How Precious Was That While, page 28
There are writers who think that the only good review is a favorable one, and they curse any negative review. They are mistaken. There is considerable subjectivity; nevertheless, some novels are by most standards excellent; others are not. The deciding criterion is the taste of the book’s intended readership, and the reviewer needs to ascertain this and relate to it. A good review is one that successfully separates the wheat from the chaff, and identifies the best, worst, and indifferent works for their intended readership. A bad review is one that fails to do this. Thus there can be a negative review that is good: it has correctly called a bad novel what it is. There can be a bad positive review, that praises a novel that readers won’t much like. The proprietors of publications that print reviews should fire any reviewer who is evidently unable or unwilling to make those distinctions. The fact that they seldom do eliminate bad reviewers suggests that such publishers neither know nor care about quality reviewing. They are just filling space. So they, too, are defaulting on their obligation to their readers, and deserve the eventual loss of circulation they will achieve.
In short, the reviewing industry needs to clean up its act. At present it is held in generally, and deservedly, low regard.
Twelve
READERS
At first fan mail was a rarity. But when I got into the Xanth fantasy series, the letters multiplied. I felt that a fair letter deserved a fair answer, and a number of correspondences developed. It gradually rose to the level of 150 a month, and that is where I have tried to hold the line, because it takes me about ten days of each month to keep up with it, and that’s one-third of my working time. Every so often I will receive a sarcastic or condemnatory missive from a reader who resents my statements that I’d rather have less mail; my standard response is to the effect of “Do you spend a third of your working time answering letters for no pay?” and that generally shuts them up. I have no statistics on this, but I suspect that there are very few novelists who answer more mail, more responsively, than I do. I don’t guarantee to answer more than the first letter, but if the reader is serious, I usually do answer others. So I judge that about half my mail is from first timers, and half from repeaters. Originally my impression was that it ran about 60—40 malefemale, but a more recent survey indicated that the ratio had reversed, and I now correspond with more women/girls than men/boys. Concerned that I might be selecting the girls for answers—I’m a man, and highly aware of the opposite gender—I limited my count to new letters—and it still ran predominantly female. So I conclude that my fantasy and novels like Virtual Mode and Firefly cause more women to react than men.
Every person is an individual, and so is every letter. That’s why I don’t use forms to respond, though I do have a number of “canned paragraphs” so that I don’t have to type the same information about an upcoming novel over and over. But over the months and years they tend to merge into broad fuzzy groups. My memory for names is poor, so few stand out in my memory. But there are some, and I’ll discuss some of those here.
One early one was difficult. I learn well from experience, but experience can be a hard teacher, and new things are not always easy to play correctly. I heard from a woman who was a devoted fan of my works, intelligent, expressive, and interesting. Her letters always drew me out, getting me into extended discussions. They also contained hints that she found me romantically interesting, and would be amenable to something along that line. Later, other correspondents came on to me similarly, and they ranged in age from thirteen to over sixty and from moderately to extremely attractive. But I was alert to the signs, and responded courteously but with no suggestion that I was looking for what they offered. If I lost my wife, in due course I would want to remarry, because I can’t face the thought of living alone. But it will be death that parts us, and whatever I can do to preserve her life and health I will do, within reason. I can’t make her stop smoking or get into a sustained exercise program, so I fear she will die before me. But I have to let her live her life in the way she chooses, and support her in that, just as she lets me live mine and supports me. It is a good marriage, and we differ on very few things, and compatibly on those. We have what I call a conventional marriage: I earn the money, she spends it. In fact she keeps the accounts and does the taxes, which are complicated. I decide on the big things, like the significance of world events, and she decides the small things, like everything else. We trust each other, and communicate constantly. I’m glad I married her, and believe that I would not be where I am today without her. But if I should find myself alone, I would then consider more carefully what else offers, with strong cautions from my life experience. Meanwhile I have a small category of correspondents I treat politely: those who profess or imply love for me. Some I would never marry, regardless, but I don’t want to bring them the grief of direct rejection. They are, as a rule, good women, and I never like the notion of breaking hearts or treading on dreams. Very generally, my proscriptions relate to age—I’m wary of women younger than my daughters, and doubly wary of teens, and think that reasonable boundaries would be within twenty years of my own age, older or younger. And to healthy lifestyle—any excesses of smoking, drinking, gambling, drugs, spending, temper, weight, politics, religion, or the like would be suspect, and I could not love one who was not a vegetarian. I also have a strong bias toward intelligence, creativity, and honor. So I guess I would be pretty damn choosy. But I think I could find such a woman, because what I would offer in return would be a compatible nature that meets the same requirements, and absolute financial security. Were I to enter a singles ad, it would be something like “Old vegetarian ogre ISO (in search of) the usual.” Those who don’t know ogres as I define them would be scared away, simplifying the search. So do I ponder in my fancy any particular women now, though I am not on the market? Yes, in much the way most men reflect what it would be like to spend a night with particular women, despite knowing there is no chance of it happening. No, I will not name my most likely choice. Yes, my wife knows who it is. Is she jealous? I doubt it. Does the woman herself know? I think not. My wife also knows that I have no desire to lose her, and no intention of crossing any lines. I think of the way I know roughly where my wife is, when we are separated in a group: I hear her ready laugh. That says so much. If there comes a time when I no longer hear it, that will be bleak.
Most correspondences consist of one fan letter and my response. A number go several letters, when there is a series of points to cover. I try to discourage letters just for the sake of letters, and most readers realize that my time is not infinite. But on occasion they refuse to take the hints of spaced-out responses or increasingly brief ones. Sometimes I stop answering, but they continue writing, demanding responses. Sometimes I simply have to say that I am terminating the correspondence. One reader was so upset by this, when I terminated him at the twenty-letter point, that he rented a car and drove by my house, then wrote a letter condemning me, my property, and my work. Another had his psychologist write to me to urge me to resume correspondence. I answered the psychologist, approximately: “Do you work for free? I have already taken $2,000 worth of my time on this, and it’s enough.” It was true, and it shut him up. Some few write to berate me on something, and will continue as long as I respond; when it is apparent that they have an agenda that is other than reasonable, I stop responding. One reader condemned my supposedly harsh treatment of the copy editors who destroyed But What of Earth? demanding answers when I sought to demur. So I let him have it, but didn’t persuade him. I showed the correspondence to another person, to ascertain whether I was dealing fairly with the issues, and was told I was. So I let him go; there was no further point. I don’t drop someone just because he disagrees with me; I’m not looking for yes-men. Sometimes there is ground for reasonable debate. Sometimes there is formidable reversal. A reader named Roberto Fuentes criticized me—and later became a friend and collaborator for six published novels. A pro reader objected to my interpretation of Neandertal man, who I believe was not ancestral to modern man; we differ, but he knows a lot, and I respect it. One woman called my novel Firefly “trash,” but I maintained a correspondence with her because I saw that she was a good person, sacrificing herself for the sake of her ailing husband. Agreement with me is no sure ticket to correspondence, nor does disagreeing with me bar it; my perspective is wider than that.
One category of correspondent I have discussed in Chapter 5: the suicidally depressive, whom I call Ligeia. They can be either gender, but the great majority are female. Normally they write to me when they are unhappy, and cease when their outlook improves. Some cross over into the romantic category, perhaps in the manner of the transference psychologists or psychiatrists encounter. This can be difficult, as it was with the first Ligeia, but I respond to them with sympathy, not love.
Some write to me for advice on myriad subjects. I’m not an expert in anything much other than writing fantasy, but I try to answer reasonably. One young man was with his girlfriend when an attractive mutual acquaintance said that she was curious about sex and would like to try it with him, no other obligation. His girlfriend said it was okay with her, but he wasn’t sure, so asked me. My answer, in essence, was: if you decide to have sex with anyone, have it with your regular girlfriend, or you will lose her, regardless what she tells you now. One girl told me that she loved her pony, but could see it only once a week. Should she sell it, which would be good for the pony but would break the girl’s heart? I suggested that she sell it to a neighbor with a stipulation that she be granted regular visiting rights. She reported later than she did that, and it solved the problem; the pony was well cared for and happy, and she did visit it as often as she wished.
Some are routine correspondences, that suddenly emerge as memorable. That was the case when a girl sent me a newspaper clipping of the volunteer work she did nursing injured wild raptors—birds of prey—back to health. That lifted her right out of the ordinary; how many people do such work on a volunteer basis? I dubbed her The Bird Maiden, after a character in my novel Hasan who married a woman who could don a bird suit and fly, and mentioned her when that novel was reissued. I still hear from her annually; she is married, lived in Germany for several years, and now lives in the United States.
Some are remarkable from the start. One reader was not a correspondent, but met me personally in New York. She had been spelunking in a phenomenally extensive newly discovered cave system out west, and had broken her leg and had to be hauled out. The horror of the situation and degree of challenge made national headlines. She was in a wheelchair, with a cast on her leg, when she came to meet me. I told her I was thrilled to have a reader who was famous. Another was a survivor of Waco, when the government stormed the stronghold of the David Koresh cult. My reader hid under a bed with her children, having no way to escape the situation. Her husband was shot to death, her four children were taken from her, and she was convicted of “resisting arrest” and sent to prison, where I heard from her: my novels helped bring her solace in a most difficult time. Another was Janet Hines, who had been stricken as a teenager with a debilitating disease that gradually deprived her of her sight and motion, leaving her by age thirty completely blind and paralyzed. But she enjoyed hearing my books read to her, or on tape. She was learning to use an eye-controlled computer, because though she was blind, she could still move her eyes. She was in my area, and in due course I visited her, and held her hand, talked with her, and kissed her on the cheek. She could respond only with a kind of laugh, but she certainly knew who I was. Later she died, and I wrote her into Xanth, her faculties restored, and in that manner gave her a nice life and marriage. Another correspondent bred new types of iris flowers, and I put him in touch with Janet’s family, and he named a new iris after Janet. He also named one after Jenny Elf.
Some have had special experiences. Once a woman who had been violently raped asked to be put in touch with others who had suffered similarly. In such cases I am even more careful than usual; I must get permission from both parties before giving out any addresses. In due course I introduced her to three others, and I believe those turned out to be lasting correspondences. Rape is not something I am in much position to understand, and perhaps only a victim is in such a position. But I pay attention to what my correspondents tell me, and so have been able to write about it with more authority than would otherwise have been possible. Individual cases can be tragic. A little girl saw her father unhappy, and tried to cheer him—and he raped her. No, that’s not the one in Chapter 5, “I knew to be a Woman.” Another girl, sixteen, went on a date with a high school sports hero, who took her into a barn, took a hammer to her, and raped her. She thought he was trying to kill her, but apparently he was only making sure she wouldn’t resist by hammering her into submission first. She never told her family, pretending she had taken a fall and bruised herself. Some fall! She asked me whether I would want to know it, if someone did that to one of my daughters. That was no easy question, and I’m not sure how I answered it, but did say that I’d probably want to kill the perpetrator. So I understood her silence, though I was appalled that the rapist thus got away with it. Another girl went on a date at age thirteen, and didn’t understand why her date took her to his house for a party, but soon discovered that she was the entertainment. There were four of them, and she could go along with it, or be subjected to it more violently. So she didn’t scream or cry, but she nevertheless felt the shock of rape, and thought that she must have been at fault somehow, and didn’t tell, though it fouled up her life thereafter. Another woman accepted a ride home from a passing acquaintance, who instead drove her to his apartment where he and a friend threatened her with a gun, stripped her, raped her, and subjected her to humiliations, such as poking the muzzle of the pistol in her rectum and daring her to protest. When she tried to tell, she wasn’t believed, even by those closest to her. Feminists like to claim that sex isn’t the object, that it’s just that men want to humiliate women. I regard that as nonsense; why not just rub feces in her hair or spit on her? Humiliation is not the object; it’s a tool to break down her resistance. The object is sex. But humiliation does in some cases become a significant part of it, when men have been taught that sex is dirty. So they try to make the women dirty, to degrade them, so that they become fit objects for sex. So that they will be too ashamed to tell. And often it works, and the women do blame themselves, and feel worthless, and so are silent. Blame that on a warped society, which pretends that sex is shameful or unnatural. Rape is bad enough, without the enormous social burden, the tacit condemnation, that is put on the victims. Another young woman happened to be nearby when two “friends” grabbed her, stripped her, and replayed a scene they had seen in a movie, taking toothless bites of her flesh all over her body and running a tongue into her vagina. When they let her go, she went to an isolated spot and contemplated suicide, blaming herself. When she told me about it, she was apologetic, because she said she hadn’t really been raped. As if she didn’t have anything to fuss about. I gave her the odd comfort of correcting her on that: penetration by any organ constitutes technical rape.
The number of women who suffered incestuous sex as children seems beyond counting, and it is not just stepfathers; blood fathers do it too, and brothers. One brother “sold” his little sister to the neighbor man, who had repeated sex with her, and she didn’t feel free to tell. It may be easy for those not involved to say that a girl should report such abuse, but it’s not easy for the girls themselves, who may have been threatened or beaten, who may not be believed, and who may be blamed for bringing it on themselves. Yeah, sure: they brought it on themselves by being female and innocent and within range; by the time they discover what it’s all about, they feel so worthless that there seems to be no point in protesting. They may be told that this is perfectly normal, that everyone does it, that it’s what they owe their fathers who take care of them. One girl was visiting with a friend her own age, who persuaded her to strip for the friend’s father, for oral sex. The father offered a gift, a special doll. The friend even demonstrated how simple it was, spreading her own legs for the man’s mouth. It was easy, it was fun—see? Reluctantly persuaded, and truly desiring the doll, the girl acceded, focusing determinedly on the doll instead of what was happening between her legs. She felt deeply disgusted ever after, but she loved the doll, and no one else ever understood exactly what she had paid for it. “I never actually said no,” they tell me. “It didn’t really hurt, so it can’t have been rape.” “It’s my own fault, for being so foolish.” “I thought he was my friend.” One girl, supposedly on a date, didn’t understand why they stopped in a forest, until she got raped by one of two men. The other man then began to attack her, threatening to mutilate her, and the rapist had to protect her from that. How could she turn him in, when he had protected her from worse? One girl, put into foster care to protect her from further sexual molestation, was surprised when the official who was driving her there pulled over to the side of the road and raped her. “They’ll never believe you,” he told her, and she knew he was right. Who would believe a girl who made a habit of accusing every man with whom she came in contact? She didn’t tell, then; she told me—thirty years later. One girl, fourteen when she wrote to me, told me of how she had had to go into prostitution when she was twelve to get money to live on. She cried all the way through her indoctrination by the pimp, who was the first to try his wares, but it was indeed a way to get money. The moment she was able to get out of that situation, she did so, and the sex stopped, and she turned happy—and no longer wrote to me.
