President Koom-Posh

I have written several blog entries this year that I have held off posting for various reasons, good or otherwise. Yet now I have sent in a blog entry to Aqueduct (aqueductpress.blogspot.com) — another "Readings" installment that should appear sometime this season. That essay had room for a few but not all thoughts that were coming to mind.

So here I follow a few unvoiced strands.

Aqueduct's L. Timmel Duchamp has told me that she is "becoming an apostle of slow thinking." My sporadic blogging arises from a similar inclination, which has realized itself in my policy to post here only what I have drafted first in handwriting, usually in pencil. I still do some writing on typewriter and computer keyboard. Yet blog entries I want to redraft minimally, if possible.

My typing speed results, too often, in that which haste produces: words parading as Thought. While I acknowledge the demands of expediency, I believe a writer must nurture the writing process at every turn. That means nurturing thought, as opposed to hastening words. Writing as a process yields thought. Hastened words only reflect thoughts; and since they must reflect expedience, as well, they tend to reflect those thoughts incompletely or inaccurately.

This has become a pressing issue, to my mind, with the rise to power by Koom-Posh. Bulwer Lytton coined this term for "government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most ignorant or hollow."

Andrew Jackson I suspect could have been called President Koom-Posh, had the term then existed. However quick and canny a man he was, his making cronyism into a political institution points to hollowness. Expediency, prior to his becoming president, seems to have ruled him; and, afterwards, its demands, rather than those of the presidency, continued to rule.

The other day I came across comments stating that the presidency requires "exclusive fealty" to the constitution. "Fealty" as a word has links to fidelity; and this suggests that in thinking about a person who lacks such fealty, one might use "infidelity" as an attribute, or "infidel," as a label. The current president-elect Comb-Over, or Koom-Over, or Posh-Over, has indicated he wishes to continue his businesses while part-time president; and business cronies will dominate his administration. His fealty lies with another lord than the Constitution. Perhaps we might call him His Expediency.

Our eclectic, mannerist Age of the Masses has its deepest shallow roots in the Modern century, roughly the 1860s to 1950s. Van Wyck Brooks, in writing about the later 1800s, noted alterations to the American Fabric then being made — such as the conscious discarding of the traditional writings that had offered bedrock, on which her founders could build the United States.

I find what Brooks said about the Classics telling. They "kept alive great patterns of behavior ... The close association of intimate studies had made the patterns real, and the patterns had made great writers as they made great statesmen. They appealed to the instinct of emulation, an instinct that in later days followed the patterns set by industrial leaders, by bankers and by millionaires whose only idea was the will to power and who ruled by the blind force of money."

Correction for NYRSF Chan Davis Essay-Review

Because of the political nature of much of Dan Davis's writing, I took pains over the wording of my essay-review about It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis, edited by Josh Lukin. My essay has just appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction (25:9, whole number 297, May 2013, pp. 1, 4-6) —– and unfortunately near the beginning it contains a sentence that makes me sound a touch out of touch.

While I favor there being a bit of nonsense in my writing I would rather put it there myself, accidentally or otherwise.

A well-meaning editorial change has created this sentence: "After the Red Scare, Davis cut short his career at University of Michigan, opting to leave the United States and reestablish himself in Canada."

What I wrote is this: "Davis, after the Red Scare cut short his career at University of Michigan, opted to leave the United States and reestablish himself in Canada."

I am politically unsavvy in many ways —— but not in such a way that I think Chan Davis enjoyed any choice about his Michigan career ending. Fortunately, later in the essay I mention that Davis received summons and jail time: so persevering readers may think I am not as much a cluckbrain as I appear to be, at first ... or perhaps more of one.

Perhaps I chose too positive a word in "opted." Resuming his academic career in the U.S. had closed, as an option. Unpleasant circumstances and the purging of the liberal element from U.S. higher education forced him to "opt."

Would Davis have remained bitter about the University of Michigan's failure to apologize for its actions, had it indeed been the case that "Davis cut short his (own) career" ... ?

Cheers ...

Wiscon, Sexism, SFWA ... and Speculative Fiction and Speculative Poetry

The new furor over at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America creates sympathetic reverberations here, far away —— even though I am a man and the issue relates to depictions of women, and moreover not currently a member of SFWA. The furor reverberates here all the same. In recent years I have liked SFWA mainly for its membership directory. I had no money for membership in recent years, though, thanks to the C.M. Kornbluth biographical work; and so I thought I would just fade away. It remained in mind that if I could overcome the pennyweight writing doldrums then I might send in my overdue dues. SFWA kept sending me the relatively useless Bulletin —— probably, too, thinking that I might make good eventually, since I have done so in other lean years ... although its hopes must have been tinted with practical sense, since it never sent its directory.

It strikes me as perhaps strange, perhaps inevitable, that the current controversy should have near its center the forever-droning-on SFWA Bulletin palaver between one senior writer who has lived on the fat of Sciencefictionland and another who has gotten by on the lean —— a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore duo. Despite the sometimes useful discussions that arise in their pages the somnolent monotony prevails —— especially since the latter figure, with faraway dooms hidden behind his deep-lidded eyes, keeps genuflecting to the worldly success and knowledge of the former. That latter writer provides the more literary interest, while the former offers a vision of the beneficent behemoth that science fiction is, to the uppermost half-percent of its writers.

Perhaps strange, perhaps inevitable —— because one of their conversations had made me ask myself, "Do I care any more if I belong to this group?" How could I? Mike Resnick intoned about C.M. Kornbluth, and mentioned two books —— The Futurians and The Way the Future Was, and not mine, that I daresay has more to say about Kornbluth than any other book yet in existence. In response, Barry Malzberg said nothing.

This left me with bitterness flourishing like black rot on the tongue. Malzberg had read my book and praised it highly —- to me. Not to the world, apparently.

If, when in command of the SFWA membership's attention, the one writer who might have mentioned my book knowledgeably was failing to do so, for whatever reason, why should I want to stay in the organization?

At Wiscon two weekends ago, Mary Rickert asked me if anyone had spoken up for me, during that absurd episode when the author of The Way the Future Was identified me with "the forces of evil."

"No," I answered.

The other day I read several blog postings concerning the current furor, including one by Ann Aguirre, whose work I do not know. Aguirre's statements of cold-shouldering and public snubbing by established male science fiction writers astonished me. I had thought that the goons and gropers had been shooed away, by and large, and that the imbecile high priests to masculine writerly prowess had learned the tape-to-lips trick to look smarter. Not so, apparently. Yet on reflection how could I have known? The convention that I have attended the most, and to which I feel most allegiance, is Wiscon —— statedly feminist, and in practice egalitarian in attitude toward those who exhibit their own egalitarian spirit.

Many social problems of the sexist and racist sorts, I suspect, would begin disappearing if we would simply do this: erase "science fiction" from a convention's name and pencil in "speculative fiction." In doing so we would be harkening back to the split between the marketing category and the literary category, which I speak about in Kornbluth. Likely only a few science fiction conventions could make this shift, however. The one that I think could do it almost without effort is Wiscon. The serious, thoughtful fiction discussed in its panels and encouraged by its system of rewards and awards would fit more naturally beneath the literary banner than under the marketing one. If Judy Merril when she was guest of honor had revived her old campaign and had urged that the convention adopt the literary term "speculative fiction" and had tapped into the same energy and spunk with which Karen Fowler and Pat Murphy announced the Tiptree Award years ago, what might then have unfolded?

The great acceptance speculative poetry has enjoyed —— as a term, as a focus for panels —— at recent Wiscons offers evidence for a group mindset that might accept the change. The energy at this Wiscon 37 in this direction surprised me. Friday evening featured a lively panel, "Women's Speculative Poetry Now," with Lesley Wheeler, Amal El-Mohtar, Shira Lipkin and Sophia Samatar. The next afternoon brought "Open Secrets: A Speculative Poetry Reading," featuring "members of the Secret Poetry Cabal (a speculative poetry group)" —— a likewise lively affair with multiple poets and a large, appreciative audience. The last reading I attended at Wiscon, moreover, included Wheeler reading from her new Aqueduct Press book whose title poem (to bring matters back around to my original subject) deals with sexual harassment. (Timmi Duchamp of Aqueduct bemoans the fact that she took no notes during Friday's panel. I went prepared to do so, though —— and hope to describe that event in greater detail. Wheeler's book I came home with, and hope to dip into further.)

In the meantime, try the sound of this: "Wiscon: World's Leading Feminist Speculative Fiction Convention." Would such a name lose any attendees? Would it gain any? Would it further deter the "science fiction" sorts Aguirre encountered?

For me, I may hold out for a Speculative Writers organization to join, someday, and forget about that senile-fogey "Science Fiction" group. Blish and Knight should have known better, way back when —— no? And I should have stuck to my youthful guns, too, and persisted against the marketing tide and clutched "speculative fiction" even closer to my heart than I did.

(The subtitle of my Kornbluth biography, which was suggested by McFarland, by the way, remains fine: for "science fiction" remains the accurate term for the period 1939-58.)

Cheers ...

Dejah Thoris and Others

In recent years I have hoped some feminist student of science fiction would discover a fruitful area of study being opened within my Kornbluth biography's pages, and take off running. That not having occurred——to my knowledge——I have taken matters into my own hands. I will be taking a feminist revisionary look at Kornbluth in a talk this weekend at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction gathering in Madison.

Interestingly, one of the guests of honor, Jo Walton, wrote recently about The Space Merchants in a manner that indicates she remains unaware of the arguments in my book.

Ignorance of my book bothers me not at all. The failure of its information and ideas to penetrate the science fiction field, however, does.

I believe anyone who becomes familiar with the facts will come to regard The Space Merchants as an embarrassment. It reduces women to nothings, and distorts readers' understandings of Kornbluth's own egalitarian approach to his life and his work.

... And why do I call this entry "Dejah Thoris and Others"—–? I will also read at Wiscon a story upcoming in an Aqueduct Press anthology ... a story that reveals what Burroughs never said about his Princess of Mars.

Cheers ...

By the Fly in the Web

At Timmi Duchamp's request last summer I wrote the essay that has reappeared, published, in my mailbox.

The good folks at Aqueduct have sent me the October issue of The Cascadia Subduction Zone. In its pages, Kiini Ibura Salaam rises to Timmi's request to write about being involved in various arts, with "Painting and Writing: My Yin and Yang," while I do likewise with "Line Improvisation: Notes by the Fly in the Web."

When I wrote my first short essay for Timmi last winter, I was responding to a last-minute, near-deadline request. I worked at the typewriter for the better part of a day, put the results through several revisions, and sent in my manuscript promptly. When much later I re-read that essay in published form, I reached the ending paragraphs thinking that the essay left off its narrative prematurely. It dropped its discussion too soon. I had hurried into the writing and then hurried out, though: so what else could I have expected? What was going missing, there at essay's end, however, I had no idea. The essay wanted to go somewhere farther -- somewhere it might have gone had I struggled at the task for a longer time.

With this second essay "Line Improvisation" I took the longer time, drafting the piece in pencil and allowing thoughts to arise at a more natural pace. While writing it I grew quickly aware of the fairly large scope my narrative was acquiring, however: so even while feeling more relaxed and expansive in my writing, I was pulling back, skipping over ideas and memories, and hurrying over parts of the story. While I had ample time, that ample time did end with a deadline; and in any case I feared I was making the piece too lengthy for CSZ, a slender magazine. Timmi fortunately expressed no worries about its 5,000-word length.

I sat with the Aqueduct magazine last night and read it cover to cover, absorbed in the present moment and not thinking back to those days of steady, slow writing back in July. So after the smooth flow of Salaam's essay my own essay surprised me -- with its hop-and-skip movements, and its occasional leaps between subjects ... between distant parts of a life. The lacunae between thoughts and sentences threatened to pull me, as reader, down into wordless emptinesses.

This morning I recall that when I sent the essay to Timmi I thought that my manuscript was akin to an outline of a larger narrative.

My two CSZ essays have strong memoir components -- as does the new, even longer essay I worked at in September-October.

I should say have labored at this new work, at least, when not scurrying around engaged in antiquing and Baraboo Sunday Market tasks. For CSZ? Probably not ...

Cheers ...