This Glitterati Life

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So who have you been hanging out with lately?  Don't bother telling me, I've got you trumped.  Last night I had dinner in Manayunk (a slice of pizza at Mom's Bake At Home and shepherd's pie at Kildare's) with international glam-setter Lily Womack.

During our repast, I remarked to Lily that her father was famous for his sartorial splendor.  "No," she said.  "He's famous as a writer."

Okay, yes, Jack Womack is indeed celebrated as one of our very best.  And his wife Valeria Susanina is equally fabulous.  But it's Lily who's won my heart.


Above:  Lily and Jack.  Lily has self-created plastic vampire fangs in her mouth.  Nobody's perfect.

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December 29, 1940

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A friend who conducts tours around the City of London once told me that she quickly learned to skirt the edges of the damage done by the Blitz because the endless recital of what had been lost seriously depressed her clients.  It's a wise and useful rule of thumb.  Periodically, however, we should make exceptions.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the destruction of Paternoster Row.  During a bombing raid that many consider the worst of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe attacked London's city center with a combination of high explosives and incendiary bombs.  Paternoster Row, the heart of British publishing for centuries, was destroyed, along with surrounding streets and far too much more of London.  The damage included dozens of publishers' offices, printers, warehouses, and bookstores.

Between five and six million books went up in flames in a single night.

It was but one incident in a war that cost millions of lives (even if you consider all those murdered in the Holocaust to be victims of a separate madness).  But one that should be remembered.

Above:  A view of the damage from the roof of St. Paul's Cathedral.  

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And the Winning Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year is . . .

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As long-time readers of this blog know, one of the most cherished traditions in my household is choosing the winner of the annual Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year competition.  And what a fabulous year it's been for Christmas cards totally devoid of religious content!  So much so that cards that would have been contenders in ordinary years were eliminated early.

Science fiction people made a strong showing this year.   Tom Purdom's photograph of the monument to the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution in Washington Square, Philadelphia, was disqualified because the eternal flame has an inherently religious significance.  Even though within a year of its creation, the flame went out because it was choked by fat from homeless people roasting hot dogs on it.  Alexis and Lee Gilliland's ribald cartoon of Santa Claus with a bluefin tuna bulging from his trousers in an obscene manner was disqualified because even naughty Santas are too strongly associated with Christmas.  Beth Gwinn's retro-fifties pomo-ironic Give Peas A Chance card would have been a strong contender but, alas, it's a card she has sent us in an earlier year while the spirit of Godless Atheism is evergreen, ever new, and always comes as a surprise.

Similarly, a Currier and Ives card which I thought had nothing to do with the season other than snow and oxen was voted down by the Blue Ribbon And Not at All Nepotistic Jury of my immediate family because it was drenched with nostalgia.  A Hokusai owl was voted down for being so beautiful as to be inherently spiritual.  Which I thought a little dodgy, but who am I to argue with Hokusai and my wife?  Relatives Dick and Penny's card with pix of themselves, mountain goats, and Mount Rushmore, was disqualified simply because it had the message "Joy and Love."  It was, as I said, a brutally competitive year.

Finally, the competition came down to three cards.

The first to go down was the card from perennial favorites John and Judith Clute, a reproduction of one of Judith's artworks, this one of a Pacific Northwest-ish raven.  Here, Marianne argued eloquently for the inherent spiritual nature of the work.  "Ravens," she said, "a murder of crows, a congregation.  It's essentially Christian."  Also, "It's beautiful and I like it a lot."

Number two went right to the wire.  Sean voted one way and Marianne the other.  It was left up to me to break the tie and I have to say that Karl and Janet Kofoed's Christmas on Enceladus only lost by a whisker.  The "plumes of ice particles that rise like curtains into the dark airless skies above Saturn's inner moon" were lovely but the bleak, black lunar surface looking like nothing so much as frozen seas of gasoline . . . well, it fit the bill.  Finally, I ruled that cosmic wonder is a nonbeliever's version of religious awe.  So I set it aside in favor of the winner.

Which was the creation of last-year's first-time winner Jason Van Hollander.  His wrap-around card depicted a very JVH-ish fantasy/horror port city on the docks of which stand Fafhrd and a distinctly rat-faced Gray Mouser.  The closest things to religious elements anywhere in the card are what appear to be an imp imprisoned within a milk bottle and what Marianne declared was surely Yog-Sothoth.

Has the long reign of the Clutes come to an end?  It begins to look like what was once unthinkable is now a fait accompli.  Congratulations, Jason!


Not above:  I don't publish artwork without permission, so I can't show you Jason's card.  But you can go to his website here and see lots of his work.  Very cool stuff!

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"Andrew of the Ginger Hair" on Writing.

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It snowed.  Boy howdy, did it snow!  And as a result I can't leave the house, go to the store, answer my emails, or do any of those work-like things.  I'm snowed in.  I have no choice but to goof off.

One goof-off thing I've been doing over the past couple of days is to explore the possibilities of my brand new Nook.  Why that, instead of some other brand of e-reader?  Because Tom Purdom bought one and believes in it, and if it's good enough for Tom it's good enough for me.  I've been downloading books from Project Gutenberg which posts only books that in the public domain.  Eccentric things, mostly, because I plan to use the device primarily when I'm traveling and that's when I'm in the mood for eccentricity.  So I've downloaded about twenty of Andrew Lang's books.

One of which is a lecture titled How to Fail in Literature, originally published some one hundred twenty years ago.

Here are some of his observations on getting started as a writer:

There is no more frequent cause of failure than doubt and dread; a beginner can scarcely put his heart and strength into a work when he knows how long are the odds against his victory, how difficult it is for a new man to win a hearing, even though all editors and publishers are ever pining for a new man.

and:

One thing, perhaps, most people who succeed in letters so far as to keep themselves alive and clothed by their pens will admit, namely, that their early rejected MSS. deserved to be rejected.

and:

Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of gossip -- these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern literary success.

(Though the science fiction and fantasy genre is less rough in terms of envy and gossip than the mainstream is.) 

Also:

Editors and publishers, those keepers of the gates of success, are not infallible but their opinion of a beginner's work is far more correct than his own can ever be.

How little has changed in the last six-fifths of a century!

All of the above is from the build-up section of Andy's essay.  I may post some of his actual how-to-fail advice in a day or two.

And speaking of the annual Godless Atheist Christmas Card contest . . .

The competition this year is brutal.  So much so that I disqualified a photo of a friend-and-family posing in front of a dinosaur in a natural history museum simply because the dino was wearing a scarf!  That's how strict a set of standards I had to establish just to keep from being overwhelmed.

The traditional and not at all nepotistic Blue Ribbon Panel of Family will meet soon to make the final decision.

Above:  Remember the last roses of autumn, as depicted here on November 25?  Here's what they look like in winter.

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Quiet Christmas Day

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Eileen Gunn instructed me to celebrate finishing my novel by taking Christmas off.  And since I am the most obedient of men -- just ask Marianne -- I have.  But I've got to say that opening presents is hard work.

Pictured here is Miss Helen Hope Mrrrlees, absolutely exhausted from opening presents.  Not visible is roughly half of her tail.


Above:  Photo by Marianne Porter.

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Christmas Eve, 1973

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Almost forty years ago, I came to Philadelphia because I had a friend who offered to put me up on his couch for a few weeks.  Times were hard back then and there was no work to be found.  I survived off of temp jobs, and by selling my blood and writing essays for a term paper mill.  Sometimes I went hungry.

Christmas was kind of a low point for me.  I was sleeping in the living room of a trinity house rented by art students, with the understanding that I'd take over the lease of one of them who wanted out, just as soon as I got a real job.  I had a bit of work then, demonstrating toys at a department store, but my employer was slow in paying me.  The students went home for the holidays, all my friends were out of town, and I had the heat cranked down low, out of respect for my almost-housemates who had to pay for utilities.  On Christmas Eve, as a special treat, I had two turkey pot pies instead of my usual one, with a tiny can of cranberry jelly to go with them.

The house was on 15th Street, near South, which at that time was a pretty raffish neighborhood.  Next door was the Sahara Hotel, where rooms rented by the hour.  Across the street was Sister Minnie's Kitchen, which used to be a soul food restaurant, but by then had been converted to a flophouse.

I had just taken the pot pies out of the oven and was about to sit down to eat when there was a knock on the door.  I went to answer it, and there was Leroy.  Leroy was one of the winos who flopped across the street, and one of the neighborhood characters.  With a big grin, he said "Merry Christmas!" and stuck out his hand.

When I told him I didn't have any money, Leroy started cursing me -- vehement, scabrous stuff.  So I closed the door on him and went back to the table.

I sat down and looked at the pot pies.  "Merry Christmas," I said to nobody at all.

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Marianne thinks that's a terribly sad story.  But I don't.  I was living on hope back then.  I was going to learn how to write, and someday I'd make a living at it.  That was all I wanted from life, and I was willing to pay the freight.  Poverty, loneliness, and a Christmas spent sans friends sans family sans everything was just part of the price of admission.

Today, I make a living as a writer.  I'm married to a woman I love and have a son I'm proud of.  I have friends who mean a lot to me and a city that feels like home.  I have food and heat and a brand-new cat.  Tonight, Sean will come by and I'll tell this year's Christmas story while we sit by the wood stove with a fire going and hot drinks and a big heap of presents by the tree.

Things turned out better for me than I expected.  I wish the same for you.


Above:  Rather a blurry shot, I'm afraid.  You can pretend that it's a misty holiday memory, if you're feeling particularly charitable.

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Life-and-Love

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Here, as promised, is a second drawing by the very young (but that was long ago) Christopher Casper.  It's titled Live-and-Love.  He did a lot of these kachina-like figures for a time.  Another, I remember, was Life-and-Death.  He was definitely hooked into some kind of cosmic ley-line for a while there.

So now I bet you're thinking, nobody could come up with an appropriate sound-track for a picture like that.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Click on the video below, a cover of King Crimson's immortal 21st Century Schizoid Man by the Japanese quintet Seasons.

I haven't been able to find out much about Seasons -- their website is, understandably enough, in Japanese.  But my goodness!  That's all I can say.  My goodness!





And in yesterday's mail . . .

Shawn asked whether there was an official pub date yet for Dancing With Bears, whether the title was official, and whether it was my own invention or that of one of the contest entrants.  And the answers (please pause here a moment in order to artificially build up suspense) are . . .

1.  Yes, I heard just the other day that Night Shade is moving up the publication date to May 1, 2011.  That's May Day, for all the leftists and Catholics out there.  Beltane, if you're a pagan.

2.  Yes, it's official.

3.  The title was, regrettably, my own invention.  But there's still hope!  The novel may or may not employ a sub-title which was suggested by a contestant.  If it survives the the long publication process, said person will indeed be getting a box of schwag.  Books and such, I mean.  Not marijuana.

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