Robert - welcome! It's great to see you here. I'm really looking forward to reading more from you.

Well, according to Jim, I've posted 24+ messages, so that should keep you busy for awhile.

I look forward to participating here; now that I'm almost done with the radiation therapy (on low-grade cancer cells in a tumor removed from my right parotid gland), I should be able to start getting back into the groove of things again.

Robert

Absolutely true. Point taken. My suggestion to take Heinlein "at his word" I guess was meant more to track down his opinions on things for exemplary purposes. He's a hero of mine; I want to know his views. A good example is his "This I Believe" essay. As for using his own words as a source when tracing biographical data, then we're on shaky ground. People tend to develop "stories" about themselves over the course of their life that are simplifications or improvements on their history.



I know. I haven't read the Hemingway biography you mentioned, but the most ambitiously brilliant (and controversial) example I've seen is the Paul Shrader film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. It's a biography film depicting writer Yukio Mishima on the last day of his life, but interspersed throughout the movie are three enactments of Mishima's fiction-- the theory being that you can derive understanding of a writer by analyzing their work. Great movie, questionable stance though. I'd hate for someone to analyze Heinlein by representing only three of his works.

We could have some fun arguing which three works best represented the man -- who is a long-time hero (and world-view shaper) of mine, as well. I think we might learn more about each other than him in that process. I'm not sure that wasn't one of his goals as a writer.

Well, for my money, two of those would have to be Tramp Royale and How to Be a Politician....

For the third, I nominate the interstitial notes in Expanded Universe.

My favorite is "This I Believe"

There are many reasons other than Aspergers why a smart and unconventional person might feel out of place in an extremely and aggressively bouregois society and for which the necessity of flight to avoid the iconic rail and tar and feathers might be ever-present in someone who grew up before 1940. The lesson of Plato's cave tells us the impulse to destroy anyone who challenges the social values of "the good and the just" is very ancient, very deeply rooted in human history.

And it seems to me this explains part of the secretiveness about his private life. Another quantum is explained by the fact that he found as a pragmatic that the more he opened up, the more contact flooded in, and it could be overwhelming. It was overwhelming even when he actively discouraged contact, particularly after 1980, when he was less able to cope with it for medical reasons.

Well, Heinlein himself left a note in his safety-deposit box sayng that to understand him you have to reallize that three of his books are extended treatments of the same theme: Starship Troopers, Stranger In a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

I tend to go along with this one, though I am very leery about the three quoted above. All three of them show signs of being artful masks so it is the "public Robert Heinlein" puppet that is speaking.

So, for that matter, does "This I Believe"; the point is you cannot simply read back to Robert-Heinlein-when-he-is-at-home from any of these public works. He is too much a writer, as he hammers home over and over again in his last five books, and it is the nature of art, as Shklovky keeps reminding us, to distort mere factuality.