Thoughts Approaching a Memory: David G. Hartwell

In some ways it seemed strange, last night, to grieve for someone whom I knew less than perfectly well, and with whom I had a few differences.

Yet I did feel grief — that upwelling, unstoppable acknowledgement that some piece belonging to the puzzle presented by our own life has vanished with finality — vanished despite its seeming to have fitted into our world-picture with the permanence that great character and distinctive personality seem to possess.

It may be that they only seem to possess this permanence, and that the inevitable vanishing serves to correct our susceptible senses and hungry-to-believe hearts.

The vanishing of what, though? Surely not character and personality. The one for whom I grieved possessed these to such degrees that they must have bled off from his mere physical body constantly, collecting in rooms and hallways, in houses and offices and hotels and restaurants and taverns and any spaces public or private encountered, appearing and fading away like drifting dust motes or chance sunbeams in from a window; bled off to be breathed in like that dust, or sensed like that sunlight; bled off to become, as do dust motes or light beams, part of new blood flowing in other veins.

For we are needy plants spreading our leaves to catch light, our roots to catch settled dust.

Grief must strike when one feels, viscerally, that one is to have no more of that character and personality. Yet strangely it must strike when one feels, too, that this other's character and personality have grown into one's own. The vital moments in a relationship persist, and make those who leave us, physically, remain in us.

I can say with little certainty how long I have known David — which is to say, how long he has been real within my life, rather than just a face and a name, a figure famous in the relatively small science-fiction publishing world. That sense of the real may have come fairly quickly, since besides science fiction we shared being booksellers and poetry-magazine editors. I have small idea what he saw in me; yet since I felt adrift in the field, his consistent friendliness and generous conversations made me feel less estranged from the field that I had chosen and that often seemed intent on choosing anyone but me. That he had a genius for friendship seemed apparent; that he held too many reins at the same time to actually follow that genius, equally.

If I picture him, I recall brows that could furrow with intensity; eyes that gazed directly, whether troubled or pleased; lips that could widen around a smile that was usually genuine but partly an invention that he displayed for photographers; and lips that could pull back, too, around a grimace that reflected his wrestling with ideas and perspectives, which I think always was genuine — because, in picturing him, that grimace comes to my mind almost first. In him the element of the showman came often to the fore: a literate, thoughtful showman, who had a true respect for audience. Did he neglect any inner elements due to his impulse for show? It may be, since I find it hard to imagine anyone being a show-person without some personal cost. Yet in whatever the mood of the moment, I can still see that grimace emerge — that argumentative thoughtfulness, that assertive possession of the materials of his mind. That grimace: the smile from his tenacious power-sense, his knotty heart. His truth. In another mode he would appear with the eyebrows that seemed rising to meet his hairline; and at such moments he would tilt slightly his head and poise with a mouth that seemed too small for the expansive width of smile belonging to other moments, and speak words that would rise from the desk-worn editorial sleeve — in a small voice, almost too well spoken, a bit learned, a bit facetious, a bit fastidious. While I cannot know if I heard him use the phrase, I can hear him all the same — just after dipping down his chin to shoulder-level and upwards, like a tortoise getting a crink out of its neck: "Not to make too fine a distinction. But — " And later his smile would erupt like a voiceless laugh.

I suspect he might have found a calm, lasting happiness had it been his to find sensible order in his surroundings — books, people, food, drink, easy times, complicated times — yet the chaos that afflicts nearly all creative lives must have come as inevitable price, for him, for the sense of order he placed upon his publishing realm — his anthologies, his historical-survey compendia, his reviews-magazine editing, his ceaseless efforts to educate and inform. To some degree I believe he paid the price happily, and went striding along chaos's verge with some good cheer: for he had appetites, including one for engagement with his immediate surroundings; and he had the kind of humor that can, at least at times, save those of us who tempt the dogs of chaos perhaps too much.

We go on, as we must —

And we carry along with us another's now-permanent character and personality — as we must.

Farewell to Jack Vance

I never knew him —— although after our one or two phone conversations I began to feel as though I did, at least a little: and at this moment I can hear his voice in my ear, genial and gentle and unassuming. As has happened for me with other souls who identify themselves as political conservatives we made our links to one another via the arts —— plural —— one being science fiction, another being music. Or maybe I should say we made a link to one another through memory: his memory, personal and direct; mine, impersonal and research-based and indirect. We cared enough about the same things that our exchanges came easily.

On January 6, 2009, Jack told me, "I'm blind. My eyes went out fifteen years ago. I've acclimated myself to the situation. It seems almost normal." His contact with literary culture continued —— for he had a "reader" —— I assume an automatic device: "I've got a reader that reads cassettes to me from the Library of Congress." At the time, poetry occupied a fair share of his time, for in his queue he had the Oxford Book of English Verse and Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Should my eyes dim while my ears remain a-quiver, I could ask for no better companions for quiet afternoon or evening hours.

I doubt he could have done in prose what he did, without the influence of traditional poetry.

At the time of our conversation I jotted down those titles without too much thought.

Where does Vance stand in science fiction? I wish I knew better. He was doing a great deal of writing and publishing in years when I read relatively little in the genre. His earlier books, insofar as I know them, include distinctive, idiosyncratic and complex works that I have enjoyed and respected and look forward to revisiting. What emerges most powerfully from them, in memory, is the Vanceian color —- the strangeness, the posed artificiality that inhabits and infects his characters and situations, tingeing them with an impalpable edginess that threatens to blur into discomfort but often leaves an aftertaste of pleasure.

Cheers ...

Judith Merril: Web Observations

Yesterday I grew curious about what biographical accounts of Judith Merril might have surfaced on the Internet. When I looked I found the usual plenitude of www.flagrant-error.com sources. While some accurate accounts exist out there——for instance Rob Sawyer's personal recollections——after a time I gave up the search for general ones.

People feel remarkably at ease trotting out for public view their insufficient knowledge of any subject. Does instant transmission mean that all such entries are to be viewed as ephemeral, so that today's posting has no special importance? That might explain the attitude. Tomorrow's error will take the place of today's, after all: how could that not solve everything? I suppose all who post to Flagrant-error.com live by the hope that someone else will tidy up the confusion left by a billion Johnnies-on-the-spot. Whatever careful work has been done by those who have built up the Web, what we seem to see most of, and first, are parroting finger-peckings and cut-and-paste posturings——the expressions of people or their virtual equivalents who might like to appear in command in an infodense realm but who too often wear the infodunce cap. These key-tappers take pleasure, it seems, in perpetuating the easily available errors of those who came before them whose preference, too, is to take to a worldwide stage when factually stumbling.

It surprised me to find a quite recent piece in Kirkus Reviews written by Andrew Liptak, whose name is new to me. The posting, despite the venue, makes its share of mistakes, unfortunately; and these and the surrounding expressions of misunderstanding have appeared not only here at Kirkus but also, apparently, at the "75 Years of Science Fiction" conference at University of Vermont on April 27, to judge from this sentence from Liptak's first paraqraph, in which he promotes his impending appearance there: "The paper will be on the evolutionary roots of the genre, and draws heavily upon this column!" The phrase "evolutionary roots" seems less than happy, to me; and the notion of a paper about "roots of the genre" offering Merril as an example seems to reflect a misunderstanding of the genre's early development and maturation, which occurred before Merril became involved. Liptak's use of the phrase "The Golden Age of Science Fiction," immediately afterwards, may reflect a similar misunderstanding, insofar as the "Golden Age," for most observers, antedated Merril's major contributions.

Much of the information Liptak mentions seems drawn from the Merril memoir Better To Have Loved. His ordering of events strikes some off notes, perhaps the result of reading source materials not quite carefully enough. The errors in names reflect particularly poorly on scholarship, proofreading, or both. I puzzled over who "John Michael" was, for a moment; but I felt startled to find the column getting wrong not only the publication date but also the title for Merril's first novel. It also gets wrong the title of the first Cyril Judd serial. Fuzzy thinking and lazy writing flow on to the end.

No doubt Liptak's well-meant posting will become a source for future ones by others. Quite likely it will inspire "corrections" to existing infodense accounts, and provide fodder for all those infodunces——most of them probably virtual——who wait in the wings.

Liptak's list of sources led me to the New York Times obituary by Gerald Jonas, which is quite short but not error-free. Jonas makes a rather large misstatement——"During and just after World War II, Ms. Merril was the only woman associated with ... the Futurians." His listing of prominent Futurians may mislead readers, moreover, since of the four mentioned only James Blish was a member when Merril was. Jonas also perpetuates an error about her birth name.

I know Jonas is, and feel confident Liptak must be, capable of excellent work. Overwork and hurry may well account for much, here. Even Judy had trouble keeping her story utterly factual——as she forthrightly admitted.

On Missing Wiscon

Our normal activity for Memorial Day weekend has been, for many years, attending the feminist science fiction convention named Wiscon. It is held, these days, in the Madison Concourse. This year I made the decision to attend Wiscon countless times. despite lack of means.

I made the decision not to attend countless times plus one.

I had particularly wanted to go this year to see old friend and collaborator Richard Bowes, a fine novelist -- one of the finest, in truth, in my reading experience -- and to see again Carol Emshwiller, who came to my assistance during the writing of the Cyril Kornbluth biography.

But ...

The financial situation is in the process of changing, here in our household, because of my having taken on a job -- one that seems to be the kind of job best for me: one that saps less than the full energies that I should be putting into creative activities ... yet while the financial picture is changing, it has yet to actually change. I could not quite contemplate going two thousand dollars in debt to buy my author copies of the biography, and then adding atop that the hundreds required to spend time at the Madison Concourse. Moreover I have yet to prepare the promotional materials I need to have at hand, in any convention appearances ... so had I, this year, opted for Wiscon, I would have been making the drive down and spending the days and dollars without books to show and sell, and without materials to hand out. However much the value -- it is immense -- of seeing friends whom I dearly want to see, it seems far better to wait until I can attend conventions better equipped.

Staying home allowed us the pleasure of frittering away time, doing some Memorial-weekend rummaging. At one point in our wanderings we went into an antique shop in Centerville which usually we have seen closed and so never had investigated. A great many wonders awaited us inside. What I walked out with, though, for $2.50, was a copy of the January, 1960, issue of The Original Science Fiction Stories -- a magazine with which I had no familiarity. Its editor was Robert A.W. Lowndes, though -- the figure who, as Robert W. Lowndes, Bob Lowndes, or "Doc" Lowndes, has such prominence in the Cyril Kornbluth biography. What prompted my purchase, though, was the prominent notice on the cover:

"Puritan Planet," by Carol Emshwiller.

A perhaps stranger reminder of the Wiscon we were missing came for Martha at the Agricenter in Viroqua, where we stopped on Sunday to look at some plants. She was writing a check, so picked up the pen lying on the plant-nursery counter ... a pen from the Madison Concourse. The clerk said she had never seen the pen before.

Cheers ...