"Fair Game" by Howard Waldrop

Note: Photo found on HuffPost, unattributed. Image search turned up no attributions.

Story first appeared in Pamela Sargent and Ian Watson's Afterlives, reprinted by Gardner Dozois (his 4th annual Year's Best--and probably the only way to get Waldrop a few cents for reading this story) and Robin Wilson. Was up for a Locus award.

Summary:

Ernest Hemingway is in Bavaria when a village bürgermeister calls upon him to hunt down the Wild Man wandering the area, causing havoc.

Analysis (spoilers):

Ernest kills the Wild Man and discovers the man he hunted is himself.

[Side Bar: Ken Burns is debuting a documentary on Ernest Hemingway next month, so this story is timely. I'm optimistic it will be rich and dynamic, instead of stuffing a straw man.]

Without context, Waldrop's story seems to suggest that Hemingway needed to kill himself as he may have been upsetting the environments he was in. The title "Fair Game" suggests that perhaps, the only "fair game" is the death of one's self; however, the author fishes, so that cannot be the whole story.

Let's add context. First, the story was written specifically for Sargent's and Watson's anthology Afterlives, which has the subtitle "Stories about Life after Death." So Hemingway is already dead. The story leaves what may be hints: "hovering mountains" which may or may not be figurative. Perhaps he is paying penance for committing suicide, so he has to kill himself again and again. Perhaps this is a "fair game" with game meaning both the hunted and a sport.

We also need to look at the "wild man" figure from mythology.

One thing not to include (unless Robert Bly had been famously doing Iron John tours a half-decade before he wrote his Iron John book) is Bly's version of the wild man from Iron John. There Bly suggests that men need to embrace their inner wild man. But perhaps Joseph Campbell was saying similar things. Avoid misreadings like this one from The New York Times. The book, though, is problematic for my reading. The longer Bly hypothesizes, the less I buy into his theory (see my take-down of The Little Book on the Human Shadow--my feeling is that creative genius like Bly's is sometimes born through strange ways of thinking. See also William Butler Yeats.) though I'm sure many men would disagree. Instead, I recommend his anthology, Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, which is far less theorizing--just a little theory backed up with ample illustration from literature across the ages. The more Bly shows what he means instead of describing, the more I dig his ideas.

Searching for Joseph Campbell, I found this interview with Bill Moyers from 1981, which Waldrop could have watched and internalized--regarding Gilgamesh's grief over pending death of Endiku, the wild man whom Gilgamesh befriends and whom Gilgamesh tries to save by seeking the elixir for immortality:

"what it says to me is that man knows that there is an eternal life inside him, because the going into the depth, there is always the going down until he finds the thing in oneself."

Unfortunately, the wild man [Wiki] has come to mean several things over the millennia, so it's difficult to narrow down, let alone nail down exactly what Waldrop is getting at in this story. A few possibilities:

• loss of civilization
• to be alive (via forest)
• wisdom (which one gains by losing civilization--people would capture and tie up the wild man and would not give him his freedom until he revealed his wisdom)
• abandoned person/orphan
• amazing, strange
• etc.

Perhaps the story suggests that, by killing himself, Hemingway lost his aliveness/vitality although it was probably the other way around. Maybe Waldrop did it the right way: First, the wild man is killed; next, he learns that the wild man is himself. 

Another possibility in killing Hemingway is the writer is killing the previous god so they don't have to wrestle with him. James Gunn used to say that Hemingway said that writing was like getting into the ring with Tolstoy. However, the only ring/Tolstoy quote I found attributed to Hemingway was that he would not get into the ring with Tolstoy. Whatever he said, there is a certain amount of anxiety writers feel about the great writers (see Harold Bloom), so maybe his death here is a writer's way of getting into or not getting into the ring with Hemingway.

As fun and provocative as the story is, it seems to fall short. It might work at a longer (novella) or a short-short length. A writer should have to wrestle with Hemingway and his achievements, especially in a story so built around his biography--as well as wrestling with suicide. The story shows potent promise, but we need more.

I will discuss/speculate on a related, Arthur-Conan-Doyle-and-Hemingway connection later.

Waldrop on Style

The Robin Wilson anthology, Paragons, includes a paired essay on style (mostly about literary chameleons), but I don't think it aids one in reading this story. The best piece on Waldrop's writing is probably Lewis Shiner's introduction to Strange Monsters of the Recent Past where this story was collected.  However, I do highly recommend his story notes. They're just fun reading and indirectly give more insight into the man's voice, style, and sense of humor.

"The Ugly Chickens" by Howard Waldrop

 This first appeared in Terry Carr's Universe, was reprinted three times by Terry Carr (once within a month of its first appearance), twice by Gardner Dozois (once a major genre retrospective), once by Donald A. Wollheim, Arthur W. Saha, Jerry E. Pournelle, John F. Carr, Martin H. Greenberg, Ellen Datlow, Leigh Grossman (another genre retrospective), and Norm Sherman. It won the Nebula and World Fantasy awards, and was nominated for Hugo, Locus. and Balrog awards. Online.

If you'd like to read the story so the writer is compensated, his ebooks seem to be the primary method. The story is found in both Things Will Never Be the Same [Kindle or Weightless] and Howard Who? [Kindle or Weightless].  

Summary:

A graduate student, Paul Lindberl, riding a bus because his "car was broken," pages through a book of extinct species. One passenger, noticing the illustrations, tells him she's seen one species as a child.  

Analysis (spoilers):

Lindberl eventually tracks down where the species was supposed to be as well the family that was said to have had them. As had happened in Europe, one species of dodos had happened to be passed on in the family as one might keep chickens. They eventually died out.

The strangeness of the story is indirectly mapped out everywhere. Note that it won a fantasy award, yet it appeared in every year's best science fiction anthology of the year. Only one editor really discusses the merits of the story itself. 

Piggybacking on the weirdness of the award and the anthologies it appeared in, I'll include this circuitous gem from Wollheim and Saha's introduction:

"Science fiction is subject to many definitions and there are some that are so specific that they might exclude this unusual story. But if science fiction deals with the probable that is just beyond the newspapers of with things that might have happened--even thought they did not shake the world--then this is truly science fiction. Further, it's zoological science fiction--and you almost never get any of that!"

Note how nicely they point out that some readers won't think this is SF, but the editors do, so they're including it in this anthology.

Gardner Dozois really only discusses Waldrop the writer with insight:

"called 'the resident Weird Mind of his generation...' he has one of the most individual and quirky voices (and visions) in letters today. Nobody but Howard could possibly have written one of Howard's stories; in most cases, nobody but Howard could possibly have even thought of them. Nor is any one Waldrop story ever much like any previous Waldrop story, and that respect (as well as in the panache and pungency of the writing, the sweep of imagination, and the depth of offbeat erudition), he resembles those other two great uniques, R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson.... [Waldrop] remains underappreciated."

Probably that last statement is more true today with most of his books out of print. Terry Carr makes the best case for this particular story: 

"Ornithology isn't one of the usual sciences employed in science fiction, but it's certainly a legitimate one. In any case, Howard Waldrop's stories are seldom of the usual kind, and during the past half-dozen years sf readers have come to expect the unexpected from him... such as in this fascinating, funny and poignant tale."

One suspects that Carr, by reprinting the story immediately after having just printed it the first time, had a hand in bringing this story to readers' and critics' attention. The reprint book has the subtitle, "Science Fiction Stories About the Future of Planet Earth," which doesn't really fit Waldrop's story until you realize it's the Sierra Book Club. If you extrapolate Waldrop's story, then it becomes relevant, but some stretching's involved. 

Incidentally, Carr reprinted two stories in the Sierra book from the same year the originals were published. The second was Larry Niven's "The Green Maurader." Dozois republished both. That the Sierra Book Club agreed to the anthology and that Dozois collected both suggests that this may have been a hot topic in 1980. So that might be another reason that "The Ugly Chickens" garnered so much attention.

Once, in a private discussion with another classmate and myself, Waldrop mentioned that a New Yorker editor said he/she would have published it, which no doubt whipped up a mélange of emotions: thrill, disappointment, and doubt. He expressed the doubt. But it does have a very contemporary focus. The speculative wonder is subdued, pointed more at a scientific discovery than something rich and strange. I could see it in The New Yorker, although some passages may require the standard SF reader (although those literary readers who are willing to read lengthy passages about whales in Melville's Moby Dick, might well put up with Lindberl's historical passages about the dodo.  

So what the story had going for it: 1) realism, (semi-realistic portrayal of graduate student), 2) pursuit of an almost mythic if absurd creature, thought lost to time long before, 3) zeitgeist, 4) unusual science/subject matter, and 5) Howard Waldrop's oeuvre up to that point. Both Carr and Dozois allude to this--that Waldrop had been getting attention for his work.

Besides the above, what are the story's strengths?

One is simply Waldrop's moment-to-moment charm:

Then she began to smile.

“Oh, you mean the ugly chickens?” she said.

I smiled. I almost laughed. I knew what Oedipus must have gone through.

A weird allusion, to be sure, but it describes a sudden attraction toward an older woman,  so that we feel a warmth toward both. How many writers have you seen characterized via an allusion--Oedipus, no less. 

The opening is another strength. How exciting to find out that a stranger on a bus has seen a supposedly long extinct species:

What I should have said was: “That is quite impossible, madam. This is a drawing of an extinct bird of the island of Mauritius. It is perhaps the most famous dead bird in the world. Maybe you are mistaking this drawing for that of some rare Asiatic turkey, peafowl, or pheasant. I am sorry, but you are mistaken.”

I should have said all that.

What she said was, “Oops, this is my stop,” and got up to go....

I have several vices and follies, but I don’t think foolishness is one of them.

The stupid thing for me to do would have been to follow her.

She stepped off the bus.

I followed her.

Lindberl doesn't make a good case for his not following her. While the dodo species remains extinct, he remains excited about the discovery despite learning that the loss is still permanent. Perhaps emotionally it would be foolish/stupid. Another possibility exists, which I'll discuss later.

"Lindberl" is a cool name to choose. Apparently, no one in the history of the internet has chosen to name anyone with the same name. A search only turned up mentions of Waldrop's story. The name's almost "Lindbergh," which we are supposed to think of; in fact, someone calls him by that name. Readers, then, are supposed to associate our narrator with the man who first flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean--an appropriate association since we are dealing with birds (although dodos are flightless, so are humans without some intervention). Lindergh was also the first to accomplish a thing, so too will Lindberl.  

Much of the story is devoted to the history of the dodo. It's doom seems inevitable, yet Waldrop makes us feel a tender, sadness at their loss, nonetheless.

There are a few issues that seem like authorial errors. For instance, Lindberl collecting evidence in a sack, as opposed to doing a careful excavation. Likely there would be a lot of evidence destroyed by humans. Still, in trying to suss out on how the dodos behaved, surely they'd want to look at where the evidence was found. 

Also, it ends with his hope about getting into Scientific American. One would think his concern would be getting into a professional journal. Scientific American is for lay readers. 

It took me awhile to put this together, but maybe Lindberl prefers Scientific American to an academic journal. Maybe his goal isn't academia at all but a launchpad for, say, popular scientific writing (nothing indicates this in the text, though). Or maybe he's kind of a goofball, half-cocked grad student. Maybe that's why he felt foolish and stupid above. Maybe he's so eager to find out about the dodo that he's rushed into this, unprepared. Maybe that explains the mention of his professor reading Nature. Not that whatever he's done would ruin his chances for getting into a good academic journal and Scientific American or wind up with a good study, but his rush into this might have been prevented with a discussion with his advising professor. I'm not sure how he talked his way into getting money from the department. Perhaps they had a slush fund for whatever purpose. I would suspect there would have to be some sort of application process.

Other Quotes:

The following excerpt seems to be a self-allusion, perhaps to his future work, Them Bones:

Or [the dodos] could have been brought centuries before by the Arabs who plied the Indian Ocean in their triangular-sailed craft, and who may have discovered the Mascarenes before the Europeans cranked themselves up for the First Crusade.

This passage, describing the narrator, seems to mirror humanity's own historical behavior toward animals: 

"At one time early in my bird-fascination days (after I stopped killing them with BB guns but before I began to work for a scholarship)"  

Comments Published, Howard Waldrop story updated, Future Posts

• Realizing that someone might misunderstand my intent, I added on to the commentary on "Night of the Cooters" by Howard Waldrop. Mostly it deals with how the story conforms to and confounds H. G. Wells' original tale, War of the Worlds.  
• Discovery!: Eileen Gunn wrote a sequel to Waldrop's story for Tor.com.

• I used to get emails when someone commented on my post, and frankly it slipped my mind that I needed to approve them. There's usually more spam than comments. When I unleashed about two years of comments, I found two interesting ones:
• One asked about the theme in "The King of the Beasts" by Philip José Farmer.
• A second asked me to discuss ethics and morality in "Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon.

"The King of the Beasts" by Philip José Farmer

It's interesting that "The King of the Beasts" is #17 on this blog's most popular posts. That suggests that the story has more impact on readers than one might have supposed. Time permitting, I will need to revise it. It has more relevance than the tone may have implied. 

The theme deals with how, as a consequence of allowing so many species to become endangered. humanity itself might become one of its own victims. Potent, surely. 

I still contend that, instead of building up to the surprise, the idea might have been developed a little more although one could argue that that would be unnecessary due to its brevity. 

I will rewrite this post to incorporate the above.

"Microcosmic God" by Theodore Sturgeon

This post is #8 on the all-time most popular blog posts. I will need to reread the story with the question of ethics and morality in mind. What a fascinating question. Thank you.

I looked up the definitions and commentary and it appears that most of us use them interchangeably. However. some view morality as a personal thing and ethics as a group thing. 

I don't. I see morality as a group and personal thing. They are the rules we live by and sometimes share with others. Ethics would be examining these rules closely, trying to eliminate bias, to understand our rules and others' rules. Morality would be the vine that grows naturally. Ethics would be the trellis that someone constructed (or that someone examined). Others have made different distinctions--if there are any. 

I hope to eventually write a post addressing this, assuming that, when I reread it, I will come up with something interesting. Great question. 

 

Future Posts

I hope to write about more mentors and colleagues who became friends as a result of our mutual interest in writing. SF is a small field. Some mentors were kind, some were not. Some I disagreed with ethically, some not. You probably cannot guess which is which by the way I write about them here since I try to maintain integrity in examining the stories. Stories are not people. Besides these comments are as much for me as for others.

Howard Waldrop was a mentor. As Chad Oliver called him, he was a story doctor, knowing how to diagnose a story's ills. His perspective always surprised our Clarion class.

After winning the Writers of the Future contest, I plan to read and discuss stories from those anthologies as well L. Ron Hubbard's own oeuvre. I discussed a few of his works on here: Fear and "Beyond All Weapons." I thought there had been more. In terms of books, Battlefield Earth I found particularly interesting for its discussion of economics though I forget now what that discussion entailed (hence, the blog). Ole Doc Methuselah wasn't as effective. As a young man, I remember getting enthralled by the opening of the Mission Earth sequence; however, my rereading was interrupted. I am most fond of his pulp stories, though. So I plan read those. I seem to recall being particularly fond of "Crossroads."

The WotF contest has its own, self-guided workshop with essays by Hubbard and videos with Orson Scott Card, Tim Powers, and Dave Wolverton. Pretty interesting, so far.

Some claim they have the contest figured out. I don't, so I don't know that I can offer general advice. However, I do think the "After the Workshop" podcast on this link is particularly enlightening. If you're submitting a story to the contest, good luck!

"Night of the Cooters" by Howard Waldrop (with updated analysis)

First appeared in Ellen Datlow's Omni. Reprinted by Gardner Dozois, Kevin J. Anderson, Jack Dann, Gina Hyams, Mike Resnick, Neil Clarke, and Norm Sherman. It was up for the Hugo and Locus awards. The can read online at Clarkesworld and listened to.

"Night of the Cooters" may well be the best starting point for someone wanting to get acquainted with Howard Waldrop's oeuvre. It displays his characteristic panache for mixing oddities (what Gardner Dozois often termed "gonzo"), humor, historical verve, and singular style. Dozois considered Waldrop one of the best writers of his generation, comparing him to R.A. Lafferty. Though their styles differ, their voices are both unique within the speculative field.

As far as I can tell, the only places you can get the story where the writer will benefit are as ebooks [Kindle or Weightless]: Things Will Never Be the Same.

The story follows the 68-year-old Civil-War veteran, Sheriff Bert Lindley, as he starts what seems to be an ordinary day, but ends up bombarded by meteors that happen to be Martian war-machines in disguise.

Analysis (spoilers):

 After the aforementioned writerly effects, the main power of the narrative comes from its contrast with the H.G. Wells's original War of the Worlds. It highlights the difference between the American (particularly a small Texas town) and the British response. The opening helps characterize these motley humans as the unlikely heroes who come together and repel an invasion. 

Wells might have been incensed, given that his whole point was to pit the British against their own colonial attitudes at the height of its empire. Waldrop's version is not completely an idealized version of America as some problems of the era are set up. Still, the story's a good deal of fun.

It is the only reprint in Anderson's War of the Worlds anthology, which might lead one to suspect that it might have helped crystalize the anthology. Apparently, Waldrop selected it as his funniest (according to Resnick's anthology).

Style, Structure, and Meaning

It struck me, belatedly, that the above description was intended to show Waldrop--knowingly or unknowingly--inverting what Wells did. Well, sort of yes, but no. Some of his stylistic choices should illustrate.

The story opens:

"Sheriff Lindley was asleep on the toilet in the Pachuco County courthouse when someone started pounding of the door. 

" 'Bert! Bert!' the voice yelled as the sheriff jerked awake. 

" 'Gol Dang!' said the lawman. The Waco newspaper slid off his lap onto the floor." 

1) Pachuco is not a county in Texas. It is a zoot-suit-wearing, swing-and-jazz-listening rebel from the 1930s--one who did not conform to the predominant culture.

2) That older gentleman has fallen asleep on that location is not unbelievable, but certainly laughable--as is his euphemistic vocabulary. Waldrop plays with words as you can see above, and Waco looks a lot like wacko.   

3)  The sheriff sits on what is mockingly called a "throne." This is the first of several power structures referred to. He also has humble origins: "He had been born in the bottom of an Ohio keelboat in 1830." This could be considered the American dream: to rise above poverty into a position of power.

What follows is the description Sheriff Bert Lindley's dream. The dream--especially one this long--breaks conventional writer rules. Waldrop is unafraid to deploy as a long vision appears in "The Ugly Chickens."

The dream brings in some Aztec culture, full of what seems like amusing mistakes the some of us might feel momentarily superior: like "Moctezuma" vs. "Montezuma," both of which are actually accepted variations, and "I-talian" priests. Probably they'd be from Spain alongside the conquistadores--ha, ha, that idiot sheriff. But then you think about it, and those priests are part of a hierarchy that peaks in Rome. Rather clever inversions.  

Now the conquistadores overthrew the Moctezuma, which is one power structure--one that mimics what Wells may have been up to--however, that isn't the dream. Moctezuma is atop another power structure where players will be sacrificed. Power structures within power structures. There is a rebellion.

Keep in mind the comic tone. Any sense of mocking we might feel toward these rubes should be balanced by their pluckiness and success at mounting a defense.

The next power structure (prior to the aliens) is the visit to the rich De Spain's [another Spain] property where two boys were caught stealing peaches. Although De Spain not only wants the boys to be charged with trespassing and thieving but also beaten, the sheriff lets the boys go with a threat about schooling if they get caught again. 

Then we have the battle with the aliens. It seems dubious that where the British failed, some small-town Texans could succeed, but maybe the improbability mirrors how the aliens are defeated by the smallest organism on the planet.

The story ends with another dream. This one is a bit puzzling in how to read it in terms of the story. 

1) The sheriff now sees himself as the king of Babylon. It's hard to say where to put the emphasis. It may be that at the beginning was not sure of himself as a policeman, but now he's proven himself, he accepts this power, so it shows his character shift. Lindley may have felt uncomfortable in his position as two details might suggest this:

"He had become sheriff in the special election three years ago to fill out Sanderson’s term when the governor had appointed the former sheriff attorney general. Nothing much had happened in the county since then."

and

[Lindley:] “You’ve got sixteen months, three weeks, and two days to find somebody to run against me. Good evening, Mr. De Spain.”

Perhaps this dream, not interrupted while sleeping on a faux throne, suggests that, after not doing anything to prove his his worth as a sheriff, he has finally entered into self-confidence about his work.

2) A Babylonian king would be no picnic: Conquer and coerce obeisance. Severe penalties. It could be that Waldrop suggests that there will always be a power structure and, as such, it will problematic. However, the text doesn't support this, except perhaps suggesting that a power structure will always exist.

3) The Babylonian king Hammurabi may not have been a perfect ruler, but he started introducing some of our modern ideals of justice such as assumption of innocence and presentation of both sides. His rule may have been sometime/somewhere near the construction of the tower of Babel. This seems a likely intention. Perhaps with the above mention of the sheriff's handling of the boys suggests his type of rule. The beating of the boys would go beyond Hammurabi Code's Eye for an Eye, so perhaps this strengthens this point.