Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Saturday 06/25/2005 P.M. EDT
Nature in Heinlein or “Is June bustin’ out all over?
Here begins the Discussion
You have just entered room “heinleinreadersgroupchat.”
DavidWrightSr: That did it.
AGplusone: great
DavidWrightSr: Ok. Now I’ve got to run and finish cleaning the dishes before we get started.
AGplusone: Good, I can try out something now.
AGplusone: About an hour before sundown we came to the Singing Waters.
AGplusone: We had been traveling over a high, wooded plateau.
AGplusone: The brook where we had caught the trout had been joined by other streams and was now a big creek.
AGplusone: Below us, at a place we hadn’t reached yet, it would plunge over high cliffs in a super-Yosemite fall.
AGplusone: But here, where we stopped to camp, the water had cut a notch into the plateau, forming cascades, before it took that dive.
AGplusone: “Cascades” is a weak word. Upstream, downstream, everywhere you looked, you saw waterfalls–big ones thirty or fifty feet high,
AGplusone: little ones a mouse could have jumped up, every size in between. Terraces and staircases of them there were, smooth water green from
AGplusone: rich foliage overhead and water white as whipped cream as it splashed into dense foam.
AGplusone: And you heard them. Tiny falls tinkled in silvery sophrano, big falls
AGplusone: rumbled in basso profundo. On the grassy alp where we camped it was an everpresent chorale; in the middle of the falls you had to shout to make yourself heard.
AGplusone: Coleridge was there in one of his dope dreams:
AGplusone: And here were forests ancient as the hills,
AGplusone: Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
AGplusone: But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
AGplusone: Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover
AGplusone: A savage place! as holy and enchanted
AGplusone: As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
AGplusone: By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
AGplusone: And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething–
DavidWrightSr: Glory Road. Right?
AGplusone: Right
DavidWrightSr: You were using some new technique to post?
AGplusone: several nature descriptions–not new, something I used back on AOL when I was a HOST chat leader.
AGplusone: Just haven’t used it in a while.
starfall2 has entered the room.
starfall2: hi
Fire262 has entered the room.
GreedyCapitalist has entered the room.
Kultsi KN has entered the room.
Fire262: Hello one and all
Kultsi KN: hi, all!
GreedyCapitalist: hi
AGplusone: It doesn’t work as well here as it used to … was a time when you could set it to scroll a full paragraph in. Hi, Jackie, Bob, Kultsi, and “Greedy” — I’m another David.
AGplusone: Couldn’t be Yisroel, could it?
rahstudies has entered the room.
AGplusone: Hi, Lisa.
DavidWrightSr: Welcome to all.
rahstudies: Greetings
DavidWrightSr: I wonder if our moderator is going to make it. Have you heard anything from him David?
Fire262: I’ll be involved in here from the fringe as I have a project that I’m currently working on
Fire262: matter of fact
Fire262: if all you folks don’t mind
AGplusone: No, haven’t heard from him. Hope whomever is ill is getting better.
Fire262: I would like to bounce a few ideas off y’all
DavidWrightSr: Not at all. We ususally have a bunch of lurkers.
Fire262: Mr Silver knows of what I speak
starfall2: i’m only going to be here for a few minutes. i’ve got to leave in a little while to see my mom in the hospital
AGplusone: How’s your mom, Jackie?
Fire262: best wishes for a swift recovery
DavidWrightSr: I hope it’s not serious, Jackie
starfall2: doing better
starfall2: it was, but it’s getting better
DavidWrightSr: Give her our best.
Fire262: my wife’s mother just got out of one
AGplusone: Her name is Audrey? I forget. Been ages since I emailed her.
Fire262: infected arm
AGplusone: Give her our best.
starfall2: pneumonia that went septic – her kidneys shut down at one point, and she was on a 24 hour dialysis machine
starfall2: thanks
starfall2: audrey, but uses audi – you remembered right
AGplusone: Please give her our best!
starfall2: she’s off the dialysis now, and breathing without the respirators help – just on oxygen now
starfall2: i will!
starfall2: and thanks ^_^
Fire262: ick, what kind of pneumo? Bacterial? Viral?
starfall2: i’m not sure.
starfall2: but it’s her second time in just over six months. she’s got lupus and a very weak immune system
starfall2: she ended up with a staph infection in addition to the pneumonia this time
Fire262: not a great combination
AGplusone: Tell her we’ll be discussing Coleridge (and Heinlein) here in a while. She might enjoy it.
starfall2: k
AGplusone: our very best to her
starfall2: thanks. i’ll let her know!
AGplusone: It’s about time …. why don’t we start? Let me try something I haven’t used in a chat room for a while. Hold while I do it, please:
AGplusone: About an hour before sundown we came to the Singing Waters.
AGplusone: We had been traveling over a high, wooded plateau.
AGplusone: The brook where we had caught the trout had been joined by other streams and was now a big creek.
AGplusone: Below us, at a place we hadn’t reached yet, it would plunge over high cliffs in a super-Yosemite fall.
AGplusone: But here, where we stopped to camp, the water had cut a notch into the plateau, forming cascades, before it took that dive.
AGplusone: “Cascades” is a weak word. Upstream, downstream, everywhere you looked, you saw waterfalls–big ones thirty or fifty feet high,
AGplusone: little ones a mouse could have jumped up, every size in between. Terraces and staircases of them there were, smooth water green from
AGplusone: rich foliage overhead and water white as whipped cream as it splashed into dense foam.
AGplusone: And you heard them. Tiny falls tinkled in silvery sophrano, big falls
AGplusone: rumbled in basso profundo. On the grassy alp where we camped it was an everpresent chorale; in the middle of the falls you had to shout to make yourself heard.
AGplusone: But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
AGplusone: Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover
AGplusone: A savage place! as holy and enchanted
AGplusone: As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
AGplusone: By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
AGplusone: And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething–
rahstudies has left the room.
AGplusone: We used to use those when we were on AOL. Anyone except David want to guess where that was from?
Kultsi KN: except Glory Road?
AGplusone: Yes, Glory Road. I wondered while I read the posts why no one mentioned all the lyrical descriptions of nature in Glory Road. There are others … even while Oscar is using a rope to rappel down from the cliff he describes scenery.
AGplusone: Is there something about a “fantasy” that impels Heinlein to get lyrical?
DavidWrightSr: I have been surprised to find a numbe of lyrical passages in his works.
AGplusone: But, my question is: when does he get lyrical? Particular usages at particular times
AGplusone: How short would Glory Road be without all the descriptive passages …. short, brutal, nasty adventure.
DavidWrightSr: As I mentioned Thursday, that neat opening passage in _Between Planets_ was used, IMO, to set up the next scene where everything was being overturned.
AGplusone: Sticking his sword between the horns … rolling Igly up, and crawling through rats to get to Cyrano, his nemesis.
AGplusone: More than sex and adventure … which is what I find in most adventure stories.
AGplusone: Take a comparison: in Tunnel in the Sky, is there really much more about nature other than they get sent where “nature” is generally malign, must be overcome, tamed, and subjugated?
Kultsi KN: the first part of GL has those lyrical descriptions, the latter part much less so — showing the flips side of the hero business, of course
AGplusone: Which is a description of “nature” that some feel appropriate … not exactly a stroll in the park.
AGplusone: Well, yes, but in the later part of GL there’s their setting: on a civilized planet. The descriptions are of jewels and girls, mostly, the attractive ones anyway; and of pillow talk.
Kultsi KN: yet it does make the difference more pronounced
AGplusone: Nature on the one hand, civilization (and a well trimmed one at that) on the other. Is it a contrast?
AGplusone: He gets to the serious part: what does a hero do after heroing, and there’s suddenly no lyrical passages about “Singing Waters” or “singing the praises of Nevian wimmen” is there?
Kultsi KN: indeed, no more of either — and Oscar, Hero First Class, seems to be an incurable romantic
AGplusone: As David pointed out, in Between Planets … after the idyllic beginning “clomping along with the tumbleweeds” comes the rattlesnakes that have to be killed, and the degenerate scenes in the nightclub, then ever worse challenges.
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: Hi Bill. Welcome
AGplusone: You get a bit of romanticism at the beginning of Dora’s Tale, then it’s nothing except baby girl getting tossed out of the burning building, etc., and challenges in Happy Valley, most of which are glossed over.
BPRAL22169: Hello — just got back.
AGplusone: … to the part where they’ve got the place pretty well tamed, except for when they have to kill Bill and his sons.
AGplusone: Or was that Mounty.
AGplusone: Bill Montgomery?
AGplusone: Then after that there are no bumps on the road and it’s back to the kids reading Shakespeare.
AGplusone: Having tamed “nature” …
DavidWrightSr: I wonder what RAH had against Montgomerys. There was the step-father in _Starman Jones_ too.
AGplusone: Yeah, I’d say it wasn’t a favorite name of his.
BPRAL22169: His contractor on the Colorado Springs house.
BPRAL22169: Threatened to kill him.
AGplusone: that was the first one?
BPRAL22169: He actually had to wear a gun when going into C.S.
BPRAL22169: Yes — in a letter to
DavidWrightSr: Wow!
BPRAL22169: Alice Dalgliesh he says the Montgomery in Starman Jones was drawn from life.
BPRAL22169: and specifies this guy
AGplusone: In Tunnel in the Sky Deacon warns Rod about being a romantic, with the Truce of the Bear, and there really isn’t a bit of romanticism after that, is there? Except at the end, when Buffalo Bill darts his pony under the lead team
AGplusone: into the gate.
AGplusone: Why return to a little romanticism? The settlers expect it?
BPRAL22169: Well — as well as romanticism, the book is a romance in form — loss of identity and then restoration
AGplusone: “lip-service to romanticism” … a tradition in the service?
AGplusone: Just as the Californio Don in the start?
BPRAL22169: I think it was “how you sell books to kids and librarians,” too.
BPRAL22169: The adventure-romance is a huge part of the heritage of SF.
AGplusone: Well, you have to complete the wheel, I suppose.
starfall2 has left the room.
AGplusone: Yes, Lisa was here earlier, and I wanted to discuss that.
DavidWrightSr: I asked her if she need another invite, but got no response.
AGplusone: Her mother showed up and she had to tend to her.
AGplusone: Replied to me and apologized.
BPRAL22169: I think Silverberg n the REquiem piece says there were originally only two story forms in SF — the adventure romance and the gadget story.
AGplusone: And Heinlein said “character development” was what he went after, and so, when it’s down to the nut-cutting of character development, he cuts off the romanticism taps, and the descriptions of a benign “Nature” in favor of the
AGplusone: “Nature” out where there are no traffic cops.
AGplusone: EE Smith are the prototypical adventure stories.
AGplusone: goes back before that of course …
BPRAL22169: I”m thinking of “Roughing It” as a counter-exemplar, though.
AGplusone: Twain’s burlesque humor?
AGplusone: Or simply travel stories?
AGplusone: a form of the picaresque story
BPRAL22169: Frontier-romance. Going back to Cooper. Twain does burlesque a bit, but —
BPRAL22169: TitS could be related back to that — so it could be romanticism as well as anti-romanticism; kind of romanticism for the 20th century?
AGplusone: They are just adventures … and I suppose Cooper’s “forest primeval” is a kind of descriptive metaphore for what Leatherstocking, et al., Bumpo, faces.
AGplusone: Dark forest, surely not “Laughing Waters” there.
LVPPakaAspie has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: could be ironic.
LVPPakaAspie: Hello everone
Kultsi KN: hi
BPRAL22169: All though sf’s history there’s a love-hate relationship with romance traditions.
BPRAL22169: Hey, Kultsi.
LVPPakaAspie: I recognize everyone except fire262
BPRAL22169: Bob Grieve
AGplusone: What, Heinlein’s choice of having “Laughing Waters” et al., in what is really a blood and sex adventure? To point out the falacy of a “romantic” view of adventuring?
BPRAL22169: I haven’t thought about that specifically — but he does that kind of critique repeatedly and in different ways.
BPRAL22169: I can’t remember which story — but somewhere he says “it takes a very hardheaded person to live in a romantic time.”
AGplusone: He intermeshes “Laughing Waters” with Rufo talking about “rough and rugged roads”
AGplusone: Deacon tells Rod just about that.
BPRAL22169: And isn’t the end of Friday really him pointing out that the hero-saves-the-universe conventions of Campbellian SF aren’t very realistic?
BPRAL22169: I think yoiu’re right — I believe it is in TitS
AGplusone: That’s what I think. First things first. Tend your garden.
AGplusone: Then, if you’ve tended it, and really a hard-head, go find another adventure.
AGplusone: If you’re bored, for example, as in Woody, our Pal, going De Capo
AGplusone: Da Capo
AGplusone: There are two kinds of “Natures” protrayed. The pretty Laughing Waters, and the “nature” where there are Stobor to Beware Of.
BPRAL22169: Well, he’s merging them in this book. They are one and the same. More Cooper?
BPRAL22169: (though the real nature to be afraid of is human nature)
AGplusone: Referring to Glory Road?
BPRAL22169: I’m not so sure.
BPRAL22169: The adventure in Glory Road was ultimately illusions conjured for his frames of reference, wasn’t it?
AGplusone: There’s a return to nature in IWFNE when they go hide out in the Pacific on the boat.
AGplusone: Yes, the good parts and the bad parts. Rolling Igly, and rolling the Dorals women in the hay.
AGplusone: Two different things.
Fire262: There are two kinds of “Natures” protrayed. The pretty Laughing Waters, and the “nature” where there are Stobor to Beware Of.
AGplusone: But in IWFNE they have to return to the ‘spoiled’ earth, and move on to Luna … and the bubble ending.
Fire262: IS there really a difference?
BPRAL22169: thinking…
AGplusone: In kind, yes, in substance … maybe not.
BPRAL22169: There are really three ways of confronting nature in Am. lit, three dominant ideas, I mean.
AGplusone: ga
BPRAL22169: First, the Rousseauvian “noble savage.” We don’t see much of that in RAH.
Fire262: I think RAH looked at it as a single coin with two faces
Fire262: and an edge that could go either way
LVPPakaAspie: Heinlein had a definite appreciation of the beauty of nature, but he also appreciated that nature can be modified by man in useful ways.
BPRAL22169: Then there is Emersonian nature-worship. We see a little of that from time to time — I’m thinking particularly about the “where the wild geese go” tropes that show up periodically.
AGplusone: Gitchee Goomie
BPRAL22169: And, then there’s the hard nature of the frontier, to be overcome. The actual frontier experience.
LVPPakaAspie: I think there is a Notebooks entry about this.
BPRAL22169: I think Heinlein cycles back and forth between the hard nature of the frontier and the Emersonian nature worship
Fire262: How about the “noble savage” reborn in “Tunnel in the Sky” so to speak
AGplusone: The overcome nature is Swope Park, of course, entirely artificial, where you can catch your foot in a frog most anytime.
BPRAL22169: Emerson attracts him, but his rational experience tells him it’s not that way in real life.
BPRAL22169: You know, the “noble savage” really is in TitS — but it’s an illusion. These people are civilized, and that’s his point. It’s used for ironic purposes.
AGplusone: It’s interesting that Rod does become, so to speak, a noble savage … but he has to go back to school, at the end.
BPRAL22169: Gosh, he really is a modernist after all.
Fire262: yup
AGplusone: we agree
BPRAL22169: And yet it was Golding that was eventually given a Nobel Prize . . .
AGplusone: for truly ignoble savages
AGplusone: post world war II european angst
BPRAL22169: Yeah, well, Rousseau is pretty out of fashion nowadays.
LVPPakaAspie: The mid fifties was not a good time for a science fiction work to be considered for something serious, such as a Nobel Prize.
AGplusone: I always thought it was hilarious that Golding, the teacher, wound up commanding a “rocket ship” on D-Day, while RAH, the Navy officer, wound up teaching children.
AGplusone: I.e., us.
BPRAL22169: I think Golding’s Nobel Prize was given in the 1970’s — for his entire body of work, not just Lord of the Flies.
AGplusone: That’s usually the case, but I’ve never sat down to a Golding that I can say truly raised my spirits, and I stopped reading him shortly.
BPRAL22169: You and the rest of the reading public.
aggirlj has entered the room.
aggirlj: hi all
Kultsi KN: hi, Jane
AGplusone: Back to the Future, i.e., the nature of Nature in RAH …
AGplusone: Aspie, you take a short at definining it, please.
AGplusone: shot
Kultsi KN: there are examples of beatiful nature and then the same nature biting one in the tender spot, within the same book
AGplusone: such as ….
Kultsi KN: which, of course is very much the case with our nature
Kultsi KN: Singing Waters and, say, the dragon forest in GL
Kultsi KN: GP
Kultsi KN: GR
AGplusone: [that rattlesnake that Don Harvey has to plug while out riding Lazy?] [follow the yellow flowers or sink in the mire–Dorothy’s yellow brick road?]
AGplusone: Have you ever noticed how often he takes his characters on a picnic? Out where it’s beautiful?
AGplusone: Hoag. IWFNE. Cat.
BPRAL22169: TEFL
Kultsi KN: NOTB
BPRAL22169: Number of the Beast
BPRAL22169: Yes
AGplusone: And what’s he doing when he does that?
DavidWrightSr: Homage to his days in Swope Park?
BPRAL22169: Flip side of the same question: why didn’t he set up a picnic in Friday?
LVPPakaAspie: I think Heinlein had an appreciation of the beauty of nature, and certainly understood the concept that we should not foul our own nest, but also viewed it as something to be used for our own purposes, not just left alone.
AGplusone: simply interludes, or is something always in general going on … could be an echo of Swope Park, but, could be something else. Picnic in Friday begins when she starts to tend her garden.
BPRAL22169: The very first picnic he wrote about was, I think, in “Lost Legacy.”
LVPPakaAspie: Interesting question about Friday. It would not have been all that hard to work one in while she was in New Zealand, and perhaps some other points.
BPRAL22169: I’m thinking in particular when she’s working out her relatinship wityh her Canadian family.
LVPPakaAspie: That would be another good place.
BPRAL22169: Picnics are almost always extraterritorial.
AGplusone: It’s not time for a picnic for Friday. She’s got issue to solve.
AGplusone: By herself.
BPRAL22169: As enclosed places are very important in Heinlein, as Slusser points out, so, too, are open spaces.
AGplusone: In Hoag the picnic is when it’s all revealled what it’s all about … it’s all opened up so to speak
BPRAL22169: In “Lost Legacy” the picnic is where they make the first demonstration and talk about setting up their program
BPRAL22169: So in those cases, they were expository devices.
AGplusone: In Starman Jones, isn’t it a picnic they’re on when they find out the gobblins and nice “horsies” are malign?
Kultsi KN: yes
BPRAL22169: I believe so.
DavidWrightSr: Not really, Max and Ellie were just going for a walk.
AGplusone: How could they wander around alone out there on a barely explored planet?
AGplusone: Too much trust of nature there.
AGplusone: Even just for a walk, David.
DavidWrightSr: Max should have known better.
BPRAL22169: Strikes me it’s the same kind of organized malevolent (demonic?) nature they encounter in Time for the Stars, too.
AGplusone: Country boy really forgot it there.
DavidWrightSr: That was my thought.
AGplusone: In IWFNE its time for Jo-anne to demonstrate her polymorphic perversities isn’t it? What was that point for?
Kultsi KN: might come from the country boy’s perception of his local natural suuroundings and thinking the new place would be similar
Reilloc has entered the room.
AGplusone: And in Cat, they’re at this sorta Tree Restaurant, reminds me of that place in Africa where they dine with lions below, albeit no lions there on the station.
aggirlj: Hi LN
Reilloc: Hold the phone.
Reilloc: I’m late as usual.
AGplusone: We’re talking about why they go on so many picnics in RAH, and what goes on there …
Kultsi KN: frex here I cannot concieve any dangers in nature to take precautions against
Reilloc: Sounds good to me.
AGplusone: how’s whoever’s sick, LN?
Kultsi KN: except elements, of course
Reilloc: Ellen and she’s better now. She’s here with me.
AGplusone: Good. Nice young lady from her photos you took at Butler.
aggirlj: good news
LVPPakaAspie: Max did try to argue Ellei out of taking the walk, but gave in.
AGplusone: What’s the point about Joanne and Winnie taking on their legion of lovers at the picnic in IWFNE … other than the “little folk” don’t get to have picnics anymore?
AGplusone: Or did Winner just watch?
AGplusone: Winnie
AGplusone: Is it: when you’re in ‘nature’ be natural, and do not bind the kine that tread the grain … or the hens.
Reilloc: Would you, should you, bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain?
Fire262: lots of picnics in SiaSL, both indoor and outdoor
AGplusone: Another picnic (?) Maureen and Lazurus go to her favorite spot and then wind up having to take Woody to a tamed park instead?
AGplusone: for suitable fun for a four or five year old rather than grown up fun
BPRAL22169: It occurs to me that picnics generally take place in “tamed nature” rather than nature in the raw. Kind of a halfway state.
LVPPakaAspie: I’m trying to remember something. In TEFL Uncle Gibbie and Dora went riding often, but were picnics ever mentioned?
Reilloc: There’s in the raw in nature but nature in the raw is rare.
Kultsi KN: I’m getting too drowsy to think. nice meeting you all and g’night
BPRAL22169: Yes — but it’s there.
BPRAL22169: Starman Jones came up a bit ago.
Kultsi KN has left the room.
BPRAL22169: and Time for the STars, though I don’t think that was a picnic.
AGplusone: perhaps it’s a tamed nature in Glory Road we saw … interspersed with nature that will bite you hard, where there be dragons, etc.
BPRAL22169: The point being that the places where tamed nature are, are all equivalents of gardens.
Reilloc: The “natural” setting of the safe place on Barsoom is one of the most romanticized settings I can recollect in RAH.
AGplusone: Yes! What I was hoping I’d hear.
AGplusone: Whenever Oscar relaxes it’s because Star puts up “wards” around to ward off nature.
AGplusone: A little garden Eden for Oscar.
BPRAL22169: The garden is nature in a human dimension
Reilloc: Now, here, in the midwest, the weather’s about like it was when the writer was a boy.
Reilloc: It’s 102 F and no garden spot.
AGplusone: 110 F in the shade.
AGplusone: Close.
aggirlj: Been hot here too, rain and hail.
BPRAL22169: Yup — late June, early July. August is worse.
BPRAL22169: (actually SF is the only place I’ve ever been that isn’t disgusting in the summertime)
DavidWrightSr: I’m reminded also of LL’s desire to find lively weather. No more on Earth, none on the planet of the little people etc.
AGplusone: Was 120 in the shade one birthday I had in early August. Aunt keeled over from heat.
Reilloc: What day in August, Dave?
AGplusone: early
BPRAL22169: It’s routinely 120 on 4th of July where I grew up — Phoenix
DavidWrightSr: But Phoenix is dry heat! Not that steam bath stuff
BPRAL22169: Ha! you’ve never been to Phoenix in Monsoon season (August)
LVPPakaAspie: I’m enjoying a Michigan summer. I don’t think it has been over 100 yet this year, and many years it never goes over 100. For those who don’t know me from AFH, I moved here from Las Vegas last fall.
DavidWrightSr: I lived there 3 years.
aggirlj: Ah but the no seeums are fun I here.
AGplusone: why don’t we water cats until 30 past?
aggirlj: We hardly have skeeters
AGplusone: I give conn back to Lester, who gets to keep it … off to see what Bob did.
Reilloc: Thanks, David.
AGplusone: me gusto!
Reilloc: I appreciate your sitting in for me.
AGplusone: da nada
Reilloc: I recall a post that Alec Inorio made quoting TEfL and how the meter tracked The Song of Hiawatha…
Reilloc: I’d not noticed that before when I’d read the book.
AGplusone: nice, eh?
Reilloc: Anybody know of other examples, whether in a “nature” context or not?
AGplusone: he frequently quotes other’s poetry
AGplusone: as in the Laughing Waters passage where he quotes Coleridge.
AGplusone: in Glory Road
Reilloc: I can’t remember…was that Kublakhan or some other?
AGplusone: There’s the part of Universe where he wrote the epic legends that the boy had to memorize
AGplusone: Yeah, the dream the Porlock idiot interrupted.
AGplusone: But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
AGplusone: Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover
AGplusone: A savage place! as holy and enchanted
AGplusone: As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
AGplusone: By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
AGplusone: And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething–
Reilloc: Almost logically, since he didn’t often hesitate to swipe, if you will, I’d go looking for something derivitive of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
Reilloc: Somebody who stoppeth one of three, on his way to a wedding and subjects him to a tale of woe and redemption…
AGplusone: And there’s the poem to Ginny. Witches Daughters.
AGplusone: In Requiem
AGplusone: or whatever it was titled
AGplusone: and little snatches of doggeral from Green Hills
AGplusone: There are what, two or three early poems (juvenilia?) from him that are still not published, right Bill?
AGplusone: The one he wrote when his sister was killed and …
aggirlj: Have to go now, see you later.
AGplusone: bye Jane
aggirlj: bye all
Reilloc: Stay cool, Jane.
aggirlj has left the room.
BPRAL22169: 2 juveniles, half a dozen or so written as an adult.
BPRAL22169: And some bits of doggerel.
AGplusone: There’s that one about Ginny skating he wrote in what, 1946 or so?
BPRAL22169: Yes, 1946. June, I think.
AGplusone: Wasm
BPRAL22169: Just before going off to see a V-2 launch.
jilyd has entered the room.
jilyd: Thanks, guys.
Reilloc: Hi, Dee.
AGplusone: Wasn’t that published in a THJ article?
BPRAL22169: The Ginny bio, I think
jilyd: Hi, LN. And eveyone.
BPRAL22169: Along with a photo I think was taken at the session he writes about.
AGplusone: No. 13, I think
BPRAL22169: Yes, that’s right.
AGplusone: Hi, Dee, we’re transiting from “nature” into poetry RAH wrote.
BPRAL22169: Incidentally, I have a project for someone who wants to do a poetry article for the journal — I’ve got all his drafts of the verse from Green Hills.
BPRAL22169: I tried talking Jane Davitt into doing it, but no go.
AGplusone: Hmmm, Les?
Reilloc: Me do a poetry article?
Reilloc: Sure.
Reilloc: Send the material.
BPRAL22169: I”ll look it up on Monday — it’s on the machine at the library.
AGplusone: I was thinking about visual art. RAH liked Maxfield Parrish. Parrish’s stuff are heavily “nature” but always a very well manicured nature.
Reilloc: So manicured they’re fantastic and hardly natural.
AGplusone: Views of pools, ponds, mountains, etc., always adorned by a beautiful form divine.
jilyd: There is no color as emotionally evocatoive for me as Maxfield Parrish blue.
AGplusone: Or several foms divine, such as Garden of Allah.
jilyd: It is peaceful and exhilarating at the same time.
Reilloc: Any reports of RAH’s reaction to Peter Maxx?
BPRAL22169: I don’t recall running across any references.
Reilloc: Maxx is the Parrish of his time, to me.
AGplusone: someone ‘splain Peter Maxx … okay.
Reilloc: There’s a psychedelic quality to both their works in my perception.
BPRAL22169: Just think of the 1970’s.
AGplusone: posters that glow in the dark
jilyd: If I remember right, psychadelic poster-stylcover of Yellow Submarine.
BPRAL22169: Beatles album covers — Yellow Submarine’s graphics sensibilities were straight from Peter Maxx
AGplusone: and oh! did I have some beautiful sideburns and Edwardian suits.
Reilloc: http://www.doubletakegallery.com/images/0035 9-22765.gif
AGplusone: yep, SGT PEPPER
BPRAL22169: He used to have a gallery on Santa Monica near Doheny. I wonder if it’s still there.
BPRAL22169: His later stuff was much darker.
jilyd: Eswardian suits are one 70s fashion I would not mind the return of. It would be nice to see a return to beauty instead of pseudo-dirt and critch-grabbing.
Reilloc: I could see SiaSL with a Peter Maxx cover.
AGplusone: But Parrish was far more beautiful I think. Maxx is too cartoony
AGplusone: Who did the illustrations in Number?
Reilloc: Parrish was cartoony but photorealistically cartoony.
jilyd: I agree, David, but I also think LN is rtiight that there is some kinship between them.
jilyd: Illustrations? WHAT ILLUSTRATIONS?
AGplusone: http://images.google.com/images?q=Maxfield+Parrish&hl=en&lr =&client=safari&rls=en&sa=N&tab=ii&oi=imagest
jilyd: Did I miss something big by having only paperback?
BPRAL22169: Richard Powers, I think.
BPRAL22169: RAH didn’t care for them.
AGplusone: Yes, you did. And you can’t get one for less than a couple hundred today. Some bastard stole mine and if I ever find out ….
BPRAL22169: I think the Trade Paperback has the illustrations and those are fairly reasonable.
jilyd: I sorta ho[pe you don’t find out, because I would fell compelled to assist you, and we would both end up locked up unless we are very good about it.
LVPPakaAspie: It’s not that bad. A trade paperback edition was published with the illustrations, and I’m sure you can get it for less than a few hundred.
LVPPakaAspie: Plead justifiable homicide. 🙂
DavidWrightSr: I found mine in a used book store. 😎
jilyd: All these years I never was aware of any illustrations. “swhat I get for being too cheap to buy hardbound.
DavidWrightSr: I don’t care for some of the illustrations, myself.
AGplusone: http://amigosdeltemple.iespana.es/blog/maxfield%20parrish%201 926.jpg
AGplusone: There’s your blue, Dee.
jilyd: Don, I would rahter be very good at it. AG is crafty enough to manage that, I feel sure.
BPRAL22169: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ca tegory=72309&item=5209417249&rd=1&ssPageName =WDVW
BPRAL22169: That auction ends in 9 hours — if you use Paypal, it’s from a British vendor, and It’s currently priced at only 9 L
BPRAL22169: That’s wrong. It’s currently 1 lb. 99, about $3.63 U.S.
AGplusone: bookmarked
BPRAL22169: Perhaps I should have said “vendour”
Reilloc: Shipping is the usual sticking point.
BPRAL22169: I don’t use Paypal any more.
BPRAL22169: Else I’d pick it up for you.
BPRAL22169: The description specifically says it’s the illustrated version.
AGplusone: yes it does
AGplusone: There aren’t bad illustrations, Dee. Kinda fun I always thought
DavidWrightSr: Well, Deety looked good, and Hilda wasn’t bad, but I thought both Jake and Zeb looked horrible.
DavidWrightSr: Didn’t fit my image at all.
AGplusone: Hey, Powers didn’t like guys.
AGplusone: I forget, Bill. Did they have one of Deety’s nipples crumbling the Walls of Ilium?
AGplusone:
jilyd: Except the neighbor childrens’s kitten who comes to see me very regularly.
jilyd: She is in that halfway between satge right now. No longer truly akitten, but not yet grown.
AGplusone: variant on the China Shop Rule: “if you feed them you adopt them”
AGplusone: or, rather, they adopt you.
jilyd: She used to rush over from their yard to see me, now she only ruses as far as the sycamore tree. (I sometimes play “stick” with her there, using longish twigs.)
BPRAL22169: I took time out to look up the TP version on bibliofind — there’s one for $10. I owe you a “sweetener” (some sweeteners) on the Starship Troopers deals — I could pick it up
AGplusone: Appreciate it
BPRAL22169: Will do.
AGplusone: Dee, your thoughts on the role of Nature in RAH? What is it?
jilyd: This doesn’t mean we have to play nice if you ever figure out who, does it?
AGplusone: naw, I’ll cut him up really fine and feed him to Bob. Who will eat him.
jilyd: It seems to me best emobdies in that well-know quote about dmas of men and beavers.
AGplusone: quote it please
jilyd: CAn’t, memory shot off in th war.
AGplusone: War of Ft. Rucker, when they let you fire the cannon?
jilyd: Right! My only chance in this lifetime to give the order for the howitzer to be shot, and have it obeyed.
LVPPakaAspie: It’s a rather lengthy Notebooks entry, which I have in front of me. Should I type it in?
Reilloc: In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race—i.e., his own self-hatred.
jilyd: You know the one I mean, about people who care for beaver dams because they aare “natural” and despising manmade dams as “unnatural.” Mankind being a part of nature, too.
jilyd: Thanks, Les.
AGplusone: thanks … from Notebooks
Reilloc: ctrl-v
AGplusone: thanks for the offer Don
Reilloc: Naturally, so to speak, I disagree with the quote.
jilyd: The man who wrote Green Hills of Earth either had to appreciate nature or at least be able to empathize with those who do, I htink.
jilyd: IN what way do you disagree?
AGplusone: I think his definition of “naturist” isn’t what a Naturist’s definition might be. Tree huggers : those who love nature :: PETA : those who love animals
Reilloc: Dispising Hoover Damn doesn’t translate into hating all mankind or oneself for being a part of it.
jilyd: Despising Hoover Dam ONLY because it is man-made, and not “natural” might, however.
jilyd: PETS–People Eating Tasty Animals?
jilyd: *PETA*
Reilloc: Despising Hoover Dam because it’s man-made as opposed to having occurred naturally?
AGplusone: Better dam to despise might be the ones that keep the Salmon from going upstream than Hoover. Hoover did little do damage ecology.
Reilloc: That’s simply detached from reality.
AGplusone: by comparison
AGplusone: What Hoover did do was damage Mexico, big time.
jilyd: And the Mexicans probably despise it for that reason.
Reilloc: Seems like the anti-Naturist position is a good pretext for allowing any human modification of anything.
jilyd: People in Lower Alabama aren’t all that happy with Atlanta, either.
jilyd: But not because the construction is “unnatural.”
Reilloc: Just accuse somebody of being a Naturist and you can drill all over Alaska.
AGplusone: but the earth is a modification from slash and burn agriculture onward
LVPPakaAspie: “Don’t foul your own nest” and “Leave nature alone” are NOT equivalent positions.
jilyd: ANd how does theo one follow from the other, LN?
AGplusone: from the time we wiped out the mammoth, etc.
jilyd: Exactly, Don.
BPRAL22169: I think that’s only the Woolly Mammoth in North America.
AGplusone: Rob Sawyer’s Hominids is sort of fun to read. Not just a critique of the Anglo American Rules of Law.
BPRAL22169: Sort of — I wish he were a better writer/technician, though.
AGplusone: Course he helps himself a little bit by having his neandrathals programmed only to breed at certain times to keep the population down
AGplusone: neanderthals
AGplusone: he’s bright enough to make his points
BPRAL22169: To some extent we had a bad experience after TEFL and that aphorism was written, that has re-cast the way we read it.
BPRAL22169: I’m thinking of Reagan’s secretary of the interior — Watt? — who wanted to make Teapot Dome into national policy.
AGplusone: nimby and banana?
Reilloc: Let Reagan be Reagan.
BPRAL22169: I think that’s where LNC got the “pave over Alaska” thing, isn’t it?
BPRAL22169: (Actually, I think the fear was “let Regan be Reagan”)
AGplusone: You don’t like Donald?
BPRAL22169: So in 1973, that quote didn’t “align” him with James Watt; but after 1980-84, it did.
BPRAL22169: (Actually, wasn’t Regan in the second term? I forget)
BPRAL22169: Nixon was still in the White House when that was written.
AGplusone: Half hour to go … nature is more than seratan spelled backwards, but in RAH, is nature Mother or Mother F? “Both,” said Bob … despite beavers and dams.
Reilloc: Nature’s something to which to pay lip service but it’s nuture that controls.
BPRAL22169: That’s another one he comes down on both sides of.
AGplusone: And nurture is character development …
AGplusone: whether it’s by hook or by crook, as in Don Harvey’s case, slipping in and out of the fog as a guerrilla or in the case of others who have a few more mentors.
Reilloc: Nature is to be subdued.
AGplusone: With wards at least.
AGplusone: Actually if you could do that …
Reilloc: Any suggestions for future chat topics?
Fire262: I wouldn’t say subdued so much as tamed to our pleasure that which we can and learn to live harmoniously with what we cannot
LVPPakaAspie: Whether or not a justifiable homicide defense would work if someone killed D. Spencer Hines?
BPRAL22169: You know, it might be time to go back to something we did several years ago and just go through all the stories seriatim
Fire262: the big thing is to understand it first
Reilloc: Hines meets the Unicycle Man.
BPRAL22169: I’d take up a collection to reward him.
Fire262: GROK nature before you fuss with it
jilyd: LN, Counld we just lock them together ina small room?
BPRAL22169: It may be that “nature” is too big an abstraction to be able to say anything useful about it.
AGplusone: I think we said a lot.
BPRAL22169: come to a definite conclusion, I mean, one way or another.
jilyd: ANd as we seem to be winding down, I must leave. Good day to you all, I enjoyed the chat.
jilyd has left the room.
Reilloc: Sorry, I got interrupted.
Reilloc: And it wasn’t that “nature called.”
AGplusone: We could do that comparison of the Michaels … but I think it might be fun to go look at RAH’s Fantasies. Some early stuff there that we don’t talk about much.
AGplusone: Lost Legacy, Hoag, They, etc.
DavidWrightSr: The Man Who Traveled in Elephants?
Reilloc: I think I may have only read that once and decades ago…
AGplusone: be new then
Reilloc: What’s it in?
Reilloc: I don’t even know if I’ve got it.
DavidWrightSr: Jonathan Hoag.
LVPPakaAspie: If I remember right, Heinlein once stated that Elephants was his perosnal favorite.
LVPPakaAspie: Personal, even.
AGplusone: Fantasies of RAH … http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sim-explorer/explore-ite ms/-/0312872453/0/101/1/none/purchase/ref%3Dpd%5Fsxp% 5Fr0/104-1813445-8201540
BPRAL22169: It’s in Unpleasant Profession — but I think it’s also in the new Fantasies of
Reilloc: I’m going to have to open some boxes of books and find stuff…
BPRAL22169: Oh, just start over.
BPRAL22169: I’ve always found opening boxes of books too risky to contemplate.
AGplusone: Magic, Inc.–And He Built a Crooked HouseThey–The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan HoagOur Fair CityThe Man Who Traveled in Elephants–All You Zombies–
AGplusone: Sale Price: $14.95 http://www.vintagelibrary.com/pd.cfm?&pcode=rah034
Reilloc: There’s a copy of Hoag on eBay for $2.50.
Reilloc: I’ll just buy that and save lifting boxes of books.
AGplusone: But is Hoag enough for three hours?
BPRAL22169: There’s a copy of Fantasies of hc on Ebay for $6.50.
Reilloc: It won’t take me that long to read it, I hope.
AGplusone: You have a copy of Waldo and Magic Inc?
BPRAL22169: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ca tegory=377&item=8312557211&rd=1&ssPageName=W DVW
Reilloc: I’m sure I do.
AGplusone: Well, do both, and we’ll do Fantasies, which is the same thing.
Reilloc: When I read those two, originally, they were in one book with Puppet Master.
Reilloc: s
AGplusone: 352 pages
BPRAL22169: I remember that — big red spiral on a blue cover. Book club edition
BPRAL22169: Doubleday certainly did some gawdawful covers.
Reilloc: Any last words on “nature” before we adjourn?
AGplusone: Hoag, I found last time I read it, is something that grows on you, and you have to be older to get a lot out of it. Odd, RAH wrote it at 33 and I didn’t get much from it until far older.
BPRAL22169: 35, I think — January-February 1942
BPRAL22169: So 34 going on 35
AGplusone: red claws and fangs compared to Swope Park?
Reilloc: I was in Swope Park on Fathers’ Day.
BPRAL22169: I don’t know — it’s really a perversion of nature
AGplusone: where there’s always a frog to catch your foot in … hear the one about the Princess in the tower, at dawn, dishelved and tore. Looks at her lover and says” You despicable frog, you lied!”
AGplusone: Frog goes Ribbit.
AGplusone: … and then lights a cigarette … ta-ta.
Reilloc: We should do “smoking in Heinlein.”
BPRAL22169: “fire, tamed at man’s fingertips” . . . .
Reilloc: Prometheus, Uncarcigenated.
AGplusone: Benson & Hedges # 5 vs. Gauloise
BPRAL22169: Mentholated Miltons?
LVPPakaAspie: Smoking does show up quite often.
AGplusone: Smoke the toke that Jesus toked.
Reilloc: I was re-reading the Foundation trilogy the other day and there’s smoking everywhere.
BPRAL22169: That’s so twen-cen
AGplusone: Well, I bail now …
AGplusone: fix lunch
AGplusone: eat
BPRAL22169: ciao all.
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
AGplusone: drink beer
AGplusone: Dave: got log?
Reilloc: Professor, would you close the log?
DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 7:58 P.M. EDT
Reilloc: Thanks for attending, everybody.
DavidWrightSr: duh,duh,duh, that’s all folks!
Reilloc: Next month’ll go more according to plan, I’m hopeful.
AGplusone: a pleasure as always
AGplusone: Bob: you wanted to talk?
DavidWrightSr: Gotta go. Night all.
Reilloc: ‘night, guys…
AGplusone: Good night David
