EXTANT 22 December 2007
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EXTANT 22 December 2007 THE INNER DARKNESS OF THE WINGED BEING Strange She Hasn’t Written The mystery novels, character development, Ports of Call . 1 UP WITH UPFIELD! The Bony novels of Arthur Upfi eld . .10 Vance, we say, wrote 14 ‘mystery’ novels, but many qualify A Tribute to Richard Heaps, Carol Barnes . 15 poorly. The Joe Bain stories, of course, are murder A GLIMMER OF MURIAL SPARK: Loitering With Intent . 16 mysteries, with a murder and a detective. But Bird Island is VIE DOCUMENTS: Gold and Iron; the VIE ending: an atmospheric idyl. There is no killing, no detective, no Steve Sherman, Tim Stretton, Patrick Dusoulier, Alun Hughes . 17 puzzle. The Man in the Cage, The Dark Ocean, The Flesh Mask, Bad THE FRENCH POLITICAL NEW WAVE Ronald, and The Telephone was Ringing in the Dark, to say nothing of Strange People Queer Notions and The View from Chickweed’s Window, Ségo versus Sarko : the Presidential Campaign of 2007. 2323 have elements of the mystery genre. None, however, has a FACES OF IMMORTALITY detective. Bad Ronald even lacks a mystery (for the reader), . 34 Except from a novel in progress, by J. Evertt while the murder in Chickweed could be eliminated without CYBER FOLLIES changing the plot. These books are less mysteries than tales Dan Gunter and the Washington State Bar Association . 35 of childhood pain, dramas of illusions and dreams, vistas of Lulu; easy gal?. 37 life’s magical richness. Father Gander’s Rhyming Flames (x rated) . 38 Of the three Ellery Queen mysteries one, Strange She Hasn’t LAST AND LEAST: Games, illustrations, End Note . 48 Written (The Four Johns), falls into the ‘no detective’ category.* The protagonist, Mervyn Gray, is a direct descendent of 7 Robert Struve (FleshFlesh MaskMask), Ronald Wilby (Bad Ronald) and Paul Gunther (The House on Lily Street). Like many Vance mystery protagonists he is a non-detective who plays the detectives’ The Inner Darkness of the roll. Protagonists of this type post-dating the EQ stories include Lulu Enright (Chickweed), Betty Haverhill (Dark Ocean) Winged Being and Luke Royce (The Deadly Isles). Wilby and Gunther, but more interestingly Struve (FleshFlesh MaskMask), Marsh (Telephone), and Prefatory even in a certain way Lulu Enright (Chickweed), have another characteristic; they are what might be called ‘protagonist At long last I have read Vance’s Ellery Queen novels. How, villains’. The EQ’s Mervyn Gray falls into both these you will ask, is it possible that I, of all people, have not categories: he is a non-detective protagonist who plays the done so before? Strange, or even bad, as this may be, at detective, and is not just flawed, like Betty Haverhill, but least it is not like the years I resisted reading “The Planet actually somewhat criminal. of Adventure”—victim of the very anti-trash prejudice The writing dates of The House on Lily Street and Bad Ronald I pretend to deplore—because in this case Jack himself are unsure. A finished early draft (now lost) of Bad Ronald discouraged me, insisting the books had been wreaked by (then called Something Awful) existed in 1955, and no proper editors. As it turns out only one of them really was, and documentation exists for House on Lily Street.† These books, that’s been fixed. and certainly The Flesh Mask (1948),(1948), areare earlyearly ttexts.exts. TTheirheir Not only ‘prime Vance’, not only great in themselves, these protagonists (Gunther, Wilby, Struve) are variations on a stories are significant pieces in a literary puzzle nagging at basic type, the root type of a crucial vancian gambit. Struve, me these last 7 years. I do not mean to suggest that Vance’s behind his mask of flesh, is the archetypal elevated vancian work is a problem to which there is a solution, but the EQ conscience, potentially free of the constraints of persona‡ novels, in particular, clarify certain pertinent matters— but just as potentially subject to its influence. Vance matters recently evoked by David B. Williams who publicly introduces this explicit dynamic as early as 1944, in the wondered if his own idea about why Ports of Call isis a ‘new‘new sort’sort’ character Ettar (T’sais), condemned to wear a hideous demon of story was the same as the author’s own, the latter having face—Like Struve from 1948. Mervyn Gray, of Strange She declared it was different from anything he had done before. Hasn’t Written, has Ettar’s and Struve’s problem, but in reverse: And let us not forget that Vance has claimed he would rather have been a mystery author. He went into the bathroom, showered, shaved, ran a comb through his hair, regarded himself in the mirror with sardonic disapproval. The reflections which follow are yet another scrambling, He was just too damn handsome, a Mexican matinee idol. His skin redundant and allusive attempt to see the invisible and palp was a clear olive, eyes hazel and long-lashed, hair a dense black the impalpable. Specifically I wish to explore my suspicion * The same is true of the 100 page outline, The Telephone was Ringing in the Dark, that Vance’s sort of mystery novel, as opposed to the classic a compelling narrative despite the sections merely outlined. This story features a form of the genre, not only carries the germ of great twist on the Bad Ronald idea.idea. literature but may shed light on the special nature of Ports of † As far as I know. ‡ ‘Persona’ is the Greek word for mask. In English it has come to mean the Call, and reflect light on Vance’s work as a whole. personality, personality being a mask of the true self. Extant 22 1 pelt. He wore unobtrusive clothes, having long since cultivated characters, even fashioning a planetary theater of cultures a sartorial reserve. But the dark grays and blues accentuated and centuries of history to assuage a hyper-atrophied his coloring; the reserve was variously interpreted as arrogance, lust for life. The demon princes, like Gunther and Wilby, narcissism, cruelty, plain stupidity. So Mervyn had taken refuge in the twelfth century, where he could refresh himself with the represent the Neitchien aspect: man as superman, creator of chansons and gestes, the rondels and virelais of the Provençal self, source of culture, molder of reality. jongleurs. But there are more subtly and powerfully heidegerrian VIE volume 14bis, page 28 examples. The persona of Pardero-Efriam of Marune has All of us live behind a flesh mask, imprisoned in a persona been torn from him. He then reawakes into consciousness we did not chose, and all are confronted with the same though culture. In a recapitulation of Heidegger’s great elemental paradox. While our persona, or at least its affect, teaching Vance makes Efriam re-becomes ‘himself’ by is defined by the world, we own a true or inner-self. We recovering his persona. This is heideggerian because, here, may be trapped in our persona but the search for our true culture is not merely identity, not even just consciousness, but selves is as arduous and painful as coping with reactions to actual existence; as Pardero becomes Efriam, Pardero ceases that unchosen and shifting mask. As for the true-self, is it to exist. In Trullion Vance tracks this process at the level of also something outside our will and choice or, like a persona culture itself, in the form of competing modes of consciences under certain conditions, is it subject to sculpting? and existence. In the end innovative Fanscheriad loses to Paul Gunther resolves this problem by redefining it. He traditional Trill ways. But the victory is precarious; one day has no interest in his true-self. But he knows what he Fancheriad may win. The struggle is an ontological drama, wants, and decrees his will to get it to be his true-self. and which culture wins is ultimately a matter of indifference Gunther then ‘knows himself’, and knowledge is power. to the heideggerian theater. Culture, whichever or whatever This self has not been discovered. It is not a natural given. or it is, determines being, and is not stable. It is a fabrication. It might be argued that Gunther’s will Persona themes abound in Vance’s work. In Lyonesse is only a reflection of his desires, which are givens, he is Melanthe is an aspect of Desmei, an avatar of her mission of not troubled by such reflections. Liberating himself from hate. Shimrod is a scion of Murgen. Kul is a projection of conscience, from any identity larger than personal desire, Aillas. At a less obvious level Suldren and Madouc struggle he can concentrate on a narrow goal—gratification. Thus to realize their true selves despite the trap of persona Gunther becomes strong, just as Robert Struve’s hideous face, which destines them as tools of state. Through search for with which he ends up identifying, makes him strong though his true self Aillas’ illusory obsession with Tatzel gives the revulsion and fear it inspires. Gunther and Struve are way to awareness of how he is moving in an environment of therefore not unwilling to be violent. They are at peace protagonists whose personae have hallucinogenic power of with themselves not because they have decided to submit which he must free himself if he wishes to come to grips to society but, to the contrary, that societies’s strictures do with the world. not apply to them. They do not angrily flaunt the rules, Often the persona theme overlaps with the heideggerian as if offended by restriction; they coldly maneuver around theme of culture as existence.