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Argyll, A Memoir
- GenresNonfiction
80 pages, Pamphlet
First published June 28, 1993
About the author
Theodore Sturgeon
732 books786 followersTheodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) is considered one of the godfathers of contemporary science fiction and dark fantasy. The author of numerous acclaimed short stories and novels, among them the classics More Than Human, Venus Plus X, and To Marry Medusa, Sturgeon also wrote for television and holds among his credits two episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek series, for which he created the Vulcan mating ritual and the expression "Live long and prosper." He is also credited as the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring fictional character Kilgore Trout.
Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 12, 2011
This is a short (about 70 pages long) chapbook that contains a memoir and a letter by Theodore Sturgeon. Both documents are about Sturgeon's childhood relationship with his adoptive father, Dicky "Argyll" Sturgeon.
Theodore Sturgeon (b. 1918) was a prominent and highly respected writer of sf, fantasy, and other pulp genres, whose work achieved cult status even before his death in 1985. He's probably best-known for such widely anthologized stories as "Microcosmic God," "The Man Who Lost the Sea," and "And Now for the News." His novels include "More Than Human" and "The Dreaming Jewels" (those are just the two that I have read).
This memoir sheds some light on why T. Sturgeon became an sf writer, and suggests that Sturgeon was permanently hamstrung in life by the tortured childhood that Argyll so carefully designed for him and his brother, Peter.
Argyll's warped, antagonistic personality is so weird and astonishing -- indeed, it's almost as if he had supernatural powers -- that it is hard to put this book down. Argyll had "high standards" for his adopted kids. He graduated Edinburgh University with a first in languages and a second in mathematics. He "had one of the most fabulous minds that [T. Sturgeon] had ever encountered." He could speak French, Spanish, and German; his Latin was flawless; he could get along well in both Italian and Portuguese.
When Argyll came home at night from his job at the Drexel Language Institute, there was always hell to pay! Just the sound of his key turning in the lock became a traumatic experience for the young Sturgeon brothers while they were growing up during the Great Depression.
Little fun was allowed; money was withheld, even though Argyll was among the lucky few with a well-paying job; and harsh punishment or searing criticism was always looming. Argyll wanted to keep an eye on those boys at all times, so he even removed the door from their room in order to enable a repressive and hyper-vigilant environment.
A few powerful incidents stand out. First: the time that Sturgeon brought home a science fiction magazine. Argyll promptly confiscated it and threw it in the garbage. Sturgeon loved the stories, so he began collecting a few magazines on the sly. He waxed his desk drawer so that it would open and close silently at the push of his stomach, which enabled him to secretly read sf mags from the drawer while he appeared to be doing schoolwork.
Sturgeon hid a stack of sf magazines in an attic that he could reach through a trap-door in his bedroom closet. Despite Sturgeon's extreme pains to avoid detection, Argyll nevertheless found the magazines. One day, when Sturgeon returned from an outing, Argyll announced that there was a mess in Sturgeon's bedroom that needed cleaning. Sturgeon discovered that Argyll had painstakingly ripped some 14 magazines into scraps the size of postage stamps and spread them around the room like confetti!
Second powerful incident: there's the time that Sturgeon had stockpiled some allowance money that had accumulated during some weeks when he had been bedridden with rheumatic fever. He saw a beaten-up banjo-ukelele in a shop window and decided to purchase it for a few cents. He took it home and began lovingly repairing and restoring it for use. Some of the preparations involved soldering and heat from a gas stove. Sturgeon got so involved in his work that he lost track of time. Consequently, he was still working on it when Argyll got home (even though Sturgeon's mother had cautioned him to keep the instrument out of Argyll's sight).
Needless to say, Sturgeon was excited about this banjo and proud of the ingenious methods that he had devised to restore it. Argyll's immediate reaction to the banjo and Sturgeon's work was to say, "You little parasite. We ought to charge you for the gas!"
That was that for the banjo-ukelele. Sturgeon was never able to finish the restoration work or to play it.
Finally, there's Sturgeon's inability to participate in his high-school graduation ceremony because of Argyll's refusal to provide him with the fees for his cap, gown, diploma, etc. Sturgeon had to feign contempt for the whole process with his classmates because he was too ashamed to admit that he couldn't afford to attend the ceremony.
Knowing that he was not welcome to stay at home and could not expect any help from his parents after high school, Sturgeon applied to and was accepted by some sort of hellish State Naval Academy. He tried his hand at various jobs thereafter (including running a hotel in the Caribbean and operating a bulldozer), but never had a stable career. Even his writing, which is pretty voluminous, came in fits and starts. Sturgeon was plagued with writer's block, sometimes for several years running.
In the letter to Argyll and Sturgeon's mother, which is the second document included in this book, Sturgeon describes his writing process. He'd always wait until some important bill was coming due, or an editor's deadline was looming. Before writing a story, he would occupy himself with various distractions for a whole day, like working on a car engine. Then he'd stay up all night reading magazines. The next morning, he'd take some pep-pills and write all day, making no revisions. And the next day, he'd put the manuscript in the post.
Sturgeon suggests (rightly or wrongly, I don't know), that this pathological approach to writing was caused by Argyll's abuse. He suggests that his work might have been better, and his corpus larger, if he had not been subjected to Argyll's torments. And that somehow, the Argyll of his childhood continued to live on inside him, as an inner voice that constantly belittled and criticized him at every turn.
I don't think that my childhood was nearly as bad as Sturgeon's, even though my father was fairly abusive in an emotional sense, but I have always been reluctant to blame my failures as an adult on my parents. So I'm not entirely convinced that all the blame can be placed on Argyll, even though he was a truly horrible father. I'm sure that he shares some responsibility for Sturgeon's lifelong troubles, but you'd think that as the years wear on, we can more or less heal from our childhood traumas.
And despite it all, Sturgeon managed to produce high-caliber work that will be respected and remembered indefinitely. For that I am grateful.
Final Note: this book is very difficult to find at a reasonable price. I got one for $70, and felt lucky to pay that little! Most copies are offered for $100 or more. I looked into inter-library loan, and even that was going to cost me $20. I contacted Noel Sturgeon (T. Sturgeon's daughter and trustee of the T. Sturgeon Literary Trust) to see if there were any plans to reprint this book at affordable prices. She said no, but that she might reconsider given the phenomenal prices that this book is fetching. I hope that it will be reprinted and made available to the public once again at an affordable price, but I'm not holding my breath!
Theodore Sturgeon (b. 1918) was a prominent and highly respected writer of sf, fantasy, and other pulp genres, whose work achieved cult status even before his death in 1985. He's probably best-known for such widely anthologized stories as "Microcosmic God," "The Man Who Lost the Sea," and "And Now for the News." His novels include "More Than Human" and "The Dreaming Jewels" (those are just the two that I have read).
This memoir sheds some light on why T. Sturgeon became an sf writer, and suggests that Sturgeon was permanently hamstrung in life by the tortured childhood that Argyll so carefully designed for him and his brother, Peter.
Argyll's warped, antagonistic personality is so weird and astonishing -- indeed, it's almost as if he had supernatural powers -- that it is hard to put this book down. Argyll had "high standards" for his adopted kids. He graduated Edinburgh University with a first in languages and a second in mathematics. He "had one of the most fabulous minds that [T. Sturgeon] had ever encountered." He could speak French, Spanish, and German; his Latin was flawless; he could get along well in both Italian and Portuguese.
When Argyll came home at night from his job at the Drexel Language Institute, there was always hell to pay! Just the sound of his key turning in the lock became a traumatic experience for the young Sturgeon brothers while they were growing up during the Great Depression.
Little fun was allowed; money was withheld, even though Argyll was among the lucky few with a well-paying job; and harsh punishment or searing criticism was always looming. Argyll wanted to keep an eye on those boys at all times, so he even removed the door from their room in order to enable a repressive and hyper-vigilant environment.
A few powerful incidents stand out. First: the time that Sturgeon brought home a science fiction magazine. Argyll promptly confiscated it and threw it in the garbage. Sturgeon loved the stories, so he began collecting a few magazines on the sly. He waxed his desk drawer so that it would open and close silently at the push of his stomach, which enabled him to secretly read sf mags from the drawer while he appeared to be doing schoolwork.
Sturgeon hid a stack of sf magazines in an attic that he could reach through a trap-door in his bedroom closet. Despite Sturgeon's extreme pains to avoid detection, Argyll nevertheless found the magazines. One day, when Sturgeon returned from an outing, Argyll announced that there was a mess in Sturgeon's bedroom that needed cleaning. Sturgeon discovered that Argyll had painstakingly ripped some 14 magazines into scraps the size of postage stamps and spread them around the room like confetti!
Second powerful incident: there's the time that Sturgeon had stockpiled some allowance money that had accumulated during some weeks when he had been bedridden with rheumatic fever. He saw a beaten-up banjo-ukelele in a shop window and decided to purchase it for a few cents. He took it home and began lovingly repairing and restoring it for use. Some of the preparations involved soldering and heat from a gas stove. Sturgeon got so involved in his work that he lost track of time. Consequently, he was still working on it when Argyll got home (even though Sturgeon's mother had cautioned him to keep the instrument out of Argyll's sight).
Needless to say, Sturgeon was excited about this banjo and proud of the ingenious methods that he had devised to restore it. Argyll's immediate reaction to the banjo and Sturgeon's work was to say, "You little parasite. We ought to charge you for the gas!"
That was that for the banjo-ukelele. Sturgeon was never able to finish the restoration work or to play it.
Finally, there's Sturgeon's inability to participate in his high-school graduation ceremony because of Argyll's refusal to provide him with the fees for his cap, gown, diploma, etc. Sturgeon had to feign contempt for the whole process with his classmates because he was too ashamed to admit that he couldn't afford to attend the ceremony.
Knowing that he was not welcome to stay at home and could not expect any help from his parents after high school, Sturgeon applied to and was accepted by some sort of hellish State Naval Academy. He tried his hand at various jobs thereafter (including running a hotel in the Caribbean and operating a bulldozer), but never had a stable career. Even his writing, which is pretty voluminous, came in fits and starts. Sturgeon was plagued with writer's block, sometimes for several years running.
In the letter to Argyll and Sturgeon's mother, which is the second document included in this book, Sturgeon describes his writing process. He'd always wait until some important bill was coming due, or an editor's deadline was looming. Before writing a story, he would occupy himself with various distractions for a whole day, like working on a car engine. Then he'd stay up all night reading magazines. The next morning, he'd take some pep-pills and write all day, making no revisions. And the next day, he'd put the manuscript in the post.
Sturgeon suggests (rightly or wrongly, I don't know), that this pathological approach to writing was caused by Argyll's abuse. He suggests that his work might have been better, and his corpus larger, if he had not been subjected to Argyll's torments. And that somehow, the Argyll of his childhood continued to live on inside him, as an inner voice that constantly belittled and criticized him at every turn.
I don't think that my childhood was nearly as bad as Sturgeon's, even though my father was fairly abusive in an emotional sense, but I have always been reluctant to blame my failures as an adult on my parents. So I'm not entirely convinced that all the blame can be placed on Argyll, even though he was a truly horrible father. I'm sure that he shares some responsibility for Sturgeon's lifelong troubles, but you'd think that as the years wear on, we can more or less heal from our childhood traumas.
And despite it all, Sturgeon managed to produce high-caliber work that will be respected and remembered indefinitely. For that I am grateful.
Final Note: this book is very difficult to find at a reasonable price. I got one for $70, and felt lucky to pay that little! Most copies are offered for $100 or more. I looked into inter-library loan, and even that was going to cost me $20. I contacted Noel Sturgeon (T. Sturgeon's daughter and trustee of the T. Sturgeon Literary Trust) to see if there were any plans to reprint this book at affordable prices. She said no, but that she might reconsider given the phenomenal prices that this book is fetching. I hope that it will be reprinted and made available to the public once again at an affordable price, but I'm not holding my breath!
April 14, 2019
Swift, powerful, and clear. An important and illuminating book for us Sturgeon aficionados!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews