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HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING SCHEDULED
WHEN: April 5, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT
WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom
TOPIC: Time Enough For Love

Following on our discussion of The Number of the Beast and the World as Myth, the next Heinlein Readers Group meeting will be devoted to discussion of the book Time Enough For Love. One of Heinlein's longest works, this book is the capstone of the Future History series. It revived the Lazarus Long character, yet it's about a lot more than just his adventures. First, because it weaves together many other stories that LL is relating, sort of like the flashbacks on the TV show Lost: they're related stories, tell us something about why the characters are the way they are now, but they're also interested in their own right. But Heinlein used LL's unique perspective on life to make observations about it (exactly what the Howards wanted from him: his wisdom). Topics that the book addresses include the significance and meaning of life, self-awareness, love, and relationships. *Does* age bring wisdom? LL is a litmus test. Did the Howards get what they wanted/needed in saving him? As usual in Heinlein, there are many minor themes woven in as well, such as observations on the nature and business of government.

Heinlein combined many influences in creating this book. One is Vincent McHugh's Caleb Catlum's America---hugely popular when it was published in 1936, but now largely forgotten and hard to come by. To quote Bill Patterson: "There are some passages in the Archivist's remarks that are almost taken verbatim from the author's introduction to CCA -- a redheaded (and polymorphous perverse as taught by his grandfather, does any of this ring bells) immortal who had led his families in a flight from persecution." I hope that someone who has read Caleb Catlum's America can join the discussion to fill us in on it.

Please join us,
Tim Morgan, for The Heinlein Society

Just bringing this up top for everyone to remind you that this Thursday is the day. See you there.

JaneE!

> Tim Morgan wrote:
>> HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING SCHEDULED
>> WHEN: April 5, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT
>> WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom
>> TOPIC: Time Enough For Love

>> Following on our discussion of The Number of the Beast and the World
>> as Myth, the next Heinlein Readers Group meeting will be devoted to
>> discussion of the book Time Enough For Love.  One of Heinlein's
>> longest works, this book is the capstone of the Future History
>> series.  It revived the Lazarus Long character, yet it's about a lot
>> more than just his adventures.  First, because it weaves together many
>> other stories that LL is relating, sort of like the flashbacks on the
>> TV show Lost: they're related stories, tell us something about why the
>> characters are the way they are now, but they're also interested in
>> their own right.  But Heinlein used LL's unique perspective on life to
>> make observations about it (exactly what the Howards wanted from him:
>> his wisdom).  Topics that the book addresses include the significance
>> and meaning of life, self-awareness, love, and relationships.   *Does*
>> age bring wisdom? LL is a litmus test.  Did the Howards get what they
>> wanted/needed in saving him?  As usual in Heinlein, there are many
>> minor themes woven in as well, such as observations on the nature and
>> business of government.

>> Heinlein combined many influences in creating this book.  One is
>> Vincent McHugh's Caleb Catlum's America---hugely popular when it was
>> published in 1936, but now largely forgotten and hard to come by.  To
>> quote Bill Patterson: "There are some passages in the Archivist's
>> remarks that are almost taken verbatim from the author's introduction
>> to CCA -- a redheaded (and polymorphous perverse as taught by his
>> grandfather, does any of this ring bells) immortal who had led his
>> families in a flight from persecution."  I hope that someone who has
>> read Caleb Catlum's America can join the discussion to fill us in on
>> it.

>> Please join us,
>> Tim Morgan, for The Heinlein Society

> Just bringing this up top for everyone to remind you that this
> Thursday is the day.  See you there.

And I _may_ even be able to infest this one. Someone keep an eye peeled, 'cause I'll need an invite, I think.

Rtb

Seeing as how there haven't been many responses, I would suggest that you might want to check out previous discussions to get some ideas.

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_10-12-2000.html

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_10-14-2000.html

David Wright Sr.

In article <1173721906.332010.232...@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com>,
 "Tim Morgan" <morgan...@gmail.com> wrote:

> HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING SCHEDULED
> WHEN: April 5, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT
> WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom
> TOPIC: Time Enough For Love

The log for the 04/05/07 meeting of the Heinlein Readers Group is now available at:

http://heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_04-05-2007.html

The participants in the last reading group meeting decided at its end that one meeting wasn't enough to cover enough of _Time Enough for Love_, so it was agreed to continue discussing it in a second meeting. Mr. Morgan will let us know the date, which should be within four weeks.

The stories of _Time Enough for Love_ seemingly tied up the "Future History" series that began chronologically with "Life-Line" and continued on in time through "Universe" and its sequel "Common Sense," the two parts as _Orphans in the Sky_.

From 1939, probably some time after _For Us, the Living_ was written, while Heinlein's series of short stories were being conceived Heinlein created a chart laying out the various stories, projected, that would be included. John Campbell, who coined the term "Future History" published an early draft of the chart in the February 1941 issue of "Astounding Science-Fiction."

It contained several stories that would never been written, so far as we know, one close to the beginning, "Word Edgewise," one after "The Green Hills of Earth" to have been named "Fire Down Below," three in the gap between "Logic of Empire" and _"If This Goes On --"_ dealing with the rise of Nehemiah Scudder and the generation long process of revolution against the Prophets, "The Sound of His Wings," Eclipse," and "The Stone Pillow," and a final story after the two parts of Orphans, titled "Da Capo."

We can only speculate about the content of "Word Edgewise," perhaps it would have involved Semantics somehow. We know "Fire Down Below" would have involved a revolution in Antarctica, and would have been set in the early 21st century, because Heinlein told us about it in a postscript to the collection _Revolt in 2100_. We know from the same postscript about the three others. "The Sound Of His Wings" covers Nehemiah Scudder's early life as a television evangelist through his rise to power as the First Prophet. "Eclipse" describes independence movements on Mars and Venus. "The Stone Pillow" details the rise of the resistance movement from the early days of the theocracy through the beginning of _"If This Goes On --"_.

But _Da Capo_ was written. Not as a stand alone short, novella, or novel; but as the final part of _Time Enough for Love_.

The form of _Time Enough for Love_ has been criticized by some ignorant reviewers as not conforming to a more regular form of a Novel. They're right. It isn't a novel. What makes their criticism meaningless is its form is that of an Anatomy, the same form as the 17th century scholar and cleryman Robert Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ or another well-known work by a different Burton (explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, KCMG FRGS (1821­1890), the translation of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night (sometimes called "1001 Arabian Nights"), a collection of stories compiled over centuries by various Arabian authors, translators and scholars.

What makes the "criticism" especially meaningless is Heinlein's direct reference to The Nights and those tales in the opening of TEfL, when Ira, Minerva, and Lazarus Long expressly refer to Queen Scheherazade's life-saving ploy to keep up Lazarus' own interest in life.

An "anatomy" is a collection of writings, part fiction, part not, perhaps including essays or dissertations on subjects of interest, lists, aphorisms, humorous asides, stories within stories, what-nots and what-have-yous, designed with a certain end in view, whether to induce Persian King Shahryar to preserve Scheherazade's life to hear more, or Lazarus' to tell more, or by amusing each of them, or something else, such as to cure the reader's melancholy, including love's melancholy, as was the first Burton's desire. (Love melancholy is the subject of the third part of Robert Burton's _Anatomy_. A master of narrative, Burton includes as examples most of the world's great love stories, showing a 17th century approach to psychological problems.)

My approach to an overall assessment of Time Enough for Love is to determine what Heinlein may have had as an end in view. Why is Da Capo the title of the final portion of the long series of stories?

Da Capo means "return to the beginning" (and replay it in music).

What do you think that means? Why?

The Da Capo chapters are introduced with certain Variations on a Theme, including "Bacchanalia," which were wild, mystic, secret, originally women-only festivals of the Roman god Bacchus, and, progressively, three forms of love, "Agape," "Eros," and "Narcissus."

There follows a love story in Da Capo which can be described as Oedipal, with undertones of an Electra complex working as well (Maureen for Dr. Ira Johnson). Heinlein disliked Freudian criticism. Why did he challenge his critics with such an appealing invitation?

George Slusser bit hard on this bait:

   Lazarus Long explicitly refuses to leave the world of matter, and
   only then is granted time enough for love. Not only is the term
   purely quantitative in nature, but the loving always turns out to be
   the physical thing, and nothing more. He yearns to establish a full
   love, spiritual as well as carnal, with the woman he was destined (as
   her child) never to know. But his self-control is merely libidinous
   teasing, destined to whet both his appetite and ours, and when it
   finally comes, his love-making gives us the most vulgar scene in this
   book.
               -- George Edgar Slusser: _Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger
               in His Own Land_, pp. 48-9 (Bongo, 19776).

What do you think is going on here?

-- 

David M. Silver
http://www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
     Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29
     Lt.(jg), USN, R'td

"David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote in news:ag.plusone-
50D497.19075913042...@individual.net:

> The log for the 04/05/07 meeting of the Heinlein Readers Group is now
> available at:

> http://heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_04-05-2007.html

> The participants in the last reading group meeting decided at its end
> that one meeting wasn't enough to cover enough of _Time Enough for
> Love_, so it was agreed to continue discussing it in a second meeting.
> Mr. Morgan will let us know the date, which should be within four weeks.

(snip)

When Justin Foote is joining the family on Tertius, LL explains what he is getting into.

"[Lazarus] What it amounts to, Justin, is three fathers-four, with you-three mothers, but four when Minerva asks to have her adolescence protection canceled-an ever-cbanging number of kids to be taught and spanked and loved- plus always the possibility of the number of parents being either enhanced or diminished. But this is my house, in my name, and I've kept it that way because I planned it to house one family, not to make life jolly for goats such as Galahad-"

[Galahad] "But it does! Thank you, Pappy darling."

[Lazarus] "-but for the welfare of children. I've seen catastrophe strike colonies that looked as safe as this one. Justin, a disaster could wipe out all but one mother and father in this family, and our kids would still grow up normally and happily. This is the only long-run purpose of a family. We think our setup insures that purpose more than a one-couple family can. When you join, you commit yourself to that purpose--thafs all."

[Justin] I took a deep breath. "Where do I sign?"

[Lazarus] "I see no use in written marriage contracts; they can't be enforced .. whereas if the partners want to make it work, no written instrument is necessary. H you seriously want to join us, a nod of your head is enough."

This passage ties in directly to what Heinlein said in his 1973 Forrestal Lecture at Annapolis:(and spoke about in _Starship Troopers_)

His explanation of 'morality' included the following quotes. I have marked each quote with the levels that he identified.

Self: "The simplest form of moral behavior is when a man or other animal fights or struggles for his own survival."

Family:" The next higher level is to work, struggle, fight, and sometimes die for your own unit family."

'Tribe':"The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for a group larger than the unit family -- extended family, herd, tribe"

Nation: "The next level in moral behavior … is that in which duty and loyalty are exhibited toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them personally"

Mankind: "The astronauts who went to the Moon were behaving morally on a still higher level, the highest level H. sapiens has as yet achieved, for their actions tend toward survival of the entire race of mankind."

--
David Wright Sr.

David Wright Sr. wrote:
> (snip)

> When Justin Foote is joining the family on Tertius, LL
> explains what
> he is getting into.

> "[Lazarus] What it amounts to, Justin, is three
> fathers-four, with
> you-three mothers, but four when Minerva asks to have her
> adolescence
> protection canceled-an ever-cbanging number of kids to be
> taught and
> spanked and loved- plus always the possibility of the
> number of
> parents being either enhanced or diminished. But this is
> my house, in
> my name, and I've kept it that way because I planned it to
> house one
> family, not to make life jolly for goats such as Galahad-"

> [Galahad] "But it does! Thank you, Pappy darling."

> [Lazarus] "-but for the welfare of children. I've seen
> catastrophe
> strike colonies that looked as safe as this one. Justin, a
> disaster
> could wipe out all but one mother and father in this
> family, and our
> kids would still grow up normally and happily. This is the
> only
> long-run purpose of a family. We think our setup insures
> that purpose
> more than a one-couple family can. When you join, you
> commit yourself
> to that purpose--thafs all."

> [Justin] I took a deep breath. "Where do I sign?"

> [Lazarus] "I see no use in written marriage contracts;
> they can't be
> enforced .. whereas if the partners want to make it work,
> no written
> instrument is necessary. H you seriously want to join us,
> a nod of
> your head is enough."

> This passage ties in directly to what Heinlein said in his
> 1973
> Forrestal Lecture at Annapolis:(and spoke about in
> _Starship
> Troopers_)

> His explanation of 'morality' included the following
> quotes. I have
> marked each quote with the levels that he identified.

> Self: "The simplest form of moral behavior is when a man
> or other
> animal fights or struggles for his own survival."

> Family:" The next higher level is to work, struggle,
> fight, and
> sometimes die for your own unit family."

> 'Tribe':"The next higher level is to work, fight, and
> sometimes die
> for a group larger than the unit family -- extended
> family, herd,
> tribe"

> Nation: "The next level in moral behavior . is that in
> which duty and
> loyalty are exhibited toward a group of your own kind too
> large for
> an individual to know all of them personally"

> Mankind: "The astronauts who went to the Moon were
> behaving morally
> on a still higher level, the highest level H. sapiens has
> as yet
> achieved, for their actions tend toward survival of the
> entire race
> of mankind."

Thanks for the reminder, David.

If I may add (to the list of moral actors favoring Mankind headed by "the astronauts who went to the Moon... "):

the astronauts and other explorers who didn't go to the Moon but who risk and sometimes give their lives to extend our species' habitat;
researchers who dedicate their lives to adding useful things to what we know;
teachers who dedicate their lives to spreading that knowledge to the rest of us;
physicians who dedicate their lives to keeping the rest of us healthy;
statesmen who dedicate their lives to maintaining the civilization in which we live;
and the soldiers who defend what is right and just so the rest of us may live in peace.

There are many, many other entries I have omitted - not deliberately.

Crash!
-- 
Vance P. Frickey

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they
infect the soul
with evil." -- Socrates 

On Apr 13, 7:07 pm, "David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote:

> The participants in the last reading group meeting decided at its end
> that one meeting wasn't enough to cover enough of _Time Enough for
> Love_, so it was agreed to continue discussing it in a second meeting.
> Mr. Morgan will let us know the date, which should be within four weeks.

I was originally thinking that we would hold this meeting on May 10th. However, I'm going to be on a trip on one of the first 3 Thursdays in May, and I won't know for probably a couple of weeks exactly when that will be. So let's say tentatively that we'll meet on the 10th, and I'll let everyone know as soon as I do if we need to change to a different date.

Sorry I can't be more sure at this point,
Tim

In article <Xns99126ECFDF2CFnokva...@208.49.80.253>,
 "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

[snip]

> When Justin Foote is joining the family on Tertius, LL explains what he is
> getting into.

> "[Lazarus] What it amounts to, Justin, is three fathers-four, with you-three
> mothers, but four when Minerva asks to have her adolescence protection
> canceled-an ever-cbanging number of kids to be taught and spanked and loved-
> plus always the possibility of the number of parents being either enhanced or
> diminished. But this is my house, in my name, and I've kept it that way
> because I planned it to house one family, not to make life jolly for goats
> such as Galahad-"

> [Galahad] "But it does! Thank you, Pappy darling."

> [Lazarus] "-but for the welfare of children. I've seen catastrophe strike
> colonies that looked as safe as this one. Justin, a disaster could wipe out
> all but one mother and father in this family, and our kids would still grow
> up normally and happily. This is the only long-run purpose of a family. We
> think our setup insures that purpose more than a one-couple family can. When
> you join, you commit yourself to that purpose--thafs all."

> [Justin] I took a deep breath. "Where do I sign?"

> [Lazarus] "I see no use in written marriage contracts; they can't be enforced
> .. whereas if the partners want to make it work, no written instrument is
> necessary. H you seriously want to join us, a nod of your head is enough."

> This passage ties in directly to what Heinlein said in his 1973 Forrestal
> Lecture at Annapolis:(and spoke about in _Starship Troopers_)

> His explanation of 'morality' included the following quotes. I have marked
> each quote with the levels that he identified.

> Self: "The simplest form of moral behavior is when a man or other animal
> fights or struggles for his own survival."

> Family:" The next higher level is to work, struggle, fight, and sometimes die
> for your own unit family."

> 'Tribe':"The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for a
> group larger than the unit family -- extended family, herd, tribe"

> Nation: "The next level in moral behavior … is that in which duty and loyalty
> are exhibited toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to
> know all of them personally"

> Mankind: "The astronauts who went to the Moon were behaving morally on a
> still higher level, the highest level H. sapiens has as yet achieved, for
> their actions tend toward survival of the entire race of mankind."

Isn't that the same lesson we'd have learned by watching one episode of the recently-cancelled "The Black Donnelleys" on NBC? E.g., "family always first." Isn't it just a restatement of the same notion held by the Stone Gang in TMIAHM? If not, tell me why, please. What's the point so far as the overall theme in _Time Enough for Love_ is concerned, David? Isn't Heinlein just repeating himself?

Think about it for a moment: what Long has done is simply swoop down when he decided and while he was leaving Secundus and skimmed off some of the cream. Now he's transplanted them to a hothouse colony that doesn't apparently require the hard work and effort to overcome dangers such as were in Happy Valley, but used a sledgehammer approach to colonization that allows him in a few short months or years to create a villa, a Garden of Allah, if you will, suitable to Petronius the Arbiter to house his conglomeration of willing sex partners of both genders in luxury under his benign and absolute dictatorship (a seeming anarchy, until push comes to shove) and rear in comfort the unnamed brats who are allowed to occasionally result, assuming their genetics satisfy whichever computer is running the show at the time. His massive accumulated wealth created and sustains this. He enjoys a monopoly on several things, not the least of which are the long-life therapies, for his corner of the universe. They'll always have to come to him for the products of those monopolies, just as they'll always have to listen kindly to whatever prattle he spouts at the dinner table. There may be a "catastrophe" coming from somewhere; but so far as appears none is on or below any horizon we know of. What does the creation of Boondock prove, exactly, that any billionaire's vacation retreat doesn't? The fact that Hearst built Hearst's castle didn't prove anything except that he could build it--and serve cheap catsup in refilled bottles to guests who came to dine, and who had to similarly listen to whatever prattle Hearst spouted.

What's the point of Boondock?

-- 
David M. Silver
http://www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
     Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29
     Lt.(jg), USN, R'td

"David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote in
news:ag.plusone-3E7663.13154415042007@individual.net:

> In article <Xns99126ECFDF2CFnokva...@208.49.80.253>,
>  "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

(snip)

> Isn't that the same lesson we'd have learned by watching one episode of
> the recently-cancelled "The Black Donnelleys" on NBC? E.g., "family
> always first." Isn't it just a restatement of the same notion held by
> the Stone Gang in TMIAHM? If not, tell me why, please.

I never watched "The Black Donnelleys" so I am not sure how it figures. If you are saying that 'family always first' means that nothing beyond the family is important, I would disagree with you with respect to LL. As for the Stone Gang, I don't see the relevance. The only 'Stone Gang' member we see in TMIAHM is Slim Lemke.

Mannie, on the other hand, was a member of the Davis Family and they put their lives in jeopardy by joining in the revolution to try to free Luna exhibiting exactly the kind of 'moral behavior' talked about at Annapolis.

>What's the point
> so far as the overall theme in _Time Enough for Love_ is concerned,
> David? Isn't Heinlein just repeating himself?

The themes of self-responsibility and freedom are repeated throughout Heinlein's works. I don't see it as a problem.

> Think about it for a moment: what Long has done is simply swoop down
> when he decided and while he was leaving Secundus and skimmed off some
> of the cream.

I have to disagree with the characterization that LL 'swooped down'. He went to Secundus to die. He failed in this only through tremendous efforts of all of those who became his family later.

The migration was Ira's and he had been thinking about it long before LL came to Secundus. He remained as Colony Leader, 'the supreme arbitrator' after they came to Tertius. Lazarus did not plan to go on it initially as he saw it as something he had already done a number of times. When the time trip became a possibility, and after he had regained a desire to live, the migration simply provided him a way to be with his new family until and, hopefully, after the time trips became possible.

As for 'skimming off the cream'. Yes, that is, according to the texts about it, one of the reasons for it, to move that 'Bell Curve' higher and produce a better band of people. I don't know if that is true. but it is certainly supported textually.

>Now he's transplanted them to a hothouse colony that
> doesn't apparently require the hard work and effort to overcome dangers
> such as were in Happy Valley,

True, although it is not stated that *all* hard work and effort have been eliminated for everyone and LL is clearly aware that even the appearance of a benign environment can produce unforeseen dangers.

>but used a sledgehammer approach to
> colonization that allows him in a few short months or years to create a
> villa, a Garden of Allah, if you will, suitable to Petronius the Arbiter
> to house his conglomeration of willing sex partners of both genders

Why shouldn't they be willing. They loved him and were his *family*, wives and husbands.

> in
> luxury under his benign and absolute dictatorship (a seeming anarchy,
> until push comes to shove)

I don't see any evidence of this. What is the textual evidence, the fact that he disrupted the normal protocol of a dinner to shift all discussion to the story of the re-discovered Vanguard?

>and rear in comfort the unnamed brats who are
> allowed to occasionally result, assuming their genetics satisfy
> whichever computer is running the show at the time.

Actually, IIRC, Ishtar was the one who looked at genetic charts for problems of incompatibility and so forth, and I see no evidence that any were 'occasionally allowed to result'.

>His massive
> accumulated wealth created and sustains this. He enjoys a monopoly on
> several things, not the least of which are the long-life therapies, for
> his corner of the universe. They'll always have to come to him for the
> products of those monopolies,

I really think that you are reading motives into people that are simply not supported by the text. Even in the days of New Beginnings, Howards were able to return to Secundus to be rejuvenated and there is no reason why they couldn't do so now. The family providing re-juve and other services simply makes it easier for all around as well as providing income to the family.

>just as they'll always have to listen
> kindly to whatever prattle he spouts at the dinner table.

Who was holding a gun against their head making them stay? Besides at the one dinner party we see, much of the 'prattle' was from Ira and Justin.

>There may be a
> "catastrophe" coming from somewhere; but so far as appears none is on or
> below any horizon we know of.

Right we don't see any and they didn't, but they doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. LL and Libby didn't foresee the problems that occurred on New Beginnings either, but they wiped out a large part of the colony there.

>What does the creation of Boondock prove,
> exactly, that any billionaire's vacation retreat doesn't? The fact that
> Hearst built Hearst's castle didn't prove anything except that he could
> build it--and serve cheap catsup in refilled bottles to guests who came
> to dine, and who had to similarly listen to whatever prattle Hearst
> spouted.

Analogies are always suspect. LL was not Hearst.

> What's the point of Boondock?

The point of Boondock was that people were sufficiently dissatisfied with life on Secundus that over a 100,000 people tried to sign up to migrate there. They saw a chance for a better life, most likely more difficult than what they were used to even if it wasn't as hard as it been a 1,000 years before on places like New Beginnings.

David Wright Sr.
-- 
A structure of language perpetuating identification reactions keeps us on the
level of primitive or prescientific types of evaluation, stressing
similarities and neglecting (not consciously), differences. Thus, we do not
"see" differences and react as if two objects, persons, or happenings were
"the Same".
Alfred Korzybski , "The Role of Language in the Perceptual Process"

In article <Xns9913C84D38E0Fnokva...@208.49.80.253>,
 "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

> "David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote in
> news:ag.plusone-3E7663.13154415042007@individual.net:

> > In article <Xns99126ECFDF2CFnokva...@208.49.80.253>,
> >  "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

> (snip)

> Let's take this one point at a time.

Fine with me, so long as you fairly answer the questions that way. You won't mind when I point it out when you don't, I'm sure.

> > Isn't that the same lesson we'd have learned by watching one episode of
> > the recently-cancelled "The Black Donnelleys" on NBC? E.g., "family
> > always first." Isn't it just a restatement of the same notion held by
> > the Stone Gang in TMIAHM? If not, tell me why, please.

> I never watched "The Black Donnelleys" so I am not sure how it figures. If
> you are saying that 'family always first' means that nothing beyond the
> family is important, I would disagree with you with respect to LL.

That's not what "The Black Donnellys" teaches--there's loyalty the neighborhood, and the community too. It's just that family comes first; but you didn't watch it and you're not prepared to infer anything from what I've written.

> As for the
> Stone Gang, I don't see the relevance. The only 'Stone Gang' member we see in
> TMIAHM is Slim Lemke.

Tilt. Speak for yourself. "We" see some members of the "Davis" family as members of the 'Stone Gang,' by birthright. Don't take my word for it, take Manny's:

   Maternal grandmother claimed she came up in bride ship--but I've seen
   records; she was Peace Corps enrollee (involuntary), which means what
   you think: juvenile delinquency female type. As she was in early clan
   marriage (Stone Gang) and shared six husbands with another woman,
   identity of maternal grandfather open to question. But was often so
   and I'm content with grandpappy she picked.

Manny, a member of the Stone Gang, opted and married into the Davis family. Later, Slim (aka "Moses Lemke Stone; member of Stone Gang") married Hazel. Hazel took Slim's name and (as Gwen) refers in Cat to her family as the Stone Gang ("Slim got Hazel to change name to Stone, two kids and she studied engineering."). That name was taken back by her after a couple other marriages, carried on by her son, Roger, and grandsons, Castor and Pollux (and Meade perhaps only until she got married, and Buster the doctor).

(Manny on finding the relationship:

"This pleased me, we were relatives.
But surprised me. However, even best families such as Stones sometimes
can't always find marriages for all sons; I had been lucky or might have
been roving corridors at his age, too.")

> Mannie, on the other hand, was a member of the Davis Family and they put
> their lives in jeopardy by joining in the revolution to try to free Luna
> exhibiting exactly the kind of 'moral behavior' talked about at Annapolis.

They tried because Manny got involved over Wyoh, was kind to an old bomb-throwing terrorist, and wanted to find his lonesome computer a few "not-stupids" to play with. Later, Manny wonders whether starvation might not have been a better thing. "Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden. Prof got fascinated by possibilities for shaping future that lay in a big, smart computer--and lost track of things closer home. Oh, I backed him! But now I wonder. Are food riots too high a price to pay to let people be? I don't know."

This isn't Heinlein, but it's pretty well established that a maximum of only about forty percent of the people ever support a revolution--even counting summer soldiers and sunshine patriots and all that. Where does it say in anything about the young baboons starting a revolution in the Forrestal Address? (That reminds me of an "Irish joke" I won't tell here.)

> >What's the point
> > so far as the overall theme in _Time Enough for Love_ is concerned,
> > David? Isn't Heinlein just repeating himself?

> The themes of self-responsibility and freedom are repeated throughout
> Heinlein's works. I don't see it as a problem.

Is that all that you see as the purpose of Boondock? Letting them be free and self-responsible? I see them as Lazarus Long's pampered pets--highly skilled technicians some of them--enjoying Elysium. Tell me: what do they do except prattle about different versions of love, and "shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--and cabbages--and kings"; make love to each other, and count the money as it rolls in? They can't have a lot of business yet; Ira didn't select large numbers of folk who immediately needed rejuvenation, did he? Where's the text support that? They've got enough free time they're field testing with Minerva's clone and growing her up.

> > Think about it for a moment: what Long has done is simply swoop down
> > when he decided and while he was leaving Secundus and skimmed off some
> > of the cream.

> I have to disagree with the characterization that LL 'swooped down'. He went
> to Secundus to die. He failed in this only through tremendous efforts of all
> of those who became his family later.

And at the end, if he hadn't 'swooped down' and taken the gavel, Ira's successor would have prevented the migration and probably sent Ira off to whatever planet it was he used for a coventry.

There would have been no migration. No freedom or self-responsibility in your terms.

> The migration was Ira's and he had been thinking about it long before LL came
> to Secundus. He remained as Colony Leader, 'the supreme arbitrator' after
> they came to Tertius.

Ira remained as titular leader. Lazarus was what he will always be: "the Senior," fully in change whenever and for whatever reason he wants. I think 'swooped down' is a great characterization of his Jovian powers.

> Lazarus did not plan to go on it initially as he saw it
> as something he had already done a number of times. When the time trip became
> a possibility, and after he had regained a desire to live,

You forgot about "after he got tricked into having two daughter/clone sisters" impregnated into two of his wives to be, and was then obliged to raise them to maturity.

> the migration
> simply provided him a way to be with his new family until and, hopefully,
> after the time trips became possible.

> As for 'skimming off the cream'. Yes, that is, according to the texts about
> it, one of the reasons for it, to move that 'Bell Curve' higher and produce a
> better band of people. I don't know if that is true. but it is certainly
> supported textually.

So you agree then with both Franklin and Smith that Heinlein is a Social Darwinist, that the purpose of Boondock is simply to create a lab in which social darwinism can take place? Just like the red monkeys in _Friday_. Is that it? Why bring up Bell Curves, David, otherwise? Is the term even used by Heinlein in TEfL? You're drawing an implication that even Heinlein might distain. He did, you know, later. Pick one side or another. Imply as I do or be a literal reader and seek "textual" support. Don't slide from one to the other as it suits your convenience in argument--unless you admit it when you argue one against the other.

> > Now he's transplanted them to a hothouse colony that
> > doesn't apparently require the hard work and effort to overcome dangers
> > such as were in Happy Valley,

> True, although it is not stated that *all* hard work and effort have been
> eliminated for everyone and LL is clearly aware that even the appearance of a
> benign environment can produce unforeseen dangers.

Yeah, but meanwhile here there are: pampered pets living in luxury, prattling on about cabbages and kings and counting the money as it rolls in. I suppose there could be a subclass of "little people," less well-bankrolled than Lazarus' family who are out there pioneering to build farms, etc., but so far as greater efforts are required, as you say, "the text doesn't support it." He used the word "sledgehammer." That implies to me terra-forming wherever and whatever else is necessary. There aren't any stobor, Deacon Matson would be sad to find; and no dragon carcasses either to stink up the place.

> > but used a sledgehammer approach to
> > colonization that allows him in a few short months or years to create a
> > villa, a Garden of Allah, if you will, suitable to Petronius the Arbiter
> > to house his conglomeration of willing sex partners of both genders

> Why shouldn't they be willing. They loved him and were his *family*, wives
> and husbands.

What happens when they get bored and want to take up pirating? (That's why I compared it to a rich man's vacation estate, later on, David.)

> > in
> > luxury under his benign and absolute dictatorship (a seeming anarchy,
> > until push comes to shove)

> I don't see any evidence of this. What is the textual evidence, the fact that
> he disrupted the normal protocol of a dinner to shift all discussion to the
> story of the re-discovered Vanguard?

Very amusing. No, it's the gavel he's always able to pick up. Read the texts, please, if that's what you wish to do.

> > and rear in comfort the unnamed brats who are
> > allowed to occasionally result, assuming their genetics satisfy
> > whichever computer is running the show at the time.

> Actually, IIRC, Ishtar was the one who looked at genetic charts for problems
> of incompatibility and so forth, and I see no evidence that any were
> 'occasionally allowed to result'.

Ishtar "looked" while Minerva/and later Athena computed. It's always nice to have triple checks, I suppose. Reread the conversation with Justin when he arrives. Laz counts the kiddies for him. Doesn't dignify them with names, just gives their number, as though they were puppies.

>  His massive
> > accumulated wealth created and sustains this. He enjoys a monopoly on
> > several things, not the least of which are the long-life therapies, for
> > his corner of the universe. They'll always have to come to him for the
> > products of those monopolies,

> I really think that you are reading motives into people that are simply not
> supported by the text. Even in the days of New Beginnings, Howards were able
> to return to Secundus to be rejuvenated and there is no reason why they
> couldn't do so now.

Except money, time and distance. Secundus is so far away that Lazarus ridicules whatername's, Arabella's, commands to him; and decides to add insult by "accepting" delivery of the transport that his wide-spread wealth owns. As to money, how many years indenture do you suppose Colin Campbell thought he was going to be charged in Cat? How much just for the legs? What did the other guy sign up for? What's the difference between an indenture and slavery? Read Charles and Mary Beard's essays on colonial America, as I'm sure Heinlein did, before you answer, please. You can find them on Gutenberg.

I'm sure the little people out there struggling to build farms or whatever other economy supports Boondock for the aristocracy such as Lazarus to live in comfort are oblivious to the choke hold he has on their future. How long before assassination attempts start? Did a Professor Bernardo something or other arrive on the last shipload? If so, sooner than Lazarus thinks.

> The family providing re-juve and other services simply
> makes it easier for all around as well as providing income to the family.

Too true. For sufficient amounts of $$$$ Laz will sell you everything, except maybe his family as slaves. His keeps his family "close at hand" (as the Donnellys or Italians would say), some indentured, so he can take them on little jaunts, as we see later. You know the kind, where Colin and Hazel bleed out in half the universes. Where even Maureen spends weeks or months recovering from burns when the aid station gets hit. That rejuvenation will come with a price tag. See the negotiations involving Hazel and Jubal in L'envoi. Everything has a price tag. Note Sharpie's hot tub negotiations with Laz in Number. Tanstaafl.

>  just as they'll always have to listen
> > kindly to whatever prattle he spouts at the dinner table.

> Who was holding a gun against their head making them stay? Besides at the one
> dinner party we see, much of the 'prattle' was from Ira and Justin.

No one ever held a gun at anyone's head to listen to Hearst's dinner conversation, either. Presidents, governors, movie stars, writers, even Winston Churchill. They all enjoyed being on the "A-list."

> > There may be a
> > "catastrophe" coming from somewhere; but so far as appears none is on or
> > below any horizon we know of.

> Right we don't see any and they didn't, but they doesn't mean that it
> couldn't happen. LL and Libby didn't foresee the problems that occurred on
> New Beginnings either, but they wiped out a large part of the colony there.

I think Libby had met the cave bear described in Number by then. Laz was in partnership with one of his sons on New Beginnings, iirc.

>  What does the creation of Boondock prove,
> > exactly, that any billionaire's vacation retreat doesn't? The fact that
> > Hearst built Hearst's castle didn't prove anything except that he could
> > build it--and serve cheap catsup in refilled bottles to guests who came
> > to dine, and who had to similarly listen to whatever prattle Hearst
> > spouted.

> Analogies are always suspect. LL was not Hearst.

Nope, he wasn't. Hearst had a newspaper chain. Laz had multiple enterprises that dwarfed a little chain in one country on an insignificant planet. Prove the analogy is suspect here, please.

> > What's the point of Boondock?

> The point of Boondock was that people were sufficiently dissatisfied with
> life on Secundus that over a 100,000 people tried to sign up to migrate
> there. They saw a chance for a better life, most likely more difficult than
> what they were used to even if it wasn't as hard as it been a 1,000 years
> before on places like New Beginnings.

Is that all the point you see? Heinlein repeating himself, that's it?

I think there might be a little more. Anyone else see what it could be? David? Others?

-- 
David M. Silver
http://www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
     Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29
     Lt.(jg), USN, R'td

"David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote in
news:ag.plusone-A4D663.20043915042007@individual.net:

> In article <Xns9913C84D38E0Fnokva...@208.49.80.253>,
>  "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

>> "David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote in
>> news:ag.plusone-3E7663.13154415042007@individual.net:

>> > In article <Xns99126ECFDF2CFnokva...@208.49.80.253>,
>> >  "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

>> (snip)

>> Let's take this one point at a time.

> Fine with me, so long as you fairly answer the questions that way. You
> won't mind when I point it out when you don't, I'm sure.

>> > Isn't that the same lesson we'd have learned by watching one episode
>> > of the recently-cancelled "The Black Donnelleys" on NBC? E.g.,
>> > "family always first." Isn't it just a restatement of the same notion
>> > held by the Stone Gang in TMIAHM? If not, tell me why, please.

>> I never watched "The Black Donnelleys" so I am not sure how it figures.
>> If you are saying that 'family always first' means that nothing beyond
>> the family is important, I would disagree with you with respect to LL.

> That's not what "The Black Donnellys" teaches--there's loyalty the
> neighborhood, and the community too. It's just that family comes first;
> but you didn't watch it and you're not prepared to infer anything from
> what I've written.

Point taken. Your words seemed to me to say what I inferred, but even so, I was doubtful and that is why I made it a conditional.

>> As for the
>> Stone Gang, I don't see the relevance. The only 'Stone Gang' member we
>> see in TMIAHM is Slim Lemke.

> Tilt. Speak for yourself. "We" see some members of the "Davis" family as

(snip extensive verification of my mistake)

Yes, you are right. I had totally forgotten those passages and the only one I could remember was Slim. However, I don't see anything in those passages which would imply that the Stone Gang held the same notion. Were there other statements which did?

>> Mannie, on the other hand, was a member of the Davis Family and they
>> put their lives in jeopardy by joining in the revolution to try to free
>> Luna exhibiting exactly the kind of 'moral behavior' talked about at
>> Annapolis.

> They tried because Manny got involved over Wyoh, was kind to an old
> bomb-throwing terrorist, and wanted to find his lonesome computer a few
> "not-stupids" to play with.

That may account for Mannie's first involvement, but I can't see where it applies to the other members of the Davis family, especially Mum,who said, "I think every Loonie dreams of the day when we will be free. All but some spineless rats," and Ludmilla who died trying to defend her people.

>Later, Manny wonders whether starvation
> might not have been a better thing. "Seems to be a deep instinct in
> human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden. Prof
> got fascinated by possibilities for shaping future that lay in a big,
> smart computer--and lost track of things closer home. Oh, I backed him!
> But now I wonder. Are food riots too high a price to pay to let people
> be? I don't know."

Seeing how the revolution turned out finally, I can see where Mannie might have doubts.

If you recall, the book opens with the mention that *taxes* are being proposed.

Looking at Loonie society in _Cat_, it apparently got even worse.

> This isn't Heinlein, but it's pretty well established that a maximum of
> only about forty percent of the people ever support a revolution--even
> counting summer soldiers and sunshine patriots and all that.

True, Mannie spoke at length about the 'patriotism' of most Loonies.

> Where does
> it say in anything about the young baboons starting a revolution in the
> Forrestal Address? (That reminds me of an "Irish joke" I won't tell
> here.)

I don't see the relevance. Are the baboons being bled white of their ability to live? Well, maybe they are, but I doubt that they are able to abstract at a high enough level to recognize it.

>> >What's the point
>> > so far as the overall theme in _Time Enough for Love_ is concerned,
>> > David? Isn't Heinlein just repeating himself?

>> The themes of self-responsibility and freedom are repeated throughout
>> Heinlein's works. I don't see it as a problem.

> Is that all that you see as the purpose of Boondock? Letting them be
> free and self-responsible?

Not all, but yes in essence.

>I see them as Lazarus Long's pampered
> pets--highly skilled technicians some of them--enjoying Elysium. Tell
> me: what do they do except prattle about different versions of love, and
> "shoes--and ships--and sealing wax--and cabbages--and kings"; make love
> to each other, and count the money as it rolls in? They can't have a lot
> of business yet; Ira didn't select large numbers of folk who immediately
> needed rejuvenation, did he? Where's the text support that? They've got
> enough free time they're field testing with Minerva's clone and growing
> her up.

The most that I can say is the your mileage apparently varies considerably from mine.

As to how often they have re-juve clients, I can't say, but when they do, "One or more clients puts Ishtar, Tamara, Hamadryad and me out of circulation for much of the time," according to Galahad. And it was a therapy clinic as well as an infirmary.

>> > Think about it for a moment: what Long has done is simply swoop down
>> > when he decided and while he was leaving Secundus and skimmed off
>> > some  of the cream.

>> I have to disagree with the characterization that LL 'swooped down'. He
>> went to Secundus to die. He failed in this only through tremendous
>> efforts of all of those who became his family later.

> And at the end, if he hadn't 'swooped down' and taken the gavel, Ira's
> successor would have prevented the migration and probably sent Ira off
> to whatever planet it was he used for a coventry.

> There would have been no migration. No freedom or self-responsibility in
> your terms.

>> The migration was Ira's and he had been thinking about it long before
>> LL came to Secundus. He remained as Colony Leader, 'the supreme
>> arbitrator' after they came to Tertius.

> Ira remained as titular leader. Lazarus was what he will always be: "the
> Senior," fully in change whenever and for whatever reason he wants. I
> think 'swooped down' is a great characterization of his Jovian powers.

I think that the ability to do so and the desire to do so are two totally different things, and makes all the difference in whether or not he is a dictator.

There is no indication that he ever took over Ira's position as 'supreme arbitrator'.

>> Lazarus did not plan to go on it initially as he saw it
>> as something he had already done a number of times. When the time trip
>> became a possibility, and after he had regained a desire to live,

> You forgot about "after he got tricked into having two daughter/clone
> sisters" impregnated into two of his wives to be, and was then obliged
> to raise them to maturity.  

It's clear that the twins were not the only reason that he regained a reason to live, and in the state that he was in, it is a toss-up whether or not his principle of never abandoning a child dependant on him would have sufficed, especially, since he knew that Ira had guaranteed to take care of any.

To see what finally restored his desired to live, look at the section where he is telling Maureen about Tamara.

>> the migration
>> simply provided him a way to be with his new family until and,
>> hopefully, after the time trips became possible.

>> As for 'skimming off the cream'. Yes, that is, according to the texts
>> about it, one of the reasons for it, to move that 'Bell Curve' higher
>> and produce a better band of people. I don't know if that is true. but
>> it is certainly supported textually.

> So you agree then with both Franklin and Smith that Heinlein is a Social
> Darwinist, that the purpose of Boondock is simply to create a lab in
> which social darwinism can take place? Just like the red monkeys in
> _Friday_. Is that it? Why bring up Bell Curves, David, otherwise? Is the
> term even used by Heinlein in TEfL? You're drawing an implication that
> even Heinlein might distain. He did, you know, later. Pick one side or
> another. Imply as I do or be a literal reader and seek "textual"
> support. Don't slide from one to the other as it suits your convenience
> in argument--unless you admit it when you argue one against the other.

No, I disagree with them. Emphasis placed on the period!

But, "It's the bell curve again," I said to Ishtar. If--as Lazarus thinks
and statistics back him up--every migration comes primarily from the right-
hand end of the normal-incidence curve of human ability, then this acts as
a sorting device whereby the new planet will show a bell curve with a much
higher intelligence norm than the population it comes from..."

>> > Now he's transplanted them to a hothouse colony that
>> > doesn't apparently require the hard work and effort to overcome
>> > dangers such as were in Happy Valley,

>> True, although it is not stated that *all* hard work and effort have
>> been eliminated for everyone and LL is clearly aware that even the
>> appearance of a benign environment can produce unforeseen dangers.

(snip more different mileage)

>> > in
>> > luxury under his benign and absolute dictatorship (a seeming anarchy,
>> >  until push comes to shove)

>> I don't see any evidence of this. What is the textual evidence, the
>> fact that he disrupted the normal protocol of a dinner to shift all
>> discussion to the story of the re-discovered Vanguard?

> Very amusing. No, it's the gavel he's always able to pick up. Read the
> texts, please, if that's what you wish to do.

Yes, he could 'pick up the gavel'in terms of being in charge whenever he wanted to, but I read that as being done only when absolutely necessary. He rarely every wanted or needed to do so. (and after they left Secundus, he couldn't have gone back there even if he had wanted to as long as Arabelle controlled the situation there).

Moreover, FWIW, Justin uses 'picking up the gavel' as a metaphorical term applied to Lazarus' ability to put his full attention on any problem, big or large.

>> > and rear in comfort the unnamed brats who are
>> > allowed to occasionally result, assuming their genetics satisfy
>> > whichever computer is running the show at the time.

>> Actually, IIRC, Ishtar was the one who looked at genetic charts for
>> problems of incompatibility and so forth, and I see no evidence that
>> any were 'occasionally allowed to result'.

> Ishtar "looked" while Minerva/and later Athena computed. It's always
> nice to have triple checks,

"..it is extremely unlikely .... that she[Hamadryad] has or ever will have
a child by Ira. No genetic hazard, Ishtar is certain. And the fact that we
have yet to have *any* defectives gives me great confidence in Ishtar's
skill in reading a gene chart."

>I suppose. Reread the conversation with
> Justin when he arrives. Laz counts the kiddies for him. Doesn't dignify
> them with names, just gives their number, as though they were puppies.

The three youngest are named later, Elf, Undine and Andrew Jackson. No puppies, and I think that all of the adults taking turns with the 'pee watch' indicates a more than puppy interest in their children.

>>  His massive
>> > accumulated wealth created and sustains this. He enjoys a monopoly on
>> > several things, not the least of which are the long-life therapies,
>> > for his corner of the universe. They'll always have to come to him
>> > for the products of those monopolies,

>> I really think that you are reading motives into people that are simply
>> not supported by the text. Even in the days of New Beginnings, Howards
>> were able to return to Secundus to be rejuvenated and there is no
>> reason why they couldn't do so now.

> Except money, time and distance. Secundus is so far away that Lazarus
> ridicules whatername's, Arabella's, commands to him; and decides to add
> insult by "accepting" delivery of the transport that his wide-spread
> wealth owns. As to money, how many years indenture do you suppose Colin
> Campbell thought he was going to be charged in Cat? How much just for
> the legs? What did the other guy sign up for? What's the difference
> between an indenture and slavery? Read Charles and Mary Beard's essays
> on colonial America, as I'm sure Heinlein did, before you answer,
> please. You can find them on Gutenberg.

I appreciate the reference and will look at when I have more time. But the situation with enlistees in the Time Corps and that of colonists on Tertius is, I don't believe, valid. I can't recall any indication that the colonists there were 'indentured' in any way. Different than the situation in _Farmer In the Sky_ where the colonists had to pay off their original land grants and tools etc., that they had to buy, by processing and turning over land to the commission.

> I'm sure the little people out there struggling to build farms or
> whatever other economy supports Boondock for the aristocracy such as
> Lazarus to live in comfort are oblivious to the choke hold he has on
> their future. How long before assassination attempts start? Did a
> Professor Bernardo something or other arrive on the last shipload? If
> so, sooner than Lazarus thinks.

>> The family providing re-juve and other services simply
>> makes it easier for all around as well as providing income to the
>> family.

(snip more of what appears to me to be irrelevant material)

>> > There may be a
>> > "catastrophe" coming from somewhere; but so far as appears none is on
>> > or below any horizon we know of.

>> Right we don't see any and they didn't, but they doesn't mean that it
>> couldn't happen. LL and Libby didn't foresee the problems that occurred
>> on New Beginnings either, but they wiped out a large part of the colony
>> there.

> I think Libby had met the cave bear described in Number by then. Laz was
> in partnership with one of his sons on New Beginnings, iirc.

Yes, Libby was dead at the time, but "...Helen Mayberry was not the only widow who had married a widower as a result of a weather cycle that Andy Libby and I had not anticipated..."

>>  What does the creation of Boondock prove,
>> > exactly, that any billionaire's vacation retreat doesn't? The fact
>> > that Hearst built Hearst's castle didn't prove anything except that
>> > he could build it--and serve cheap catsup in refilled bottles to
>> > guests who came to dine, and who had to similarly listen to whatever
>> > prattle Hearst spouted.

>> Analogies are always suspect. LL was not Hearst.

> Nope, he wasn't. Hearst had a newspaper chain. Laz had multiple
> enterprises that dwarfed a little chain in one country on an
> insignificant planet. Prove the analogy is suspect here, please.

The analogy assumes, I believe, that LL's motives and Hearst's were the same.

I can't prove that they weren't, but I don't think that anyone can assume that they were, either. However, you might have other reasons for seeing an analogy, other than extreme wealth, that I don't.

>> > What's the point of Boondock?

>> The point of Boondock was that people were sufficiently dissatisfied
>> with life on Secundus that over a 100,000 people tried to sign up to
>> migrate there. They saw a chance for a better life, most likely more
>> difficult than what they were used to even if it wasn't as hard as it
>> been a 1,000 years before on places like New Beginnings.

> Is that all the point you see? Heinlein repeating himself, that's it?

It's sufficient for me, but then I'm not a very deep person, and I suspect that he found that he had to repeat things a lot before they sunk in, if ever, to people like me.

> I think there might be a little more. Anyone else see what it could be?
> David? Others?

You are probably right. There may be a dozen other reasons. I have always found that Heinlein had multiple layers around just about everything.

Hopefully, others can go deeper than I am able to at this time.

David Wright Sr.

In article <Xns99146A0D0C996nokva...@208.49.80.253>,
 "David Wright Sr." <dwrigh...@alltel.net> wrote:

> >> > What's the point of Boondock?

> >> The point of Boondock was that people were sufficiently dissatisfied
> >> with life on Secundus that over a 100,000 people tried to sign up to
> >> migrate there. They saw a chance for a better life, most likely more
> >> difficult than what they were used to even if it wasn't as hard as it
> >> been a 1,000 years before on places like New Beginnings.

> > Is that all the point you see? Heinlein repeating himself, that's it?

> It's sufficient for me, but then I'm not a very deep person, and I suspect
> that he found that he had to repeat things a lot before they sunk in, if
> ever, to people like me.

> > I think there might be a little more. Anyone else see what it could be?
> > David? Others?

> You are probably right. There may be a dozen other reasons. I have always
> found that Heinlein had multiple layers around just about everything.

> Hopefully, others can go deeper than I am able to at this time.

It's not really that deep; but I bring it up because, perhaps, it's not that obvious either.

Heinlein told us directly, over the years, if his writings didn't make it manifest, what he tried to do when writing, besides pay for groceries. He said, "I was asking questions ... _not_ giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself along new and fresh lines." Letter, dated January 20, 1972, p. 242, at 244, _Grumbles from the Grave_ (1991).

He also drew a distinction about science fiction.

"Much so-called science fiction is not about human beings and their
problems, consisting instead of a fictionalized framework, peopled by
cardboard figures, on which is hung an essay about the Glorious Future
of Technology. With due respect to Mr. Bellamy, 'Looking Backwards' is a
perfect example of the fictionalized essay. I've done it myself;
'Solution Unsatisfactory' is a fictionalized essay, written as such.
Knowing it would have to compete with a real _story_, I used every
device I could think of, some of them hardly admissible, to make it look
like a story."
      "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction," 1947, from
      Eshbach (ed.) _Of Worlds Beyond_ (Advent, 1964), at 16.

With respect to Mr. Heinlein, _For Us, the Living_, his cadet and then unpublished novel-length work, is a fictionalized essay.

There is a problem with form whenever you ask any number of hard questions to make your readership think in fiction. How do you do it? One form is the form Heinlein used in "Solution Unsatisfactory." Put your questions, put all the doubts, put the quandaries, put the developed essay, in the mouth and mind of a first-person narrator, John DeFries, Colonel Manning's aide, the former high school sociology teacher.

Heinlein did the same thing, again, into the mind and mouth of Manuel O'Kelly Garcia Davis in _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_, although that novel also involves some character development (which Heinlein contrasted unfavorably with a fictionalized essay in "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction") for Mannie, unlike John DeFries, whose only development is radiation cancer.

It helps if your narrator is in the center of the action. Sometimes you cannot do that, however, so I think Heinlein searched for other ways.

There are a few other ways. They takes me back to Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. You can write an Anatomy and use it to ask hard questions, focus down on all aspects of a problem, just as Burton deliberately did when he invented that encyclopedic form; but it's an unpopular form today. For one thing, most editors and readers wouldn't know what you're doing if you entitled it _Heinlein's Anatomy of Love_. They'd think you were selling a plot or chart of erogenous zones for love-making technique. And they'd get pretty bored, quickly, unless they understood the form and got the idea of how it is being or to be used. How many anatomies can we name, today? Burton's. Then there's Francois Rabelais' _Gargantua and Pantagruel_; but what else? Most people would want to say Rabelais wrote a series of five books, instead of one. Would you know that _1001 Nights_ is an anatomy if I hadn't told you? How about Laurence Sterne's _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_. Wikipedia calls it a "novel." It isn't, not in any form most editors have ever seen. Read Wikipedia's description: "The novel itself is difficult to describe. The story starts with the narration, by Tristram, of his own conception. It proceeds by fits and starts, but mostly by what Sterne calls "progressive digressions" so that we do not reach Tristram's birth before the third volume. The novel is rich in characters and humor, and the influences of Rabelais and Cervantes are present throughout. The novel ends after 9 volumes, published over a decade, but without anything that might be considered a traditional conclusion. Sterne inserts sermons, essays and legal documents into the pages of his novel; and he explores the limits of typography and print design by including marbled pages and, most famously, an entirely black page within the narrative."

All these devices fell out of fashion certainly by the nineteenth century, except among really serious readers of "dead, white men." Twain used the picaresque form that some anatomies have, along with the first person narrative in his _Hucklebery Finn_; and his travel journals, a form Heinlein tried with _Tramp Royale_, contain some elements of anatomies. Some modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and more contemporary writers such as Thomas Pynchon have experimented with elements of the anatomy as well. But who reads them outside assignments for English class?

But there's another branch of the anatomy that did survive. 1001 Nights is the older and the prototype; but we also have Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. They call them "frame narratives" or "frame tales."

What happens in frame tales is some people, sometimes on a long journey to somewhere ("from every shires ende // Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende"), often fleeing from something (the Black Death as in Decameron), or sometimes just cooped up (1001 Nights) trying to avoid being another danger, tell each other tales, on successive nights or days. Questions may be asked, one tale may respond to or contradict one it follows, others may interrupt to express differing or opposing or supporting viewpoints, with their own tales.

Sometimes the "host" or leader requires all the tale tellers to focus in on a certain topic for a time, or the structure of narrative leads to a focus. These may serve to express variations of viewpoint or, as Heinlein's titles in TEfL suggest, "Variations On a Theme."

Intermissions occur, interactions between characters occur, character development can occur, or whatever have you make take place in the interludes. Minerva can print out collected aphorisms.

What Heinlein did I think, David, in Boondock (and before in Ira's private quarters on the roof in Secundus, temporarily turned over to the Senior) was merely create an amphitheatre, a refuge, for Lazarus and his guests to tell their tales, just as Hearst told and permitted his guests at his castle to tell their tales, at dinner and otherwise. (Heast was a molder of public opinion. Those dinners provided him an audience to try out policies and obtain feedback from those he considered worth hearing--the movie star friends of Marion Davis were glitter to attract the audience, but the other guests tended to show off their knowledge, opinions [and power] in front of the glitter. Hearst had baths, like Lazarus, but they weren't quite small enough, not even the Roman tiled indoor one, to gather companionably, express opinions, and tell tales.)

Heinlein was experimenting. In his next, he went to the multiple minds of Johann, Eunice, and Jake, which was another device to ask questions and express differing viewpoints. In Number the four person shifting POV was yet another, especially in light of their constant close proximity. But Boondock is retained--or reasonable fascimiles thereof, the picnic scene for example in Cat with Jubal, Mannie, Rufo, et al., to continue the conversational digressions Heinlein wished to focus upon "to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself along new and fresh lines."

Perhaps there's more; but my tentative opinion is this frame was Heinlein's object, not repetition, and the repetition such as it was, may have been an invitation to Variations On a Theme.

What do you, anyone, think?

-- 
David M. Silver
http://www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
     Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29
     Lt.(jg), USN, R'td

To: "David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net>

"David M. Silver" <ag.plus...@verizon.net> wrote in news:ag.plusone-
60CBDA.12434016042...@individual.net:

(snip)

> Heinlein was experimenting. In his next, he went to the multiple minds
> of Johann, Eunice, and Jake, which was another device to ask questions
> and express differing viewpoints. In Number the four person shifting POV
> was yet another, especially in light of their constant close proximity.
> But Boondock is retained--or reasonable fascimiles thereof, the picnic
> scene for example in Cat with Jubal, Mannie, Rufo, et al., to continue
> the conversational digressions Heinlein wished to focus upon "to shake
> the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for
> himself along new and fresh lines."

> Perhaps there's more; but my tentative opinion is this frame was
> Heinlein's object, not repetition, and the repetition such as it was,
> may have been an invitation to Variations On a Theme.

> What do you, anyone, think?

Now you've gone and gotten 'literary' on me. With respect to 'literary' issues, I am less than an egg[1].

As for shaking up preconceptions and forcing the reader to think along different lines, I have seen it suggested somewhere that one of the themes of several of the frames, (if I understand that word correctly), is to gradually lead up to the incest motif that occurs at the end, by presenting situations that are semi-incestuous or incestuously suggestive. Thus we have the "Tale of the twins who weren't", "The Tale of the Adopted Daughter" and the Boondock sections, especially the interaction between LL and Laz-Lor, before LL goes back in time where we see the real thing.

[1] I now have Frye's _Anatomy of Criticism_ and one day, I hope to be able to sling the slang with the best of them. :)

David Wright Sr.
-- 
The map is not the territory.
A word is not the object that it refers to.
         A. Korzybski, _Science & Sanity_ (1933)

David M. Silver wrote:

I've been putting off reading this thread 'cause I ain't had the available time. I still don't but I gave myself a Special Dispensation for a bit today.

< snipping to save some space >

> From 1939, probably some time after _For Us, the Living_ was written,
> while Heinlein's series of short stories were being conceived Heinlein
> created a chart laying out the various stories, projected, that would be
> included. John Campbell, who coined the term "Future History" published
> an early draft of the chart in the February 1941 issue of "Astounding
> Science-Fiction."

> It contained several stories that would never been written, so far as we
> know, one close to the beginning, "Word Edgewise," one after "The Green
> Hills of Earth" to have been named "Fire Down Below," three in the gap
> between "Logic of Empire" and _"If This Goes On --"_ dealing with the
> rise of Nehemiah Scudder and the generation long process of revolution
> against the Prophets, "The Sound of His Wings," Eclipse," and "The Stone
> Pillow," and a final story after the two parts of Orphans, titled "Da
> Capo."

> We can only speculate about the content of "Word Edgewise," perhaps it
> would have involved Semantics somehow. We know "Fire Down Below" would
> have involved a revolution in Antarctica, and would have been set in the
> early 21st century, because Heinlein told us about it in a postscript to
> the collection _Revolt in 2100_. We know from the same postscript about
> the three others. "The Sound Of His Wings" covers Nehemiah Scudder's
> early life as a television evangelist through his rise to power as the
> First Prophet. "Eclipse" describes independence movements on Mars and
> Venus. "The Stone Pillow" details the rise of the resistance movement
> from the early days of the theocracy through the beginning of _"If This
> Goes On --"_.

In the case that they may be subsumed into the Future HIstory, are you leaving _Red Planet_ and _Between Planets_ to be noted by "the student" as plausible alternatives for the "Eclipse" story?

> But _Da Capo_ was written. Not as a stand alone short, novella, or
> novel; but as the final part of _Time Enough for Love_.

> The form of _Time Enough for Love_ has been criticized by some ignorant
> reviewers as not conforming to a more regular form of a Novel. They're
> right. It isn't a novel.

< more snip of damned fine literary background notes >

> What makes the "criticism" especially meaningless is Heinlein's direct
> reference to The Nights and those tales in the opening of TEfL, when
> Ira, Minerva, and Lazarus Long expressly refer to Queen Scheherazade's
> life-saving ploy to keep up Lazarus' own interest in life.

> An "anatomy" is a collection of writings, part fiction, part not,
> perhaps including essays or dissertations on subjects of interest,
> lists, aphorisms, humorous asides, stories within stories, what-nots and
> what-have-yous, designed with a certain end in view,

Holy Blue, Dave! I suggest you shoulda/coulda mentioned the Menippean or Varronian satire in your gloss because the setting for those satires is dinner-table ("cena") and/or drinking party ("symposium") conversations which, of course, reappear throughout TEFL.

< more snip >

> My approach to an overall assessment of Time Enough for Love is to
> determine what Heinlein may have had as an end in view.

So you're suggesting an analysis of the structure to determine the purpose of the work? "If it quacks like a duck . . . "

> Why is Da Capo
> the title of the final portion of the long series of stories?

Dave, it's meaningless if it's used in any other position. It must be at/near the end.

> Da Capo means "return to the beginning" (and replay it in music).

> What do you think that means? Why?

Perhaps it stands as a literary model of the usual visual image showing the "looping" of the World-Snake, Ouroboros?
There is no END but merely ("entirely") a RETURN to the beginning point.
In much the same way, V.M. Smith objectifies his murders of the "bad 'uns" by saying that he's sending them back to the end of the line to wait for their next go-'round as humans. That there is no end to human consciousness is not novel to RAH. Nor is the justification of murder(s) by their perpetrator's declaration of gnosis: secret knowledge that is not held by everyone.

> The Da Capo chapters are introduced with certain Variations on a Theme,
> including "Bacchanalia," which were wild, mystic, secret, originally
> women-only festivals of the Roman god Bacchus, and, progressively, three
> forms of love, "Agape," "Eros," and "Narcissus."

"Selfless love" where the happiness of the Beloved is the Goal.
"Sexual love" where the sexual possession of the Beloved is the Goal.
"Self-love"/narcissism, hmmmmm. Well, the nymph Narcissus saw his own image reflected in a pond and lay down on the shore to enjoy the view. From thee the story varies, but the certainty is that he died because his only happiness was looking at himself.

Googie supplies: "Narcissism is the pattern of characteristics and behaviors which involve infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one's gratification, dominance and ambition." Ain't that applicable to Ole Buddy Boy?

> There follows a love story in Da Capo which can be described as Oedipal,
> with undertones of an Electra complex working as well (Maureen for Dr.
> Ira Johnson).

< snip >

> What do you think is going on here?

At the present, I haven't a plausible option to offer and will yield the floor to the Next Speaker.

Rufe

David M. Silver wrote:

< snip >

> Isn't that the same lesson we'd have learned by watching one episode of
> the recently-cancelled "The Black Donnelleys" on NBC? E.g., "family
> always first."

NBC canceled "Studio 60" and replaced it with Yet Another Shoot-'Em-Up Crime Show. The Element of Novelty in this iteration was the substitution of a soi-disant "Black Irish" family for the more typical Eye-tralians/Sicilians.

I watched the first episode and am not surprised it's already been canceled itself. I do not rejoice for the individuals put out of work by either change in scheduling but there was no noticeable improvement wrought by the change.

The network will now most likely re-cycle materials for which they've already paid and for which they now will need pay out only diminished residual fees.

In the coinage of Nuclear Jim, "Feh!"

> Isn't it just a restatement of the same notion held by
> the Stone Gang in TMIAHM?

Surely (NOT "Shirley"), you're conflating the Stone Gang (who only appear in the denouement) with the Davis Family (whose public and private activities are a central element of the book)?

Rufe

Hi,

Thank you for quoting my work via Google.

For a more informed view of pathological narcissism and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) - click on these links:

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/npdglance.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/narcissismglance.html

Take care.

Sam

In article <1173721906.332010.232...@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com>,
 "Tim Morgan" <morgan...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Heinlein combined many influences in creating this book.  One is
> Vincent McHugh's Caleb Catlum's America---hugely popular when it was
> published in 1936, but now largely forgotten and hard to come by.  To
> quote Bill Patterson: "There are some passages in the Archivist's
> remarks that are almost taken verbatim from the author's introduction
> to CCA -- a redheaded (and polymorphous perverse as taught by his
> grandfather, does any of this ring bells) immortal who had led his
> families in a flight from persecution."  I hope that someone who has
> read Caleb Catlum's America can join the discussion to fill us in on
> it.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=Vincent+McHugh&y=0&tn=catlum&x=0&sortby=2

or, http://tinyurl.com/ytter8

There's about sixty used copies there.

So, about a week or so ago, I bought one. In a way, Bill's assessment of influence is misleading. Yes, certainly, the framework of _Caleb Catlum's America, etc._, contains the tales of "a redheaded (and polymorphous perverse as taught by his grandfather" character, "who does, at its end lead his families in a flight from persecution"

The book is, I think, a parody of a genre. The American Humorous Tall Tale. See, http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/talltales/index.html

To get a taste of the flavor of writing by McHugh, try here, which is the first couple pages or so, of the last chapter of _Caleb Catlum's America_:

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=53844280

or.

http://tinyurl.com/2jg6mb

So far as style and tone are concerned, Heinlein's TEfL comes no where close to replicating the style of the tales told by McHugh in _Catlum_.

It is humorous to read. It parodies or lampoons tall tales, combining almost all the major uniquely American characters into one overarching tale about this Catlum, who claims to have been born in the 1790 era, and whose travels throughout an alleged life that lasts through the 1930s have him meeting and interacting with everyone from Ben Franklin to Abraham Lincoln, through David Crockett and Daniel Boone, Mike Fink, Johnny Appleseed, Pecos Bill and John Henry the Steeldrivin' Man.

He sticks with John Henry through John's founding of Harlem, and John's opening of a nightclub that appears very much like the fabled Cotton Club of the 1920s. Obviously, Catlum's John Henry's activities survive well past the heart attack or stroke the contest with the mechanical pile driver brought on. We might prefer Huddie Ledbetter's version; but maybe Lead Belly would prefer McHugh's. So far as I know, no one every asked.

"Characterized by exaggeration, expansiveness and humor, tall tales and their heroes can be viewed as a reflection of the exaggerated scale of a vast frontier and of the rugged pioneers that faced and overcame its challenges," so saith one commentator. E.g., http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/talltales/index.html

A national identity is said likewise to have been developed by their creation, the so-called "rugged individualist." Mark Twain, whose writings were collected and beloved by Heinlein, wrote a few. More than just "rugged individualists" are prototypical characters. "The Connecticut Yankee" is one. That's the carpetbagger peddler who comes down south and sells ma, the innkeeper's wife, the beautiful quit before he leaves having enjoyed her hospitality. Afterwards, she realizes she's been sold the quilt off one of her own guest beds. Catlum pulls off the same sorts of fraud, and meets in his travels even worse swindlers than himself.

Ben Franklin accepts a young Catlum as an apprentice newspaperman, and to keep Catlum from dissipating what little money he has agrees to bank the sum for safekeeping. When Catlum has learned all he can--little, he decides to move on and finds that Franklin will keep the banked sum to repay himself for instruction. So, Catlum lifts Franklin's silver watch, fop and chain from his vest pocket on the way out the door, as each assure each other they will always treasure the acquaintanceship.

One of Catlum's early companions is Uncas, the native American beloved by readers of James Fenimore Cooper's book _The Last of the Mohicans_ as Chingachgook's heroic son and Hawkeye's companion. However, Catlum's Uncas is Harvard-educated, and a swindler and scoundrel who fits in as suitable companion for Catlum. The actually was a real Uncas, by the way.

[Uncas (c. 1588 - 1682) was a Native American who was a member of the Pequots by birth, but in 1634 he rebelled against its chief, Sassacus. He was expelled from the tribe and gathered together a number of other alienated Pequots and formed the Mohegan tribe with himself as chief. He is also known as ³Le Cerf Agile² or the bounding elk. In 1637 he helped the English under Colonel John Mason in a war against the Pequots and received part of their land as a reward. Native tribes made war on Uncas several times, but with the help of the English he always defeated them. In 1643 he tricked and took prisoner Miantonomo, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. Uncas put to death several of Miantonomo's fellow warrior prisoners in front of him trying to solicit a confession from Miantonomo. He then bought Miantonomo to the English for a "trial", he was of course found guilty, by five clergymen brought in to pass false judgement and to isolate the Colonial Commission members from retribution. Uncas was allowed to put Miantonomo to death provided that it be done away from Colony land. Uncas' brother Wawequa later killed him at the signal from Uncas with a tomahawk. The Mohegan tribe that runs more than a few casinos today in New England is descended from this branch of the Pequots.]

Well, that's a little taste of Catlum. Perhaps more later.

-- 
David M. Silver
http://www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
     Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29
     Lt.(jg), USN, R'td

David M. Silver wrote:
> In article <1173721906.332010.232...@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com>,
>  "Tim Morgan" <morgan...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Heinlein combined many influences in creating this book.  One is
>>Vincent McHugh's Caleb Catlum's America---hugely popular when it was
>>published in 1936, but now largely forgotten and hard to come by.  To
>>quote Bill Patterson: "There are some passages in the Archivist's
>>remarks that are almost taken verbatim from the author's introduction
>>to CCA -- a redheaded (and polymorphous perverse as taught by his
>>grandfather, does any of this ring bells) immortal who had led his
>>families in a flight from persecution."  I hope that someone who has
>>read Caleb Catlum's America can join the discussion to fill us in on
>>it.

> I've waited for someone else to reply to this lead, but apparently no
> one else has accepted the invitation. It's not really that hard to
> obtain a copy inexpensively, if you're willing to buy a used book. See,

> http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=V
> incent+McHugh&y=0&tn=catlum&x=0&sortby=2

> or,

> http://tinyurl.com/ytter8

> There's about sixty used copies there.

> So, about a week or so ago, I bought one. In a way, Bill's assessment of
> influence is misleading. Yes, certainly, the framework of _Caleb
> Catlum's America, etc._, contains the tales of "a redheaded (and
> polymorphous perverse as taught by his grandfather" character, "who
> does, at its end lead his families in a flight from persecution"

> The book is, I think, a parody of a genre. The American Humorous Tall
> Tale. See, http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/talltales/index.html

> To get a taste of the flavor of writing by McHugh, try here, which is
> the first couple pages or so, of the last chapter of _Caleb Catlum's
> America_:

> http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=53844280

> or.

> http://tinyurl.com/2jg6mb

> So far as style and tone are concerned, Heinlein's TEfL comes no where
> close to replicating the style of the tales told by McHugh in _Catlum_.

> It is humorous to read. It parodies or lampoons tall tales, combining
> almost all the major uniquely American characters into one overarching
> tale about this Catlum

Thank you, Dave. I'm one of those who had McHugh's _Catlum_ on my list but for one reason or another it wasn't very near the top. I appreciate your redaction and am more than ever motivated to grab it and read it.

As I read through your post, I kept hearing, in the recesses of my memory, a background rendition of one of Woody Guthrie's better efforts (I*M*HO, of course). It's not really one of *those* songs that Pete mentioned a little while back unless you've taken graduate courses in history.

The Bragging Song (a.k.a. The Great Historical Bum) by Woody Guthrie

I was born about ten thousand years ago.
There ain't nuthin' in this world that I don't know.
I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playin' ring-around-the-roses
And I'll whup the guy what says it isn't so

Well, I'm just a lonesome traveler,
        a great historical bum
Highly educated
        through history I have come
I built the Rock of Ages,
        it was in the year '01
And that's about the biggest thing that Man has ever done.

I saw Adam and Eve driven from the door.
I'm the guy that picked the fig leaves that they wore.
And from behind the bushes peepin' saw the apple they was eatin'
And I swear that I'm the one that et the core.

Now I built the garden of Eden,
        it was in the year '02.
Joine