by Gene Wolfe
Think then of the wall of incomprehension a writer such as Lafferty faces, a wall as blank, as ugly, and as unyielding as concrete. Small wonder that he labors at times to shut an eye. Less wonder, even, that too often only small presses like this one will publish him when he has refused.
For he has refused in writing “Episodes of the Argo,” the novella you’re about to read. It’s fun, to be sure. Just about everything Lafferty writes is fun, is witty, is entertaining and playful. But it is not easy, for it is a mingling of allegory with myth, and of both with something more. Furthermore, it was intended as the final chapter of a book, More Than Melchisedech, and that book was intended as the final volume of a trilogy, of which the first two parts are The Devil Is Dead and Archipelago. “We all wake up on a battlefield,” said G. K. Chesterton, talking of life, “but it often takes us a long time to realize what the fight is about or even who is fighting whom.” Lafferty’s books are always good practice for life, but never more so than here.
Life is hard enough already. Why should we practice?
That is the question (or so it seems to me) at the heart of “Episodes of the Argo.” It is sketched for us in brief in the episode of the Neanderthal Eve and treated in more detail in the story of Melchisedech Duffey. And doubtless it is dealt with in greater detail still in the book called More Than Melchisedech, which I haven’t read—and which no one, perhaps, will ever read. But it is encapsulated neatly in Melchisedech’s song, which you will hear at the very beginning of the story: “It’s great to be young and in danger.”
Lafferty, who is old as human life is mundanely measured, would be the very first to tell you that it is better—far, far better—to be twenty-three than seventy-three. But that is not what is meant in Melchisedech’s song; and Lafferty himself is young in Melchisedech’s sense. Nor, I should add, does Lafferty (or Melchisedech) really think it grand to fall off a glacier. Even our youthful friend Kim Stanley Robinson, who climbs such things for the comfort of it, is not eager to fall off them.
But Lafferty is young in the unusual sense, the sense that matters far more; which is to say that he finds joy and wonder in what are called ordinary things, because he is young enough still to see that they are extraordinary things. Have you ever watched a baby discovering its feet? It is pleased and amused, delighted and astonished, all at once. Years ago I knew a man who had “earned his wings”—that is to say he had just completed the Air Force training that made him a pilot. And he was not prouder or happier with those wings (which he glanced down at when he thought I wasn’t looking and admired in every mirror we passed) than a baby is with its feet when it has found them new. To be young as Lafferty is young is to realize that the baby is correct, as babies nearly always are. If my friend the pilot’s wings had been a part of him (like the wings of angels), and if he had been able to fly with them with no need of a plane, they would not have been more wonderful than the baby’s feet.
Nor would they have been any less inclined to take him into danger, along the edges of cliffs and glaciers, reefs and shoals of all kinds, metaphorical as well as littoral. That, you see, is their business—the business of feet as it is the business of the fighter pilot’s wings, and of the sails of every ship, very much including the Argo, whether it is Jason’s or Melchisedech Duffey’s. “I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.” So said John Paul Jones. It is not the business of ships to be wrecked; but it is not their business, either, to remain safe in harbor. No sane sailor wishes to dare the hurricane; but every sane sailor knows that his business will take him where it blows, again and again, voyage after voyage.
We need to practice, then, because we may be hurt and hurt badly if we slip, if we fail to weather the gale or run aground. And because we will ultimately be hurt as badly if we will not climb or sail at all.
Physical dangers, I should add, are only the most obvious of those we face. There are moral dangers as well. We will do things that we’ll regret for the remainder of our lives, and it is best to do as few as possible, and to counter them with such positive good as we can contrive. We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I’ve met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I’ve never met one who believed he had no conscience—this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see.
Most subtle and most dangerous are the storms and shoals of the intellect, of which the very first is believing that we must be Presidents or professors before the mistakes we make can harm others. Hitler was a paperhanger once, and Marx a newspaperman. No one who reads their works objectively can fail to find good in Hitler’s quite genuine patriotism and Marx’s real concern for the downtrodden; but their mistakes have dyed most of the twentieth century with innocent blood.
There’s a good old Irish song whose chorus goes: “So it’s good-bye, Mick, an’ good-bye, Pat An’ good-bye, Kate an’ Mary! The anchor’s weighed ’n the gangway’s up, I’m leavin’ Tipperary! An’ now the steam is risin’ up, I’ve got no more to say. / I’m bound fer New York City, boys, three thousand miles away!” That time arrives for you and I, reader. We are about to embark in Lafferty’s paper boat, both of us young and at risk, thank God!
For we, too, have business upon the sea. If you can bear just one quotation more, let it be from that great sailor Joseph Conrad. “The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet.”
From a Letter to Ron Antonucci
DATED JUNE 22, 1983
Roses are red and violets are blue,
And I have copied the page for you!
Coffee to drink with candy is grand,
But how you missed it, I can’t understand.
Tootsie Pops, yea! An’ Eskimo Pie,
But leave bourbon and rye to the other guy;
Then you’d see plain as leaves on a tree,
In Fantasy Newsletter, 4/83,
The very review that offended me.
‘Tis called, “Will the Real Gene Wolfe Please Stand?”
And I did, in the hope of getting a hand,
Read it and see what they did to me,
At Florida Atlantic University.
Oh, blood is red and eyes are black,
But watch out, Bob, ‘cause I’ll get you back;
Someday you’ll write a book of your own,
And I’ll knife it as sure as the flowers are growin’.
While roses are red and violets blue
Pray, Ron, that it never happens to you;
Gather your roses while you may,
Strollin’ through meadows the livelong day;
But add to each bunch a sprig of rue,
You may need it after that first review.
From a Chain Letter to George R.R. Martin and Greg Benford
DATED JULY 10, 1982
My own guess is that the U.S. Milford stopped drawing big-name writers because the big-name writers were no longer invited. I admit that Kate Wilhelm said to me fairly recently that despite all she and Damon Knight could do Milford turned itself into a post-Clarion course (though I don’t think she used that precise term); but my impression at the time was—and remains—as I have given it. I have met a good number of teachers who would rather be writers, but Damon and Kate are the only writers I ever met who appear to want to be teachers instead.
Tastes differ, I know, but I can’t imagine a place too isolated and rural for me, unless it was so I&R as to lack mail service. Was Devon pronounced Dee-von, as it is in Chicago? What do the Mullions do when ferries are declared a nature myth? I wish you’d told us, George, how much it cost to spend the night in Mary Queen of Scots’ bedroom. Surely it was worth it, whatever it was, as you say. I have hated Cromwell all my life. He seems to have been one of the truly evil people in history, and though there isn’t much I won’t forgive to military genius, he exceeded the limit.
Speaking of castles and such, do
you—or does anyone—know anything about the song “Mary Ambree”?
“Now saye, English captaine, what woldest thou give
To ransome thy selfe, which else must not live?
Come yield thy selfe quicklye, or slaine thou must bee.”
Then smiled sweetlye brave Mary Ambree.
“Ye captaines couragious of valour so bold,
Whom thinke you before you now you doe behold?”
“A knight, sir, of England, and captaine soe free,
Who shortly with us prisoner must bee.”
“No captaine of England; behold in your sight
Two breasts in my bosome, and therefore no knight:
Noe knight, sirs, of England, nor captaine you see,
But a poor simple mayden called Mary Ambree.”
This song is supposed to be the source of Kipling’s title Captains Courageous, but other than that I know nothing about it. Mary Ambree is standing on the ramparts when she bares her breasts to her enemies. From internal evidence it dates from after the introduction of gunpowder and precedes the time when the shield was abandoned.
Then tooke shee her sworde and her targett in hand,
Bidding all such, as wold, to bee of her band;
To wayte on her person came thousand and three:
Was not this a brave bonny lass, Mary Ambree?
The “targett” is a small shield, of course.
My definition of a great story has nothing to do with “a varied and interesting background.” It is: One that can be read with pleasure by a cultivated reader and reread with increased pleasure. The business about a varied and interesting background belongs to my definition of a good story; but the V&I background should not be understood in the narrow sense of mere geographical features. The mind of the protagonist can supply that background, as in “Silent Snow, Secret Snow.” The overwhelming majority of inward-directed stories simply aren’t good stories at all, which is why so few people want to read them.
Speaking of “junk lit,” have you read Roger Martin du Gard? He didn’t write junk lit. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature the year Lovecraft died.
You’re correct, I’m sure, about women enjoying engulfing activities. I’ve often noticed how women—and in all cultures—enjoy fishing with nets. Men, on the other hand, like to sew (as I do myself), deriving an erotic pleasure each time the needle passes through the material. The clincher, it seems to me, is the pleasure women derive from catching snakes. Which reminds me, does anyone know an effective way of keeping rabbits out of a garden that does not involve building a fence? I have tried that already, but the rabbit will not sit still long enough for me to get the fence all the way around him.
Nebula Awards Speech
APRIL 24, 1982
Good evening.
I come before you tonight with a unique qualification. Many of you are better writers than I am. Some of you may even be older, balder, or fatter than I am. All of you are better speakers than I am. But I am the only member of this organization who has ever lost the Nebula to Noah Ward.
I think that qualified me as an expert on losing, and I might add, more or less parenthetically, that having looked into most of the nominated books, I am prepared to lose another Nebula tonight.
Recently there has been a lot of talk about what has been called the Labor Day Crowd. In fact, when I was in this very hotel six months ago for the World Fantasy Convention, a certain prominent writer had a sticker on her name badge that read “Labor Day Crowd.” I told her I really didn’t think she needed to lose a lot of weight. After she helped me up, she explained that the sticker meant she wanted to win an award—that is what the Labor Day Crowd is, it seems: a bunch of people who want to win awards. When I joined I thought it would entitle me to drink beer at the company picnic and watch other people play softball, but this way I fit in even batter.
Anyway, tonight I want to talk about something a little different. I mean the Labor Day Crud—the Hugos—and our Nebulas, and awards in general. And particularly about losing them, which is my own field of expertise.
I’m going to suggest to you the paradoxical proposition that all those awards really belong to those of us who lose them. I’m basing that on conversations I’ve had with writers who have won them. When I talk to these writers with all the statues and rocket ships and crystal cubes on their mantels, what I hear is that they really care nothing about the awards. What they are really interested in is the increased sales the awards bring them and the opportunities they give their publishers to hype their books. And so on and so forth—you all know the drill.
That’s the kind of thinking that is encouraged by a society in which anybody who wants to can start his own steel mill: If you want to prove that you are a man or woman of solid worth, you demonstrate at every opportunity that the only thing you really care about is making more and more money. We SF writers tend to pride ourselves on our independence of mind and on our invention of new social orders. But it’s amazing how much trouble some of our best writers have in putting the values of our own society behind them when those values concern money. Present company excepted, to be sure.
When we accept those values, we have lost the game. You could make more money by getting a government contract to build almost anything, or by becoming Assistant Emperor of the Imperial Faucet Company, or in any one of ten dozen other ways, than you are ever likely to get out of a Hugo or a Nebula.
I would like to suggest to you that this system of values, the values of Broadway and Sunset Strip and Main Street, is not eternal—that ours is in fact one of the few societies to embrace those values, and that the societies that have embraced them have caught a social disease as a result. It is customary to look at the crystal cube, or whatever, and say something along the lines of “That and a nickel”—or a dime, or a quarter, or, now, a dollar—“will get you a cup of coffee.” Surely the escalation of the price reveals the weakness of the argument.
I read once that in Spain they hold a poetry competition in which the third-place winner receives a silver rose. And the second-place winner a gold rose. And the first-place winner a real rose. I wish that we could do that—give a silver galaxy and a gold galaxy, and to each winner, a real galaxy. Even though the winners would have to await the invention of a faster-than-light drive to visit their domains, I think that might put things in a clearer perspective.
Now, before the awards are given, I want to suggest to you that their value is not the price SFWA paid for them.
Nor is it the publicity value a publisher might obtain from them if he were to exploit them properly, which he is quite unlikely to do. Their true value is precisely this: the value that we losers set upon them—neither more nor less.
Their value, in short, is the value of the dream; and that dream belongs to those of us who will not win them tonight.
Vunce Around der Momma’s Kitchen
PY HANS KATZENJAMMER
(1983)
Tvice around der Momma’s kitchen, more times around der Momma’s kitchen, und Miss Tviddle ist—vonst for her life—ketchin’ me und not dot lucky schtiff mine brudder Fritz.
Vots verse (vell, chust for openers, anytin’ von Goethe) she ist makin’ me right dis afterverd uf mine brudder’s teem, vhich he hadda do vhen Miss Tviddle ist not ketchin’ me!
But vots bedder (vell, chellybein’s, if dey vasn’t all in Vashington), I don’t tink Fritz ist rilly rightin dis. (Because vhy ist Fritz ist not so goot at rightin, unless du ist countin’ dos liddle balloons for talkin’. I’m der brains uf der tim, und du shooten believe him!) Rilly rightin dis, I tink, ist Fritz’s clognate in der verld next door (I’m here talkin’ pairahell uniwerses) der Leiber Fritz. Dis is vun big schkinny schtargeezer vot vould make a goot date for Miss Tviddle or maybe petter a schkarecrow. Dis odder Fritz vos born in a trunk, only der ellyfunt dropped him.
It dint do vun bit goot.
He schtill grue up a cheenyus, only der vorst kind, vhich ist humble. He ist inwentin’
maybe zix kinds uf new Marchen, tails vhich he don’t get no credit for, der reason for vhich ist he is humble und der pipple in der verld next door schtupid! Me und Fritz (dis vun, not dot vun) ist gonna keep mixin’ up deir postmens till dey vise up, dem dumbkoffers!
Anyvey, der Leiber Fritz, he ist here rightin all kinds serious schtuff dot dem dummies vont unterschtand, und der reason ist because uf his haffin’ fun vit anudder dummy, chust like dem, vots rightin to der friends ein Tannenbomb newslitter. Vots dis about, deir sayin’? Vell, chust ist bean born der Auntie-Christ from out der wergin at Weihnachtsfeiertag, und like dot.
But der dumbkoffers ist neffer unterschtandin’. Not iffen vhen der Leiber Fritz ist bringin’ in mine ownin’ clognate Hans P. Luffkraft.
Der dumbkoffers should fry in der Hölle! (Miss Tviddle too.) Und dey vill.
From the Desk of Gilmer C Merton
Dear Miss Morgan:
No, you don’t know me or anything about me—I got your name from Literary Market Place. My own name is Gilmer C. Merton, and I’m a writer. I say that I am one, even though I haven’t sold anything yet, because I know I am. I have written a sci-fi novel, of which I enclose the first chapter and an outline of the remainder (is that a dirty word?) of the book.
