January meme, Cordwainer Smith
Jan. 15th, 2015 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn(More meme slots available; comment here.)
snickfic asked me to talk about my experiences with Cordwainer Smith. I said a lot in this previous post; this will be a bit more meandering and personal.
I first must have encountered Cordwainer Smith (henceforth CS) when I was a middle-school/high-schooler (probably between the ages of 10 and 16) haunting the short-story stacks at my local library, which happened to have a fairly good science-fiction selection. (I'd previously haunted the SF section, but had read most of the novels that struck my fancy.) Pretty much my whole life, you could (can) always get me to read (or otherwise consume) something by sticking "Ballad" in the title or the description (hi, Ballad of Baby Doe!), and so I was pretty excited to find "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell." And the actual story — I was probably too young to read the actual story, but I liked it a lot. I read a couple more anthologized stories he had, like "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," which I didn't particularly love. (In retrospect, I was definitely too young for it.)
Later — this was probably when I was in college — I read an essay by Ursula LeGuin where she talked about reading "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" and being overwhelmed by it as her first experience of what science fiction could do, and thinking, huh, maybe I should give that another read. Around that time I bought the SF Masterworks collection of the best Instrumentality of Mankind short stories — The Rediscovery of Man — and I was hooked from then on.
I don't think I could tell you my favorite CS story. I have always had a soft spot for "Ballad of Lost C'Mell," of course. "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is the one that probably inspires the greatest emotion in me. I also really love "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," mostly because Suzdal himself is such a nice guy — and even though it is one of the stories that suffers being read from a twenty-first century viewpoint, because in the interim, other writers have done much more sophisticated and less offensive things with gender — well, he went there, he tried, and in his inimitable zany way he even succeeded; even if you don't buy klopt society as a gender concept, the refrain "And I mourn Man!" is… haunting. And it's such a short story, with so many ideas that are bursting out the seams of it, up to and including the end.
(Furthermore, it isn't true.)
One of the things that has always totally intrigued me about CS is the way his stories carry with them so many allusions. I'm pretty sure that I know fewer than half the allusions to which he refers, and often only because someone has told me what they were. Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith's real name) was an East Asian scholar, and clearly into French literature as well; these are two areas I know nothing about. (I now know that "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" is a retelling of Paul et Virginie, and that "Drunkboat" is related to Rimbaud, but, uh. That's about it. And that "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a retelling of Joan of Arc. And hey, Wikipedia informs me that An-fang Square, the Peace Square, where all things begin, is a Chinese-German bilingual pun. How about that.)
Another totally random thing I will bring up, Just Because: in my head I group Cordwainer Smith and James Tiptree, Jr. together. Not for any really obvious reason, as they are very different: Tiptree wrote gorgeously despairing stories about love and sex and death and biology, and investigating the linkages between them; CS wrote courageously hopeful stories about destiny (in the sense of creating a destiny) and meaning and life (and death; last reread I was surprised to find out how much death there was) and cats.
I think I group these writers together partially because I found both these authors at around the same time, quite frankly — but also because they are both really spectacular and pyrotechnic and thinky writers, two of the few writers I read as a child that I would unhesitatingly recommend as a grown adult. And writers who used pseudonyms to create an alternate personality for themselves, and writers who used allusions to the hilt. (I went on a bit of a quest to find the sources of Tiptree's titles, as a child… it was very good for me.)
(Oh, man. Is it kosher to ask for James Tiptree, Jr. fic for Yuletide?)
One more thing: I cannot write this post without once again pimping my incredible Cordwainer Smith Yuletide giftfic, The Peaceful Ghost of Old Repose, which is crazy and wonderful and has poetry in it and ALSO A STEALTH ALLUSION CROSSOVER using my Yuletide letter, which I. Just. Also check out the comments, where the author talks about all the stuff that went into it, and alludes to the different meanings of the title <3
snickfic asked me to talk about my experiences with Cordwainer Smith. I said a lot in this previous post; this will be a bit more meandering and personal.I first must have encountered Cordwainer Smith (henceforth CS) when I was a middle-school/high-schooler (probably between the ages of 10 and 16) haunting the short-story stacks at my local library, which happened to have a fairly good science-fiction selection. (I'd previously haunted the SF section, but had read most of the novels that struck my fancy.) Pretty much my whole life, you could (can) always get me to read (or otherwise consume) something by sticking "Ballad" in the title or the description (hi, Ballad of Baby Doe!), and so I was pretty excited to find "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell." And the actual story — I was probably too young to read the actual story, but I liked it a lot. I read a couple more anthologized stories he had, like "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard," which I didn't particularly love. (In retrospect, I was definitely too young for it.)
Later — this was probably when I was in college — I read an essay by Ursula LeGuin where she talked about reading "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" and being overwhelmed by it as her first experience of what science fiction could do, and thinking, huh, maybe I should give that another read. Around that time I bought the SF Masterworks collection of the best Instrumentality of Mankind short stories — The Rediscovery of Man — and I was hooked from then on.
I don't think I could tell you my favorite CS story. I have always had a soft spot for "Ballad of Lost C'Mell," of course. "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is the one that probably inspires the greatest emotion in me. I also really love "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," mostly because Suzdal himself is such a nice guy — and even though it is one of the stories that suffers being read from a twenty-first century viewpoint, because in the interim, other writers have done much more sophisticated and less offensive things with gender — well, he went there, he tried, and in his inimitable zany way he even succeeded; even if you don't buy klopt society as a gender concept, the refrain "And I mourn Man!" is… haunting. And it's such a short story, with so many ideas that are bursting out the seams of it, up to and including the end.
(Furthermore, it isn't true.)
One of the things that has always totally intrigued me about CS is the way his stories carry with them so many allusions. I'm pretty sure that I know fewer than half the allusions to which he refers, and often only because someone has told me what they were. Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith's real name) was an East Asian scholar, and clearly into French literature as well; these are two areas I know nothing about. (I now know that "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" is a retelling of Paul et Virginie, and that "Drunkboat" is related to Rimbaud, but, uh. That's about it. And that "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" is a retelling of Joan of Arc. And hey, Wikipedia informs me that An-fang Square, the Peace Square, where all things begin, is a Chinese-German bilingual pun. How about that.)
Another totally random thing I will bring up, Just Because: in my head I group Cordwainer Smith and James Tiptree, Jr. together. Not for any really obvious reason, as they are very different: Tiptree wrote gorgeously despairing stories about love and sex and death and biology, and investigating the linkages between them; CS wrote courageously hopeful stories about destiny (in the sense of creating a destiny) and meaning and life (and death; last reread I was surprised to find out how much death there was) and cats.
I think I group these writers together partially because I found both these authors at around the same time, quite frankly — but also because they are both really spectacular and pyrotechnic and thinky writers, two of the few writers I read as a child that I would unhesitatingly recommend as a grown adult. And writers who used pseudonyms to create an alternate personality for themselves, and writers who used allusions to the hilt. (I went on a bit of a quest to find the sources of Tiptree's titles, as a child… it was very good for me.)
(Oh, man. Is it kosher to ask for James Tiptree, Jr. fic for Yuletide?)
One more thing: I cannot write this post without once again pimping my incredible Cordwainer Smith Yuletide giftfic, The Peaceful Ghost of Old Repose, which is crazy and wonderful and has poetry in it and ALSO A STEALTH ALLUSION CROSSOVER using my Yuletide letter, which I. Just. Also check out the comments, where the author talks about all the stuff that went into it, and alludes to the different meanings of the title <3
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Date: 2015-01-18 02:02 am (UTC)"Dr. Seuss for grown-ups" is not at all a bad description, really. (I have been rereading Dr. Seuss lately and am rather impressed :) )