Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 12
August 11, 2015
Thinking about Daguerre
This came from someone else's dream . . .
I sometimes have darkroom images in my dreams. It was such an important part of my childhood. The dim red light, the vinegary acetic acid fixer smell, the images swimming into view. I remember the odd dull clunk that wooden tongs made on the enamel tins of developing fluid and the sudden on-and-off whooshing of the furnace next to our little darkroom in the basement, a tent made of hanging woolen blankets. Huddled in there next to my mother as she puffed on a cigarette, careful not to shed light on the developing print.
I suppose much of my fascination with optics comes from fiddling with the enlarger down in that little room. Maybe much of my feeling for science in general. And for mystery. Though mystery is always close in childhood.
Joe
I sometimes have darkroom images in my dreams. It was such an important part of my childhood. The dim red light, the vinegary acetic acid fixer smell, the images swimming into view. I remember the odd dull clunk that wooden tongs made on the enamel tins of developing fluid and the sudden on-and-off whooshing of the furnace next to our little darkroom in the basement, a tent made of hanging woolen blankets. Huddled in there next to my mother as she puffed on a cigarette, careful not to shed light on the developing print.
I suppose much of my fascination with optics comes from fiddling with the enlarger down in that little room. Maybe much of my feeling for science in general. And for mystery. Though mystery is always close in childhood.
Joe
August 9, 2015
joe_haldeman @ 2015-08-09T16:15:00
(responding to a question in sff.net)
I think a title change would be a disastrous mistake, but my opinion is worth very little. It will probably wind up THE BIG SPACE WAR or something.
Martin, I won't have any formal control. I didn't even ask. The producer has never contacted me, and I understand why he wouldn't want to. He would consider me an amateur (and be right), and you don't want an amateur screwing around with a seven-figure enterprise.
Of course I would like to be involved, and I'm not a total virgin, having written one commercial movie and a number of marginal things, mostly teevee. Even so, a producer would have to be insane to give a novelist any control over an adaptation.
Novels and movie scripts are about as far removed from one another as novels and narrative poetry. In all three cases you probably will have characters, a plot, a definite setting, and a time interval. But within that huge box there are almost infinite possible variations. Throw in time dilation and almost anything might happen!
It would be an interesting tour de force to write a screenplay that was "the same" as the novel from which it was adapted. I saw a version of The Red Badge of Courage that might qualify, but several adaptations of The Great Gatsby seem to demonstrate that the translation is between one medium and the other is doomed. Especially if "style" is a consideration. A movie that tries to ape the literary style of a novel is usually an excruciating cartoon.
When this question has come up before, I suggest The African Queen as a rare example of a really good novel that became a really good movie. Or Hawks's translation of John Campbell's "Who Goes There" into the iconic "The Thing From Outer Space" – a classic turned into another classic. On the other extreme, Islands in the Stream was a bad novel that became an even worse movie.
Hemingway is sort of the icon for the incompatibility of the two forms – people might think of him as a "cinematic" novelist because of his love of drama and action and his often kinetic literary style, but almost every attempt to put his work on the screen has been an embarrassment. I could write a book about why, but that's been done several times.
Better get off this horse before I ride it into the sunset.
Joe
I think a title change would be a disastrous mistake, but my opinion is worth very little. It will probably wind up THE BIG SPACE WAR or something.
Martin, I won't have any formal control. I didn't even ask. The producer has never contacted me, and I understand why he wouldn't want to. He would consider me an amateur (and be right), and you don't want an amateur screwing around with a seven-figure enterprise.
Of course I would like to be involved, and I'm not a total virgin, having written one commercial movie and a number of marginal things, mostly teevee. Even so, a producer would have to be insane to give a novelist any control over an adaptation.
Novels and movie scripts are about as far removed from one another as novels and narrative poetry. In all three cases you probably will have characters, a plot, a definite setting, and a time interval. But within that huge box there are almost infinite possible variations. Throw in time dilation and almost anything might happen!
It would be an interesting tour de force to write a screenplay that was "the same" as the novel from which it was adapted. I saw a version of The Red Badge of Courage that might qualify, but several adaptations of The Great Gatsby seem to demonstrate that the translation is between one medium and the other is doomed. Especially if "style" is a consideration. A movie that tries to ape the literary style of a novel is usually an excruciating cartoon.
When this question has come up before, I suggest The African Queen as a rare example of a really good novel that became a really good movie. Or Hawks's translation of John Campbell's "Who Goes There" into the iconic "The Thing From Outer Space" – a classic turned into another classic. On the other extreme, Islands in the Stream was a bad novel that became an even worse movie.
Hemingway is sort of the icon for the incompatibility of the two forms – people might think of him as a "cinematic" novelist because of his love of drama and action and his often kinetic literary style, but almost every attempt to put his work on the screen has been an embarrassment. I could write a book about why, but that's been done several times.
Better get off this horse before I ride it into the sunset.
Joe
August 3, 2015
bookstore magic
A pleasant thought, or feeling, came to me while I was resting after the rigors of grocery shopping this morning . . . one thing that I miss from living in Cambridge in the fall is the mid-August anticipation of going back to class, which after thirty summers I associate with this season in Florida. Our muggy dampness that would suddenly be crisp autumn. To me that leads to a specific sensory panoply: College Book Store.
In my memory, or history, it goes back well before M.I.T., to when I first went to college in Norman, Oklahoma.
Step into frigid air conditioning to the dizzying rainbow sight and smell of thousands of new books stacked all around, with a small army of pretty and slightly cross shopgirls lugging them back and forth. The random walk from subject to subject, opening texts at whim, accumulating snapshots of different peoples' futures, studying aardvarks to zygotes.
I do need a new perfect-bound notebook for my bag, and I think I'll go down to the university to look for one. 'Tis the season, after all. Their website has "Moleskine Classic Notebook, Large, Plain, Black, Hard Cover (5 x 8.25) (Classic Notebooks) by Moleskine Hardcover $12.91." Probably go for that, though I might be seduced by something fancier.
Joe
In my memory, or history, it goes back well before M.I.T., to when I first went to college in Norman, Oklahoma.
Step into frigid air conditioning to the dizzying rainbow sight and smell of thousands of new books stacked all around, with a small army of pretty and slightly cross shopgirls lugging them back and forth. The random walk from subject to subject, opening texts at whim, accumulating snapshots of different peoples' futures, studying aardvarks to zygotes.
I do need a new perfect-bound notebook for my bag, and I think I'll go down to the university to look for one. 'Tis the season, after all. Their website has "Moleskine Classic Notebook, Large, Plain, Black, Hard Cover (5 x 8.25) (Classic Notebooks) by Moleskine Hardcover $12.91." Probably go for that, though I might be seduced by something fancier.
Joe
July 22, 2015
E.L. Doctorow, R.I.P., and Vance Bourjaily
I tried to respond on sff.net's Obituary column to the announcement of Doctorow's death, but was reminded that I do not have posting priveleges at that august venue. So here:
RAGTIME was "The" Great American Novel of my generation -- in grad school inthe seventies. Still a lovely kitchen sink of a book. I read it in the IowaWriters Workshop in a class taught by Vance Bourjaily -- both of them "obscureAmerican novelists of the late 20th century" now. Both of them poetic energeticnovelists not afraid of huge themes.I guess the best any of us (temporarily popular novelists) can expect from posterityis an elegaic remembrance in some obscure venue. Better to have lived in lustthan never have lusted at all.
Joe
RAGTIME was "The" Great American Novel of my generation -- in grad school inthe seventies. Still a lovely kitchen sink of a book. I read it in the IowaWriters Workshop in a class taught by Vance Bourjaily -- both of them "obscureAmerican novelists of the late 20th century" now. Both of them poetic energeticnovelists not afraid of huge themes.I guess the best any of us (temporarily popular novelists) can expect from posterityis an elegaic remembrance in some obscure venue. Better to have lived in lustthan never have lusted at all.
Joe
E.H. R.I.P.
A correspondent reminded me that yesterday was Ernest Hemingway's birthday, which I don't often remember . . . not like I remember the anniversary of his death, which affected me, perhaps profoundly.
I'd just turned eighteen, and had ambitions to be a writer – though I hadn't written much, really. Started a novel but it sputtered out. That night I staggered out of a bar in Washington, D.C. with some cronies and saw the early headlines of Hemingway's death. The first story said it was an accident, cleaning a double-barreled shotgun. How on Earth could that happen? You would notice when the cleaning rod didn't go through.
The gang I was with were all science fiction readers, but we knew Hemingway, or at least about him. We sat down in a Howard Johnson's to drink coffee and sober up before the drive home and traded what little we knew about the man, and what little we knew about suicide.
I know a lot more about Hemingway now, but suicide is still a primal mystery to me. Optimistic me. Hemingway was a physical wreck from a lifetime of alcoholism and the sequelae of a dozen serious accidents – how many people survive two plane crashes in the same week? – and doctors kept him drugged to the gills for pain and depression. He tried to commit suicide several times after he left the hospital, and finally succeeded, with a little help from his wife. Cynics say she was sick and tired of him, and left a loaded shotgun in the kitchen for his convenience. I don't think it was that deliberate. (The fact that the shotgun was loaded, some writers don't seem to understand, was unremarkable in their household. They were both inveterate hunters and had experienced a lot of combat. The house was and remains isolated and vulnerable.)
The suicide was tragic, but in pharmaceutical and psychological perspective it was unsurprising, perhaps predictable. Would it have happened today? Maybe not. He'd had his skull blasted with line-current electroshock therapy several times and was washing down antidepressants with one or two bottles of red wine a day. He was sturdy as a bull, but those of us who read Hemingway know that bulls are vulnerable, and fated.
Joe
I'd just turned eighteen, and had ambitions to be a writer – though I hadn't written much, really. Started a novel but it sputtered out. That night I staggered out of a bar in Washington, D.C. with some cronies and saw the early headlines of Hemingway's death. The first story said it was an accident, cleaning a double-barreled shotgun. How on Earth could that happen? You would notice when the cleaning rod didn't go through.
The gang I was with were all science fiction readers, but we knew Hemingway, or at least about him. We sat down in a Howard Johnson's to drink coffee and sober up before the drive home and traded what little we knew about the man, and what little we knew about suicide.
I know a lot more about Hemingway now, but suicide is still a primal mystery to me. Optimistic me. Hemingway was a physical wreck from a lifetime of alcoholism and the sequelae of a dozen serious accidents – how many people survive two plane crashes in the same week? – and doctors kept him drugged to the gills for pain and depression. He tried to commit suicide several times after he left the hospital, and finally succeeded, with a little help from his wife. Cynics say she was sick and tired of him, and left a loaded shotgun in the kitchen for his convenience. I don't think it was that deliberate. (The fact that the shotgun was loaded, some writers don't seem to understand, was unremarkable in their household. They were both inveterate hunters and had experienced a lot of combat. The house was and remains isolated and vulnerable.)
The suicide was tragic, but in pharmaceutical and psychological perspective it was unsurprising, perhaps predictable. Would it have happened today? Maybe not. He'd had his skull blasted with line-current electroshock therapy several times and was washing down antidepressants with one or two bottles of red wine a day. He was sturdy as a bull, but those of us who read Hemingway know that bulls are vulnerable, and fated.
Joe
July 19, 2015
Back to Florida
Back from England, into the thick Florida heat. It's been worse, though. I went out this morning and pedaled around for eight or ten miles, and didn't melt. Then went into the coffee house Mi Apå for a double espresso, and then on to my regular work space, CYM Café, where I had regular coffee and a beer, first in the sultry porch heat and then in air-conditioning, meanwhile writing 454 words, which is a little more than usual.
I don't mind the hot days, but wish we had some clear nights. All work and no stars makes Joe a dull boy. I have a brand-new set-up, a ten-inch RFT (rich field telescope) that I've hardly used.
It's in the mid-nineties now but will be cooling off a bit for the rest of the week, thanks to daily thunderstorms. That will be the pattern for the next month or so. Then it will be radioactive meteorites and occasional pterodactyl storms, but <shrug> that's Florida. Mothers send their kids off to school with "Don't forget your gas mask!" and give them an extra clip of dum-dums for the bicycle commute home. No, that's not until tomorrow. Sunday keeps the tough guys off the street, where the parole officers are trolling for truants. They shoot to kill.
England was relaxing but, you know, nothing has happened there since the Stuarts' heydays. Well, I'll give you the Beatles. (Which are nothing compared to Florida cockroaches, the size of spaniels.)
Had a very attractive model for figure studies yesterday. The moral arbiters of computerland won't let me transmit a drawn image of a nude, but here's a picture of her face. You'll have to use your imagination for the rest.
(Of course you're only two clicks away from live bestiality, or one away from Ann Coulter. But the Internet knows what's good for you.)
(Which might be a powerful argument for privatization. How much would you pay to see Ann Coulter bite the head off a live (liberal) chicken?)
Better withdraw that offer. Don't want to overload my server . . .
Joe
I don't mind the hot days, but wish we had some clear nights. All work and no stars makes Joe a dull boy. I have a brand-new set-up, a ten-inch RFT (rich field telescope) that I've hardly used.
It's in the mid-nineties now but will be cooling off a bit for the rest of the week, thanks to daily thunderstorms. That will be the pattern for the next month or so. Then it will be radioactive meteorites and occasional pterodactyl storms, but <shrug> that's Florida. Mothers send their kids off to school with "Don't forget your gas mask!" and give them an extra clip of dum-dums for the bicycle commute home. No, that's not until tomorrow. Sunday keeps the tough guys off the street, where the parole officers are trolling for truants. They shoot to kill.
England was relaxing but, you know, nothing has happened there since the Stuarts' heydays. Well, I'll give you the Beatles. (Which are nothing compared to Florida cockroaches, the size of spaniels.)
Had a very attractive model for figure studies yesterday. The moral arbiters of computerland won't let me transmit a drawn image of a nude, but here's a picture of her face. You'll have to use your imagination for the rest.
(Of course you're only two clicks away from live bestiality, or one away from Ann Coulter. But the Internet knows what's good for you.)
(Which might be a powerful argument for privatization. How much would you pay to see Ann Coulter bite the head off a live (liberal) chicken?)
Better withdraw that offer. Don't want to overload my server . . .
Joe
July 12, 2015
A day on the train and ferry
All day yesterday was given over to transportation, leaving the Dublin hotel right after breakfast and taking a succession of taxis, trains, and ferries to wind up in Chester after 11:00 p.m.
The ferry ride was very smooth, only a little rocking and swaying. We didn't opt for a cabin, but the main area wasn't crowded. Big wall-sized teevee screen showing interminable golf. Misting rain most of the time. I only went out on deck a couple of times, to accompany Wendi on her cigarette breaks. (Wishing I was still smoking my pipe!)
We had a nice meal on the ferry, Swedish meatballs with loganberry sauce. Free wine in first class, pour your own. I enjoyed reading the book from the conference, The Impossible Craft, Scott Donaldson's long personal essay on the challenges of writing literary biography. (Donaldson wrote landmark books on Fitzgerald and Hemingway, among others.)
It was interesting to compare that genre with the problems of writing fiction, which are surprisingly similar. (If your characters' descendants could sue you!)
The sun has come up on Chester, a town with a lot of medieval ruins that still has an intact Roman wall. Hope to have some spots of clear weather for a watercolor. The town looked pretty picturesque in the darkness last night.
Joe
The ferry ride was very smooth, only a little rocking and swaying. We didn't opt for a cabin, but the main area wasn't crowded. Big wall-sized teevee screen showing interminable golf. Misting rain most of the time. I only went out on deck a couple of times, to accompany Wendi on her cigarette breaks. (Wishing I was still smoking my pipe!)
We had a nice meal on the ferry, Swedish meatballs with loganberry sauce. Free wine in first class, pour your own. I enjoyed reading the book from the conference, The Impossible Craft, Scott Donaldson's long personal essay on the challenges of writing literary biography. (Donaldson wrote landmark books on Fitzgerald and Hemingway, among others.)
It was interesting to compare that genre with the problems of writing fiction, which are surprisingly similar. (If your characters' descendants could sue you!)
The sun has come up on Chester, a town with a lot of medieval ruins that still has an intact Roman wall. Hope to have some spots of clear weather for a watercolor. The town looked pretty picturesque in the darkness last night.
Joe
July 2, 2015
Let's do it . . .
Last night Gay and I went with her sister Wendi and Judith Clute to see the new rendition of the musical High Society at the Old Vic, a stirring recreation – resembling the 1956 movie more than the 1939 stage play (The Philadelphia Story), experts say. Good enough; that was a great movie.
A note to myself – when I get back to the states want to rent or buy the 1956 movie, which has Louis Armstrong as the musician character. He was played by jazz pianist Joe Stilgoe in the play last night, absolutely smooth and jazzy. There was an eye-popping four-handed windmilling performance with Stilgoe twining arms impossibly with the Musical Director Theo Jamieson, standing behind him – that tour de force was worth the price of admission alone.
We had a sturdy pub lunch beforehand with cocktails in the interval, but were too tired to make a whole evening of it. Age and travel fatigue – Cole Porter would have just popped another bottle of champagne, I'm sure, and partied into the night. But they were built of sterner stuff back then.
He chain-smoked nonfilter Camel cigarettes and boozed constantly and lived to be 73. Just think of how long he might've lived if he'd entered a monastery instead. His music might have been less interesting.
Joe
A note to myself – when I get back to the states want to rent or buy the 1956 movie, which has Louis Armstrong as the musician character. He was played by jazz pianist Joe Stilgoe in the play last night, absolutely smooth and jazzy. There was an eye-popping four-handed windmilling performance with Stilgoe twining arms impossibly with the Musical Director Theo Jamieson, standing behind him – that tour de force was worth the price of admission alone.
We had a sturdy pub lunch beforehand with cocktails in the interval, but were too tired to make a whole evening of it. Age and travel fatigue – Cole Porter would have just popped another bottle of champagne, I'm sure, and partied into the night. But they were built of sterner stuff back then.
He chain-smoked nonfilter Camel cigarettes and boozed constantly and lived to be 73. Just think of how long he might've lived if he'd entered a monastery instead. His music might have been less interesting.
Joe
June 19, 2015
Marjorie Kennan Rawlings - "Invasion of Privacy"
Last night we went off to see "Invasion of Privacy," a very interesting play about the life of Marjorie Kennan Rawlings, author of The Yearling and other regional fiction set in Florida. (She hated that "regional" label, but it does fit.) The play was about a lawsuit that Rawlings got stuck with, when a local character – quite a character, it turned out – sued her for invasion of privacy. After a long and (for Rawlings) grueling court battle, she wound up paying one dollar. But it sapped her strength and spirit, and she left Florida, her writing career essentially over.
I read The Yearling when we moved to Gainesville thirty years ago, and found it a worthwhile YA novel, but I've always liked her chatty cookbook, Cross Creek Cookery, more. I've visited her well-preserved cottage many times; it's a great place to take visiting writers. Until a few years ago, they kept one of her typewriters on the porch, and maintained it in working order. So you could sit where she used to sit, and type your own deathless prose.
It's still one of the best literary tourist spots in Florida. People who don't care for literature can still enjoy the Yearling Restaurant nearby, with all kinds of Rawlings memorabilia. and dam' fine southern cooking as well. A good place for alligator, now that it's off the endangered species list. Cooter (freshwater softshell turtle) is wonderful, but rarely available. Catfish and trout are fine, but I most love their frog legs and quail. And atmosphere. They sometimes have a black guy who fingerpicks a wonderful steel guitar and sings murky lyrics.
They say when Hemingway drove down toward Key West in the thirties, he took a detour to see Rawlings and Cross Creek. I'm not sure that's true, but it should be, and you should do it, too.
Joe
I read The Yearling when we moved to Gainesville thirty years ago, and found it a worthwhile YA novel, but I've always liked her chatty cookbook, Cross Creek Cookery, more. I've visited her well-preserved cottage many times; it's a great place to take visiting writers. Until a few years ago, they kept one of her typewriters on the porch, and maintained it in working order. So you could sit where she used to sit, and type your own deathless prose.
It's still one of the best literary tourist spots in Florida. People who don't care for literature can still enjoy the Yearling Restaurant nearby, with all kinds of Rawlings memorabilia. and dam' fine southern cooking as well. A good place for alligator, now that it's off the endangered species list. Cooter (freshwater softshell turtle) is wonderful, but rarely available. Catfish and trout are fine, but I most love their frog legs and quail. And atmosphere. They sometimes have a black guy who fingerpicks a wonderful steel guitar and sings murky lyrics.
They say when Hemingway drove down toward Key West in the thirties, he took a detour to see Rawlings and Cross Creek. I'm not sure that's true, but it should be, and you should do it, too.
Joe
June 17, 2015
Jurassic snark
Yesterday we fled the record-breaking Florida heat for the airconditioned screamfest of Jurassic World, which I think was the same story as Jurassic Park, with similar but different dinosaurs. Handsome leading man, check; sexy female scientist who shucks her lab coat as quickly as possible, check; adult scientists and other authority figures for comic relief and villains, check; young boy and girl as bait, check. No gross-out dinosaur-shit jokes; they must have scored low on the audience response surveys.
One real improvement was that this time they had good-guy and bad-guy dinosaurs. The scientists had scientifically implanted morals in some of them, but alas, some of these got the bad kind of morals. Two hundred tons of surly rabid carnivore – maybe we should think this through, Jim. An antepenultimate scene where the good dinosaurs defend the humans against the bad dinosaurs –
Jesus. I just realized that I wrote that as a comic book when I was eleven years old. Then frittered away the intervening six decades having a life!
I coulda been a contender. But I read some actual science fiction, and then got infected by a liberal arts degree . . . .
One real improvement was that this time they had good-guy and bad-guy dinosaurs. The scientists had scientifically implanted morals in some of them, but alas, some of these got the bad kind of morals. Two hundred tons of surly rabid carnivore – maybe we should think this through, Jim. An antepenultimate scene where the good dinosaurs defend the humans against the bad dinosaurs –
Jesus. I just realized that I wrote that as a comic book when I was eleven years old. Then frittered away the intervening six decades having a life!
I coulda been a contender. But I read some actual science fiction, and then got infected by a liberal arts degree . . . .
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