185 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
185 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
************** CHEAP TRUTH 11 **************
|
|
|
|
** SF WRITER EATS OWN FOOT TO SURVIVE! **
|
|
|
|
Sci-fi writer Russell M. Griffin, after a succession of
|
|
poorly-marketed novels, each from a less successful publisher than the one
|
|
before it, last week devoured his own foot in order to stay alive. Griffin
|
|
was unavailable for comment, but our sources conjectured, "How else is the
|
|
poor b*st*rd supposed to live? Not on the piece-of-sh*t advances these
|
|
people pay!"
|
|
|
|
What brought Griffin to this end? Inquiring minds want to know.
|
|
|
|
The seeds are visible in his first novel, THE MAKESHIFT GOD (Dell,
|
|
1979). Obviously some sort of effete intellectual snob, Griffin packs an
|
|
otherwise well-written and fast-paced space adventure with all sorts of
|
|
literary references and dead languages.
|
|
|
|
It is in CENTURY'S END (Bantam 1981), however, that Griffin begins to
|
|
blatantly show his true colors. Not only does he mock organized religion,
|
|
flying saucers (!), and politicians, he has a whole sci-fi novel with no time
|
|
machines, space ships, or aliens. What's the point?
|
|
|
|
THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT (Timescape, 1982) isn't even set in
|
|
the future, for cripe's sake, and not only are there no aliens and no
|
|
spaceships, the origin of the story's Elephant Man is so disgusting we dare
|
|
not print it in a family newsmagazine!
|
|
|
|
THE TIME SERVERS (Avon, 1985) starts off promisingly enough, set in
|
|
an embassy on an alien planet, a situation we are told resembles the "Retief"
|
|
stories by fellow sci-fi'er Keith Laumer. But in the end Griffin resorts to
|
|
sly accusations about the Vietnam War, and we know no one wants to hear about
|
|
Vietnam any more.
|
|
|
|
These reasons all seemed sufficient to explain Griffin's lack of
|
|
popularity. Still, because inquiring minds like yours want to know, we
|
|
contacted Prominent Literary Critic SUE DENIM and asked her opinion on
|
|
Griffin's work.
|
|
|
|
"I think the guy's a genius, but for G*d's sake don't quote me.
|
|
Obviously the guy has f*ck*d up big somewhere to get his stuff buried like
|
|
this. I mean, he should be getting hardcover deals and high five-figure
|
|
advances and every award in the field.
|
|
|
|
"Take CENTURY'S END. Please. Apparently nobody noticed that this
|
|
was the first really visionary book about the coming millenium. It's going
|
|
to be crazy, and Griffin is the only writer I know of (other than maybe Jim
|
|
Blaylock or Phil Dick -- and Dick wasn't as funny) who is good enough at both
|
|
humor and pathos to really bring the craziness of it to life. In the next 15
|
|
years we're going to see pale imitations of this book make the best seller
|
|
list. You'll see.
|
|
|
|
"THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT is cripplingly funny, the characters
|
|
are so vivid and so fully realized that you forget you met them in a book,
|
|
Griffin seems a complete expert in every field he even touches on, and the
|
|
moral issues he raises are always complex and important. The book is about
|
|
the news media, but more about taking responsibility for your actions -- the
|
|
Elephant Man being a living symbol of Consequences.
|
|
|
|
"You almost feel guilty about laughing at THE TIME SERVERS because
|
|
it's so brutal, but when you find out who the Depazians really are, when the
|
|
whole Vietnam parallel starts taking shape, you just want to laugh and cry
|
|
and jump up and down all at the same time.
|
|
|
|
"But obviously I'm not supposed to talk about this, or somebody else
|
|
would already have been singing Griffin's praises. He's that good. So
|
|
forget I even said anything, okay? And if you print a word of this I'll sue
|
|
your *ss off."
|
|
|
|
THE TIME SERVERS is still available in a lot of bookstores, but the
|
|
rest of Griffin's books are of course out of print. Sci-fi, as we all know,
|
|
is meant to be cheap, lightweight, and disposable -- rather like a butane
|
|
lighter -- and is not meant to appeal to Prominent Literary Critics.
|
|
Inquiring minds don't need them.
|
|
|
|
$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0
|
|
|
|
CHEAP TRUTH Raymond Chandler Interview
|
|
|
|
$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0
|
|
|
|
It was late March, 1985, two years since our CHEAP TRUTH Lovecraft
|
|
interview (see CT3). Once again we used the unspeakable necromancy of the
|
|
Cross Plains Dairy Queen.
|
|
|
|
Arriving from 1957, Raymond Chandler appeared in the CHEAP TRUTH
|
|
offices as a small, silver-haired gentleman with a round, dignified face and
|
|
round tortoiseshell glasses. He wore an ivory linen suit, a striped bow-tie,
|
|
exquisite two-tone shoes and long yellow cotton gloves.
|
|
|
|
RC: (flopping onto couch) I've always been a horizontal thinker. (Frowns
|
|
at television) What the hell is that?
|
|
|
|
CT: It's MTV.
|
|
|
|
RC: You have a blabb-off? (Seizes remote control.) I had one of these
|
|
before they were even on the market. (Kills the sound.) Modern Americans.
|
|
Jesus. Clustered around TVs like flies on garbage.
|
|
|
|
CT: Thanks for coming by, Mr. Chandler.
|
|
|
|
RC: Call me Ray, I hate snobbery.
|
|
|
|
CT: Fine, Ray. How about some hot tea?
|
|
|
|
RC: (irritably) A Ballantine's on the rocks. (sips) No doubt you want to
|
|
know how a fellow like me got into this stinking mess.
|
|
|
|
CT: Actually, I --
|
|
|
|
RC: I began as a businessman. Worked for an oil company. That gave me a
|
|
grasp of real life -- not like those lace-pantied fakers for the slicks. And
|
|
I WORKED at my writing. Other pulp writers used buckets of whitewash, I used
|
|
a camel's-hair brush.
|
|
|
|
CT: How'd you reconcile that with the lousy pay scales of BLACK MASK and
|
|
DIME DETECTIVE magazines?
|
|
|
|
RC: I wrote film scripts for Tinseltown, too.
|
|
|
|
CT: And how did that work out?
|
|
|
|
RC: It was agony! You had no artistic control. Publishers are sick
|
|
kittens compared to the moguls. And the agents! Jesus! (Grimaces.) Take
|
|
my rewrite for THE BLUE DAHLIA. They were shooting from my script as I wrote
|
|
it. Had to write it drunk. The only way I could do it in time. I wrote
|
|
around the clock and had two nurses and a doctor giving me vitamin shots.
|
|
|
|
CT: Why'd you let them put you through all that, Ray?
|
|
|
|
RC: A man has to eat! (Shrugs) Besides, there was the gardener, the
|
|
cook... seaside house in La Jolla... eighteen pairs of shoes... It adds up!
|
|
|
|
CT: Let's talk about your books, Ray. The mainstream is always tough on
|
|
genre writers.
|
|
|
|
RC: Sure. Till you're a success. Then it's worse. You're halfway through
|
|
a Marlowe story, cracking wise from the corner of your mouth, and along comes
|
|
W. H. Auden and tells you you're writing "serious studies of a criminal
|
|
milieu." Then you freeze up, and it takes two or three gimlets to thaw you
|
|
out again. And there's the mystery hacks, envious pipsqueaks knifing your
|
|
back. Or the goddamn Saturday Review of Literature -- a bunch of
|
|
out-at-elbows professors mewling at everyone who has the brain and guts to
|
|
make a dime!
|
|
|
|
CT: You were a critic's darling.
|
|
|
|
RC: In Britain, maybe. The British know good writing. To them I was a
|
|
major American author -- not just a mystery writer. And the British have a
|
|
code of honor. The women make you say "please" five times before you can
|
|
sleep with them.
|
|
|
|
CT: You don't say....
|
|
|
|
RC: I love the way they talk. A writer has to know how to listen to
|
|
dialogue, dammit! Nobody listens now -- except to these damn squawkboxes.
|
|
(Stares gloomily at silent video) Look at that twist capering. They put
|
|
whores on television these days? No wonder the West is going to hell.
|
|
|
|
CT: Uh, yeah. Now, Ray, about your treatment of women --
|
|
|
|
RC: But a man does his best. I know I did. I took a cheap, shoddy, and
|
|
utterly lost kind of writing, and made it into something that intellectuals
|
|
claw each other about.
|
|
|
|
CT: Right! There's your real legacy, Ray. The promise that genre writing,
|
|
done from the heart, can break its own limits and really last. There's a
|
|
camaraderie among pop writers. We science fiction writers should --
|
|
|
|
RC: You\what?\ (laughs wildly) I read that sci-fi crap once! "I cocked
|
|
the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass.
|
|
My breath froze into pink pretzels...." (dabs at tears of laughter) You call
|
|
that \writing?\ Jesus Christ --
|
|
|
|
(Chandler falls silent and winks out with a crackle of static. God bless the
|
|
remote control!)
|
|
|
|
************************************************************************
|
|
CHEAP TRUTH On-Line, 809-C West 12th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. NOT
|
|
COPYRIGHTED. Vincent Omniaveritas, editing. Shiva the Destroyer, systems
|
|
operation. "Where Mutation Is The Norm"
|
|
************************************************************************
|
|
|