"Grandy Devil" first appeared in H. L. Gold's Galaxy. Reprinted by Robin Scott Wilson.
This was reprinted as one of Pohl's best (~the top 15% of his stories up until this point, 1974? or perhaps from the 1940s through the 1960s).
Summary: A young man learns who the strange people who visit the house which has been in family's hands for generations.
"Punch" first appeared in Playboy. Reprinted by Avram Davidson, Groff Conklin, the editors of Playboy, Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, Joseph D. Olander, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg. This was reprinted as one of Pohl's best (~the top 15% of his stories up until this point, 1974? or perhaps from the 1940s through the 1960s). Read online.
Summary: A kind group of aliens offer humanity many gifts, including warships to venture into space.
"Pythias" first appeared in H. L. Gold's Galaxy. Reprinted by Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh, Jenny-Lynn Waugh. Read online.
Summary: A young visits an old friend in the hospital, who had just protected the Senate from a hand grenade meant to blow up the proceedings.
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Velocity Exercises
What are they?
In his essay on style in the anthology, Those Who Can, these are three stories Pohl pointed to as having fit the definition. Pohl used a number of terms and definitions that make it difficult to pinpoint.
"Three-word stories": Pohl wrote, "not that every one of them is exactly three words; it may be a little more or less." Rather, I think he refers to the turn the story makes which may depend on three-word revelations that cast the story in a new light. In "Punch" it's "Neither do we," and in "Punch" it's "But I can."
"Twist-ending" or "one-punch" stories: two other names Pohl lent to this idea, which Pohl telegraphs by calling one "Punch." These, he says, were popular in magazines like Liberty and Collier's. He's a bit dismissive, but the anthologies these appeared in had multiple printings, which is rare for anthologies. The magazines were popular in Pohl's youth, but they folded, but I suspect that had more to do with the changing economy than the stories themselves given the popularity of anthologies that appeared decades after the magazines folded. Moreover, Collier's published Hemingway, Faulkner, and Heinlein whose work could not easily be summed up by this.
Velocity exercises: What is the velocity in the exercise? A story that can be written quickly? A story that can be read quickly? He doesn't say. He does call it a haiku--a kind of compressed story told in 2000 words or less, which may be a narrative form more akin to, say, the sonnet and its iambic pentameter and final turn, especially.
Pohl adds that the important thing to these stories, despite the emphasis on the "turn" or "twist," is not to diminish the story that proceeds the change. He does invest in the main story, but it's unclear where these represent a departure from other stories of this kind.
Now Pohl's essay is supposed to be about style. I suspect that the two short short stories ("Day Million" and "Grandy Devil") were selected for Pohl by Robin Scott Wilson so as to give Pohl a path to illumine what style in a story might be. Rather, Pohl took the essay in the direction of form, which is somewhat informative but not fully. The gist of what Pohl had to say about this was
"In the act of solving these problem [character, plot, scene, setting, theme] style is created. If it is appropriate, it is good; if it is inappropriate it; and that is the Whole of the Law."
The last is an allusion to Aleister Crowley, suggesting that the writer seek out his own true path. A bit mushy and not entirely useful for a writer seeking advice. This suggests that he may not know himself except on a subconscious level. He does suggest that parodists copy other writers' styles and when it does so inappropriately to the story in question, "the results are comic."
James Gunn in addressing his own style in his most famous story [the Nebula-nominated "The Listeners"] says essentially that style should be seen but not heard--a very different conclusion. Yet, Gunn goes into more depth, suggesting that style in part comes out of revision, seeking better words to express one's meaning. Most surprisingly, Gunn invites disagreement: "don't let me get by with that! disagree!" which echoes the old, long lost ways of academia that invited people to disagree, to let people own their own opinions and to have discussions, rather to be told what to think.
What's interesting about several of these stories ["The Listeners" and "Grandy Devil"] and the above quote alluding to Crowley, too, is that they borrow from other writers, invoking a kind of style that comments on and illumines the work of each.
In "Grandy Devil" Pohl has a series of "begats" that calls on the Bible where historical lineages are of critical importance as it is here as well.
Gunn's "The Listeners" quotes famous works to put them in a context of communicating with aliens, which both illumines and alters the theme in that they comment on Gunn's own spare, clear style.
Commentary on individual stories:
"Grandy Devil": In some ways this is the most fun, but the least provocative. Unless you consider the mystery of one's lineage important. There's also the idea that we don't always understand the history of conflicts that we walk into as young people.
"Punch": This is the most famed and recognized of the three, but perhaps the least interesting. Beware of those bearing gifts. "I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts."--Virgil's Aeneid. But still fun and provocative, nonetheless.
"Pythias": The most brilliant of the three, this tells the story of a man who kills a friend in order to obtain the secret of telekinesis and hold it for himself. It presents itself as doing the greater good thing, but we see that it's just selfishness and greed--a parable applicable to every political faction ever.
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