Littlebrook 7
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Littlebrook , a fanzine by and for science fiction fans without much about science fiction in it, is published by Jerry Kaufman and Suzanne Tompkins (aka Suzle), on an irregular and unpredict- able schedule. The publishers’ address is P.O. Box 25075, Seattle, Washington, 98165; phone number is 206-367-8898. Email can be sent to [email protected]. This seventh issue is dated October 2009. Littlebrook is available for the usual: a letter commenting on a previous issue, articles or artwork, or your own fanzine in trade. We will also accept in-person requests, the provision of a beverage, or $2. We do not accept subscriptions. Littlebrook is also available on-line in a PDF format at eFanzines.com. If you prefer the electronic version, let us know, and we’ll send you an email announcement when another issue is ready. Contents: Bewitched, Bothered & Bemildred………………………..Jerry Kaufman.……...…….Page 2 Cane and Able…………………………………………………….John Berry…………….……..Page 6 Shadows on a Wall……………………………………………...Jim Young…...……..……….Page 8 Backwaters………………………………………………………...The Readers...……….….....Page 12 Suzlecol……………………………………………………………...Suzanne Tompkins…….....Page 20 Artwork by Anonymous (page 1, 7, 19), Brad Foster (pages 3, 5, 14, 15), William Rostler (page 11, 17), and Steve Stiles (16). Title card for Cat People on page 8 found on the Internet and used without permission but the best of intentions. Photos on page 24 by Jerry and Suzle. © Contents copyright October 2009. All copyrights are held by the various contributors to their own work. Thanks in advance to Bill Burns for posting the PDF version to eFanzines.com. Yes, it has been al- most two years since our previous issue. 1 Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred Jerry Kaufman t’s obvious we have a pattern to the summer we found ourselves dealing with our publishing. We start off my mother’s final illness and death. In the fall strong, enthusiastic, and (for us) we allowed ourselves to be distracted by our frequent. Then the lapse between plan to visit Paris, and by the trip itself. issues becomesI longer and longer. You’ve This was my first time there. I prepared waited, if your memory lasts that long, for over by reading Rick Steves’ guidebook, among a year for a new Littlebrook . Thanks to Corflu others, and John Baxter’s marvelous We’ll Al- Zed and a sense of dread (and delayed again ways Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of by appliances breaking down, and the dol- Light. Steves in a local travel writer and guide drums of summer) you have it at last. with a national reputation. His series of books I don’t know about you, but my sense and tv programs have the umbrella title of of dread comes from a fear of death and things “Europe Through the Back Door.” (He does left unfinished. Let me rush to assure you that I phrasebooks, too.) Both Suzle and I found his have no immediate reason for this. I think it advice and guidance invaluable. (And we even comes more from seeing several good friends met a café owner who knew him. He’d been at and my mother pass away in the past two the café only two weeks before we were.) Bax- years. Mom, at least, had done everything she ter’s book was full of charming and funny an- ever expected in life. She’d served in the Army ecdotes, characters, and facts about Paris life, in World War II, met and married my father a interwoven with his own experiences as a few years after, had three kids and lived to see transplant from Australia. (Fans may know two of them grown and married themselves. him from his film books; Science Fiction in the She no longer knew what to do with herself. Cinema is one.) However, the friends died in their We saw many of the usual sights and primes, younger than me, and I expect they sites: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmar- hoped for more life. I know they fought to stay tre. We rode buses or the Metro to most of with us. I know they had more to do. them, but walked quite a bit in the area around My ideal is to be around, start and our hotel, only a couple of blocks from the complete projects, always have something to Bastille in one direction and the Marais in an- do. Right now Littlebrook is one of those other. The Bastille exists only in memory, to things. be sure – there’s a monument in the middle of a traffic circle, and an outline on the pavement he past year has been mostly to show its original footprint. quiet with bursts of activity. The Marais is Paris’ Jewish neighbor- In the spring of 2008 we hood, among other things. It houses a museum helped run Potlatch, a small of Jewish culture and history, and rows of science Tfiction and fantasy convention that shops selling kosher foods, baked goods and lands in Seattle every other year or so. During sharp clothing. We also stumbled across one of 2 Paris’ English language bookshops there, the had an unsuspected back room or upper level. Red Wheelbarrow. (That’s a reference to a The front of the shop was obviously too William Carlos Williams poem.) jammed to fit any chairs or anywhere for the Confusingly to an English speaker, a readers to stand. “bookstore” in French is a librairie , while a However, Parisians defy the laws of “library” is a bibliothèque . The Red Wheelbar- space and time every day. We were almost the row was like the French librairies we bumbled first to arrive, and found that the impossibly into: floor to ceiling bookshelves, tables and narrow gap between shelves and tables was counters all overflowing with books, separated where we would sit. The shop owner kept on by the narrowest possible aisles. (Only the Vir- finding more places in the aisles and around gin Megastore was different – but it was going the corners to fit the newcomers – a few even out of business.) wound up standing in the doorway. She wel- We chatted with the store’s owner for a comed everyone, handing each a glass of inex- few minutes, finding out that she was an pensive but tasty vin ordinaire rouge . American expatriate. She told us about a read- The readings were pleasant, but more ing she was hosting the next evening, featuring than the characters or settings, I remember that another expat writing about a bookshop owner, each writer read a portion in English and a por- and a French writer whose first book had been tion in French. Afterward, they took questions, translated into English. many in French, and responded, usually in Suzle and I had been looking for some- French again. This left us somewhat baffled, as thing interesting to occupy an evening, so we neither of us has more than a rudimentary un- decided to return. We hoped we’d be able to derstanding of the language. (Suzle was at one make the acquaintance of other Americans time much more fluent, but time has eroded who would then invite us to join them for din- her grasp.) The worst of this was when the ner at their favorite bistro. French writer told a story of cooking for her This plan has never worked in the past, husband’s documentary film crew. Much of but we keep trying it. the tale was in English, but she switched to We wondered just where the reading French for the punch line. would take place, and speculated that the shop We took our revenge by eating dinner 3 afterward in the most French-looking restau- that I had a chance to look up Victor Noir. I rant we could find and ordering French fries. found an entry in Wikipedia that explained No, I lie. I had onion soup, escargot, and lamb Noir’s importance in the history of French re- gigot. With more wine. publicanism (shot by a nobleman he’d con- The next morning, while Suzle ex- fronted), but also how the bulge in his sculpted plored the neighborhood more thoroughly, I bronze trousers had made him a fertility sym- hopped on the #69 bus to visit one of Paris’s bol and – literally – a touchstone for women most famous cemeteries, the Cimetiere du Pere wanting to become pregnant. Lachaise. (See “Suzlecol,” elsewhere in this We had other adventures, of course, issue for our first experience on that bus, in the such as our visit to the Louvre, during which opposite direction.) I walked in through the we managed to become separated by a single main entrance but didn't see where the map floor, and spent an anxious half hour missing brochures were, and didn’t have a guidebook each other by seconds as we wandering up and with me. So I missed the tombs and graves of down stairs and elevators. We stopped in at many famous people, like Jim Morrison or Shakespeare and Company – I was disap- Oscar Wilde. pointed that they haven’t kept in print such Instead, I wandered without plan or ori- books as Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce, entation along twisting paths between rows of which was first published by the shop’s origi- crammed together small chapel, stones, tombs, nal owner, Sylvia Beach. statuary, and monuments. It was a melancholy Then there was the trip home. Suzle and forlorn pleasure to see that people from all writes about it in “Suzlecol” so I don’t have to. walks of French life were buried there – Chris- I don’t think I would have made it back with- tian, Jewish or Moslem; workers, nobles, and out her calm version of panicking.