Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 166

My Night With Jeffrey Dahmer

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"I've had sex with over a hundred men and only killed seventeen of them.  That should count for something."


I spent Wednesday night in a dark, hot, filthy, basement-like garage listening to Jeffrey Dahmer talk about his life.

Okay, it was actually actor Josh Hitchens performing his one man play Jeffrey Dahmer: Guilty But Insane .  But oh my God, it was mesmerizing.  I know because twice I managed to look away from Hitchens in order to glance at the audience and they were motionless, stunned, rapt.

The first thing that has to be said is that no, the piece was neither exploitative or gross.  Hitchens's impersonation of a man who killed human beings, ate their hearts, and kept their skulls as trophies is both moving and horrific.  None of it is played for visceral kicks.  his Dahmer is a very human monster, in part appalling and in part sympathetic.

The other thing that has to be said is that though "Dahmer" tells you up front that there will be no explanations, this narrative (taken from his confession, courtroom testimony, and subsequent interviews) provides as close to an explanation of his behavior as we're going to get.  All the experts who examined Dahmer declared him sane, prompting a headline that read:  HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU HAVE TO KILL AND EAT TO BE CONSIDERED INSANE IN MILWAUKEE?  But in a court case, "sanity" is a legal term meaning "able to distinguish between right and wrong."  Which Dahmer could.  He was, however, acting under compulsions that made him do things he knew were wrong.

This is a terrific piece of theater, written by Hitchens, and made up almost entirely of Dahmer's own unparaphrased words, stitched together from his confession, the trial transcript, and interviews after the fact.  I'll go to see Hitchens in pretty much anything -- he's that good -- but I think this may be his best work to date.

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Chinese Glove Puppetry

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One of the pleasures of writing is the odd places that research takes you.  As witness the video clip above.

Back in my college days, I had a friend who ran a summers-only puppet troupe called Moxie Marionettes.  The name came from his conviction that anybody could be a puppeteer -- that all it took was moxie.

Well, my friend had moxie a-plenty, but that's another story.  More relevant is the fact that while, yes, close to anybody with moxie can, with some research, practice, and hard work put on a puppet show, there is a huge gulf between mere puppetry and great puppetry.

The clip above being a good example of the latter.

Enjoy!  You can find Part 2 here.

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Richard Matheson, 1926 - 20013

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There is a strange irony in the fact that writers for TV and movies make a lot more money than do print writers but garner a lot less fame.  Which irony is doubled when you consider that Richard Matheson was a print writer best known for his media work who was greatly admired by Ray Bradbury, a prolific media writer who is best known for his print work.

Matheson was an originary writer -- a source of ideas rather than a writer who takes other writers' ideas and casts them in better prose.  Here's a case in point.  One of his novels, I AM LEGEND, posited the last man on Earth who is under nightly siege by former humans turned vampire.  This was a great idea which was obviously suited for a movie.

Which movie has been made I don't know how many times, possibly most famously as THE OMEGA MAN.

But there are movie geeks out there who can read me chapter and verse.

 It doesn't stop there, though.  At one point an obscure film maker named George Romera tried to get he rights to make his version of the novel and failed.  So he tweaked a little here and there and came up with the first modern zombie movie.

An entire genre owes its existence to Matheson.

There'sa a lot more I could say, but the essence of it is that he was a writer who enriched your life.  I can confidently state that without knowing who you are.  Of how many writers can that be said?

You can read io9's excellent memorial here.

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Know Your Audience

.I was, as always, on the road today.  So this post is entered late . . . But since the implicit social contract I have entered into with you stipulates only the day and not the hour, it counts.  
If I had to miss a day, though, better it were a Friday than a Monday or Wednesday.  Because fewer people read this blog on Fridays.  (This is, I suspect, because most people do their idle blog-reading in the office and on week's end are looking forward to the weekend.). That's why if I have an observation that that I think a larger-than-usual number of people will want to read, I post it on a Wednesday or a Monday.

And there is the essence of the principle of "knowing your audience."  It is not a matter, as I'm sure many suspect, of pandering and condescending to one's imagined audience.  It's having some idea of the expectations of such readers who are likely to read the sort of stuff you write and throwing in a bit of explanation or foreshadowing when they need it, but refraining from it when they don't.

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Speak of the Devil . . .

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Here's a true story.  Years ago, my friend Stanley was driving through my neighborhood with his daughter Nell and granddaughter Cassandra, then a little girl.  Prompted by the locale, he said something to Nell about me.

Just then, he saw me up ahead, walking along the sidewalk, as usual lost in thought.  "Speak of the Devil," he said, pointing, "there he is!"

And drove on.

A mile or so down the road, Cassandra said, in a very small voice, "Pop-Pop, was that really the Devil?"

I've always been pleased with that.  And I like the thought that many, many decades from now, when memory starts to fade, Cassandra might say to her great-grandchildren, "I saw the Devil once.  He was  this scrawny white dude.  Not at all elegant the way you'd expect."

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Fireflies

.I had a thought and I think you should pass it along.  Not because it will do me any good -- the first thing that gets stripped from this sort of thing is the author -- but because I think it would be great if everybody who would like the thought encountered it:

Fireflies are proof that God loves children and wants them to be happy.

Spread it to the winds!  Let's make strangers happy!

(I should mention here that while I have never censored any comments posted here, I reserve the right to do so with this post.  No smarm, please.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Gertrude Stein

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Gertrude Stein is very important to me, and I could not tell you why.  All I know is that I find myself thinking about her a lot more than I do about, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald or William Faulkner, authors whose works you might think would be a lot more utile to me as a writer. 

At her best, she wrote works of genius -- though what kind of genius it's sometimes hard to say.  And much of her writing was so gnostic that critic Michael Dirda, genial man though he is, was prompted to compare it to children playing in a sandbox:  They're obviously involved in something intense, "but what it is, only the angels in heaven know."

Still, whenever I encounter an article about her, I immediately pick it up and read it.  Which is how I noticed that inevitably the writer will refer to her as looking "mannish."

Odd word choice, that, because she looked like a lot of women of a certain heft and age.  You could easily have an aunt who looks like her.  There was really nothing strange or man-like about her appearance.  Now, obviously, the writers are (a) being lazy and (b) signaling the reader that she was a lesbian.  But there are so many  different ways of conveying that information ("She was a lesbian" leaps to mind, or "Alice B. Toklas was her lover") that it seems there must be something behind that word.

My theory is this:  Everybody agrees that Stein took herself very seriously indeed.  She knew she was a genius and would tell you so to your face.  She deferred to nobody.  And she clearly thought she was the most important writer alive.

The great male egos of the time were all exactly the same way.  Consider only Hemingway and Picasso.  But women creators did not act that way.  They may have thought it -- I'm guessing Virginia Woolf had a pretty good notion her work would endure -- but they didn't shove that fact in your face, the way the guys did.

Except for Gertrude.  She did it and she got away with it and it's too late now to put her in her place.  So when she's written about, that word "mannish" is brought out like a ritual slap in the face:  You weren't properly deferential, it says.  You stepped out of line.

That's only a theory, mind you.  But reading some of what's written about her, the subtext is strong.

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The Phoenix and the Dragon

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It was a big moment for me when The Iron Dragon's Daughter  was selected for the Fantasy Masterworks line.  Over the years the editors chose wisely and well and so created a literary community such as I had yearned to be numbered among since long before I published a word.  For one brief, glorious moment, I thought, "I made it!  I'm playing with the Big Kids now!"

And of course then a little voice in the back of my skull said, "Back to work, Swanwick."

Now the Fantasy Masterworks people have announced their next five books, scheduled to come out in October, in time for the World Fantasy Convention.  All worthy, all admirable, all books you should read.  But I want to draw your attention to two in particular.

Most of all I want you to admire The Phoenix and the Mirror because Avram Davidson was a literary genius who is today in danger of being forgotten.  In the Middle Ages, a body of legend arose around the error that the poet Virgil was a magician.  Avram built upon this fact the first volume of a trilogy he never completed., rich in alchemical lore and literary as all get-out.

Learned, brilliant, accomplished ... Dear God, this man could write!  So well that I have not words for it.  Honesty compels me to admit that TPatM was originally going to be the first volume of a series (Davidson started a lot of trilogies he couldn't complete), but it does conclude, and for those who love gorgeous prose, there's nothing to compare with it.   Please do consider buying this book, reading it, and becoming a better person for having done so.

The second book is The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard.  What is particularly notable here is that where most great fantasy works creep into greatness over the course of decades, Subterranean Press first published this volume last year.  It went immediately out of print (I snatched up my copy very fast), and now it's slated to a Fantasy Masterwork.  This may be a world speed record.  But, by God, the book deserves it.

You can see the press release (or net release or whatever it's called) here.

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Inspiration Versus Sitzfleisch

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It's been so long since I relied on inspiration that I'm in danger of forgetting that it's a real thing.

Back in the day, when I was a teenage werewolf, the holy fire would descend and I would stay up all night writing, writing, writing.  That's how I came to be married, in fact.  One Friday night, I was inspired and by the time that feeling went away, it was nine o'clock in the morning.  I switched off the typewriter (a Selectric, I am proud to say), stood up, and was about to stagger off to bed, when I remembered that I didn't have any clean clothes in the apartment.  So it was either go to the laundromat right away or wake up in eight or ten or twelve hours, only to have to put on filthy clothes.

So off to the laundromat I went.

I'd been writing all night, remember.  So I'd outlived my deodorant and I needed to shave.  My hair, which back then went halfway down my back, was a mess.  So this was a very bad time to encounter somebody I knew.  But two doors down the street, there was Marianne, sitting on the stoop with her father, who had come to visit.

Mr. Porter was a snazzy dresser, and he was looking good as always.  Marianne was (and is) a beautiful woman.  I looked like the very definition of a perp.  So when I stopped to say hello, I was careful to explain that I didn't always look like this.

Marianne's father went home and told her mother about me.  Marianne's mother very firmly told her that she was not to marry me.  And Marianne, for the first time in her life, looked at me as a potential object of romance.

So I'll always be grateful to inspiration.  But I stopped relying on it long ago.  Nowadays, I rely on Sitzfleisch.  Absolutely uninspired, I plant my butt in the chair and force myself to write.  Even though I'm almost never in the mood to do so.

This is one of the differences between the gonnabe writer and the professional.  I could go the rest of my life without inspiration and never notice the lack.

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Inspiration Versus Sitzflesch

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It's been so long since I relied on inspiration that I'm in danger of forgetting that it's a real thing.

Back in the day, when I was a teenage werewolf, the holy fire would descend and I would stay up all night writing, writing, writing.  That's how I came to be married, in fact.  One Friday night, I was inspired and by the time that feeling went away, it was nine o'clock in the morning.  I switched off the typewriter (a Selectric, I am proud to say), stood up, and was about to stagger off to bed, when I remembered that I didn't have any clean clothes in the apartment.  So it was either go to the laundromat right away or wake up in eight or ten or twelve hours, only to have to put on filthy clothes.

So off to the laundromat I went.

I'd been writing all night, remember.  So I'd outlived my deodorant and I needed to shave.  My hair, which back then went halfway down my back, was a mess.  So this was a very bad time to encounter somebody I knew.  But two doors down the street, there was Marianne, sitting on the stoop with her father, who had come to visit.

Mr. Porter was a snazzy dresser, and he was looking good as always.  Marianne was (and is) a beautiful woman.  I looked like the very definition of a perp.  So when I stopped to say hello, I was careful to explain that I didn't always look like this.

Marianne's father went home and told her mother about me.  Marianne's mother very firmly told her that she was not to marry me.  And Marianne, for the first time in her life, looked at me as a potential object of romance.

So I'll always be grateful to inspiration.  But I stopped relying on it long ago.  Nowadays, I rely on Sitzflesch.  Absolutely uninspired, I plant my butt in the chair and force myself to write.  Even though I'm almost never in the mood to do so.

This is one of the differences between the gonnabe writer and the professional.  I could go the rest of my life without inspiration and never notice the lack.

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