David Lynch: A Dark And Troubling DUNE

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In 1984, when I had not yet seen ERASERHEAD or the short films of David Lynch, I called his adaptation of DUNE a disaster. Here in 2021, I think of Lynch as my favourite living film artist, and would call DUNE at least halfway brilliant. As an interpretation of Herbert's book, it fails, but as an individualistic vision that works better than ever on Blu Ray, it could almost have been ERASERHEAD 2: A DREAM OF DARK AND TROUBLING SPACE.

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Time and experience change perspective. Back then, I failed to recognize that many flaws in DUNE the movie were caused, perhaps inevitably, by the complications of DUNE the book, which is not so much an original work as a melange of previously-tested ideas in a newly-jumbled combination. Once the readers have accepted this mixture of Charles Harness, Cordwainer Smith, Middle Eastern history and Islamic culture, they often take pleasure not only in Herbert's blend, but in his trust that people will understand what he has in mind as the story unfolds.

Herbert does what he can to keep exposition to a minimum: he dumps most of his background information into his appendices, but he also relies on italicized thoughts from many different characters, along with points of view that leap from skull to skull within a scene. The result is a set of narrative techniques less than elegant on the page, and pretty much impossible to film. Lynch retains the spoken thoughts, drags exposition into full view, and ends up with moments that tell more than show -- not the best approach for a cinematic story.

Lynch is also forced to leave out chunks of the book, not only from the story itself (which often happens when books are adapted to the screen), but also, fatally, from Herbert's perspective on the rise and fall of Paul Muad'Dib. Herbert takes a dim view of political and religious heroes, a skepticism that Lynch never considers. By turning Paul into an actual messiah, Lynch not only distorts the book, he misses the point completely.

This failure back then remains a botch today: DUNE the film is not DUNE the book. It is, however, in its images, moods, and sounds, very much the creation of David Lynch. That a director-for-hire could have imposed this personal touch on a film so expensive and so theoretically impersonal would perhaps have been unexpected for anyone less confidently and stubbornly himself.

What we have, then, is a film by Lynch, but is it a good film? I would argue that it works well up until its halfway point; after Paul and his mother meet the desert Fremen, the pacing and focus fall apart as Lynch crams too much narrative within too small a running time. The lingering moods, the stately movements disappear; all that remain are scattered moments of nightmare imagery.

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Yet still, for all of its abandoned promise (and despite its ridiculous rainfall ending), DUNE the film has gained clarity over time: the clarity of context within the later work of its director. Readers of the book will find much to lament; viewers of David Lynch will find much to love.

The American Senate Recesses Without Having Passed Legislation To Protect Voting Rights

Trivia quiz: Name the American president between Trump 1 and Trump 2.

"Wait a minute. Was there a president between Trump 1 and 2?"

Yes. Who was it?

"Can you give me a hint?"

Joe....

"Manchin!"

That is CORRECT.

Against Ironic Disengagement

Human variety guarantees that no work of art can speak to every human being, and for this reason, I have no quarrel with anyone who engages honestly with something that I love, but cannot share my enthusiasm. As my brother would say, we are all wired differently.

What does anger me is ironic disengagement: the refusal to meet any work of art halfway. I disagree with anyone who comes to a story, a poem, a film, a piece of music, with a preconceived notion that this work does not deserve any full attention, that it can be picked apart from moment to moment without consideration of historical or aesthetic context, that it deserves to be mocked or dismissed right from the start.

I see nothing wrong with individual taste and thoughtful criticism; I see no reason to complain when a person likes This and This and This about something, but really hates That. I despise, instead, the trendy Youtube illness that never gives art the time and opportunity to do its work.

At the very least, we should pay attention for a while, to see what can be found.

Garry Kilworth, WITCHWATER COUNTRY

Cover by Tim Gill. Click for a better jpeg.

An easy book to read but a hard one to assess, Garry Kilworth's WITCHWATER COUNTRY (1986) deserves a long review that I cannot provide, because even though several days have gone by since I finished it, the book whispers to me within my skull. In its many details, it offers a paradox.

For one thing, the book is written with utter simplicity and clarity, with a narrative so straightforward that a child could read it, yet at the same time, the story is about the perplexity of not knowing: of not knowing your family secrets, of not knowing your own parents, of not knowing your place in a shifting hierarchy of childhood friends.

The story is also about not knowing what might come next. The book seems unplotted: as in life, things happen, often out of the blue, yet the book is also structured with a series of set-ups and pay-offs that make the unexpected events feel inevitable after they occur. Halfway through the book, I knew that something terrible would happen, and then it did, but not in ways I could have anticpated. Nor could I have anticipated the chapters that followed, in which anxiety gave way to a looming sadness.

Not knowing what might come next leads to the challenge of dealing with what does happen, and for the story's young protagonist, coping is frustrated by his inability to process fears and complexities as an adult could. Halfway through the story, abruptly and without warning, someone dies; an adult would confront grief and shocked surprise head-on, but the child protagonist has no understanding of how to do this, and so he falls back on childhood fears, on the dread of ghosts and witches. Later, his true feelings erupt in ways that are unexpected but all-too believable.

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In WITCHWATER COUNTRY, childhood is a time of not knowing, and the setting of the story matches the shifting, uncertain moods of the protagonist. The firm landscape gives way to tides that come and go; droughts give way to floods; rainstorms give way to fire. The setting changes constantly while never quite changing at all, and matches perfectly the fears and doubts of the hero.

If that sounds abstract, the story is not: as in the best writing by Kilworth, the book thrives on physical detail, on the moods and colours, fragrances and textures of a place and its history. You can walk through this book to see it and feel it, but Kilworth never holds your hand, never explains more than he has to. In the simplest of ways, he has written a complicated book, and the result is unsettling, uncertain, as vivid as a dream and as baffling as life.

The Ebb-Tide: Opening Paragraphs

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From 1894, THE EBB-TIDE, by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, opens with a passage worth analysis.

The writing is firm and graceful; it relies on subtle repetitions of consonants and vowels ("carry activity and disseminate disease"; "memoirs of the music-hall"), and on parallel structures ("less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, and perhaps less base"). Physical details might be scarce ("palm-leaf verandahs"; "a single eye-glass"), and verbs could be stronger ("vegetate" and "sprawl" stand out), but from one clause to the next, the writing moves quickly. Notice, too, that the longer, more elaborately constructed sentences appear at the end of the paragraph, built on a solid foundation of shorter statements ("Some prosper, some vegetate.").

I wish more of the books I try to read could start like this, with writing for the eyes and ears.

Or Else

"My country, right or wrong"? No. "My country, right or else," with a storm-wind emphasis on else.

Gods, Ghosts, and Burdens of Proof

My last girlfriend once asked what it would take for me to accept an apparently religious or supernatural experience as genuine. Being religious herself, she was unimpressed by my answer.

Over the decades, I have been startled and frightened by many strange events, but experience has taught me to consider these in the light of certain basic assumptions.

What I have seen are:

1) Normal events that I have observed poorly, or misinterpreted.

Especially at night in dark and isolated settings, the brain overcompensates for limited information by manufacturing monsters. And so I have watched UFOs that crossed the sky at alarmingly slow speeds become ordinary propeller planes. I have seen tiny bipeds in space helmets, or tall, impossibly thin humanoids, or strangely gliding "cone creatures" become ordinary deer backlit by the rising moon, or silhouetted while standing face to face with me, or cropping the grass in a park by the light of a distant lamppost that I had assumed was full size and far away, but which turned out to be not much taller than I am and very close. The brain's over-interpretation of uncertain events can keep us out of danger, but it can also give us false impressions of what is really going on.

Poor observations can also distort perception. Tricks of light and shadow, failures to gauge speeds or directions accurately, can make people suddenly vanish between one glance and the next, remove airplanes from the sky, or turn bright autumn shrubs on the pathways ahead into looming monsters of the night. The most initially-convincing UFO I have ever seen turned out to be a blimp lit up like a christmas tree, observed over a long period at sunset, when the soft light made everything magical.

2) Optical illusions, visual or auditory hallucinations, hypnopompic or hypnagogic dream states.

Especially when I am hungry, alone and isolated, or coming out of sleep, these imaginary perceptions can seem completely and often terrifyingly real. And so my bedroom has been invaded by strangers. I have heard voices call my name. I have seen statues move with menacing intent, and the planet Venus flutter like an alien spy-ship on the prowl.

3) Pranks and frauds.

What if my observations have been accurate, my perceptions unclouded by fear, fatigue, or unfamiliar circumstances? What if I saw what really seemed like a ghost or a god? Then I would most likely assume that someone was trying to fool people.

In the same way, if I had carefully observed, at length, a bizarre object in the sky, I would be less likely to think of an alien presence than the appearance of a new and perhaps military craft, but something otherwise down to Earth and human. (Unless, of course, that craft was a christmas tree blimp at sunset -- automatically alien!)

Finally, if I had eliminated these three possibilities, what I would I assume next?

4) I have gone completely crackers.

What is more likely: that Earth has been invaded, that the dead have risen from their graves, that the gods have spoken to me in person, or that I have lost my mind?

As I have mentioned, my last girlfriend was unimpressed by my standards for proof, because I seem to have none. But is that really the case?

If I were to be convinced that a religious or supernatural event was real, I would need to witness a spectacular display. After all, even a verified monster might be nothing more than a severely-deformed yet otherwise familiar animal; even a clearly-extraterrestrial ship would be a technological device, and therefore perfectly natural. Gods and ghosts remain stuck in a category of their own, and for me to believe in their existence, I would need Earth-shattering proof.

"So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." That would be a start. Add a parting of the Red Sea by visible godly fingertips, and I might begin to wonder.

Vomit Sonnet

[Inspired by the insipid Canadian poets of the 19th Century, except for Archibald Lampman; he's cool.]

O daisies! greet the skyey welkin high,
God's goldfish bowl so sunshiny and blue,
As polar bears might greet the glaciers, too,
As moose might greet the green of prancing rye;
Let posies of the prairies touch the sky,
Let springtime swarms of blackflies, caribou,
And salmon that would capsize my canoe
Redeem this heathen wildernessy sty.

O sullen Queen divine of Empire grand!
Ever shall we mine for Thee, and toil,
And chop down trees, and slice up beaver hide,
Exploit ourselves as markets will demand,
Extract our riches, make the rivers boil,
And in Thine endless wars, kill for Thy pride.

[Monday, September 18, 2017]

Cut For The Readers, Dammit

How many stories have I read that could have been rescued by mere cutting?

Cut that adverb. Cut that clause. Cut that repeated information. Cut that present-participle afterthought. Cut that parasitical statement of the obvious.

Cut for the readers, dammit. Do you think we have endless hours to waste on your garbage?

The Fireshirt

"Igor Stravinsky's Hawaiian Shirts Declared Illegal in Australia."

-- An actual headline from one of my dreams this week.

The Many Lives and Countless Deaths of Daniil Ivanovich

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Writers are often told to "write what they know," but what does it mean, to know? We know our own imaginations, our own obsessions, and whatever heritage we choose.

For example, Jason E. Rolfe knows the heroes of the Russian avant-garde, although he has never met them; he knows the moods and complexities of their iconic city, Saint Petersburg, although he has never been there; he knows and loves the heritage of Absurdist literature that informs his work.

All that he knows comes together in his latest collection from Black Scat Books, THE MANY LIVES AND COUNTLESS DEATHS OF DANIIL IVANOVICH. Whether you find this book maddening or hilarious will depend on your sensibilities, but it made me guffaw like a sick-hearted hyena.

If we recognize absurdity and pointlessness in life, we can greet it with anger, sadness, compassion, or laughter. Rolfe has chosen to laugh:

"'Perfect nonsense goes on in the world,' the nose of the statue of Nicholas I formerly disguised as the nose of the statue of Nikolai Gogol whispered, as if reading Daniil’s thoughts. 'Sometimes there is no plausibility at all....'

"The five characters stood around for several minutes, silently studying their surroundings. It seemed as though each one expected something further, but when nothing else happened they shrugged and walked off, each in their own direction until only Daniil remained -- Daniil and the statue of Gogol. After several additional moments in which nothing significant occurred, Gogol’s statue stood, stretched, and walked away."

What makes life absurd? Politics.

"'Gogol was a pre-revolutionary writer,' the First Policeman said. 'He wrote political satire that was counter to the pre-revolutionary Czarist government and therefore revolutionary in its nature.'

"'Is it not still revolutionary in its nature regardless the fact that the government upon which it shines its satirical light is a post-Czarist, post-revolutionary, post-Soviet one?' Daniil asked.

"'Of course not,' the First Policeman replied, 'If Gogol truly were a post-Czarist, post-revolutionary, post-Soviet writer that would make him a neo-Czarist writer imbibed with neo-post-revolutionary ideas and would therefore be allowed under the current administration.'

"'But what if Gogol’s neo-Czarist, neo-post-revolutionary ideas were misinterpreted by a pre-post-Czarist sympathizer?' Daniil asked.

"'Don’t be absurd,' the First Policeman snapped. 'There is no such thing as pre-post-Czarism, it’s a myth, a hoax, a bad rumour started by post-revolutionary, pre-Stalinist neo-Bolsheviks looking to stir up trouble.'"

Also, business.

"Daniil’s primary role with The Company involved the writing, filing, and shredding of reports. He was greeted each and every morning by the same list of forty-two required reports. He spent the first three hours of his day writing them, the next three filing them. Between the fourth and fifth hours he took a brief lunch and, as discussed in another story, stared out the office window while his mind wandered along Nevsky Prospekt. When his mind returned from its brief jaunts, Daniil attended the Old Man’s meeting. The reports were never discussed. The Old Man preached the need for a passionate, enthusiastic workforce willing to surrender its life to The Company and its glorious ideals. He said these things in such a way that each and every employee understood them as unquestionable commands rather than encouraging prosaicisms. After the meeting, Daniil finished filing the forty-two reports, and then spent the final three hours of his day shredding them (for reasons known only to the Old Man)."

Also, bureaucracy.

"Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev first learned of his death while at work. He had spent the first three hours of his day writing forty-three reports -- the same forty-three reports he wrote every day -- and the next three hours filing them.Between the fourth and fifth hours he paused for a brief lunch. It was during this pause that Daniil read the memo announcing his death. There were no details, merely a sentence stating that Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev had died, and that no replacement would be necessary as the reports he wrote, filed and shredded on a daily basis were superfluous.

"Needless to say, he was stunned by the news. He felt more alive than dead. Surely there had been some mistake! While he sat contemplating his unexpected demise, his friend and fellow writer Alexander Ivanovich entered the small corner office. He carried with him a box of personal belongings, which he promptly began setting up on Daniil’s desk. In order to make room for the various photographs and knickknacks, Alexander had to push Daniil’s photographs and knickknacks aside. Once the box was empty, he filled it with Daniil’s belongings and carried it from the room. Daniil watched him leave in stunned silence.

"Several minutes later Yury Nikolaevich walked into the office carrying a box of his own photographs and knickknacks. When he saw Alexander’s photographs and knickknacks on the desk, he sighed and said, 'He beat me to it.'"

Also, death.

"Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev stepped into the street and was instantly struck and killed by a trolleybus. He immediately regretted not looking to his left before crossing the street. Fortunately for Daniil, the trolleybus hit him so hard it actually knocked him back in time fifteen seconds. His foresight thus enhanced by time-displaced hindsight, Daniil looked left before stepping back into the street, saw the oncoming trolleybus and waited for it to pass before crossing. Unfortunately for Daniil, he neglected to look to the right and was promptly struck by a swiftly moving cube van before reaching the safety of the far curb. It can only be described as remarkable that the cube van hit him hard enough to send him back in time twenty seconds. Armed with the knowledge that he ought to look both left and right before crossing the street, Daniil managed to reach the far side of Nevsky Prospekt with his life intact. He is, however, a man both blessed and cursed with good and bad luck in equal measure, for as he stood on the sidewalk feeling quite pleased with himself, a piano fell from above and struck him on the head. Needless to say, he died almost instantly. To his continued surprise, the piano hit him so hard it knocked him back in time almost thirty seconds...."

Whether you find this funny or frustrating, I would recommend a few sips of this book from day to day. Taken all at once, it can induce mental chaos, but taken one story at a time, it can promise wide smiles. Jason E. Rolfe might be the most specialized of specialist writers, but he deserves a wide, non-specialized readership.

The Most Patient and Forgiving People on Earth

The people of the United States are the most patient and forgiving on Earth. For this, I offer proof: Americans have not yet burnt down the Pentagon, the White House, and Wall Street.

The Swill Of Corporate Swine

When I was in my final years of high school, I came to realize that I hated corporate culture.

There were current songs on the radio that I liked, a few current movies, and even a few TV shows, but more and more, I began to smell garbage -- a reeking stew of cynicism, laziness, and contempt for the audience. More and more of it seemed the flakings of a small heart, of a smaller head, and all designed to scoff at human feeling, to diminish human thought.

Because I hated what I saw and hated myself for wasting time with it, I became drawn without intention to works of the past. I listened to symphonies on CBC radio, watched old films on late-night television, read books and plays, poems and essays by writers no longer central in the public eye. All of this was purely by accident: I would encounter something that grabbed my attention, and this, in turn, would lead me down obscure pathways to other music, other stories, forgotten by many people but alive in ways that current offerings were not. What motivated me was neither a backwards-pacing need for some non-existent "golden age," nor a fake nostalgia for something I had never known, but a thirst and hunger for meaning. I wanted to be taught, challenged, and above all, kept honest.

The lesson, here, is that no one forced me to choke down the gruel of corporate commerce. No one forced me to wallow in the puddles of the Zeitgeist. I was free to look for meaning on my own terms, and if this meaning lay in works of the past, then I was free to love them no matter how many centuries had kept us apart.

I claimed this heritage. Anyone can.

When You're Strange

Social isolation has a tendency to distort subjective impressions of exterior phenomena, and this is not limited to perceptions of facial physiognomy; indeed, related phenomena can also be perceptually distorted, and this would include the qualia of non-same-sexedness and transport medium fitness.

For any given individual with tendencies beyond the socially-accepted range of performance and/or state of being, facial perception begins to seem a function of precipitation. Indeed, it can be stated that codes of personal identification become progressively non-optimal, when you're strange.

I Dream Of CD

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My dreaming mind has a sense of humour -- or, I should say, it thinks it has a sense of humour. Just before I woke up this morning, it tossed a stupid joke at me:

In the midst of our pandemic, I had a task to perform. From a pile of CDs in jewel cases, all of them symphonies by Anton Bruckner, my job was to put the CDs in order of composition, from Symphony No. 00 in F minor, to No. 1, to No. 0 in D minor, and then all the way to No. 9.

That seemed easy enough at first, but every attempt was complicated by a bunch of semi-identical CDs with a cartoonish black wolf on the white cover of the jewel case. Whenever the regular CDs appeared to be in order, these "cartoon wolf" CDs would show up out of nowhere to mess up my efforts.

I was getting frustrated: what the hell was going on? Finally, a voice in my dream told me that these disruptive CDs were the Bruckner variants....

Then I woke up, and thought, "Come on! That was awful."

Lonely Mitochondria

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I worry about the endosymbiotic hypothesis of mitochondria. It keeps me awake.

Without mitochondria, the chemical reactions within cells that make multi-cellular life possible would not exist. The endosymbiotic hypothesis puts forward the idea that mitochondria were once individual cells living separately, that were somehow ingested or parasitized by other cells, yet survived, reproduced in their new environment, and provided a great source of energy for their hosts.

If this hypothesis turns out to be true, then here on Earth we have mitochondria by accident -- an incredibly lucky accident. How often could this accident (or any similar endosymbiosis) be repeated on other planets? How many planets are full of thriving bacteria, but with no multi-cellular forms?

Given the sheer size of the universe and the likely number of planets, this lucky accident might have occured many times, but on worlds far apart from each other, so far apart that interstellar contact would be impossible within the lifetime of any civilization, or of any species.

Either way, the implication here is that we live in a universe of planets bulging with life, but not with multi-cellular, intelligent life. And this idea nags at me: we might be alone, or so isolated by chance and by distance, that we will never learn if anyone else is out there. We will never know.

Ad For A Martial Arts Course....

...In one of my dreams last night:

"Book reviewers, why wait? Attack writers NOW."

Vague Suspicion

When I find myself shouting PISS OFF AND DIE at every third sentence, I should ask if I might have chosen the wrong writer.

Bowen and Ballard, Condensed

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Reading Elizabeth Bowen's "Summer Night" for the second time in five years, and wondering, once again, what the hell to make of it, I suddenly realized that one possible key to understanding is to recognize that it never was a short story, but a 26-page novel.

Suddenly, the shifts in perspective, the changes in tone, the drastically separate responses of the main characters, all began to make sense. These things are expected in novels; here they are in "Summer Night," compressed in startling ways.

J. G. Ballard would later develop compression methods of his own for the stories collected as THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION; his book, along with "Summer Night," could teach writers to craft better stories in fewer words.

Fascination and Bafflement: Walter de la Mare

"All Hallows," by Walter de la Mare, 1926.

After all of these decades, I've come to accept that I might never understand most of de la Mare's fiction, but this helps to make his work fascinating: a sense of layers beyond my comprehension.

Even so, I feel especially conflicted over this one. It combines de la Mare's gift for expressing the uncanny and for leaving me baffled, all at the same time.

Right from the start, the strengths become apparent:

"It was about half-past three on an August afternoon when I found myself for the first time looking down upon All Hallows. And at glimpse of it, fatigue and vexation passed away. I stood 'at gaze', as the old phrase goes -- like the two children of Israel sent in to spy out the Promised Land. How often the imagined transcends the real. Not so All Hallows. Having at last reached the end of my journey -- flies, dust, heat, wind -- having at last come limping out upon the green sea-bluff beneath which lay its walls -- I confess the actuality excelled my feeble dreams of it.

"What most astonished me, perhaps, was the sense not so much of its age, its austerity, or even its solitude, but its air of abandonment. It lay couched there as if in hiding in its narrow sea-bay. Not a sound was in the air; not a jackdaw clapped its wings among its turrets. No other roof, not even a chimney, was in sight; only the dark-blue arch of the sky; the narrow snowline of the ebbing tide; and that gaunt coast fading away into the haze of a west over which were already gathering the veils of sunset."

But then frustration sets in: the narrator broods on and on and on, takes forever to reach the front door.

Once he finally manages to get inside the building, the story comes to life:

"I looked close at the dim face in profile against that narrow oblong of night. 'It is so difficult to be sure of oneself,' I said. 'Have you ever actually encountered anything -- near at hand, I mean?'

"'I keep a sharp look-out, sir. Maybe they don't think me of enough importance to molest -- the last rat, as they say.'

"'But have you?' -- I might myself have been communicating with the phantasmal genius loci of All Hallows -- our muffled voices; this intense caution and secret listening; the slight breathlessness, as if at any instant one's heart were ready for flight: 'But have you?'"

Again, frustration sets in: de la Mare hits the oldest writing speed-bump on the road.

"What appeared to represent an eagle was perched on the image's lifted wrist -- an eagle resembling a vulture. The head beneath it was poised at an angle of defiance -- its ears abnormally erected on the skull; the lean right forearm extended with pointing forefinger as if in derision. Its stony gaze was fixed upon the stars; its whole aspect was hostile, sinister and intimidating. I drew aside. The faintest puff of milk-warm air from over the sea stirred on my cheek."

You can toss around adjectives like "hostile" and "sinister" as much as you'd like, but unless your object behaves in a hostile way, or becomes vividly sinister to the reader's eye, your adjectives are a waste of time. "The faintest puff of milk-warm air from over the sea stirred on my cheek" -- this evokes a definite response; "hostile" and "sinister" evoke nothing.

But in contrast to this empty vagueness, the forces at work in All Hallows are much more bizarre:

"'There was a sound like clanging metal -- but I don't think it was metal. It drew near at a furious speed, then passed me, making a filthy gust of wind. For some instants I couldn't breathe; the air was gone.'

"'And no other sound?'

"'No other, sir, except out of the distance a noise like the sounding of a stupendous kind of gibberish. A calling; or so it seemed -- no human sound. The air shook with it. You see, sir, I myself wasn't of any consequence, I take it -- unless a mere obstruction in the way."

- - - - -

"And then, without the slightest warning, I became aware of a peculiar and incessant vibration. It is impossible to give a name to it. It suggested the remote whirring of an enormous mill-stone, or that -- though without definite pulsation -- of revolving wings, or even the spinning of an immense top."

- - - - -

"At that instant, a dull enormous rumble reverberated from within the building -- as if a huge boulder or block of stone had been shifted or dislodged in the fabric; a peculiar grinding nerve-wracking sound. And for the fraction of a second the flags on which we stood seemed to tremble beneath our feet.

"The fingers tightened on my arm. 'Come, sir; keep close; we must be gone at once' the quavering old voice whispered; 'we have stayed too long.'"

The effect, here, is what you might encounter while sneaking at night through a factory: all around you, the walls and floors tremble at the touch of some alien process, but what it might be, or what it might imply, are nothing you can grasp in the dark.

It's a fascinating method (used to great effect, later on, by Nigel Kneale in his teleplays), and here, it certainly conveys a mood of something detached and remote from human concerns.

But what does it all mean? You'll have to guess; I'm a stranger here, myself.

A Thought Hole in the Dreaming City

Cover by Brian Lewis, 1961. Click for a better jpeg.

We all know that a plot is a chain of cause and effect: one thing leads to another, which in turn leads to something else, on and on in ways that should seem clear -- at the very least, in hindsight.

We also know that a plot hole is a break in this chain: something happens without sufficient cause, character motivation, or explanation:

KUZCO: No! It can't be! How did you get back here before us?

YZMA: Uh... how *did* we, Kronk?

KRONK: Well, ya got me. By all accounts, it doesn't make sense.

YZMA: Oh, well. Back to business.

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Along with plot holes, we can also have what I call thought holes. These are gaps in the reasoning behind a story, in its concept, in its background details, or in both.

One example crops up in "The Dreaming City" by Michael Moorcock, a story based on certain assumptions:

-- Elric is the rightful heir to the throne of the dreaming city.

-- While he is out wandering in distant lands, he is declared a traitor and outlaw by his cousin, who now rules in Elric's place.

-- Elric wants vengeance against his cousin. To this end, he is willing to have the dreaming city invaded and sacked by sea raiders.

-- The point of attack will be the main harbour, which is concealed behind a maze. Elric knows how to pass through the maze, and so he must lead the attack. He must also conceal the approach of this fleet with a magical fog.

All in all, a risky plan; so much could go wrong. But consider this: a day or two before the raid, Elric, in a single boat, sails to the dreaming city to set up one of his own personal schemes:

"Elric knew that he dare not risk entering the harbour by the maze, though he understood the route perfectly. He decided, instead, to land the boat further up the coast in a small inlet of which he had knowledge. With sure, capable hands, he guided the little craft towards the hidden inlet which was obscured by a growth of shrubs...."

All of this happens in full daylight:

"On foot, Elric strode inland.... At last he came to the city."

At nightfall:

"Elric, his hand ever near his sword-hilt, slipped through an unguarded gate in the city wall and began to walk cautiously through the ill-lit streets...."

I have no head for military planning, but I still have to wonder: if I were to lead a potentially-disastrous, frontal attack on a city, and knew of an unguarded back route where a secondary line of men could reach the city in full daylight without being observed, would I not want to use this tactic, at the very least, as a diversion?

When Elric snuck into this hidden cove, he could have brought several men along with him, shown them the route, shown them the unguarded gateway, and then returned them to the raiders' fleet where they could develop plans for a back-up force. I would have done it. Hell, why not?

Moorcock never explains why such a plan could never work, because he never mentions the possibility. He sets it up in the reader's mind, but then ignores it.

A thought hole!

Not A Critic

When I lose my perspective, I can become aggressive in promoting aesthetic principles: a pointless and perhaps even offensive waste of time.

What matters is not that other people share my convictions, but that my convictions gain enough clarity within my skull to inform what I write. I will never be a critic; my reviews and comments are lessons to myself.

Raymond Z. Gallun's "Derelict"

Elliott Dold. ASTOUNDING STORIES, October 1935. Click for a better jpeg.

One of the miracles of American pulp SF of the 1930s is that a good story could slip through, now and then -- this one, for example.

Raymond Z. Gallun was never a stylist, but never an embarrassment, either. He had just enough writing skill to bring his ideas to life, and these were often striking.

In "Derelict," a man running away from his past, without direction since the death of his wife and child, comes across a dead alien vessel adrift in space. His arrival triggers an automatic repair system, and its elegant alien robot, voiceless but perceptive, inscrutable but patient, not only rebuilds the ship, but also heals the psychologically-wounded man.

This combination of narrative simplicity and emotional meaning sets "Derelict" above so many other stories from its decade. Gallun deserves to be rediscovered by every new generation; I want stories like this to stay alive.

Warning: Do Not Read This Warning

When I was young (and strong, and charming, and psychotic) I took antibiotics as if they were ordinary medicine, without much concern for side-effects or interactions. But now, I find the warning labels almost frightening:

-- While taking this medication, do not step on linoleum tiles.

-- Avoid the colour orange.

-- Do not look at the Big Dipper.

-- Chew any and all food on the left side of your mouth. If you accidentally chew on the right, contact your local funeral home for immediate services.

-- If you begin to feel as if you were in the grip of overwhelming mutational forces, you are mistaken and should not be alarmed. Mutation occurs at the level of DNA sequencing, and can harm organisms in reproductive development; as a fully-developed, adult organism, you are most unlikely to sprout lobster claws, or to grow an extra brain, because of mutationary damage. Instead, the overpowering forces that compel your somatic structure to bulge and melt into the shape of a killer monstrosity are nothing more than a pharmaceutically-induced action of metamorphosis, a mere side-effect. It is not mutation. It is not mutation at all. It happens every year to caterpillars, and they never complain.

The Charm Of Simplicity: Garry Kilworth And "Scarecrows"

Because they compress their narratives, many short stories can be far more complex, overtly and by implication, than their length might suggest. This complexity adds to their power, but there can also be power in simplicity. Not every story needs layers of meaning and nuance, because every now and then, a story can suceed by charm alone.

One of my favourite recent examples would be "Scarecrows," by Garry Kilworth, from his collection, DARK HILLS, HOLLOW CLOCKS. Within five pages, Kilworth sets out everything he needs for a light-hearted, almost fabular story.

Right from the start, "Scarecrows" grounds its concept, plot, and resolution in the story's location:

"This village is called Feerness. It sits on an alluvial island which can be reached at low tide from the mainland by a track known locally as 'the hard'. The hard is visible for just a short period each day, the rest of the time it is submerged. A horseman crossing the hard needs to judge when to start his journey very accurately, while the waters are still on the ebb, to reach the other side before the tide turns and rushes back in to recover its territory."

In the most matter-of-fact way, the story then implies that anything could happen here:

"In such places of course, there are still nooks of magic, which have not been cleared away by the march of reason and logic of later centuries. They lie there in hollows, like pockets of green marsh gas, waiting to be used up."

For all of its remote severity, this village has one irresistible pull for the tourists:

"'Aren't the houses charming?' remarked the foreigners. 'Look at the beautiful gabled windows and the thatched rooftops of the cottages. Have you seen the gardens? Full of hollyhocks and roses, and trellises covered in wisteria. And the bullseye windows and leaded lights...'"

Accustomed to their isolation and their private ways, the villagers decide to ward off attention by making their houses ugly:

"The villagers had a meeting one night, and being fisher and farming folk, decided on a course of action congruent with their way of life. They were simple people who believed in simple solutions. They rebuilt their village, making it ugly and frightening, using stone dredged from the slick wastes of the estuary, and sea-rotted timbers covered in limpets and barnacles. There were bulges, and mean little windows as tight as ploughshare slits in turnips, and sills dripping with slime. There were grotesques jutting from the eaves, and dark bands of pocked wood, and misshapen bricks of river mud sealed with organic sludge. The gardens grew only stunted alders, always leafless, that twisted in arthritic poses. There were stagnant pools and lifeless streams, and mounds reminiscent of unkempt graves.

"These new houses threw daunting shadows that in themselves were forbidding areas, cold as churchyard earth."

The trick works, but with an unforeseen cost: the scarecrows of the village come to life, and claim these ugly houses for themselves.

"'What on earth do you want?' asked the astonished John Barnes. It was not the idea that his scarecrow stood before him that was shocking, so much as the fact that the fellow had deserted his post and left the fields unattended.

"'This house,' said the scarecrow, 'was obviously built for the likes of me, not people like you. You must have stolen it from my ancestors. I'm reclaiming my rights.'

"With that, strong gloved fingers of straw gripped John Barnes by the shoulder and wrenched him out into the rain. The scarecrow stepped inside the cottage and slammed the door. There were the sounds of bolts being slammed into place and after a few moments the lamp was put out and the fire doused."

Before the night is over, everyone in the village has been tossed out and locked out, but having fooled the tourists, the villagers now find a way to trick the scarecrows. The plan, of course, goes right back to details of location that began the story. But -- there is always a But.

And there is always room for different priorities in short fiction. Complex or straightforward, haunting or just plain fun, a short story lives or dies according to its impact on the page and its endurance in memory. Garry Kilworth shows that even the simplest of stories, on its own terms, can live and succeed.

This Island Earth

Click for a better jpeg.

[Journal notes: November 22, 2020.]

Although many science fiction films of the 1950s offer layers of implication that speak to adult viewers, while the surface levels of action, spectacle, and monsters appeal to children, THIS ISLAND EARTH is probably best appreciated by the young.

For pure spectacle, the film is a joy (and on the Scream Factory blu ray, looks better than ever). I must have been seven years old when I saw it for the first time, and watching it last night, I felt again that childhood appeal, even if its merits are only skin-deep. I would never call the film bad, so much as naive: the scientist heroes are essentially smart children, lured by the promises of a mail-order catalogue, given lectures by a school teacher benevolent yet distant, dragged without agency from one educational tableau to another. As a result, the film is dreamlike, episodic, with all the colours and emotional depth of a rain puddle bright with gasoline.

Still, for the sake of that colour, THIS ISLAND EARTH remains a film that a part of me will never outgrow.

We Are For The Cheque

I hand her the manuscript. She looks at it the way I looked at that chipped beef on toast I looked at during the last convention, and then she starts to hand it back to me, but then I shake my head and start to hand it back to her.

"For me," I say. "A gift. I've typed a lot, and then still more. I want the dough."

She is standing with her back to the great reddish-yellow neon sign of this bank, and it seems to me that light is streaming from her as it does from a cash register, that she is glowing, that she is luminous, that she is brilliant, that she is gleaming, that she is herself becoming a cash register.

"Mammon save you, Lady," I say quietly.

All of the words of the galaxy are whirling about me, around me, within me, through me, above me. I will type them all. I will take this contract and take what it pays, until I take another.

"Mammon save you," I say quietly. "Mammon save you, Lady."

I am alive. I am aglow. I am agog. I am typing at random. I am filling the pages. I am pouring into the trough. I am winning a Hugo, a Nebula, a Mars bar. I am going on and on and on and on and on. I am slaughtering the verb To Be in a great sacrifice.

"Mammon save you," I say quietly. "Mammon save you, Lady," I say quietly. Soon I will be saying it again.

-- From, "We Are For the Cheque," by Robert Silverberg.

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[Monday, August 31, 2020.]

Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved

I suspect that, for many people, the sadness, anxiety, and confusion of life are problems to be solved, but for people who work in (pardon this hollow term!) "art," the pains of life are fuels that drive (pardon this one!) "creativity."

Experience, and reflection upon experience, are what allow people to write, draw, compose, dance, build. Others, uncompelled to do such things, emphasize recovery, closure, "moving on," but these healthy responses would harmfully deprive "creative" people of the forces that drive their work.

This is the paradox of mental pain: most of us, quite understandably, hate pain of the private skull, steer away from it however we can, and work to overcome it when it strikes, but for others, mental pain is what makes work necessary. Without broken hearts and minds, would we have the arts at all?

All Dreams End

At the end of a complex dream, I held my last girlfriend close, and said, "I'm sorry to be so difficult: I never expected anyone to love me back."

Maniacs Of Music

Click for a better jpeg.

Although I've never understood jazz (in all of its variety, a complex form of music), I could probably understand jazz fanatics, because I, too, am fanatical. Many of us in the "classical" world are wild-eyed maniacs, always in search of that elusive live bootleg CD of Klemperer and the Orange County Abbatoir Philharmonic performing the undestroyed Sibelius Eighth, or of Reiner's doubly rare phonebooth recording of the Scriabin "Scratch 'n' Sniff" Concerto.

But for unbridled rabid devotion, nobody, no human being, can match an opera fan. Even baseball fans, with heads full of batting averages that go back a century, are no match for opera fans, with heads that go back to Monteverdi.

Opera fans are the Star Trek fans of the music world, and their well-stocked brains, like an Escher print, twist and recoil back and forth in tunnels that no sane lover of sound could imagine.

Compare Your Work To The Work Of Others

Should you compare your work to the work of other people?

Yes. No.

Yes, because craft will always be a set of skills worth assessing and, if the skills match your needs, worth acquiring.

Yes, because other people might reach depths of individuality, thought, and emotional courage that you have not yet fathomed. Their willingness to peer through telescopes at the world, and through microscopes into the pits of their own personal hells, can strengthen your own resolve to face your own obsessions.

No, because the concerns of other people are not necessarily your concerns, and because their techniques will not suit your intended purposes.

No, because other people can gain popularity when they reflect the Zeitgeist back to itself, when they provide, not interrogations, but echoes of any fads or delusions that have gripped the public. From this you can only learn what not to do; learning to work as you need to work is a task both separate and central.

Yes. No. Choose with caution.

Don't Say It!

I censor myself every day, and for good reason. For example, today on Facebook, someone posted an image of a painting that he wanted to frame.

"Frame for what -- the crime of tangents?"

Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.

"Cry Hope, Cry Fury," and the Prose of J. G. Ballard

In 1982, I read this comment by Thomas M. Disch in his collection, THE MAN WHO HAD NO IDEA:

"Though critics rarely examine its nuts and bolts, visualization is as crucial to the craft of story-telling as character, plot, or (in the prosodic sense) style. Often, when prose is praised for being 'poetic', it is not for its aural properties but for its power to project images on the camera obscura of the reading mind."

I agreed, but then Disch went on to baffle me:

"J. G. Ballard, for instance, might as well have been born deaf, but few writers paint so persuasively with a typewriter."

Again, I agreed, but only in part. Ballard was indeed a verbal painter, but did he write as if he were deaf? This made no sense to me.

That was almost four decades ago, but this year, having read again THE UNLIMITED DREAM COMPANY and several of my favourite stories about Vermilion Sands, I believe that Disch had a point:

J. G. Ballard writes with keen eyes and keen intellect, but with weak ears.

His keen eyes are obvious in "Cry Hope, Cry Fury," where every page gives a reader something to watch. Intellect comes through in passages like this one, about the properties of photosensitive paintings that record whatever is placed in front of them:

"As always, they recapitulated in reverse, like some bizarre embryo, a complete phylogeny of modern art, a regression through the principal schools of the twentieth century. After the first liquid ripples and motion of a kinetic phase, they stabilized into the block colours of the hard-edge school, and from there, as a thousand arteries of colour irrigated the canvas, into a brilliant replica of Jackson Pollock. These coalesced into the crude forms of late Picasso, in which Hope appeared as a Junoesque madonna with massive shoulders and concrete face, and then through surrealist fantasies of anatomy into the multiple outlines of futurism and cubism. Ultimately an impressionist period emerged, lasting a few hours, a roseate sea of powdery light in which we seemed like a placid domestic couple in the suburban bowers of Monet and Renoir."

As I have mentioned elsewhere, Ballard writes with an almost Elizabethan genius for metaphor and simile, but I have also begun to notice that he often writes as if unaware of sound. For example, "Cry Hope, Cry Fury" echoes with end rhymes and internal rhymes that litter the story from the first page to the last:

"The dunes gave way to a series of walled plains crossed by quartz veins."

"It flew monotonously around me as I sipped at the last of the lukewarm Martini. Despite its curiosity, the creature showed no signs of wanting to attack me."

"Lifted by the wind, her opal hair, like antique silver, made a chasuble of the air."

"Unsure whether this strange craft and its crew were an apparition, I raised the empty Martini flask to the woman."

"Hope had listened closely, as if unsure of my real identity."

"'Guise?' Hope looked up at him with wary eyes."

"For an hour I read to her, more as a gesture to calm her. For some reason she kept searching the painting which bore my veiled likeness as the Mariner...."

"Once, when she was away, sailing the empty dunes with her white rays, I hobbled up to her studio. There I found a dozen of her paintings mounted on trestles in the windows, looking out on the desert below."

"The portrait showed Hope in a conventional pose, seated like any heiress on a brocaded chair. The eye was drawn to her opal hair lying like a soft harp on her strong shoulders, and to her firm mouth with its slight reflective dip at the corners."

"The watery outline of his figure -- the hands hanging at his sides were pale smudges -- gave him the appearance of a man emerging from a drowned sea, strewn with blanched weeds and algae."

"Five minutes later, as we moved arm in arm along the corridor to her bedroom, we entered an empty room. From a cabinet Hope took a white yachting-jacket."

"Almost exhausted by the time I reached the beach, I walked clumsily across the dark sand, eyes stinging from the paint on my hands."

These are echoes I would expect from an early draft, ones that would be detected and revised afterwards. But for this to happen, a writer would need to hear the prose. Perhaps Ballard never did.

Nor did he seem to notice a repetitive structure that often pollutes lazy, bloated styles like George R. R. Martin's, and that I am shocked to see in Ballard's work, even though Ballard never pushes this method to the point of pain, as Martin does. I find Martin unreadable, I consider Ballard a genius, but I would be untrue to myself if I pointed out the disease in one writer's prose while ignoring the minor symptoms of another's.

In a later work like THE UNLIMITED DREAM COMPANY, Ballard seems to have steered away from unconcious rhymes, but in that book, as in "Cry Hope, Cry Fury," he still falls prey to sentences that feature one clause with an often vague or weak verb in the simple past tense, followed by a present participle afterthought. This repetition crops up in page after page:

"Each morning she sailed off in the schooner, her opal-haired figure with its melancholy gaze scanning the desert sea. The afternoons she spent alone in her studio, working on her paintings."

"When she had gone, hunting across the dunes in her schooner...."

"Hope Cunard stepped through the open window, her white gown shivering around her naked body like a tremulous wraith. She stood beside me, staring at my face on the portrait."

Sentences like these can become worse than insect-whine distractions; they can also reduce meaning. One potential risk of a broken-spine afterthought is the violation of simultaneous action -- a simultaneity that is, after all, the one good reason in the first place to use a present participle:

"She came into the cabin half an hour later. She sat down on the bunk at my feet, touching the white plaster with a curious hand."

A second risk would be a misplaced modifier:

"Coming ashore for cocktails, his stay had lasted for several weeks, a bizarre love-idyll between himself and this shy and beautiful painter that came to a violent end."

A third risk would be a non-sentence of non-sense:

"The paint annealed, the first light of the false dawn touching the sand-blown terrace."

For Ballard, for Martin, for writers good and bad, the best way to avoid these repetitive afterthoughts is to read with ears as well as eyes.

Ears might have also warned Ballard of another tendency. He often avoids useful or even essential prepositions, and this habit can reduce the clarity of a subordinate clause:

"One hand pressed to his heavy mouth, he gestured sceptically at the portraits of Hope and myself."

It can also burden a sentence with two subjects, when one would have offered more unity, concision, or even sense:

"My hands and arms smeared with wet paint, I went down to the bedroom. Hope slept on the crossed pillows, hands clasped over her breasts."

"Standing against the skyline on the terrace behind Hope was the image of a man in a white jacket, his head lowered to reveal the bony plates of his forehead."

"Skirting a wide ravine whose ornamented mouth gaped like the door of a half-submerged cathedral, I felt the yacht slide to one side, a puncture in its starboard tyre."

"Her eyes hidden behind her dark glasses, Miss Quimby nodded promptly."

"I lay back stiffly on the sofa, waiting for the painting to be exposed, when Hope’s half-brother appeared, a second canvas between his outstretched hands."

Why would Ballard remove prepositions from a sentence that needed them? I have no idea, but I can hear a gap in every case, like one chord chopped out of an otherwise haunting melody.

All that I have pointed out, here, should be seen within a context of admiration. For me, Ballard remains a central figure not only of the past, but of the present, and I suspect that if we survive as a species, if we continue to read, then our descendants will read Ballard.

Yet I also feel that admiration must never be deaf, and that prose can appeal through sound as well as through sight. Ballard is a writer for the eye, and for many readers, this will be more than enough to guarantee his greatness. I can only regret, in the smallest of ways, that his keen eye was not matched by a keen ear.

J. G. Ballard's Unlimited Dream Company

Someday, I hope to review this book. Having now read it for the second time after decades, I struggle to put my thoughts together, all for the sake of a few stray comments.

-- There are fantasies of consolation and fantasies of vision. Vision has always been less popular, less applauded, than consolation, perhaps because visions, like dreams, are essentially amoral and have no concern for politeness or propriety:

"I was convinced that there was no evil, and that even the most plainly evil impulses were merely crude attempts to accept the demands of a higher realm that existed within each of us. By accepting these perversions and obsessions I was opening the gates into the real world, where we would all fly together, transform ourselves at will into the fish and the birds, the flowers and the dust, unite ourselves once more within the great commonwealth of nature."

-- Ballard's hero, Blake, is at heart a selfish, destructive man, a sex maniac, perhaps even a psychopath, and throughout this book he alludes constantly to his troubling intentions. At the end, however, what he does is quite different; this makes the final chapters moving and haunting in ways I had not anticipated.

"I was the first living creature to escape death, to rise above mortality to become a god.

"Again I thought of myself as an advent calendar -- I had opened the doors of my face, swung back the transoms of my heart to admit these suburban people to the real world beyond. Already I suspected that I was not merely a god, but the first god, the primal deity of whom all others were crude anticipations, clumsy metaphors of myself...."

-- If gods actually existed, would they learn to overcome themselves? Would they develop beyond their own worst impulses, and move beyond fantasies of unlimited power toward acts of human compassion?

"Already I knew that I was guilty of many crimes, not only against those beings who had granted me a second life, but against myself, crimes of arrogance and imagination. Mourning the young woman beside me, I waited as my blood fell from the air."

-- As a stylist, Ballard is not always elegant, but he has an almost Elizabethan genius for simile and metaphor. Every page offers quotable passages that seem strikingly new and logically familiar. Ballard looks at the world that we all inhabit, but like the best of poets, he sees what we often overlook, often forget.

"My frozen veins were pencil leads in my arms."

-- The book is too long, and until the final chapters, lacks any of the conflict that propels most other stories. The wheel-spinning middle section remains readable and even compelling because of Ballard's genius for metaphor, but it does repeat the same ideas, the same implications. To its credit, the book then develops these ideas for an ending of emotional power.

"My blood lifted from my open heart in black crepes, streamers that trailed through the darkening forest. A strange fungus coated the feeble trees, feeding on the nitrogenous air. A foul miasma hung over the park and deformed the dying blossoms. I sat in the aircraft in a cockpit of dead birds. On all sides I was surrounded by a garden of cancers."

-- Consolation, or vision? Many read fantasy to discover an alternative world that, unlike ours, could actually make sense. Other fantasies can smash our world apart, scatter the fragments like shards of stained glass onto a concrete floor, then stare at the play of reflected blues, reds, greens, and purples on a grey stone wall.

A fantasy of vision can remain true to life, but finds more fascination in the down-to-earth ordinary than we allow ourselves to perceive. We often turn aside from beauty when it gets in the way of business, but J. G. Ballard goes on staring at the broken glass.

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

"A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage."

[William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence."]