M. John Harrison's WISH I WAS HERE: AN ANTI-MEMOIR

My first and still favorite M. John Harrison read was The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, in which the speculative fiction elements take place so far in the background of the story that they're barely noticeable. The focus instead is on a pair of mostly dysfunctional characters, barely competent at living their own lives, utterly incapable of even paying a little attention to the bizarre changes taking place to the landscape and society around them, which feels faintly like a prequel to J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World might -- if we're interpreting the subtle and widely scattered clues, clues like a sudden and seemingly culture-wide obsession with Charles Kingsley's Victorian era children's book The Water Babies -- at all correctly.

Author and editor and all around badass M. John Harrison's new book, Wish I Was Here: An Anti-Memoir, works on much the same principle. The details of Harrison's life and career are present mostly in the negative (with the exceptions of some anecdotes about an aging cat and about his obsession with rock climbing); the positive space is filled with the figures and ideas and opinions and bits of imagery that have occupied his mind while all of that was going on. It's a fascinating and original way to approach the arts of biography and memoir that I, only the most casual reader of these genres, have never encountered before, and I love it! 

Thus instead of "I" and "me" and banal narratives of mere events in Harrison's life, we get accounts of a sort of dream-self he calls "Map Boy" (everybody writing about this book is going to remind you that "the map is not the territory, blah blah blah, how anti- do I have to get, here?), exploring remembered landscapes and word games and dreams, and of "Beatrice," Harrison's "writer friend" to whom he attributes various mini-manifestos about genre and character and why world-building is pretty bad, actually, and other matters of writing and inspiration and work. Were we to create an image in which these two constructions face one another in profile, the space in between them might in some way be a portrait of Harrison -- but it would be a pretty weird and distorted one. Just the way he wants it, I suspect.*

I can't say for sure that I like Wish I Was Here; I found it beautiful on a purely aesthetic level, full of striking ideas and images, and the very concept of it fascinates me. I do plan to read it again a few times as I become more acquainted with the rest of his work, though. I think it will resonate much more strongly for me when I recognize more of the material in it from his fiction, as it did on this first read when I kept recognizing notions and locations from The Sunken Land, like this: 

We find that, pinkish and surrounded by brand new wire netting, the surface of the tennis court is already sinking into the mud, so that the drainage channels around it, which are still to be filled in, look more like the remains of a half-hearted rescue attempt. Someone has scratched the mileage off the nearby road signs, as if to hide the town or perhaps deny its existence.

I mean, I didn't really feel like I got The Vorrh on the first reading but now it's very likely my favorite of all trilogies.

I have a very strong feeling that Wish I Was Here will grow on me like that. But I don't mean to use it as a sort of key to all his mysteries, which I'm pretty sure was not remotely what he set out to, or indeed did, write. As he pointed out several times in this text, he deliberately cultivates ambiguity and sets out to leave much to his readers' imaginations. Guys like that don't write Dummy's guides.

What they do write, apparently, is the kind of "huh, look at that" narrative that I most associate with (again) Ballardian protagonists, though Harrison has shown a lot more agency than those passive and detached observers of their lives. Ballard protagonists don't cultivate habits like base jumping in middle age, for instance! I mean, if Harrison ever wants to write a whole big non-fiction book about what that's like, I'll sure as hell read it. For I have at least concluded this: I'm down to read whatever he cares to write, and I'm very excited to read his back catalog, much of which has occupied space in my to-be-read piles, sometimes for decades. Sometimes it just takes something special to make me yank them out of the heap and let the stuff that was on top of them fall as it may. Wish I Was Here was more than adequate to that job, if nothing else.

*But can't say I know, because I'm still very much an M. John Harrison newb, for all that much of his career has had significant impact on much of what I've enjoyed the most in my reading life. But, I mean, I haven't even read all of the Virconium tales yet!

100 Books #37 - Alan Baxter's WRITE THE FIGHT RIGHT

I have never been in a fight.* Until just very recently (and I mean very recently, like last week), I had never even seen a fight. I hope never to see one again, and I really hope I never have to be in one.

Unless I want my fiction to be unrelievedly dull and full of talking heads, though, at some point I'll probably have to write a fight scene or two in my career. Indeed, I have already had to at least once, but luckily for me it was for a graphic novel script, which means the illustrator gets to do most of the heavy lifting on that one.

Enter my good pal Alan Baxter, urban fantasy novelist and martial artist extraordinare, who has been teaching workshops on writing fight scenes at various conventions in his adopted home of Australia for quite some time, and finally allowed his fans to prevail on him to publish the wisdom he has been sharing that way in book form.

The resulting work is informative as hell (at least from this non-fighter's perspective), short and vivid, just like a good fight scene should be. Baxter reminds us that the fights we see in film and television are not accurate depictions of real fights: nobody takes turns, blocking only works for a little while, size matters, so does footwork, and you only ever really see someone taking punch after punch and staying in the fight on bad TV.

Baxter illustrates his principles with examples of good (quick, lively, exciting, accurate) and bad (wordy, clinical, slow, wrong) fight-writing and a gentle sense of humor that somewhat belies his subject. Nor does he just focus on the mechanics of fighting itself; he devotes a decent amount of copy to the sights, sounds and smells of fighting as well.

All of which are things I'm perfectly happy to take his word on, thank  you. Because while I might get off my lazy butt and take a self-defense class someday (my recent experience has left me a bit shaken), I don't ever, ever want to have first-hand knowledge of this stuff.

This is seriously the best how-to-write-combat book I've found since J. Daniel Sawyer's Throwing Lead: A Writer's Guide to Firearms (and the People Who Use Them). And since it covers rather a different aspect of combat, it's a most welcome addition to my reference library. I think a few would-bes and wannabes on my  list are absolutely getting this one for Christmas, if not sooner.

*Obviously not counting the odd schoolyard scuffle. And even those, I can't really count as fights, because fighting implies more than one participant and my level of participation amounted to my pulling a Samwell Tarly (i.e. taking a few hits and crying like the little girl that I was, running  home, and then telling my parents I'd fallen off the monkey bars because I didn't want to cause any more trouble than there had already been).

Blogger's note: this is another short one, but I promise you, I'm making up for the short length of these last two by also tackling (and enjoying) some longer stuff that it's just taking me, duh, a longer time to get finished and blogged. The Recognitions, for instance. It's 956 pages long.

Can We Keep Them? [FGC #1]

"What's that you've got there?" Deputy Marty Nicodemus asked, leaning out of the window of his squad car. He was pulled over, cowboy conference style, on Rattlesnake Road for another night of watching for cattle mutilators with Jake Crenshaw, a Highway Patrolman. "That isn't what I think it is, is it?"


Jake laughed around the hand-rolled cigarette now burning in the corner of his mouth. "Naw," he said. "Confiscated this from Martin, though, believe it or not." He took a drag. "It's just tobacco. Pretty good, though."


"Got another one?"


"Last one. But here, try a puff." He passed the cigarette through his window to his friend.


"That is nice. Your boy does good work."


"Little shit. What I get for naming him after you, I suppose." Both men laughed at this old joke, a favorite right up there with "How's your wife and my kids?"


"But seriously, where'd he get this stuff?" Marty asked, passing the cigarette back.


"Hell if I know. He clammed up when I confiscated 'em"


"Smart kid."

The two men sat back in their cars, listening to the squawks and static of their radios, sitting up only to pass the cigarette back and forth until it was done.

"Sometimes I can't believe we get paid for this shit, you know?" Marty crowed.

"Shut up. That's how the bad shit starts," Jake said.

"Whatever."

Marty had a point, though. It was a calm, windless Tuesday night, lit by a half moon and a million stars and nothing else, and Marty and Jake had no worries beyond answering the odd status check and keeping an eye out for those freaks the local ranchers kept reporting, freaks with a taste for skinning and stabbing cattle and dancing around an open fire with udders on their heads. Freaks that no one else ever saw -- but there was no denying the dead livestock with strange triangular cuts, bore holes really, like a geologist's core sampler.

Based on where they tended to strike, they had to be using Rattlesnake Road, though, and so the county sheriff, just months away from a hotly contested Election Day, had ordered Marty to stake it out, and Marty had convinced Jake that it would behoove the Highway Patrol to help out with the exercise.

"Wait, I think I see something!" Jake said, waking Marty out of a light doze.

"Where? Over beneath the mountain?"

"Gotcha. Man, you snore like a fuckin' bandsaw. How does Brandy put up with you?"

"Asshole," Marty said, but Jake could hear his smile.

"Whatchoo doing Monday?" Jake asked after a while.

"My day off. Might... well, shit, I don't know."

"Let's do some fishing, then. Best time of the year for it. At least until the moon's full."

"Good idea. Mind if I bring the squirt?"

"Miss Melissa is always welcome in my boat."

"I thought so. We gotta get her back in town by noon, though."

"Oh yeah, shit, kindergarten." Jake thought about it for a moment. "Well, hell, we'll probably need a beer run by then."

"Probably."

A faint, greenish ray of light flashed across Marty's face.

"Hey, pod, I think you've got your radio turned down again. Someone trying to get ya?"

Marty bent toward the dashboard, checked some dials, picked up the mic. "Everything's on... Nicodemus, Carbon, you trying to reach me?"

A tinny yet somehow still sultry voice came back over the radio. "Negative, Nicodemus. How's the moo detail?"

"That what they're calling it?"

"Yeah."

"Outstanding. I'll be sure to bring some evidence just for you."

"No thanks. I've seen your boots."

"Ha ha. Ten-four."

"Twenty-one forty-three."

"Damn, that woman could come talk on my radio anytime," Jake said appreciatively.

"She's not bad, she just talks that way," Marty said.

The green ray lit up his face again, for a moment longer than before.

"There, you see it?" Jake said, pointing.

"Where's it coming from?"

Jake craned his neck to peer out his passenger side window. As he did, another green ray lit up the back of his head.

"You've got one, too, now."

"Where are them sumbitches?"

Cautiously, Jake and Marty got out of their cars and circled around them. Neither had drawn his weapon yet, nor turned on his flashlight, but they were ready for either.

"See anyone?" Jake asked?

"No. Not even any cows."

"Ha ha."

The two continued their circuit around their parked cars. When each was back at his own car door, they exchanged a look in the moonlight.

"I'm calling this in," Marty said. He reached through his open window for the mic. "Nicodemus, Carbon, I'm gonna be out of the car for a few."

"See something?"

"Unknown yet. I'll be available on portable."

"Ten four, Twenty-one fifty-six."

"You reporting this in?" Marty asked Jake.

"I don't have radio contact out here, usually. I was just planning on driving back out to the highway every couple hours and checking in. Long as you got signal, we're good."

"Twenty-one fifty-six. Twenty-one fifty-six. Twenty-one fifty-six...." Marty's radio had suddenly gone crazy. Every iteration of his dispatcher's sign-off -- the current time -- was at a different speed and pitch, and continued on and on. Marty hit his mic button to try to cut in and was rewarded with squealing feedback.

"What the hell?" he said angrily, shaking the device as if that would make it work better.

"Marty..."

"God damn things..."

"MARTY!"

"What?"

"Behind you --"

"Behind you, too!"

Jake felt an enormous hand cradling his head. An unearthly voice crooned nonsense into his hear. An impossibly long and strangely jointed finger caressed his neck and tickled at his chin. His eyes darted over to his friend, who was being cradled in an impossibly huge set of arms. Jake counted... four of them. Attached to... nothing he could see.

And now Jake, too, felt himself being lifted into the air, but not at any great height. The voice continued to babble. The sound soothed Jake into not minding that he was actually helpless, could not even reach for his sidearm. The sensation of floating was pleasant, the gentle touch of the weird hands calming.

Marty, too, was weirdly relaxed as the pair of them were carried, swiftly, away from their cars. He thought fleetingly of his five-year-old daughter and her pet rabbit, Clover, but couldn't think of why...

"Hmmmm..." Jake managed to say, not really fighting the urge to doze off as he was gently rocked and stroked and petted.

"Mommy, can we keep him?" Little Melissa's voice echoed in Marty's mind's ear.

And then there was nothing.

The next thing Jake and Marty knew, they were sprawled out on the hoods of their respective cars, awakened by the distant scream of a siren. Another county car was screaming up the dirt road, lights ablaze. Kicking up enough dust to make the men cough, the squad car ground to a sudden halt nearby, and Sheriff Al Guerra himself leaped out, not even bothering to shut the door.

"The hell you two doing, napping?" the sheriff demanded, angry but also, obviously, a little relieved.

"What? What's going on?" Marty asked, sitting up a little too soon. Dizziness overtook him, but he struggled to stay upright.

Jake was already standing, thinking fast. "What's the problem, Sheriff?"

"The problem is, nobody's heard from either of you two yo-yos in six fuckin' hours," Guerra bellowed.

Jake swallowed, noticing for the first time that dawn was creeping up from behind Elk Mountain. "Well, we don't have much reception here, do we?"

"I take it you didn't catch anyone pulling shit," the sheriff said.

Jake and Marty looked at each other, trying to come up with an answer, still confused.

"Nope," Jake finally said.

"So whatchoo been doing for all this time?"

"It's... it's complicated," Marty began, but his boss cut him off.

"You can tell me about it when we hit town. You're buying. Oh, and you also owe Danielle a box of chocolates. Worried her white-haired, you jerk. Come on."

And just like that, the sheriff was back in his car and revving up its engine, letting its roar communicate the rage he was too professional to express verbally.

"Ow," Marty said, rubbing at his shoulder as the sheriff drove off.

"You too, huh?"

Both men had small, triangular wounds in meat of their scalene muscles.

***

"I can't explain it," Marty said, pouring himself another cup of coffee.

"What about you, Patrolman?" the sheriff asked.

Jake just shrugged. In the background, the diner's phone rang loudly. A waitress answered, and soon sashayed up to the table where the officers were sitting.

"Jake, it's for you," she said. "It's your boy."

Jake walked to the counter, picked up the receiver, and simply said "What."

"Uh, dad...?"

"I'm busy, Martin."

"You didn't, uh... you didn't..."

"I didn't what, Martin?"

"You didn't smoke those cigarettes, did you?"

"What if I did."

"Uh oh. Um, so..."

"WHAT, Martin?"

"So, um, have you ever heard of DMT?"

This is going to be fun...

As most of you know by now, I'm just not a scribbler of cultural reportage, I'm also a poet and a fiction writer. I have a hell of a lot of projects on the boil and probably don't need to add another one, but this looks like too much fun to pass up!

Behold, the 2012 Form and Genre Challenge!

So, my dearest readers, you may look forward to seeing my contributions to this odd little project right here at Kate of Mind. The challenge for this coming week is a 1500 word short story in the third person. Any genre, any topic. My brain is bubbling with ideas.

Yee and also haw!

Bog Help Me...

It's all SennyDreadful's fault. Lord, I love that woman, but right now I want to reach across the pond (she lives in London) and shake her till her pearly whites rattle.

OK, not really. No one -- especially not a kooky gal in another country -- can make me do anything I don't want to. But I did, in a fit of sympathy and fellow-feeling, promise her that I would again endure the insanity that is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. Starting on Tuesday, Nov. 1, I will strive to add at least 1666 new words to the very rough first draft of a brand new novel. I have a very vague idea of what it's going to be about, but no outline or snowflake, no cast of planned characters, no set ending in mind. No plot, no problem, is how NaNoWriMo works, or, as my good friend Jason Erickson has famously (because I made him famous for it) characterized it "Keep writing crap fast!"

I have won NaNoWriMo twice -- won meaning I have, in fact, gotten 50,000 words down within the month of November. The first novel/novella may be irrecoverable, though maybe someday I'll find a way to retrieve files from the moribund original tangerine clamshell iBook I wrote it on back in 2000. The second has morphed/warped into a giant seekrit project that maybe someday I'll be able to disclose to you -- a few of my closest friends know about it -- but now that it's a collaboration involving at least three other people, well. Yeah.

So I go into NaNoWriMo 2011 with a light heart. I know I can do it. I've done it before and lord knows I have enough ideas. But here's the thing.

I have a lot of other projects I need to be working on, too. One of which is seekrit but is going to be awesome (and yes, it's another collaboration; I'm addicted to collaborating I guess), and another, well, my publisher pulled the trigger on the publicity website for it this summer: Omi & Lulu. And those are just the serious for-sure projects. There are others. Like a script for a budding filmmaker buddy of mine. And two epic poems. And other stuff that's probably slipped my mind right now because I'm on weird pain meds.

For yes, I'm still having lots of trouble with my left elbow, trouble that renders me all but a one-armed woman while the damage heals.

Insert one-armed paper hanger references here.

So honestly, I'm not going to sweat it if I don't win NaNoWriMo this year. But I promised my gal Senny, and a few other friends who are gearing up to go into the trenches, that I'd at least give it another try. Because it's good to barf out that terrible first draft and just see what's right and what's wrong with my idea. And because misery loves company. And because November feels weird without it.

I'm K8E over there if anyone wants to add me as a writing buddy. Good luck, NaNos, and hey you non NaNos, you can do it too; it's not a show!