Category: Howard Waldrop

Postcard from Armadillocon 46

A fun trip down to Austin to see old friends, attend Armadillocon, make new friends, eat good vegan food, and, as usual, look at books. (This is one of those postcards that gets mailed after leaving the place.) I hadn’t been to Austin or Armadillocon for several years, so it was good to be back. A curator friend recommended a vegan sushi place Nori. I headed there after our meeting and was impressed by the Katana-ya (deep-fried nori roll with avocado, cucumber, kanpyo, shoga, surimi mix; topped with wasabi mayo, unagi, ponzu green salad, jalapeño, red onion, and cilantro).  The convention was in the same hotel as before, an odd, anonymous late 1970s exurban architectural mode that could have been at the edge of Anywhere, USA. Inside, though, it was all Armadillocon, a small friendly convention with a good mix of panels and readings (even sometimes forcing one to make hard choices).

One of the reasons I went was to show up at the Howard Waldrop celebration, a panel moderated by Scott A. Cupp and also including Sanford Allen, Robert Taylor, and Don Webb: all friends who knew Howard for decades. I hadn’t been able to attend the Waldrop Memorial in June; I was glad to attend this gathering.  Towards the end of the allotted hour (the anecdotes and yarns could have gone on for hours), when the floor was open for comments, I stood up and said something like this:

My name is Henry Wessells and I’m from New Jersey, where we also esteem Howard Waldrop. He excelled at integrating incompatible ideas into improbable fictions that suddenly reveal truths about life, literature, and America; and the stories equally suddenly show themselves to be inevitable and essential parts of American literature. If “The Ugly Chickens” is often mentioned as Howard’s best known story, for me his masterpiece is “Heart of Whitenesse”, where the ambitious conceit is executed with perfect skill. Not a word out of place, and the madcap humor is controlled in the service of the tale.
I have it from a reliable source that as an angler Howard practiced catch and release, and thus understood the impossibility of clinging to things. And so we now mark his departure; the stories, and the ideas, remain.

I went to several interesting panels and readings by a variety of writers. And of course there were many pleasant conversations along the way. I came back with a few books:

— Christopher Brown. Field Notes. September 2024. [Austin, 7 September 2024]. Gift of the author, inscribed, one of the first copies out of the box. Two essays, two reading lists, and twelve photos. Newsletter for advance orders to his new book.
——. A Natural History of Empty Lots. Timber Press, [September 2024]. Advance copy, inscribed.

Live to Build a Better World. Despair, Survival, and Hope in Science Fiction’s Response to Environmental Change. [Introduction by Jeremy Brett]. Texas A&M University Libraries, 2021. Illustrated catalogue for the exhibition at the Cushing Memorial Library (January to June 2021). An interesting selection of mostly twenty-first century books and films, with the earliest titles being The Lorax (1971), by Dr. Seuss, Brunner’s The Sheep Look up and Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest (both 1972), and Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower (1993).

— Avram Davidson. The Avram Davidson Treasury. Tor, [1998]. Book club edition which I hadn’t known existed. The copyright page is altered, the dust jacket carries no price and has a number slug on the back panel, and the black boards are smooth.

— Delilah S. Dawson. Bloom. Titan, [2023].

— Joe R. Lansdale. Things Get Ugly. The Best Crime Stories of Joe R. Lansdale. [Introduction by S. A. Cosby]. Tachyon, [2023].

— Josh Rountree. Death Aesthetic. Underwood, [2024].
——. The Legend of Charlie Fish. Tachyon, [2023].

— John Varley. The Persistence of Vision. [Introduction by Algis Budrys] [1978]. Dell [Quantum Paperback], [1979]. Varley was the first Armadillocon guest of honor.

— Howard Waldrop. Howard Who?. Stories [1986]. Peapod Classics. [Small Beer Press, third printing, 30 March 2024] [replacement copy].

commonplace book : January 2024

In Memoriam : Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop (1946-2024) was an American national treasure, author of many memorable stories and novellas, among them “Winter Quarters”, “Heart of Whitenesse”, and The Ugly Chickens. If you don’t know his work, you have some strange delights ahead. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is always a good place to start:
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/waldrop_howard

Lawrence Person wrote a brief and oddly touching memorial note, here.

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— Dylan Thomas, from “In my craft or sullen art”, in Twenty-Six Poems :

[.  .  .]
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

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Sidney Sime Exhibition

A major exhibition of the work of Sidney Sime,  (from the artist’s collection and archive at the Memorial Hall in Worplesdon, Surrey) is being held at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London, with an excellent digital simulacrum for those of us who won’t be in London before 27 January

(via Mark Valentine’s Wormwoodiana)

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In Memoriam : Tom Purdom

Michael Swanwick wrote a heartfelt farewell to his friend “Tom Purdom, Heart of Philadelphia”, here.

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from the latest number of the  Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. LXXX, no. 1 (Autumn- Winter 2023) :

— Stephen Ferguson, “Rare Books at Princeton, 1873-1941”

It was not self-evident that the American colleges of the nineteenth century would become collectors of book rarities, any more than it was self-evident that they would become universities, build football stadiums, and create an education eagerly sought worldwide. But the various decisions that resulted in these choices have much to do with one another — even when each leads down a path that appears to diverge widely from the others.

— Alfred L. Bush, “How Empty Shelves in Firestone Ultimately Revealed America’s Earliest Book”

“But with the determination of the ignorant . . .”

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In Memoriam : Terry Bisson

Even now, in remembering Terry Bisson (1942-2024), I can’t help but smile. It’s a sad smile today, but  Terry was one whom I always remember with a smile on his face.  I encountered his work with Talking Man, one of the great short American novels of a fantastical, mysterious South; and then I started reading some of his fine short stories.  He and Alice Turner founded  the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series now conducted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. Terry Bisson also founded the PM Press Outspoken Authors series of interviews. Trickster Michael Swanwick recalls “Three Things You Must Know about Terry Bisson”.

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“The Black Lands”, published in Exacting Clam 10 (Autumn 2023), will be reprinted in the issue of the Book Collector for summer 2024.

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I came across a beautiful literary ’zine from the Last Press, Quire, issue 19 (2023) of which is a separate edition of a Mark Valentine story, “Qx”, as a finely printed trifold sheet. Quire 13(2022) is The Mark of Andreas Germer by Ron Weighell, a special Christmas ghost story edition about the perils of reading. It’s a twelve-page chapbook with an engraving by Ladislav Hanks. No. 15 (2023) is The Visit, a story by Maureen Aitken (below). Production values are very high, and print runs small, so have a look, here.

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This time next week (Monday 22 February), your correspondent will be at the ABAA Bibliography Week Showcase, a small book fair held at the Alliance Française on east 60th street in New York City, details here :
https://www.abaa.org/events/details/bibliography-week-showcase
(free & open to the public, come say hello at the Cummins table)

And not long after that, in San Francisco at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair, 9-11 February. Come say hello (Cummins booth 105).

recent reading : October & November 2023

— Howard Waldrop. H’ard Starts. The Early Waldrop. Edited by George R. R. Martin and Bradley Denton. [Subterranean Press, 2023]. Edition of 750 copies.
Collects nearly two dozen pieces described by Waldrop as “What I Wrote Before I Could Write” which is of course nonsense. “Lunchbox” was his first professional fiction sale, a Mars landing. “Onions, Charles Ives, and the Rock Novel” (an early piece written for Crawdaddy!), extrapolates from the posthumous production of Ives’ Fourth Symphony what would later become known as the “rock opera”. The four-part interview by Bradley Denton is great fun.

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Max Beerbohm, ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti in His Back Garden’

— Margaret D. Stetz and Mark Samuels Lasner. Max Beerbohm: The Price of Celebrity. New York Public Library, 2023.
This handsome little book presents the exhibition labels for the Beerbohm show drawing on the NYPL collection, Lasner’s collection at the University of Delaware, and other lenders. The book (96 pp.) is rich and instructive, the exhibition is fabulous: Max’s drawing of the Devil proposing the bargain with Enoch Soames; a superb portrait of his wife Florence Kahn in six dancing poses like a Greek frieze; Rossetti’s courtship of Elizabeth Siddal; caricatures of Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, and the red-headed Aubrey Beardsley; and “Mr. Beerbohm reading Mrs. Woolf”, a little sketch of himself falling asleep, in perfect imitation of the Vanessa Bell cover for her sister’s book; and more. The effect is a dense studio style hanging of drawings in a tiny room, and it works.

Max Beerbohm’s ‘improved’ copy of Zuleika Dobson

Go see it : https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/max-beerbohm (through 28 January 2024)
The guide is available online: https://drupal.nypl.org/sites-drupal/default/files/2023-10/MaxBeerbohm_PrintedGuide.pdf

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— Kenneth W. Rendell. Safeguarding History. Trailblazing Adventures inside the Worlds of Collecting and Forging History. Foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Whitman Publishing, [2023].
Memoir by the eminent autograph expert and bookman, from humble origins to international success. The accounts of uncovering forgeries are case studies of self-delusion by those who wanted to believe, and of Rendell’s clear thinking and basic skepticism. To read the book is to hear the author’s cadences and manner of speaking, very nicely done. The chapter on forming the library of Bill and Melinda Gates (and the logistics of its installation) is really something.

— John Howard and Mark Valentine. Possessions and Pursuits. Sarob Press, 2023.
Short novel by Howard, Fallen Sun, and two short stories by Mark Valentine, “Masque and Anti Masque” and “The Prospero Machine”. Third volume of tributes to the metaphysical novels of “Inkling” Charles Williams.

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— Maureen Kincaid Spiller. A Traveller in Time. The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Spiller. Edited and with an introduction by Nina Allan. [Foreword by Paul Kincaid]. Academia Lunare | Luna Press Publishing [i.e., POD printed in U.S.A., 8 September 2023].
An excellent memorial volume assembling essays and reviews from her website Paper Knife and from Strange Horizons (chiefly 2010-2022, with a handful of earlier pieces), arranged thematically. The section on British author Alan Garner is fascinating as it shows her thinking about his work over decades (the earliest is from 1987; and the most recent is the last piece she published, in 2022). From the preface: “It was this notion, I think, this sense that everything we read is part of an ongoing and unending exploration, that convinced her to start reviewing. It was certainly the guiding principle behind the criticism she did write.”

— Jean-Claude Izzo. Chourmo. Une enquête de Fabio Montale [1996]. Gallimard [Folio policier, 2022].
Marseille crime novel.

— Sarban. The Doll Maker and other tales of the uncanny. Peter Davies, [1953].

— Cyril Connolly. The Modern Movement. One Hundred Key Books from England, France and America 1880-1950. André Deutsch / Hamish Hamilton, [1965].

— Charles Renouvier. Uchronie (L’Utopie dans l’histoire). Esquisse historique apocryphe du développement de la civilisation européenne tel qu’il n’a pas été, qu’il aurait pu être. Bureau de Critique Philosophique, 1876.

— Alexander Ames and Mark Samuels Lasner. Grolier Club Bookplates Past & Present. With contributions by William E. Butler and Molly Dotson. Illustrated. The Grolier Club, 2023.