Saturday, October 31, 2020

Paul Auster / Time is running out, but I'm happy

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Paul Auster

"Time is running out, but I’m happy"


SAKIS IOANNIDIS
30 JUNE, 2018

Paul Auster wrote his first poem on a sunny spring day in 1956, when he was 9 years old. Happy to see the back of winter, he came up with a few verses while walking through a small park in his native South Orange, New Jersey. It was the worst poem ever written, the American writer says today, but it wasn’t the words on the paper that mattered.

“I remember feeling connected to everything around me,” he says, describing a feeling he still gets when putting words down on paper. “I feel connected to the world and other people. And things around me, just everything that is not me becomes part of me too. I’ve only just thought about it recently. I think that’s why writers do it. Because it creates a feeling you can’t get anywhere else,” says one of the greatest living American writers today.

Paul Auster / “I wrote the book blindly, not knowing what was going to happen next”


Paul Auster



Paul Auster: “I wrote the book blindly, not knowing what was going to happen next”

US writer discusses ‘4321’, his first novel in seven years, ahead of translation into Spanish


English version by Debora Almeida
Maribel Marín Yarza
11 September 2017

Paul Auster makes no bones about playing God with the lives of his characters; he has created and destroyed lives at will; altering existences with his games of chance. And in recent years, he has done it with greater intensity than ever. In 4321, his first novel in seven years, which is made up of four stories about the four possible lives he imagines for his protagonist, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, who was born, like him, in 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, and comes from a family of Central European Jewish immigrants. “I’m not Archie, this is not an autobiographical novel,” insists the writer. “He just shares my timeline and geography, but he’s not me.”


US author Paul Auster, in Madrid.
US author Paul Auster, in Madrid.INMA FLORES
Greeted with star status by Spanish journalists, who are as interested in his work as his views on Donald Trump’s presidency, Auster arrived in Madrid on the European leg of a book tour that began in early August. Critics have praised 4321 as the best of his 17 novels. It is certainly his most ambitious work, thanks to its unique structure. “I always try to forget what I have done previously, to rethink it, to reexamine my thoughts about what is writing and its function, and to challenge myself with new approaches to novels, biographical works, or even an essay,” says Auster.

Paul Auster / ‘I'm going to speak out as often as I can, otherwise I can't live with myself'

Paul Auster


Interview

Paul Auster: ‘I'm going to speak out as often as I can, otherwise I can't live with myself'

The novelist on Trump’s America and publishing the book of his life at 70

Paul Laity
Friday 20 January 2017

‘I started the book at 66, which is the year my father died. Once I passed that boundary, I began to live in a very creepy world’ … Paul Auster Photograph: Tim Knox for the Guardian



When Paul Auster was 14, a boy just inches away from him was struck by lightning and killed. “It’s something I’ve never got over,” he tells me. He was at summer camp: “there we were, nearly 20 of us caught in an electric storm in the woods. Someone said we should get to a clearing, and we had to crawl, single file, under a barbed wire fence. As the boy immediately in front of me was going under, lightning struck the fence. I was closer to him than you are to me now; my head was right near his feet.”

Auster didn’t realise the boy had died instantly. “So I dragged him into the clearing. And for an hour, as we were pounded by intense rain, and attacked by lightning spears, I was holding on to the boy’s tongue so he didn’t swallow it”. Two or three other kids nearby had also been struck and were moaning; “it was like a war scene. Little by little, the boy’s face was turning blue; his eyes were half open, half shut, the whites were showing.” It took Auster a little while to absorb that, had the strike occurred just a few seconds later, it would have been him. “I’ve always been haunted by what happened, the utter randomness of it,” he says. “I think it was the most important day of my life.”A similar incident occurs in Auster’s new novel, 4321. Archie Ferguson, a 13-year-old full of promise, enthralled by The Catcher in the Rye and his first kisses, runs under a tree during a storm at summer camp. When lightning strikes, he is killed by a falling branch: “as his inert body lay on the water-soaked ground … thunder continued to crack, and from one end of the earth to the other, the gods were silent”.

An Interview with Paul Auster

Paul Auster


An Interview with Paul Auster


Nathalie Cochoy et Sophie Vallas
New York, March 2014

Paul Auster: OK, fire away!

Nathalie Cochoy: One of my fields of interest is New York, and the representation of walking in New York. When thinking about the art of walking, I often think of Thoreau and his concept of “sauntering.” In “Walking,” Thoreau simultaneously associates the French etymology of the word “sauntering” with a loss—être sans terre—and a form of pilgrimage—aller à sainte terre. You also seem to consider getting lost as a means of finding yourself. In The Invention of Solitude, you recall your enjoyment at being lost in the maze of AmsterdamI also remember these ambivalent lines in one of your poems: “A footstep / gives ground,” evoking a form of relinquishment and a form of birth. Is this something you often experience? Is walking a means of returning to the origins of your art?

Friday, October 30, 2020

Gene Wolfe / The Nebraskan and the Nereid


The Nebraskan and the Nereid 

by Gene Wolfe 


THE Nebraskan was walking near the sea when he saw her. Two dark eyes, a rounded shoulder with a hint of breast, and a flash of thigh; then she was gone. A moment later he heard a faint splash-or perhaps it was only the fabled seventh wave, the wave that is stronger than the rest, breaking on the rocks. 

Almost running, he strode to the edge of the little bluff and looked east across the sea. The blue waters of the Saronikos Kolpos showed whitecaps, but nothing else. 

Gene Wolfe / Thag




Thag

by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe / Thag (A short story in Spanish)


ONCE upon a time there was a boy named Eric who had a tame raven and a ragged cap and no boots, and lived with his mother in a cottage in the forest. Eric' and his mother were very poor, but nonetheless they possessed a great treasure, a charm ancient and powerful. This was a bear's skull, and hung from the roofbeam of their little house on a chain of iron. Eric's great-grandfather had made it long ago, choking the bear with moonlight and filling his skull with the cottony tales of rabbits, and the urine of shadows, and black feathers snatched at great risk from the left foreleg of an eagle, and many other things. The bear's skull was the home of Thag, as a beehive is the home of bees; and Thag was a powerful spirit though he was often away. 

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Gene Wolfe / Kevin Malone




KEVIN MALONE

by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe / Kevin Malone (A short story in English)


MARCELLA and I were married in April. I lost my position
with Ketterly, Bruce & Drake in June, and by August we
were desperate. We kept the apartment-I think we both
felt that if we lowered our standards there would be no
chance to raise them again-but the rent tore at our small
savings. All during July I had tried to get a job at another
brokerage firm, and by August I was calling fraternity broth-
ers I had not seen since graduation, and expressing an entire
willingness to work in whatever businesses their fathers
owned. One of them, I think, must have mailed us the ad-
vertisement.

Attractive young couple, well educated and well connected,
will receive free housing, generous living allowance for min-
imal services.

There was a telephone number, which I omit for reasons
that will become clear.

I showed the clipping to Marcella, who was lying with her
cocktail shaker on the chaise longue. She said, "Why not,"
and I dialed the number.

Remembering Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe


Remembering Gene Wolfe

Valya Dudycz Lupescu
Posted on 15 April, 2019

Gene Wolfe passed away last night, April 14, 2019. He was one of the world’s greatest writers, one of my literary heroes and inspiration, and he was my friend. 

Many people have written about his novels and stories, and more will continue to speak about Gene’s incredible talent, his sharp intellect and wit, his brilliant imagination and unforgettable characters. It’s all true and so much more. Gene’s writing bridged literary and genre worlds in a way unlike any other writer. His books and stories will stand the test of time.

When the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame decided to honor a writer for our first lifetime achievement award, the Fuller Award, I had no doubt that it should be Gene Wolfe. Planning that event in 2012 was one of my greatest joys, assembling writers and editors, friends and family, who loved him under one roof. We gathered together in a gilded setting full of mechanical delights (including a giant indoor carousel!) to celebrate the man and his stories. It was a magical evening to honor a remarkable man.

Gene Wolfe / Endangered Species / Bryan Alexander's review


 

Endangered Species


I came to Endangered Species with decades of bias. I've been a Gene Wolfe fanatic since college, when I first read The Book of the New Sun. Since then I've read nearly everything the man has written. I've met him several times, and enjoyed his company immensely. I've actually gone in Wolfe-themed costume to a ball, and spent a while on the Urth email list.

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Gene Wolfe / Endangered Species

 




Endangered Species

by Gene Wolfe


Three stories by Gene Wolfe about mysterious women


Wolfe, whose tetralogy The Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction series of the 1980s, offers his second collection, a hefty volume of over 30 stories in a variety of genres--SF, fantasy, horror, mainstream. Many of them are variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales; Wolfe's deconstructions/reconstructions are provocative, multilayered, resonant. Occasionally, too, they seem intentionally enigmatic. Two of the stories, ``The Cat'' and ``The Map,'' are set in the universe of his New Sun novels. ``A Cabin on the Coast'' tells of a promising politician who loses his lover to the fey folk living in the sea. He strikes a bargain for her return, promising to undergo 20 years of servitude. When his lover finally returns, he has lost his youth, and with it, we assume, his future. ``In the House of the Gingerbread'' is a variation on ``Hansel and Gretel'' rewritten as a contemporary detective story; and ``The Detective of Dreams'' is an Arabian Nights tale as told by G. K. Chesterton--its spiritual subtext is made explicit in the end. A predominance of excellent stories makes this a rewarding book.


PW



Three stories by Gene Wolfe about mysterious women


 


Three stories 

by Gene Wolfe 

about mysterios women


M Porcius
Thursday, May 7, 2015


I'm not like tarbandu or Joachim Boaz or admiralironbombs, who apparently read entire anthologies, collections, and magazines, cover to cover, as a matter of course.  I treat such material the way I treat a box of chocolates; I try to pick out the ones with nuts or ganache and try to avoid the ones with fruit or jelly, sometimes based on the scantiest information or just my "spider sense."  Which means I own piles of anthologies and collections full of dozens (hundreds?) of stories I haven't read.

This week I got out my 1990 copy of Gene Wolfe's collection Endangered Species (I love the Marco Patrito cover) and read three stories I had never read before, "Sweet Forest Maid," "Suzanne Delage," and "Kevin Malone."

All these stories are well-written in a fairly straightforward style and include interesting tidbits and observations about life and history, and I am recommending that you read them all.  As usual with Wolfe, each sentence feels crafted, each line is entertaining, or serves the plot or mood of the story in some way.

Each story invites speculation about its hidden layers and meanings, and below I will take my wild guess as to what each story's "secret," "point" and/or "message" is.  To make things more challenging, I will post my speculations without first consulting the various websites where people smarter than me and better educated than I am explain what Wolfe's stories are all about.  Let's see if I make a fool of myself!

"Sweet Forest Maid" first appeared
in F&SF
"Sweet Forest Maid" (1971)

Lenor, a woman with no family or friends, hears about a female sasquatch, and decides to go find her, perhaps live among her people in the forest. Lenor knows nothing about camping or living off the land, and, in some of the toughest terrain in North America, she gets lost and suffers a terrible fever.  In the last paragraph of the six-page story she comes face to face with the female Bigfoot...or is it just a hallucination?

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this story is about the (alleged) decline of community and rise of atomized individualism in our society.  (All you social science types out there will perhaps be familiar with Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, which my boss back in my New York office considered a big deal.)  Wolfe says that "today... women like Lenor no longer have friends; the old ties...having broken down."  Society has failed to offer a place where the protagonist belongs, and, desperate for companionship and community, she takes crazy, suicidal risks, looking for belonging in a dangerous place.

There are also some clues (references to Hollywood special effects and to drinking Coca-Cola through a straw) that suggest our society is shallow and fake, and that Lenor goes to the woods looking for authenticity; also, that technology has spoiled our relationship with the natural world, and Lenor, after seeing how sad and wise a gorilla looks in a zoo, is looking for a closer connection with nature.

Wolfe is famously conservative and religious, so maybe this story is a depiction of the plight of people in post-war society, when institutions like religion and the family have been weakened by feminism, consumerism, careerism, technology, etc.  With fewer safe places to turn to for community, people get mixed up in risky situations, turning to drugs, gangs, cults, communes, terrorist groups, etc.

(For the record, I am skeptical of Putnam's thesis, and I love Coca-Cola.)

"Suzanne Delage" first appeared in
Le Guin and Kidd's Edges; you
can read it for free at Lightspeed,
an e-magazine
"Suzanne Delage" (1980)

This story is the reminiscence of a retired man. Spurred by a passage in a banal novel, he thinks about an odd experience in his life, how he has never met Suzanne Delage, a woman his own age who lives in his own town, is the daughter of his mother's close friend, and attended his high school.  Due to various strange coincidences, he has never seen Suzanne Delage--he's never even seen a photo of her.  A few days before penning this memoir, he saw a pretty teenage girl, slender with shiny black hair, clear skin, and an intelligent, vivacious look on her face; a friend tells him that this is Suzanne Delage's daughter.

This one is a stumper.  Could Suzanne Delage be a vampire?  This would help explain why her photo does not appear in the narrator's high school yearbook.  Also, why a bitter old widow who lived across the street from the narrator hated Suzanne's mother, so much so that the narrator's mother was afraid to invite Mrs. Delage over.  (Mom and Mrs. Delage met elsewhere, and went on excursions together to look for old quilts and embroidery.) There are no mysterious deaths, though, or any other evidence of a vampire preying on the populace.  Maybe there is no traditional SF content to this one.

It's possible I just have the loneliness of post-war American society on the brain, but somewhat like "Sweet Forest Maid," I think "Suzanne Delage" is about how in modern life people don't know each other.  The narrator talks about how in high school many students (including himself) segregated themselves into insular cliques, and, perhaps more importantly, how some students were not in cliques, and were, perhaps, alone.  Instead of getting to know new and different people, we modern Americans stick to our little groups and/or focus on our own limited interests, which leaves many people lonely.

It may also be significant that the narrator has had two failed marriages--both wives "bored" him.  Maybe the crux of the story is that Suzanne Delage was the narrator's "true love," or "soul mate," and a series of unfortunate coincidences kept them apart.

"Kevin Malone" first appeared in
Ramsey Campbell's New Terrors,
and can be found in

  The Best of Gene Wolfe 

A young upper-middle class couple has fallen on hard times, the narrator having lost his job at a brokerage firm.  In response to an odd newspaper ad offering vaguely defined employment to an attractive educated couple, they go to a fabulous old estate, The Pines, that is served by a staff of more than a dozen servants.  The "job" is to simply inhabit the mansion, to take the place of the family who once owned the estate; the current owner, Kevin Malone, wants to feel "at home" at The Pines, where, as a boy, he lived and worked alongside his father, the estate's "man-of-all-work" (another character claims he was the stableman), and his mother, the parlor maid.  Malone won't feel at home unless the place is occupied by a young couple, as it was when he was there as a kid.    

Malone was forced to leave the estate for an orphanage at age twelve after his father murdered a maid and then committed suicide. The maid's name was Betty Malone, and it is unclear if she was Malone senior's wife, or daughter, or just some unrelated woman with whom he shared a last name.  It seems likely Betty Malone was Kevin Malone's mother.  Through luck and hard work, Malone became a rich businessman, and he purchased The Pines.  Instead of making himself master of the estate, as you might expect, he decided to live over the stables, as he did in his youth.

When, weeks after moving in, the mystery behind this weird job and weird boss (whom the narrator speculates may be a ghost, or possessed in some way) is revealed to the narrator, Malone relieves him of the job, but, and this is the craziest part of the story, the narrator's wife Marcella stays on, abandoning her husband.  We already know Marcella is not a reliable person or a model wife--we learn early in the story that she is a drunk and was disowned by her family, and throughout the story she is deceptive and petulant with her husband--but it is hinted that there is something more going on than her staying with Malone simply because he has money.  When the narrator asks Malone if he owns the house, Malone replies, "this house owns me," and Marcella quickly chimes in, "It owns me too."  The last time the narrator ever sees his wife, she is doing some dusting--she has become one of the servants!  Is Marcella descended from someone who lived or worked at The Pines?  Could she be possessed by such a person's spirit?

"Kevin Malone" is about people from broken homes trying to recapture their childhood, to "go home again."  Like Malone's father, the narrator's father committed suicide, shooting himself when bankruptcy threatened; in moving into The Pines, perhaps we should see the narrator attempting to return to a childhood of financial ease, a sort of mirror image of the successful Malone who is trying to relive a childhood of servitude.

The efforts to relive one's childhood depicted in the story do not seem very successful or healthy; perhaps the horror of this horror story is how strife in the family at a young age can psychologically cripple a child, stunt his or her growth, keeping one obsessed with the past and hindering efforts to build a happy family and productive career of one's own.

There are also class issues in "Kevin Malone," of course--at one point the narrator suggests that it would be logical for Malone, the son of servants who was educated in an orphanage, to hate Marcella and the narrator, who grew up privileged.  Maybe Malone's employing Marcella as a servant is some kind of revenge?  There is not much evidence of Kevin Malone resenting the rich, however, though it is suggested that Kevin Malone's success in business was heavily reliant on luck and deception.    

This brings us to the gender issues of the story.  If Malone resents anybody, it seems to be his father's victim, Betty Malone, whom Kevin Malone declares "a tramp." He almost seems to condone or excuse his father's act of murder.  I got the impression that the narrator (and Wolfe) were drawing some kind of parallel between Betty Malone and Marcella.  For example  while they are living at The Pines, Marcella and her husband sleep in separate rooms, and the narrator wonders if his wife has been having sex with one of the servants (i.e., is a "tramp," as Betty Malone is accused of being.)

There seem to be lots of clues whose significance I am not picking up on.  The butler is named Priest,  for example, and the narrator refers to Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, writers I am not nearly as familiar with as I should be.

*************

So, there is my attempt to figure out three of Gene Wolfe's two hundred or so short stories.  Now to Google around and see how far off base I am.

M PORCIUS FICTION LOG




The Secret to Reading Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe

 

The Secret to Reading Gene Wolfe

11th September 2010

Gene Wolfe has a reputation as being one of those writers whose books & stories you have to read twice. He buries subtle clues in what the Wikipedia article about him calls his “dense, allusive prose”. He uses unreliable narrators. In reviews, people talk about “getting” him, or “not getting” him, making it sound as though there’s a secret to reading Wolfe, a special technique you don’t need for other writers. So, when I came to read him, I found myself asking questions I wouldn’t normally ask. Was I going to have to take notes? Was I going to have to disbelieve everything his narrators said? Was I going to have to buy a new, bigger dictionary? And of course, was it really going to be worth it?

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Gene Wolfe / Quotes

Gene Wolfe


Quotes 

by 

Gene Wolfe





Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.


He's not rewarding us by talking to us. He's talking to us because He has something to say to us directly, as opposed to the things He says to all humanity.


Ambiguity is necessary in some of my stories, not in all. In those, it certainly contributes to the richness of the story. I doubt that thematic closure is never attainable.


My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences; just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver.
You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree.

Neil Gaiman / How To Read Gene Wolfe

 


How To Read Gene Wolf

by Neil Gaiman


The Wolfe & Gaiman Show

LOOK AT Gene: a genial smile (the one they named for him), pixie-twinkle in his eyes, a reassuring mustache. Listen to that chuckle. Do not be lulled. He holds all the cards: he has five aces in his hand, and several more up his sleeve.

I once read him an account of a baffling murder, committed ninety years ago. "Oh," he said, "well, that's obvious," and proceeded off-handedly to offer a simple and likely explanation for both the murder and the clues the police were at a loss to explain. He has an engineer's mind that takes things apart to see how they work and then puts them back together.

Monday, October 26, 2020

Neil Gaiman / Fortunately, the Milk / Review

Neil Gaiman


Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman – review


Gaiman's inventive tale of time travel relies on Chris Riddell's illustrations to flesh out the fun

  • Philip Ardagh
  • The Guardina, Saturday 14 September 2013
Fortunately, the MilkView larger picture
High comedy … a detail of Chris Riddell’s illustration of dinosaur galactic police on space bikes in Fortunately, the Milk. Click to enlarge
Neil Gaiman is a phenomenon. I'm not saying that's good. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm simply stating a fact. As @neilhimself he has more than 1.8 million followers on Twitter, with a cult following both online and in the flesh. A fellow author recently commented that when Gaiman talks, people clap. When he coughs, they laugh. He inspires loyalty like few others. There is, in effect, the cult of Gaiman.

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Gilliam Anderson / There were times when life was really bad

Gillian Anderson




Gillian Anderson: ‘There were times when life was really bad’


The actor formerly known as Dana Scully is now a self-help guru. How did she beat self-doubt and her ‘intolerant’ inner voice?


Decca Aitkenhead
Saturday 11 March 2017


The history of India’s independence and the creation of Pakistan had been unfamiliar to Gillian Anderson when she took the role of Lady Mountbatten for her new film Viceroy’s House. The actor had once hired a private history tutor, a dozen years ago, to fill in some gaps of history she was hazy on – “Stuff that just wasn’t in my brain” – but this had not been one of them.