Barry Malzberg in Writers' Heaven

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One of Barry Malzberg's most delightful creations was Writers' Heaven, which he chronicled in four short stories. In a bespoke neighborhood of Heaven designed explicitly for Great Writers, former scribblers drink, squabble, brawl, steal each other's lovers, and have long conversations in bars. They behave, in short, exactly as they did on Earth, with one notable exception--they no longer have any desire whatsoever to write. That's what makes it Heaven.

The narrator of these stories was an author who was convinced he'd been squeaked in by some bookkeeping error, because he's painfully aware that he's not of a class with Hemingway or Mark Twain. In an interview, Barry identified the narrator as Damon Runyon. But the narrative voice didn't sound anything like Runyon's and a lot like Barry's. So it's possible to make a shrewd guess who he really is.

I was talking with Barry and Mike Resnick--they were famously good friends--and Barry told me that "Mike speaks with the authority of success and I speak with the authority of failure." Barry tried hard to make it as a mainstream writer before wandering into science fiction and then strove mightily to make it as an SF writer with only middling results. His vision was too bleak, too unrelenting for the mass audience. His critical writings were astute but collectively earned him a reputation as a prophet of doom. He never received the awards, the acclaim, the recognition that he obviously yearned for.

And yet. His passing is mourned by many, many writers--and, I would argue, writers of the best sort. The ones you hope would mourn your passing, when your time comes. He was the best of company, had a dry, mordant wit, and genuinely loved science fiction. And he wrote extremely well when the mood was on him. 

Tonight, I will haul out The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady, which is perhaps my favorite of his collections, and spend some time with the man. 

And Barry? He's at the bar in Writers' Heaven, telling anybody who will listen that he squeaked in, probably because of a bookkeeping error. All his peers and heroes are there, his pal Mike Resnick among them, and not a one of them believes him. But they listen to him anyway.

Because, like all great writers, he's also a great talker.

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