Raft of the Medusa

REFLECTIONS Robert Silverberg THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA I’ve been reading Odd Jobs, a bulky collec- his discovery of a most uncomplimentary tion of essays that John Updike published reference to him in one of Cheever’s let- in 1991—one of many such collections ters: “Updike, whom I know to be a bril- that that prolific writer produced. In it I’ve liant man, traveled with me in Russia come across a startling account of the re- last autumn [1964] and I would go to lationship between Updike and John considerable expense and inconvenience Cheever, his great predecessor as a chron- to avoid his company. I think his mag- icle of suburban angst in short stories for naminity [sic] specious and his work The New Yorker and other magazines. seems motivated by covetousness, exhibi- You may be wondering why I want to tionism, and a stony heart.” discuss Messrs. Updike and Cheever in a It is a brave man who would quote, in science fiction magazine, since neither a major magazine, a remark like that one, after all, is generally considered to be about himself coming from an important a science fiction writer. In fact, both did writer whom he considered to be a close dabble a bit in the stuff: Cheever’s eerie friend and a colleague of the greatest 1947 story, “The Enormous Radio,” has ability. But Updike goes on, in what can been reprinted in more than one SF an- be seen either as heroism or masochism, thology, while Updike wrote half a dozen to quote an equally harsh assessment of stories that could be called science fiction himself by another of his literary idols, or fantasy, several of which made it into New Yorker humorist S.J. Perelman, in a Year’s Best Science Fiction collections, published letter to comic poet Ogden and even one SF novel, Toward the End Nash: “The very next morning I had to of Time. But what interests me about the fly to Washington to a reception for Pres- Updike-Cheever material in Odd Jobs is idential scholars at which J. Cheever the light it casts on the general attitudes was a great help. Also present at this was of writers toward one another, and, indi- that eminence gris, J[ohn] O’Hara, and rectly, on the way science fiction writers that somewhat younger eminence and lit- in particular relate to each other. eratus, J. Updike. The latter read extracts Odd Jobs contains no less than four from three works of his to the assembled brief Updike pieces about John Cheever. scholars, which I couldn’t personally hear The first, from June, 1982, is a reverent as I was overtaken by the characteristic obituary. The second, published five nausea that attacks me when this youth months later, is Updike’s speech at performs on the printed page.” Cheever’s funeral, a longer and quite Updike handles all this with remark- touching description of the man, with able grace: “The effect, of finding myself some details of their friendship late in discussed with such gleeful malice in the Cheever’s life, when both men were going letters of men whom I idolized, and whose through personal anguish and Cheever works I had pondered in my teens as was lost in an alcoholic daze. The third gifts from above and signposts to heav- essay, from 1985, adds a few notes on en, is chastening, perhaps edifyingly so.” Cheever’s earliest published work. But And of Perelman’s view of him he says, the fourth essay, dating from 1990, pro- “To think that I was, however modestly, vides the big surprise: Cheever’s collected an irritant to his exquisite sensibility is correspondence had now been published, almost a source of pride. To those who and Updike, with great restraint, tells of yearn to join the angels, even the sound 6 Asimov’s of angelic mockery is music. And dead a huge and terrifying painting called The men shouldn’t be blamed for having Raft of the Medusa, grimly depicting the their private letters published.” As for hideously overcrowded raft; it is one of Cheever, Updike notes that the period the treasures of the Louvre today. when he made that comment about him Quite possibly, judging by the refer- was, for Cheever, a time “of financial ences to him in the letters of Cheever and straits and ruinous drinking,” when he Perelman, New Yorker contributors of might well have taken a sour view of his fifty years ago did regard the relentlessly young and wildly successful colleague, productive and frighteningly talented Up- and he goes on to show that in later dike as an ominously threatening com- years “Cheever was always courteous to petitor, rather than as a gifted young col- me and increasingly friendly and kind,” league who deserved a warm welcome. I giving every sign that a real friendship don’t know. I never sought to find a place existed between the two men. for myself in the New York literary scene. Writers are generally prickly, competi- But within the world of science fiction tive characters. (Updike straightfor- I was certainly as ambitious a young wardly admits that Cheever’s 1964 com- writer as there was, back when I was plaint that The New Yorker had rejected making my debut in the middle 1950s, everything he had written in the previ- and I was more prolific even than Up- ous three years left him “exultant,” for it dike, then. My name, and the names of meant there would be that much more my myriad pseudonyms, could be found room in the magazine’s pages for his on the contents pages of every SF maga- own fiction.) Describing the attitude of zine from Astounding, Galaxy, and Fan- established writers toward eager, ambi- tasy and Science Fiction at the top end of tious newcomers, Updike says, “Aspiring, the field to Amazing Stories and Imagi- we assume that those already in posses- nation at the pulpy bottom. If I had been sion of eminence will feel no squeeze as greeted by my senior colleagues the way we rise, and will form an impalpable Updike had, I surely would have had my band of welcoming angels. In fact, I fingers sorely stomped as I struggled to know now, the literary scene is a kind of climb aboard the raft. But that was not Medusa’s raft, small and sinking, and what happened. one’s instinct when a newcomer tries to When I was still in my teens in 1953 clamber aboard is to step on his fingers.” the writer and editor Harry Harrison, The Medusa to which Updike refers who had commissioned an article on SF here is a French naval frigate that ran fandom from me, took me under his wing aground off the coast of West Africa in and gave me invaluable advice about 1816. There were about four hundred peo- agents, editors, and how to conduct a ple on board, but the lifeboats had room writing career. Then Randall Garrett, a for only a couple of hundred of them. well-known writer of the era, came to Some 147 survivors of the wreck man- New York, landed by a lucky accident in aged to scramble aboard a hastily con- the same little hotel near Columbia Uni- structed raft, with a single bag of biscuits versity where I was living, and struck up and two casks of water for provisions; oth- a collaborative relationship with me, ers, likely, were driven back into the sea taking me downtown to all the SF edi- by those already on the raft. In the course tors and giving my fledgling career an of the terrible thirteen-day voyage that enormous boost. In 1955, when I had be- followed all but fifteen perished, some gun to sell my first few stories, I attend- through starvation or dehydration, and ed the World Science Fiction Convention some, apparently, killed in fighting in Cleveland and, under Garrett’s men- aboard the raft. (The accounts of the sur- torship, was introduced to most of the fa- vivors hint at cannibalism, too.) In 1818 mous writers of the era—Isaac Asimov, the French artist Theodore Gericault did Edmond Hamilton and his wife Leigh Reflections: The Raft of the Medusa 7 January 2013 Brackett, Fritz Leiber, E.E. Smith, and these two enterprises. others. They greeted me cordially, mak- I do wonder, after having read the Up- ing me feel welcome among them. I re- dike/Cheever material, how I would feel if member with particular pleasure a long the Collected Letters of my old friends amiable conversation with James Gunn, came into print and I were to discover, all a writer whose work I held in especially these decades later, that they had secret- high esteem, in which he laid out for me ly feared and despised me as a cold- the rewards and pitfalls of trying to hearted literary climber. But I don’t think write science fiction professionally, as I they did. They treated me as a friend, had already resolved to do. and I believe they meant it. In any case, In the year that followed, I graduated the Collected Letters of science fiction from college and set up in business as a writers are published very rarely, if at all, full-time writer, and came into contact and I may never have Updike’s experi- with more of the established pros: Fred- ence of coming across a letter such as erik Pohl, Lester del Rey, Gordon R. Dick- Cheever’s.

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