Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 72

headed for sunshine

School's all done now. I spent the morning being a writer. Biking through the cold rain to a warm café and sitting with my notebook. What I was meant to do.

Getting up to 51 today and tomorrow, then going back down to normal. Slog through snow on my way to work for a couple of days, and then escape back to Florida. (Though it's getting down to the twenties in Gainesville right now, it should warm up by Thursday.)

I'm really looking forward to hauling the telescope out. And the more moderate bicycle weather, off and on. Getting together with Florida pals. Cookin' up some alligator stew.

Joe

That's amore . . .

People get really purist and partisan about pizza. I like them all, myself, though tend to extremes -- either a minimalist thin-crust, even borderline crunchy, with just chopped tomato, herbs, and olive oil with a little cheese, or an overloaded deep-dish monstrosity with everything.

Best commercial pizza I've had was in the late lamented Yugoslavia, in Zagreb.
Better than the Italian, though the Italian is good.

I love make-your-own pizza parties like niece Lore throws, with Tim's expert crusts. Yum!

Joe

Plato and pepperoni

Our annual pizza party for both classes went well; almost too well. It started at six and at 11:30 people were still hotly debating Being and Nothingness and Pepperoni, and Gay had to call a stop to it. We were both walking on our heels.

The two classes mixed well, but the science fiction people gave out about 9:00. The genre people (who seem to have more dedicated writers) would have gone on till dawn if we'd let them. A veteran from several years ago, Chris Robichaud, came with his fresh Ph.D. in philosophy, and was marvelous in setting up hypothetical moral problems for the kids to yell over. He teaches an ethics "laboratory" (which I think means discussion group) over at Harvard.

We got a lot of mileage out of the "railway switching problem." A freight train is barreling down the track, unstoppable, and is about to hit a family that's stuck on the rails, six strangers. You can throw a switch that will divert the train in such a way that it will only kill one stranger. The moral dilemma is whether you take action to kill one of them, or stand by and let six die, through inaction.

Now what do you do if you know one of them?

In fact, of course there's no "right" answer, but each decision branch you choose illustrates one of four different ethical stances. Alas, I didn't take notes as to their names. (Antony Donovan had a useful expansion of the problem. He wants to be a guy outside the frame who can shoot the decision-maker with a rifle, or not.)

(For the benefit of local gourmands, let me note we got a couple of hundred bucks' worth of assorted large pizzas from Cambridge's Chicago Pizza, and most of them were pretty good; I'd vote the pepperoni best. The thin-crust variety didn't stand the test of time too well . . . after a couple of hours it was turning to cardboard. Or maybe my eyes were going, and I actually was eating cardboard . . . . )

Actively in the Florida countdown now. Finishing up my grading and will be a writer again soon. Getting on the plane a week from today.

Joe

All who wander are not lost

I frittered away a couple of hours yesterday by, of all things, getting lost on my bicycle! You'd think that after all these years in Arlington, and decades in the Boston area, that would be impossible. But in fact I found a whole new area where I could pedal around for a dozen miles without finding anything familiar.

(I wasn't worried, because at any time I could have taken out my iPhone and called up a map showing where I was. But I sort of enjoyed the feeling of nosing around in new territory. It was cold and grey but not raining.)

I was out in Belmont, as it turns out. Eventually I came upon a citizen standing out painting his mailbox, and I asked him how to get to Arlington. He gave me a series of directions that might ultimately have led me to Connecticut, but along the way I came across a pristine new bike path blocked off by a length of yellow emergency tape – "UNDER CONSTRUCTION DO NOT ENTER" -- so of course I went down it, following my fading sense of direction, and wound up following some kids' trail through the woods, which miraculously came out at the Alewife T station, a mile from our house. Coming home that new route took me fourteen miles, rather than six, but it was good exercise.

Joe

for Emily, wherever I may find her

Got an exciting book at the Emily Dickinson house, and gave myself the indulgence of reading fifty pages of it on the drive back here. A Summer of Hummingbirds, by Christopher Benfy. It's about Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade, whose disparate worlds converged at the end of the American Civil War, and a new phase of American literature began. American culture, as the blurb says, "caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment, and a new, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all." The hummingbird is a controlling and powerful metaphor.

The book seems quite well written. I'll save it for a reward when I finish grading.

Joe

off to Amherst

Shame on me, lazy blogger. Have been spending too much time on work and socializing and travel, and not enough time writing about it.

Headed out this morning to Amherst, where I'll be giving a talk, "Method and Madness," at 4:00 tomorrow, December 3. It will be at the Mahar Auditorium on the U. Mass Amherst campus.

In less than an hour I will tell you how to get a job like mine, as Kurt Vonnegut always promised. (Though it may take you forty years, so you'd better get started.)

Nothing unusual to report since last blog. Had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with the family down in Maryland and took the train back to Boston, a pretty pleasant day of travel. Graded some papers and read Francine Prose's interesting book Reading Like a Writer. It's an opinionated and engaging series of essays logically arranged in chapters like Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration . . . it's definitely going on the "recommended texts" lists for both my classes next year. Worth reading just for the examples she uses, and the reasons she gives for their inclusion are also valuable.

Time for a new book of poetry. It's been sixteen years since the publication of Saul's Death and Other Poems, and I have a few hundred to choose from. (I'm planning a "new and collected poems" volume, including Saul's Death, since that was hardly more than a chapbook, with fewer than a thousand copies printed. This will be a substantial book, maybe even a hardcover edition, who knows.)

In LiveJournal I'll include a weird photo that Judith Clute took when she visited last month. This is me standing behind a huge magnifying glass that's in the hall of the Harvard physics building.

Joe

Turkey day

Last show we saw in New York was Billy Eliot, a good British drama about a dancer boy growing up amidst the political problems associated with coal mining in the Thatcher days. Before that we wandered around more or less aimlessly through the Village, spending a few educational hours in the Tenement Museum – which is, surprisingly enough, an old tenement building turned into a museum.

Visited the rather more prosperous building that houses my publishers, Putnam/Berkley, and had a good lunch with my editor Susan Allison. Not too much Highly Secret Biz to be discussed, since I'm finishing up the second book of a two-book contract and have starts on both books in the next contract.

Sales of my books are pretty good, which didn't used to be unusual news. But it's not generally true of science fiction in these parlous days.

Went to the gorgeous guitar shop Max Umanov, where I've bought a couple of Taylors in the past, a dreadnaught and a 12-string. I was sorely tempted by a cool painted-metal National, but resisted. For some reason Gay thinks that seven guitars and a banjo are enough, for a guy who never has time to practice . . .

Took a late morning train Wednesday down to Washington, where we rented a car and drove into Silver Spring to stay with Gay's sister Wendi. Had dinner at El Gofo, a Salvadorean restaurant in Takoma Park.

Just a sensible bit of fruit after writing this morning, girding for Turkey Day.

Joe

St. Pat's

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New Yawk New Yawk

New York trip Nov. 2010

Comfortably ensconced here in the Paramount Hotel, on 86th between 7th and 8th Ave. Went out Saturday morning before 6 and found a 24-hour Subway open a block away. No breakfast food, but coffee and a BLT while I wrote on Earthbound.
We got off the train about 3 Friday and rolled our suitcases for about a half hour to the hotel. Nice doughnut shop on the ground floor, from where we called Phil Anderson.
He met us at the hotel an we went off to a little Italian joint near the circus. Had a plate of six or seven different kinds of soft cheese, like mozarellas, with breads. Then off to the circus.
It was entertaining, but definitely not the Big Top. One ring, one act at a time. Some dogs and ponies, but no lions & tigers & bears. The big spectacle, and it was quite a visual shock, was when six regular-sized horses, pure white, came galloping out and trotted around the small ring. Then six more horses, dancing around – and then one huge stallion, who danced at the direction of a small lady with a whip she never lifted. Clowns and acrobats and a lot of tumbling.
Afterwards we walked Phil back to the Times Square subway, and stopped to get me a non-beer on the way back.

Sunday we met Phil Anderson and Judith for an early dinner and show. It was a very good London production (from the Fallout Theatre) of Personal Enemy – a very American play about the fifties, with paranoia about communism and homosexuality tearing apart a family. Excellent full-bore performance.

(The play, by John Osbourne, had faded into obscurity and was physically lost after a brief run in the fifties – the Lord Chamberlain had so completely censored it that it was incoherent. A person who wanted to revive it in London had to search through discarded files to find a copy.) Afterwards we walked Phil and Judith down Fifth Avenue. Took a neat photo of St. Patrick's in the moonlight, attached in LiveJournal.



We had a good early dinner at Brasserie 8-1/2, off Fifth Avenue. I had a beautiful appetizer, avocado garnished with miniature root vegetables, and tiny Brussels sprouts and Confit of Young Pig! Health food, to be sure.

We spent the morning looking at the exhibits in the Public Library, some interesting random photographs (a "highlights" exhibit) and an exhaustive collection of ancient holy books from the Abrahamic religions. Otherwise we just walked around, enjoying mild weather and the kaleidoscope of the Big Apple.

Writing before dawn both mornings at a 24-hour Subway a block away, on 8th Avenue. This morning I walked around a bit but couldn't find a better place. Times Square had a billion candlepower of lights for the benefit of a few drunks and cops, but not a drop of coffee except at a McDonald's, and I will never give them my custom.
We were busy as bees yesterday. Hoofed down to the Morgan Library in the morning – a museum you can actually see in one trip – where there were interesting collections of drawings from Degas and Lichtenstein. The Degas were especially fascinating; many of his notebooks as well as individual sketches and roughs for paintings.

We had a nice sort of high tea at the museum and then came back uptown and, on impulse, got tickets to a show just down the street from us, The Adams Family. It was great fun, raunchy and morbid and slapstick. Wandered around and wound up at a fine Spanish (actually Columbian) restaurant on 9th Avenue, specializing in rotisseried chicken.

Got a good but of writing done Monday morning, ending what I think is the next to last chapter of the book. Have to do some backing and filling now, though.


Joe

in Columbus

I'll be signing and chatting (along with mob of other writers, maybe thirty or so) at the Ohio State Univeristy book store today, from 11 to 1. Y'all come.

Joe