's my desk.  Imagine what the rest of the room looks like.

*

The Easy Way To Win A Major Science Fiction Award

.

I may have told you this before, but what the heck.  It bears repeating.

I know you guys want to win major awards.  Well, there's an easy way to do so.  And it involves only two steps:

1.  Become a good enough writer to deserve the award.

There's no getting around this one.  Occasionally a clunker lucks its way into a Hugo or a Nebula, but that's actually pretty rare.  Anyway, you want to be recognized for being a good writer, right?  Not for being a mediocre writer with astonishing luck.

2.  Write a really good novella.

First, a few definitions.  A novel is a work of fiction over 40,000 words in length.  A novella is 17,500 to 40,000 words long, a novelette is 7,500 to 17,500 words, and a short story is under 7,500 words.  There are no major awards for flash fiction.  Though surely that's coming.

Got that?  Okay.  Now, the reason you want to write a novellalla is that there's less competition there than in any other category.  The single most competitive category is Novel, simply because there are so many of them published every year.  The second most competitive category is Novelette, because the form gives writers the freedom to develop an idea at some length combined with a plenitude of market slots available for the story.  So many very good writers have a particular fondness for that length.  It takes more skill to write a really splendid story in the Short Story category, so that's less competitive.  But there's still a lot of good writers working in that form.

Novellas, on the other hand, are relatively rare.  The major magazines have only so many slots per year for them, so most writers avoid the form.  That means that an extraordinary novella will get noticed.  It has a better chance of getting on the Hugo or Nebula ballot.  And it has a better chance of winning.

It's as simple as that.

You're welcome.  Don't forget to thank me at the awards ceremony.


Above:  Some of my awards.  The cardboard one isn't a real Hugo.

*

Free Story Idea Friday

.

Sorting through some old papers yesterday, I came across some old correspondence in which a friend asked me why I never sent her any stories.  So, on the spot, I made one up for her.  Which she didn't use, of course, because she wasn't the sort of writer who can work from other people's ideas.   De scribblibus non est disputandum and all that.

But it's not a bad idea, and since I don't plan on using it myself, I thought I'd throw it out there for whoever wants it.  Take it and run! 

The story is called . . .

"Hobbits" 

The protagonist of "Hobbits" is a Homo floresiensis.   She, and others like her, belong to what I call a lazarus taxon -- a resurrected species like the aurochs in our time or the mastodon in the near future of the story.  (Incidentally, I don't know if there's an official scientific term for resurrected species.  You'll have to do the research to find out.)   

Her name is, of course, Rosie.

Rosie is young and still sorting through the problems of being dumped into a racist (and sizist, and speciesist, and taxonist, etc.) world, feeling tremendous resentment toward the human race for having created her.  She doesn't want a hobbit boyfriend (even if they didn't all want tall girls) because they'd look cute together.  She doesn't want a sapiens boyfriend because he'd make her look and feel small.  The question that she's ultimately grappling with is whether the hobbits are part of "us," part of the greater society, or a totally different species living in implicit enmity with the human race.

These issues are chiefly played out in her relationship with her mother.  Conflicted feelings there.  When she was young, her mother doted on her, so her early memories are good.  Now she thinks she was dorked over royally just so Mom could have something cute to play with.  It doesn't help that, as she's gotten more surly and anti-social her mother is finding her a lot less engaging than she used to be.

Lots and lots of issues there.  But chiefly mother-daughter stuff, which is one of the great themes of our age, I think.

It needs a third party to kick the whole thing into fiction.  A lawyer who wants her to join in a class-action lawsuit?  A crackpot notion to create a separatist island homeland for hobbits?  A gay hobbit friend who's thinking of taking an offer to make fetish porn?  I'd recommend incorporating all three, with the first and last in the foreground and the middle just something they talk about scornfully.

Oh, and Rosie should have a sapiens female friend, mostly sympathetic, who at a key emotional moment lets her know that you don't have to be a hobbit to have problems with your mother.

That's all.  You're going to have to do some research into the science of genetic manipulation, of course.  But there's no reason why you can't start writing the story right now.

Have fun.

  

*