Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Thursday 05/10/07 9:00 P.M. EST
Time Enough For Love – Part 2
Here Begin The Postings
From: “Tim Morgan”
Date: 12 Mar 2007 10:51:46 -0700
Subject HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING SCHEDULED WHEN: April 5, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom TOPIC: Time Enough For Love
From: “Tim Morgan”
Date: 12 Mar 2007 10:51:46 -0700
Subject: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th
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
From: “JaneE!”
Date: 3 Apr 2007 15:18:46 -0700
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th
Just bringing this up top for everyone to remind you that this Thursday is the day. See you there.
JaneE!
From: TheBookman Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 04:59:20 -0500
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th On 3 Apr 2007 15:18:46 -0700, JaneE! wrote:
> 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
From: “David Wright Sr.”
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:30:19 +0000
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th
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.
https://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_10-12-2000.html
https://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_10-14-2000.html
David Wright Sr.
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:07:59 -0700
Subject: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“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
The log for the 04/05/07 meeting of the Heinlein Readers Group is now available at:
https://www.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
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David Wright Sr.”
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:53:36 +0000
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
“David M. Silver” 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:
> https://www.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.
From: “Vance P. Frickey”
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:48:16 -0600
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
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
From: “Tim Morgan”
Date: 15 Apr 2007 10:13:42 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
On Apr 13, 7:07 pm, “David M. Silver”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
From: “David M. Silver” Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:15:44 -0700 Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“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.”
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
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David Wright Sr.”
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:41:26 +0000
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
“David M. Silver” wrote in
news::
> In article ,
> “David Wright Sr.” wrote:
(snip)
Let’s take this one point at a time.
> 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”
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:04:39 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“David Wright Sr.” wrote:
> “David M. Silver” wrote in
> news::
> > In article ,
> > “David Wright Sr.” 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
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David Wright Sr.”
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:25:31 +0000
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD \
“David M. Silver” wrote in
news::
> In article ,
> “David Wright Sr.” wrote:
>> “David M. Silver” wrote in
>> news::
>> > In article ,
>> > “David Wright Sr.” 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,
True, but it is Ishtar who makes the final decision.
“..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.
From: “David M. Silver” Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:43:40 -0700 Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“David Wright Sr.” 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
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David Wright Sr.”
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:45:51 +0000
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
To: “David M. Silver”
“David M. Silver” 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)
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:58:34 GMT
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
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
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:16:16 GMT
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
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
From: samvaknin Date: 20 Apr 2007 02:24:00 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
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
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:24:00 -0700
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th
In article ,
“Tim Morgan” 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=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
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:12:03 GMT
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th — Variation
David M. Silver wrote:
> In article ,
> “Tim Morgan” 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.
Joined the apple-pickers union
and I always paid my dues.
I’m the man that signed the contract to raise the risin’ sun.
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done.
I taught Samson how to use his mighty hand.
I showed Columbus to this happy land.
And for Pharaoh’s little kiddies I built all the pyramiddies
And to the Sahara carried all the sand.
Now I was strawboss on the pyramids
and the tower of Babel too.
I opened up the ocean,
let the mighty children through.
I fought a million battles and I never lost a one.
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done.
I taught Solomon his little ABC’s.
I’m the first one to eat Limburger cheese.
And while floating down the bay with Methuselah one day
I saw his whiskers floating in the breeze.
Now I fought the revolution that set this country free.
It was me and a couple of Indians that dumped the Boston tea.
I won the battle of Valley Forge and the battle of Bully Run.
And that’s about the biggest thing that Man has ever done.
Now Queen Elizabeth,
she fell in love with me.
We were married
in Milwaukee secretly.
But I got tired of snooker
and ran off with General Hooker
To go shootin’ skeeters down in Tennessee.
[Repeat first two verses]
Whaddyathink?
Rufe
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:46:38 -0700
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th — Variation
In article ,
“Dr. Rufo” wrote:
> Whaddyathink?
Woodie and McHugh have each other’s tone and style down pretty pat.
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:23:01 -0700
Subject: Re: HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING: Time Enough for Love, April 5th — Variation
In article ,
“David M. Silver” wrote:
> In article ,
> “Dr. Rufo” wrote:
> > Whaddyathink?
> Woodie and McHugh have each other’s tone and style down pretty pat.
And, sorry to forget this initially, but thank you for Guthrie’s lyrics. I’d never read them, although I think I once saw and heard Guthrie singing a snatch of it. Wonderful song.
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: Tim Morgan
Date: 27 Apr 2007 20:53:30 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: May 10 9PM EDT
On Apr 15, 10:13 am, “Tim Morgan”wrote:
> On Apr 13, 7:07 pm, “David M. Silver”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
Well, I’m still not sure if I’ll be traveling on May 10th, and I don’t want to hold things up forever. So let’s say definitively that the next Readers Group meeting will be held as follows:
WHEN: May 10, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT
WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom
TOPIC: Time Enough For Love, Part II
If it turns out that I can’t make it, perhaps someone will volunteer to be the guest moderator for the evening.
Tim
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:41:38 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“David M. Silver” wrote:
– Hide quoted text –
– Show quoted text –
> 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?
Okay, time to “grasp the nettle,”since we’ve only about a week or so before the chat. [I’d wondered where that quote came from. I find a theory it’s derived from Shakespeare, a quote of Hotspur in Henry IV, part I, “out of this nettle, danger, we grasp the flower, safely.” It has come to face up to or take on a known problem. And Heinlein’s taking up incest is certainly a known problem for readers.]
Why is Heinlein messing around with incestuous love in _Time Enough for Love_? Why does the progression move from agape, to eros, to narcissus, end in incest?
Let’s first look at incest as a theme in literature. When censorship didn’t prevent that theme from being published at all, there’s quite a bit of it. Where does literature start? In the stories of myth that become religion–myths of every civilization that become, for a time, perhaps forever religions think, a statement of the accepted rules of morals and dogma that religion adopts, “some say” as FOX news often puts it, to control mankind. What are the myths and religious stories about? Gods and heroes–sometimes kings, queens and their followers, sometimes patriarchs and prophets. What do gods and patriarchs and prophets do in their stories? Basically, anything they want.
In our first substantial Western civilization, Egypt, the deities Nut and Geb, brother and sister, the children of Shu, grandchildren of Ra, are perpetually sexually lovemaking with each other. When separated at Ra’s command, Nut is found to be pregnant. During the following year, Nut gives birth to Isis, Osiris, Nephthys, Set and Horus the Elder, not to be confused with Horus, the later child of Isis and Osiris (who are also brother and sister). Incest compounded. Set and Osiris hate each other because Nephythys, Set’s sister-wife (another incest) is barren with Set. She disguises herself as her sister Isis, gets Osiris (her potent brother) drunk, takes him to bed and the child of this incestuous union becomes Anubis. Set later kills his brother Osiris over this incestuous union with their sister Nephythys, Set’s doubly incestuous and adulterous wife. I could go on to the homosexual “inpregnation” of Set, a revenge by Horus the Younger for the murder of his father Osisis, but I won’t. You get the point. No one by now should be wondering why the Egyptian Kings and Queens practiced brother and sister marriages with these examples from their religion before them, I hope.
I can do the same with the Greeks. For just a little taste, Zeus and Hera are brother and sister as well as husband and wife. They are children of Cronus and Rhea, also married brother and sister, and according to some sources, grandchildren of Uranus and Caia (in some sources a son who took his mother as wife, in some sources as brother and sister, first known inhabitants of earth).
The Hebrew religious writings (aka the Christian “Bible”) contains much of the same–only it’s the heroes this time. Lot and his daughters. Gen. 19:33-26. Sarah is Abraham’s niece (daughter of his brother Haran). Esau and Jacob both marry their first counsins (Esau four of them; Jacob two, Laban’s daughters). Judah, fourth son of Jacob, mistakes his daughter-in-law Tamar for a prostitutes and impregnates her and she gives birth to twin sons. There are other examples: David’s eldest son Amnon who rapes his half-sister, the second Tamar (unlucky name one would think).
Among the Norse gods, incest and brother and sister marriage was permitted among the gods in Vanheim, but not in Asgard. When Njord, god of the sea, goes to Asgard with his children he has to give up his sister-wife (perhaps named Nerthus), who is the mother of Freyr and Freyja (and this brother-sister set are lovers and husband and wife, originally). Freyja goddess of love and sex is, of course, Friday (and is sometimes confused with Frigg, wife of Odin, who sometimes has the same attributes as Freyja. The bloodlines of the Norse gods aren’t the only thing that gets confusing.)
Okay, that’s enough for the gods and prophets and patriarchs–except one point later–who don’t have to play by the human rules.
Where might Heinlein be going here, assuming he has the gods of all these religions in mind? Anybody got a guess? Think Valentine Michael: “Thou art god!” (All that groks is god.) Um-huh.
More tomorrow. Please remember, the more comment and discussion, the better the chat. This is Heinlein. What this newsgroup is here for.
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 04:45:58 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“David M. Silver” wrote:
A week to go before the chat room meeting on May 10.
> 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).
To understand Slusser’s critique in terms of what Heinlein may have been writing, it’s only fair to review what others have written when dealing with incest as a theme.
Once we get past from myths directly involving incest of the gods and onto stories involving incest and other misdeeds by men and women we come upon the Greek plays and epics.
Homer refers briefly to Oedipus, who became king of Thebes, in both the Iliad and Odyssey; others write bits and pieces of the story; but it was the poet Sophocles in the 5th century, BC, who gives us the more complete tale. Laius is king of Thebes, and rules with his wife Queen Jocasta, who gives birth to Oedipus. This following slightly edited summary from wikipedia:
Laius hears a prophecy that his son will kill him. Fearing the
prophecy, Laius … leaves [Oedipus] out to die, but a herdsman
finds him and takes him away from Thebes. Oedipus, not knowing he
was adopted, leaves the [adopted] home in fear of a prophecy he
hears that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius,
meanwhile, ventures out … [to solve a mysterious riddle]. As
prophesized, Oedipus crossed paths with Laius and this leads to a
fight where Oedipus slays Laius. Oedipus then … [solves the]
mysterious riddle [as part of his goal] to become king of Thebes. He
marries the widow queen Jocasta, [as he must, because succession is
matriarchial, to complete his goal to become king] not knowing it is
his mother[, and their incestuous relationship results in sons]. A
plague falls on the people of Thebes. Upon discovery of the truth,
Jocasta hangs herself. [Oedipus gives up his reign and becomes a
penniless wanderer.] After Oedipus is no longer king, Oedipus’ sons
kill each other, fighting over who will rule Thebes.
This gets us to the Greek notion of hubris, which today has come to mean exaggerated self-pride, often resulting in fatal retribution; Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (King James Version) epitomizes the modern definition.
In ancient Greece, however, it referred to actions taken by others of the community who act against the person showing exaggerated self-pride (and offending the gods thereby) to shame the victim exhibiting hubris. Upright citizens (aka the Mrs. Grundys?) were supposed to join in shaming the victim for his or her misdeeds. The gods don’t generally directly involve themselves in retribution; they rely upon the society of humans to shame and shun the miscreants.
In Oedipus, the sins that offended the gods were patricide and incest; the shaming in retribution led to Jocasta’s suicide, Oedipus’ surrender of the kingship, and the fratricide of each other by the sons.
Let’s pass for a bit on the notion of Freud of “the Oedipus complex” and of Jung of “the Electra complex” which comes from another Greek poet, Aeschylus’ cycle of plays, and move on to the earliest English-language literature that deals with incest themes.
Post-Christainity, there’s nothing I know of involving themes of incest until Daniel DeFoe in 1722 with Moll Flanders, who wrote what a described as the first English novels. A short somewhat inaccurate summary from a bookseller’s site puts it thus: “‘Twelve [years] a Whore, five times a Wife’, Moll Flanders weds, beds and cheats her way around the country before being deported to Virginia, where she finally achieves respectability.”
Yeah, well, that was her second visit to Virginia; and she wasn’t deported directly there, but to Maryland. The first time around, Moll, who believes herself a foundling who has striven hard and more or less honestly built a second marriage to a kind solid man, goes over with her husband to continue to build an estate he has begun in Virginia. Once there, he introduces her to his mother; and, guess what, mother turns out to be Moll’s actual biological mother, deported from England because she was a thief and a whore, who pled her pregnant belly (Moll) to avoid the gallows and secure deportation instead. Ooops! To avoid the shame which hasn’t started yet because no one knows and the continued further sin, Moll leaves her husband, mother, and the two incestuous sons she has already borne her good husband-brother, and a comfortable, respectable life (her mother, brother and sons have no idea why she must leave until she tells them); and returns to England where she becomes an actual whore, con artist and thief to survive. Caught and condemned to death eventually for a felony, she convinced a minister of her repentance, had her sentence reduced to deportation, and, with another husband (also condemned for the same crime), arrives in Maryland and lives happily. There, after a time, she finds her mother has left her a plantation in Virginia; and she tracks down her brother-husband and a son, arranges for them to run it as her stewards, and makes the son her heir. She conceals her incestuous, still extant bigamy from her thief-husband; and they in their very old age return to England where they live out their days in sincere penitent [and affluent] lives, saith staid DeFoe, the puritan Dissenter.
Then there’s that other Foundling, Tom Jones, by satirist Henry Fielding in 1749. Tom shows up in a basket left on the doorstep of a very kind and wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy, at the same time one of Allworthy’s chubby little pretty maids, Jenny, goes AWOL. There comes a time when Tom must leave the comfortable home of Allworthy and, once on the road, he has adventures. One adventure includes a mildly attractive middle aged lady who Tom saves from a beating who finds Tom attractive and they end up in bed together. Ooops number two, for the omniscient reader knows or ought to figure out very quickly, that lady is Jenny. Complications–an understatement whenever talking about Fielding’s writings–ensue, but Tom eventually manages to walk between the raindrops; and at the end it turns out Jenny wasn’t Tom’s mother after all–but as Professor Susser would undoubtedly say, the affair certainly was “the physical thing and nothing more” and solely intended by His Lordship, Chief Magistrate of London, the Honorable Justice Fielding, to be “merely libidinous teasing” to all prurient readers.
There may have been a writer or two who followed Fielding who played around with incest themes; but no one and nothing significant comes to my mind. Playwrights were already under even more added censorship from the 1737 Theatre Licensing Act, which was why satirist Fielding turned to from writing plays to the novel in the first place. There followed, in a generation or two, Queen Vicky, her stuffy husband Albert, and the Victorian Age. The theatre was tied down pretty tightly by the censors until about 1907 when someone finally got permission to perform Dryden’s rewrite of Sophocles’ Oedipus, kept off English stages by censorship since the seventeenth century.
Let’s fast forward now to Susser’s critique again. I’ll repeat it so you won’t have to scroll back:
> 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, 1976).
I sometimes wonder whether the second- and third-class critics who wrote about Robert Heinlein in the 1960s and 1970s stopped reading literature after they finished their formal degreed education.
Here’s Slusser prating about vulgarity in theme while the rest of the literary world is reading, teaching and trying to figure out Vladimir Nabokov’s second major novel that dealt with vulgar themes of incest, _Ada, Or Ardor: A Family Chronicle_, published and reviewed seven years earlier.
See,
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-ada-appel.html?… &oref=slogin
The title of the NY Times review I cite is hilarious in context: “Ada: An Erotic Masterpiece That Explores the Nature of Time.” Time enough for love there, eh? No time for Heinlein. Note I haven’t even mentioned, yet, Nabokov’s earlier major novel, _Lolita_, which dealt with paedophilia.
In 1958, Terry Southern with Mason Hoffenberg published _Candy_ by Olympia Press in Paris. It appeared in an American wrapping by 1964, and was filmed–along with Lolita in 1962, by 1968. Pardon if I haven’t read _Candy_ in about thirty years, but doesn’t Candy wind up in the sack, or close to it, with her father at some point?
No one has any problem at all recognizing satirist Southern was reworking Voltaire’s _Candide_ in _Candy_, and both Southern’s and Nabokov’s far more highly regarded works were immediately invested into the body of literary classics–although I sometimes wonder how long _Candy_ will last there. You couldn’t take a modern novel class in a college or university in the 1960s or 70s without running into references to works of both these writers.
So, what do we talk about when we consider Ted Bronson’s romance with Maureen Smith? Any thoughts? Any ideas yet? Anyone?
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 16:39:39 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“Dr. Rufo” wrote:
> David M. Silver wrote:
> > In article ,
> > “David M. Silver” wrote:
> > A week to go before the chat room meeting on May 10.
> < snip of the “bait” you’ve provided for the discussion >
> Dave, in despite of your loving provision of such a wealth of
> resources for the up-coming chat on the vagaries of Love in and out
> of Heinlein, I must decline. I’m not now, nor have I ever been to my
> certain knowledge, responsive to the theme of incest.
> Sorry,
> Rufe
As everyone knows, I’m easy, Rufo. What would you like to discuss about in the _Da Capo_ portion of TEFL? I’ve always liked the setting, the mid-west Kansas City shown at the end of an era of peace and expansion.
Somewhere I’ve read that Heinlein took to greater heights than his Master, Kipling’s technique of indirect exposition — showing the world he creates through the eyes and language of the characters, rather than through expository lumps. That’s funny, when you consider that some critical readers castigate Heinlein for what they term “info dumps” and didacticism, but what’s your view?
Or anything else? Anyone?
I don’t insist that anyone else seize the nettle. I’m only available to enjoy discussion.
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, Rtd
From: Nom DuPlume
Date: 6 May 2007 03:22:27 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
First, did the reader find the incest to be disturbing? (I did when I read it…now I don’t care anymore)
Second, does the reader believe that the act of incest was central to the overall plot of the book? (I don’t…the book is just fine without it)
Third, it’s fiction, right? Unless RAH specifically put into non- fiction his thoughts behind incest and, in particular, his reasons for putting this scene into the book…then any discussion will be nothing more than just that…discussion. Nothing stands to come of it.
Now, if someone were to propose putting TEFL into a movie or screenplay, would they consider leaving that part out? I sure would. I see no reason to include it.
Ok, perhaps I see one reason, and one reason only…
If one subscribes to RAHs notion of sexual freedom completely, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with two consenting adults getting together to express how they feel towards one another. As long as no “unhealthy” offspring are created, then there is no harm done. Furthermore, and perhaps “finally”, if an offspring is created who just happens to be the next “messiah”, then we must all swallow our pride and submit to His plan.
It seems to me that RAH has put a controversial topic into a book perhaps merely for the purpose of causing his audience to achieve controversy. In thus identifying individuals who become upset “over nothing”, he does us all a service.
Good Job, RAH!!!
keep it up
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 05:46:17 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
Nom DuPlume wrote:
> Now, if someone were to propose putting TEFL into a movie or
> screenplay, would they consider leaving [incest] out? I sure would.
> I see no reason to include it.
> Ok, perhaps I see one reason, and one reason only…
> If one subscribes to RAHs notion of sexual freedom completely, then
> there is absolutely nothing wrong with two consenting adults getting
> together to express how they feel towards one another. As long as no
> “unhealthy” offspring are created, then there is no harm done.
> Furthermore, and perhaps “finally”, if an offspring is created who
> just happens to be the next “messiah”, then we must all swallow our
> pride and submit to His plan.
Nice of you to mention these points. You see there was one 20th Century novel that dealt with incest that I didn’t mention–and it was by an SF writer who, in his time, was as respected as highly as RAH–and Heinlein considered him a mentor.
The problem was, the story although fully worked out never got put to paper, so far as anyone knows.
An unresolved plot element in the Lensmen series by E.E. (“Ted” to his family) Smith at the end of the series concerns the marriages to come of the _Children of the Lens_, as the young man and his fours sisters have, by the end of their book, not found anyone who interests them. These five children (“The Unit”) of second stage Lensmen Kimball Kinnison and Clarrissa MacDougall (the first woman to receive a Lens) are the long end of the secret breeding program by the Arisians who call this the “most nearly perfect creation the universe has ever seen,” and state that they, who created it, are themselves almost entirely ignorant of almost all of the children’s higher powers.
Several passages in _Children of the Lens_ appear to imply that an incestuous group-marriage between the young man and his four sisters will result in a race of Homo Superior, most notably:
…each of the Kinnison girls knew it would be a physical and
psychological impossibility for her to become even mildly interested
in any man not at least her father’s equal. They each had dreamed of
a man who would be her own equal, physically and mentally, but it
had not yet occurred to any of them that one such man already
existed.
–_Children of the Lens_, p. 72 (chapter 7)
Smith may not have been able to state in print directly what is implied, i.e., inbreeding.
Robert A. Heinlein referred to this inbreeding when he wrote:
The Lensman novel was left unfinished; there was to have been at
least a seventh volume. As always, Doc had worked it out in great
detail but never (so far as I know) wrote it down… because it was
unpublishable ‹ then. But he told me the ending, orally and in
private. I shan’t repeat it; it is not my story. Possibly somewhere
there is a manuscript ‹ I hope so! All I will say is that the ending
develops by inescapable logic from clues in _Children of the Lens_.
–Robert A. Heinlein, “Larger than Life,”
_Expanded Universe_, p. 499
Careful searches by people who knew Smith, who died in 1965, well have failed to locate any material related to such a story.
> It seems to me that RAH has put a controversial topic into a book
> perhaps merely for the purpose of causing his audience to achieve
> controversy. In thus identifying individuals who become upset “over
> nothing”, he does us all a service.
But is it “nothing” whether or not folk may get “upset” over it? RAH wrote that what he was after when he sat down and dirtied one side of sheets of paper, aside from paying for groceries, was to provoke his readers to ask questions, themselves, not look for answers in his writings.
And so, we’re back again to questioning the romance of another Smith (Woody, alias “Ted” to his family, as was Doc Smith) and Maureen Smith. Was Heinlein tipping his hat to E. E. Smith who had died eight years earlier and would never put to paper his seventh Lensmen novel?
What’s the end result of all this incest between Heinlein’s two Smiths going to be? Da Capo?
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 12:35:04 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“David M. Silver” wrote:
> –Robert A. Heinlein, “Larger than Life,”
> _Expanded Universe_, p. 499
correction, p. 409. (Baen October 2003 printing).
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: Nom DuPlume
Date: 8 May 2007 03:32:01 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
Hopefully, the end result is that it will open the minds of those who are against such notions on a strictly “moral” argument. We now know that morals are as fickle as thin ice. What’s good in one house is not necessarily good in the next. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is accepting the fact that attempting to measure the relative contribution to human survival can only be done centuries after our own ideas have been put to the test. It is (currently) a futile exercise. (This is why the character of LL is so compelling — he has done it!)
But also, there is the question of whether genetic manipulation should be “encouraged”, rather than scorned, as it is by (the US) government, today. And, is it indeed better to form a family like those portrayed in Heinlein’s novels? Who knows? I’m not aware of a single government in existence that will allow a family to consist of multiple moms and multiple dads, although I do not doubt the practicality of the arrangement. To me, it seems an infinitely superior method of ensuring the family’s survival. And, after all, isn’t that what is most important? More important even than the survival of the government?
Is there really a woman who is beyond jealousy — who would put the children first before her physical and or psychological “needs”? I have yet to meet her.
Are there any enlightened folks among us who are trying this out? Are they using legal devices (such as the Howard Foundation) to both promote and monitor it? I am not aware of any.
From: Chris Zakes
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 08:24:48 -0500
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
On 8 May 2007 03:32:01 -0700, an orbital mind-control laser caused
Nom DuPlume to write:
>Hopefully, the end result is that it will open the minds of those who
>are against such notions on a strictly “moral” argument. We now know
>that morals are as fickle as thin ice. What’s good in one house is
>not necessarily good in the next. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is
>accepting the fact that attempting to measure the relative
>contribution to human survival can only be done centuries after our
>own ideas have been put to the test. It is (currently) a futile
>exercise. (This is why the character of LL is so compelling — he has
>done it!)
>But also, there is the question of whether genetic manipulation should
>be “encouraged”, rather than scorned, as it is by (the US) government,
>today. And, is it indeed better to form a family like those portrayed
>in Heinlein’s novels? Who knows? I’m not aware of a single
>government in existence that will allow a family to consist of
>multiple moms and multiple dads, although I do not doubt the
>practicality of the arrangement. To me, it seems an infinitely
>superior method of ensuring the family’s survival. And, after all,
>isn’t that what is most important? More important even than the
>survival of the government?
At least in the U.S. there’s not much the government could do to stop such an arrangement. If, for example, two or three married couples (or a mixed-sex group of “roommates”) decided to share a large house, what could the government do? And as long as the people involved didn’t make a fuss about it, why would the government care who the father of any particular woman’s baby was?
Realistically, I think the biggest stumbling block would not be the government, but the people involved–how many of the communes or SIASL-style “Nests” from the 60s and 70s are still viable, and how many of them fell apart due to internal squabbling?
>Is there really a woman who is beyond jealousy — who would put the
>children first before her physical and or psychological “needs”? I
>have yet to meet her.
>Are there any enlightened folks among us who are trying this out?
I have heard of folks doing so (over on the alt.callahans list about five years ago; I’ve no idea of their current status.) The only “troika” I ever personally knew of broke up several years ago, because the guy was cheating on his wives. They dumped him and have continued as a couple.
>Are
>they using legal devices (such as the Howard Foundation) to both
>promote and monitor it? I am not aware of any.
If it’s happening (and it probably is, at least to some degree) I don’t think it’s that organized. But I could easily be wrong. I can’t imagine a Howard Foundation-like organization that would openly advertise that it was violating the prevailing moral climate, so how would most of us *know* if such an organization was out there.
-Chris Zakes
Texas
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 18:40:32 GMT
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
David M. Silver wrote:
> In article ,
> “David M. Silver” wrote:
> A week to go before the chat room meeting on May 10.
>>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).
> To understand Slusser’s critique in terms of what Heinlein may have been
> writing, it’s only fair to review what others have written when dealing
> with incest as a theme.
Dave, < I ask with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek >, could it be that Slusser’s concern with incest is not the proper issue when looking at TEfL? It may be *his* concern but is it RAH’s?
> Once we get past from myths directly involving incest of the gods and
> onto stories involving incest and other misdeeds by men and women we
> come upon the Greek plays and epics.
< snip of the Oedipal-story recension from Wicked-pedia >
Stipulating the facts at issue, I beg to differ on their import: As you say, there are “sins” committed which offend the gods but, I aver they have nothing to do with incest and parricide specifically. They may *include* incest and parricide but the REAL offense to the gods is the determination of Laius and Oedipus to change their Fates. No mere human can change his Destiny. Even the Olympians are ruled by the Parcae. Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis are the Three Hags in complete charge of Creation’s structure.
Laius was told in prophecy that he’d be killed by his own son and contrived to avoid this. He drove a stake through the baby’s ankles and exposed him on a mountain-top. Didn’t pan out.
After being raised as the son of the next-door neighbor king (& Queen) of Corinth Eddie found out – from the Oracle at Delphi – that he was “destined” to you-know-what. He buggered off to avoid that. Didn’t pan out.
Father and son “chanced to meet” at a crossroads in the country (Where roads cross is a place of bad ju-ju where Hecate rules. That’s why vampires and suicides are buried there.)
Their paths cross and then, so too, do their wills. Angry words lead to Eddie offing Laius. Laius’ chariot runs off to tell the tale and cover his own ass in Thebes. (Didja ever notice how Messengers are really bad at telling their story truthfully when their own butt is on the line?)
Cutting to the chase, Eddie answers the Sphinx’s Riddle and frees Thebes from its curse. Gets to town & finds he has qualified for the now-empty kingship and marries the Dowager Queen Regnant. They are fruitful and have two sons. (Wicked-pedia or your good self neglected to mention they have two daughters as well.)
Fast-forward. Thebes is under a new curse. The people are pissed. Eddie the King vows he will discover the man responsible and that he will punish that villain. Eddie finds out that HE, HIMSELF, is the culprit. In despite of the fact that he “had acted from the best motives in offing Laius, etc.” He publicly confirms that he deserves to be punished. PLEASE NOTE: He is claiming he deserves to be punished for what is basically “fulfilling his destiny”. Then he does it. He tells his Mother-Wife and she hangs herself. He blinds himself with her brooches (the 1954 Olivier version) and wanders off led by his daughters (I told you the girls were important!).
> This gets us to the Greek notion of hubris
< snip ’cause I want to stay on topic >
> In Oedipus, the sins that offended the gods were patricide and incest;
> the shaming in retribution led to Jocasta’s suicide, Oedipus’ surrender
> of the kingship, and the fratricide of each other by the sons.
I demur.
< “vide supra” as the Hawaiian quartermaster’s clerk has said before >
*Hubris* is the center of the tale — But it is that arrogance that makes a man believe he can change the destiny laid out for him. The incest and other blah-blah titillate and offend the humans in the audience — not the gods. As you’ve noted, the gods had done much the same themselves as required by their own Fates.
TBIYC,
Rufe
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 13:25:56 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“Dr. Rufo” wrote:
> > This gets us to the Greek notion of hubris
> < snip ’cause I want to stay on topic >
> > In Oedipus, the sins that offended the gods were patricide and incest;
> > the shaming in retribution led to Jocasta’s suicide, Oedipus’ surrender
> > of the kingship, and the fratricide of each other by the sons.
> I demur.
> < “vide supra” as the Hawaiian quartermaster’s clerk has said before >
> *Hubris* is the center of the tale — But it is that arrogance that
> makes a man believe he can change the destiny laid out for him. The
> incest and other blah-blah titillate and offend the humans in the
> audience — not the gods. As you’ve noted, the gods had done much
> the same themselves as required by their own Fates.
Maybe, Rufo, that gets us to _the_ point about the ending of Da Capo, the scene in No Man’s Land, where Ted Bronson tries to save Pvt. F. X. Dinkowski (“Dinky,” “that poor little dope” who “might as well have a cowbell around his neck”).
Ted had a ready response to the Lieutenant when he told Lazarus he wanted him to volunteer to cut the wire. That was: “Lieutenant, I volunteered on April sixth last year. That used up my quota for the duration.”
“And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying,
O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless,
not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Matthew: 27:39.
The Lieutenant’s reply is to order Corporal Ted Bronson to take out the patrol. Lazarus complies.
And, in No Man’s Land, Dinky refuses to be left behind, but insists: “Corporal, I’m going to cut the wire with _you_.” Bronson orders him to “Stick close and stay down.” and not to move if they are exposed by a flare.
But the private panics, and tries for a shell hole when the star shell burst. The expected machine gun chops Dinky in two as fortold. And Lazarus, laying still, listens to his screams.
I’ve _got_ to take care of him. Probably be a favor to finish him
off–but Maureen wouldn’t like that. Okay, let’s get him back–then
come back and finish off this crummy detail. No sleep tonight and
over the top about oh-four-hundred. Next time join the Navy.
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli,
Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?” Matthew: 27:46.
And,
“Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man
calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge,
and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”
Matthew: 27:47-50.
“You still don’t understand,” the Gray Voice droned on. “There is no
time, there is no space. What was, is, and ever shall be. You are
you, playing chess with yourself. You are the referee. Morals are
your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules. To thine
own self be true or you spoil the game.”
How’s that, Rufo, for “*Hubris* is the center of the tale — But it is that arrogance that makes a man believe he can change the destiny laid out for him. The incest and other blah-blah titillate and offend the humans in the audience — not the gods.”
Or, restated from another time and place:
An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a
few inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it
stared back at him. “Thou art God,” he said happily and
discorporated.
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 02:27:11 GMT
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
David M. Silver wrote:
< snip >
> Maybe, Rufo, that gets us to _the_ point about the ending of Da Capo,
> the scene in No Man’s Land, where Ted Bronson tries to save Pvt. F. X.
> Dinkowski (“Dinky,” “that poor little dope” who “might as well have a
> cowbell around his neck”).
> Ted had a ready response to the Lieutenant when he told Lazarus he
> wanted him to volunteer to cut the wire. That was: “Lieutenant, I
> volunteered on April sixth last year. That used up my quota for the
> duration.”
> “And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying,
> O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless,
> not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Matthew: 27:39.
> The Lieutenant’s reply is to order Corporal Ted Bronson to take out the
> patrol. Lazarus complies.
> And, in No Man’s Land, Dinky refuses to be left behind, but insists:
> “Corporal, I’m going to cut the wire with _you_.” Bronson orders him to
> “Stick close and stay down.” and not to move if they are exposed by a
> flare.
> But the private panics, and tries for a shell hole when the star shell
> burst. The expected machine gun chops Dinky in two as fortold. And
> Lazarus, laying still, listens to his screams.
> I’ve _got_ to take care of him. Probably be a favor to finish him
> off–but Maureen wouldn’t like that. Okay, let’s get him back–then
> come back and finish off this crummy detail. No sleep tonight and
> over the top about oh-four-hundred. Next time join the Navy.
> “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli,
> Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou
> forsaken me?” Matthew: 27:46.
> And,
> “Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man
> calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge,
> and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
> The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
> Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”
> Matthew: 27:47-50.
> “You still don’t understand,” the Gray Voice droned on. “There is no
> time, there is no space. What was, is, and ever shall be. You are
> you, playing chess with yourself. You are the referee. Morals are
> your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules. To thine
> own self be true or you spoil the game.”
> How’s that, Rufo, for “*Hubris* is the center of the tale — But it is
> that arrogance that makes a man believe he can change the destiny laid
> out for him. The incest and other blah-blah titillate and offend the
> humans in the audience — not the gods.”
> Or, restated from another time and place:
> An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a
> few inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it
> stared back at him. “Thou art God,” he said happily and
> discorporated.
I couldn’t bring myself to snip anything except the lead-in you left from my earlier post but,
David! Your anfractuous blathering is testing my patience and credulity! Your capricious Christological congruencies seem based on a currently crapulent (crapulous?) condition. Izzatit?
Rather than join you in inebriation, I will withdraw to contemplate and sort out to my liking the various possible motives of Lazarus and Mr. Heinlein.
À bientôt,
Rufe
From: “David M. Silver”
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 19:52:18 -0700
Subject: Re: Retitled: reading group: TEfL, 2d Meeting Time: TBD
In article ,
“Dr. Rufo” wrote:
> I couldn’t bring myself to snip anything except the lead-in you
> left from my earlier post but,
> David! Your anfractuous blathering is testing my patience and
> credulity!
Slither, slither, slither. H-s-s-s-s!
> Your capricious Christological congruencies seem based on
> a currently crapulent (crapulous?) condition. Izzatit?
> Rather than join you in inebriation, I will withdraw to contemplate
> and sort out to my liking the various possible motives of Lazarus
> and Mr. Heinlein.
Next thing I know, you’ll be accusing me!
Who first seduc’d them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; hee it was, whose guile …
— P.L., I:33-34
Wasn’t me. Or if it was:
It was the Apple the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. It was rotten, but tasted delicious, and its juices had a nice spritzig, frizzante, or pétillant aftertaste.
As to what you sort out, I’ll be looking, “Waiting is,” Rufe, “waiting is.”
—
David M. Silver
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt.(jg), USN, R’td
Here Begins the Discussion
Go to Beginning of Postings
You have just entered room “heinleinreadersgroup.”
morganuci: Hey!
aggirlj: Hi Tim, Seda
aggirlj: David’s online, I’ll invite him.
SedaGave: Early evening, here, 6 pm… Hi, aggirl!
morganuci: OK
AGplusone has entered the chat room.
aggirlj: Hey, David.
morganuci: Evening!
AGplusone: Hi, All. I was trying to remember, Tim, what the name of the “usual AIM chatroom” was.
AGplusone: 🙂
aggirlj: I came in from the site access.
morganuci: I always go to the THS web site’s link. But I hear that you can’t just click on such a link on a mac?
aggirlj: Sure you can.
AGplusone: Where’s David tonight? I usually do it differently because in the past you couldn’t.
morganuci: Oh, OK. Well, I copied the format of the meeting announcements made before me. I can change the future ones to actually list the chatroom name.
morganuci: “in the past you coudn’t” Oh, that must be what I was remembering.
AGplusone: It took AOL about five years or so for AIM to come up with a way that was reliable, and you get used to doing it one way until you can’t remember
AGplusone: what you had for breakfast or lunch somedays.
morganuci: LOL
AGplusone: Or your own name.
SedaGave: or screen name 😉
morganuci: You can always create a new one!
AGplusone: Hi, Seda. What’s up today … to say nothing of not remembering anyone else.
aggirlj: I’ll invite Geo, see if he’s available.
georule1861 has entered the chat room.
aggirlj: Hey, Geo.
AGplusone: ‘lo, G
SedaGave: Hi, David…I’m Rick, btw…I’m up for discussion, I think
georule1861: Yo
georule1861: TEFL tonight?
SedaGave: Hi, geo!
AGplusone: Nice to have your name, Rick.
aggirlj: Good, ’cause I couldn’t get past DeCapo yet.
morganuci: Yes, TEFL
aggirlj: As you said Geo, icky.
AGplusone: We can walk by Major Oz if he comes in tonight and say, “Hi, Pop” and “Hi, Pop.”
georule1861: I probably say this more often than I should, but there are days when it is my favorite.
AGplusone: Oz will understand.
georule1861: But not a fan of all of the last bit.
aggirlj: I don’t think I have him on my buddy list, what’s his handle?
georule1861: Tho I think he laid a pretty heavy take on Vietnam in there.
georule1861: Near the end, that is.
morganuci: What?
AGplusone: Ozzie and Harriett. The two boys would come in and say, “Hi, Pop.” “Hi, Pop” and he’d say, “Hi, Boys.” and then go back to sitting in his chair and wearing his cardigan.
aggirlj: Is it still oj3 jeep?
georule1861: Who were you whatting, morganuci?
morganuci: Sorry, I meant, what’s the heavy take on Vietnam?
georule1861: Ah.
AGplusone: I wonder if that’s true, Geo. Could be. Maybe just a war doesn’t ever solve what it’s intended to do, even if we conceed there’s an intent. Why do you think it so?
georule1861: Well, it’s published in 1973, height of the anti-war movement.
georule1861: And there’s a bit there where Lazarus talks about why he’s upping for WWI.
georule1861: He knows its a useless war.
morganuci: Ah, I see what you mean. Contrasting the view of volunteering and going to war
georule1861: He knows he can’t help
georule1861: It’s been over for 1,000 years etc.
georule1861: But he went anyway.
morganuci: Well, I agreed with LL!
AGplusone: It was sorta died down by then, G. Height was earlier. The only question left by then was “when” not “whether” we’d get out.
SedaGave: He did that because he’d fallen in love with Mau, tho…he wanted her to be proud
georule1861: Even more so then, David.
georule1861: They were still drafting in ’73 and people still went.
aggirlj: Dee’s on, I’ll invite.
morganuci: I agree it was for Mau and her dad, and therefore it isn’t a pursuasive argument for the general reader of why they should go fight a war
jilyd has entered the chat room.
aggirlj: Howdy Dee.
AGplusone: Yeah, but … it was all irrelevant except to those going. The end was clearly in sight. Nixon and Henry may have thought it the end of the tunnel, but we knew it was a locomotive light oncoming.
jilyd: Hi Jane. And all.
AGplusone: Whether we agreed or not.
georule1861: Still, it’s a fasinating thing that scene.
SedaGave: Hi, jilyd
georule1861: This is a man who in Godbody wrote about innocense and “the rape of Belgium”
jilyd: Swda, I’m Dee.
AGplusone: ‘lo, Dee.
jilyd: Have not met you or marganuci before.
georule1861: And for me in that scene RAH tied his own childhood for WWI and Vietnam together.
AGplusone: Seda is “Rick” Dee.
SedaGave: I’m Rick, Dee
morganuci: I’m Tim
jilyd: Hi, Rick. I will warn you now, I have a black belt in Tai Po.
georule1861: Morganuci is Tim, isn’t it?
georule1861: Old cobber!
jilyd: Reaading what I write is often a challenge.
SedaGave: lol
jilyd: Hi, Tim.
SedaGave: We’ll figger it out
jilyd: BTW, Nuke is the one who told me about have the black belt, I just “filed off the serial numbers” and clained it as my own motto.
AGplusone: I wonder about tying childhood to anything. I always had the theory that someone in Heinlein family or friends had a heavy association with the Insurrection and “Little Brown Brother” and that influenced RAH’s childhood thoughts
morganuci: Maybe. How’s the bio coming :-)?
georule1861: 7 is plenty old enuf to remember the rape of Belgium vividly.
jilyd: Is Bill here?
georule1861: I have vivid memories from younger.
jilyd: I don’t see him.
aggirlj: No, he’s not online.
AGplusone: The Insurrection (today known as Philipino-American War) was just as bloody as Vietnam, just as Iraq is/will be/per omula sacula saculorum.
georule1861: Ah, that one.
jilyd: Not much news available on the bio, then, I guess.
georule1861: Yeah, that one wasn’t pleasant.
aggirlj: [not really Dee, MM was to be possible publisher last we heard]
AGplusone: The nice word I heard is David Hartman has taken over editing it.
georule1861: Well, Jilyd, I can tell you you’ll be able to read the bio, both volumes, in July.
jilyd: Oh. Well that is just one more disappointment from them, then. 🙁
georule1861: So long as you are willing to do it online.
georule1861: Tho with only Bill’s editing.
georule1861: /me doesn’t give an opinion on that.
georule1861: I think the last word count I saw was 3/4 million words.
aggirlj: Writer should never be editor. i.e. Stephen King
jilyd: I agree, jane.
morganuci: I’m not sure I could read it all on-line. I’m much prefer a printed volume, edited down or not.
georule1861: I shouldn’t say this, but in my opinion its too bad Deb didn”t/doesn’t have the time to edit it.
georule1861: Even Bill called her reduction of his sketch “masterful”
georule1861: So I think she’d do a nice job.
jilyd: As far as length, Geo, GInny was teasing that it would be as large as a good encyclopaedia, form all Bill had gathered.
georule1861: I have both volumes on my HDD right now.
georule1861: And it will be made available with the Archives.
jilyd: Deb woudl indeed do it proud.
georule1861: But we digress from TEFL
jilyd: Everything she turns her hand to she does excellently.
jilyd: Yeah, but there is alwys timefor a man to brag on his lolvely bride. Even if she is not in the roomat themoment. 🙂
georule1861: 🙂
morganuci: But I agree that it’s useful to have the full-length version available to search and find all the details about a particular incident/time.
georule1861: There’ll be some linking back and forth from mss to bio.
aggirlj: mss?
georule1861: manuscripts
aggirlj: thx
georule1861: Anyway, I don’t mean to derail Tim’s meeting.
morganuci: Well, we already hit on it a bit, then got off-topic as usual. I’ll throw out a peripheral question to get things going:
morganuci: Why the interest in twins? Relatively many RAH books have them. This one has artificial ones (Laz/Lor) and ones who aren’t.
aggirlj: body parts?
georule1861: I think it has to do with identify
georule1861: Identity
georule1861: And showing that biology is not entirely destiny
georule1861: But still a large part.
AGplusone: Someone whose read Children of the Lens, recently–I’m decades past it–were any of the Five twin pairs?
AGplusone: who’s
SedaGave: Because “man who can resist raising twin girls hasn’t been born”, IIRC…that’s for one set…they were trying to interest LL in life again
georule1861: I haven’t read CofL in twenty years, but I don’t think so.
AGplusone: The technique in Rolling Stones (and Time for the Stars) is to give the POV character someone to talk to rather than exposate, if that’s a word.
georule1861: Twins and redheads, Heinlein returns to them a lot.
georule1861: Obviously the one is Ginny-driven.
AGplusone: Like the buddy detective stories.
georule1861: That’s a good point, David.
georule1861: And I hadn’t thought of it.
aggirlj: Could it be that some twins communicate, as do L/L, on a mental level more?
morganuci: I agree with David also. There’s a lot of similarity in the “twin banter” between the different books.
aggirlj: Meaning, that this was a fascinating level for RAH.
AGplusone: But Laz-Lor never go on their own adventure. Perhaps he planned to use it in the future. Two sets of twins married to each other, them and Castor and Pollux. Another four view POV like Number of the Beast.
georule1861: But he was usually at pains to make some distinctions with identical twins.
georule1861: Pat and Tom are very different.
AGplusone: As were Cas and Pol, and Pol, like Tom, grew out of shadow of more dominant one.
georule1861: I think Heinlein, like most reasonable people, think “nature vs nurture” is a false choice.
AGplusone: Like George Johnson, eventually got around to popping his big brother Brian, the younger, in the snoot.
georule1861: And liked to point at that fact.
AGplusone: Instead of being his stooge.
morganuci: Yes, I think looking at the differences in twins is another way to look at the influence of genetics—the twins who weren’t was another.
AGplusone: Wonder if that echoed RAH’s two older brothers, Ivar (maybe Rex, I get confused with them) and Laurence.
morganuci: I’d bet so
morganuci: The Tale of the Twins Who Weren’t and the Tale of the Adopted Daughter are the two stories told privately to Minerva.
morganuci: Some have argued that this is because those stories are so private that LL doesn’t want to share them with the others (humans).
morganuci: THat makes sense for Daughter, but why the Twins story?
AGplusone: The descriptions Ted Bronson gives of his family as he observes them are fascinating … being there, and knowing how they’ll turn out, and looking at them.
AGplusone: Joe and ‘Lita?
AGplusone: Fascinately differences.
AGplusone: Always thought of Joe as Manny from Moon, and “Lita unique unto herself in Heinlein.
morganuci: Yes, Joe and Lita. They had “opposite” genetics, same upbringing, very different personalities.
georule1861: ‘Lita is Dora raised as a slave.
georule1861: Very, very practical.
AGplusone: Dorable Dora or the computer, and is there really a difference?
georule1861: Well, there isn’t really other than the computer has been stopped on purpose at pre-adolescense.
JJ Brannon has entered the chat room.
AGplusone: Hi, JJ
georule1861: I always wondered if Dora the computer knew about Dora the girl.
georule1861: And how that would have went over with her.
JJ Brannon: What was the title?
georule1861: TELF?
AGplusone: Talking about all the twins, and semi-twins, in Heinlein, somehow.
georule1861: TEFL.
JJ Brannon: Ahh! Part II!
AGplusone: David Lamb is twin, in a sense, to RAH … in ways.
georule1861: And not in others.
georule1861: Heinlein liked to pretend to laziness at times, but it’s a canard.
JJ Brannon: DeeDee and Pinky.
AGplusone: With a little Libby thrown in, and some of the country good ol’ boy RAH wasn’t.
georule1861: But liked to think he was.
morganuci: Agreed
georule1861: He spent summers on the grandparents farm.
AGplusone: Hardly. A pose, if that.
georule1861: That’s part of the nostalgia.
georule1861: I think its hard to argue he doesn’t put the rose glasses on around farm life.
AGplusone: Yep. Tucked that old but misdated money down the hole in the one-holer purty quciklike din’ he.
georule1861: Tho even that is in part his agenda.
AGplusone: And tucked the rest back up in hisn’ overholt pocket.
georule1861: When you remember that for ahwile there he was seriously concerned about starvation.
georule1861: For the race, that is.
aggirlj: Did RAH have a stash of gold, do we know?
georule1861: Mostly non-taxable munis from what I see!
AGplusone: “south end of a North bound mule” and the Jackson Igos?
georule1861: Ginny liked bonds!
SedaGave: lol, likely…even when illegal 😉
georule1861: Sometime in the early 70s he estimated their current net worth at $2.5M
georule1861: If not another dime came in.
aggirlj: “On the Books”
georule1861: But remember.
morganuci: Interesting—I thought the big money didn’t come in til NOTB?
georule1861: These are people who lived thru the depression.
georule1861: At some level they never really believed it couldn’t all disappear in a moment.
AGplusone: Summers, ’til he was what? Seven? But KC was close enough that old Harry over the next country was working that farm quite hard.
SedaGave: sensible
aggirlj: [So, Rick, the answer is most probably yes!]
AGplusone: The depression menu that Johann-Eunice whips together for another Joe in Fear No.
AGplusone: Ever use bacon or beef fat to extend the size of a meal?
SedaGave: lol, bomb-shelter mighta been sheilded with gold
AGplusone: Was making hamburgers on a flat grill last night and when done it was swimming. Looked at it, and nearly saved it, but “No, that would be wrong and I’d have to take another pill to overcome the fat.”
AGplusone: But almost dipped a slice of bread in it …
morganuci: You’re allowed hamburgers??
AGplusone: Allowed everything I want in moderation. Except brocholi and spinach.
AGplusone: Heh.
aggirlj: Right!
morganuci: Yeah, my mom can’t eat those either, unfortunately.
AGplusone: blood thinner she’s taking, right?
aggirlj: Oh, I see.
AGplusone: And I love spinach salad.
morganuci: You got it. She likes broc, and it’s generally very good for you (and often served in restaurants), so it’s a bummer.
AGplusone: With bacon fat.
aggirlj: Now here’s a question. RAH seems to be into very sensual things, but not food. No wonderful meals.
aggirlj: Seems to me.
SedaGave: Except for breakfasts, they are usually lush
AGplusone: Wrong. Look at that tattered copy of Universe I left. There’s a Calories story in there.
aggirlj: Okay.
morganuci: I remember several stories of big breakfasts (I think there’s one in NotB). What’s the story in Universe?
SedaGave: Not so much in TEFL, but NOTB, Zebbie eats alot
AGplusone: Cliff and the Calories.
morganuci: Oh, right!
aggirlj: Next on my list. I’ll let you know my thoughts.
morganuci: I was thinking you mean the story, Universe (and Common Sense)
AGplusone: Yes, shoulda said Expanded Universe
JJ Brannon: Friday includes a menu.
AGplusone: I always call Universe and Common Sense Orphans
AGplusone: only because I first encountered them in the collection
morganuci: Me too, for the same reason
AGplusone: Back to twins: what about Athena and Minerva?
morganuci: Yes!
SedaGave: They are certainly different!
AGplusone: (and Deety and Elizabeth Libby).
AGplusone: (and Andy and Elizabeth Libby?)
georule1861: Hmm, I’m of two minds on the food thing.
AGplusone: Variations on a Theme?
georule1861: It’s pretty clear for a time in the 50s there he was concerned about famine
georule1861: And there’s some pretty lush descriptions of food.
georule1861: Re getting the race of our beloved ball of mud
AGplusone: And then there’s four-year-old Woody and 4,000 + year old Woody. One spitting in the other’s hat.
JJ Brannon: Cat starts over a restaurant dinner. Between Planets has roast satyr.
georule1861: See Farmer in the Sky
AGplusone: Gretchen’s mom laid on a table.
georule1861: yes, she did.
georule1861: There was practically an “ode to cream” in there.
AGplusone:tonight.
aggirlj: Does anybody have a theory on the twins and their relevance throughout his stories? I would like to hear it.
AGplusone: See above: “Variations on a Theme”
aggirlj: at what time frame?
georule1861: Well, if Ginny had an identical twin we could have the grand unified theory, but she didn’t to my knowledge.
JJ Brannon: “All You Zombies” is another twin story.
morganuci: Maybe a twin of Ginny was his fantasy :-)?
georule1861: I gave my theory upstream.
AGplusone: Really getting to the Children of the Lens inbreeding here, aren’t we?
aggirlj: I’ll reread later.
georule1861: Heh. Threesome with Ginny and her twin?
JJ Brannon: And, it’s flip side is “They”.
AGplusone: Ginny and Winnie and ?????
DavidWrightSr has entered the chat room.
AGplusone: Mini? Mum the redhead?
JJ Brannon: RAH is dealing with identity — who a person really is and where the Other takes off.
georule1861: Any of you who visit the online archives, steel yourselves for Ginny naked.
aggirlj: Hi DW
SedaGave: Hi, DavidW
georule1861: Not that it was unpleasant, mind you.
AGplusone: /
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
georule1861: Heh.
georule1861: Heya, Bill.
morganuci: Hi Bill
DavidWrightSr: Hi everyone. Sorry. I had some troubles with computer.
aggirlj: Hi, Bill, ltns
georule1861: Hi, DW.
SedaGave: Hi, Bpral
BPRAL22169: Howdy
AGplusone: There’s a newspaper photo of her in the Heinlein Journal in uniform I think is quite attractive.
AGplusone: In James’ bio sketch.
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
AGplusone: twice?
aggirlj: lol, same old trouble it seems;
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
morganuci: I agree. It was at a relatively early age, of course.
georule1861: Well, Bill and DW, would you like to talk about TEFL, non-taxable munis, twins, or Ginny naked?
aggirlj: wb
georule1861: You have a choice.
SedaGave: There’s a story there…leaving twice
AGplusone: Now’s where’s Bill #2? Will he reenter?
georule1861: Bill doing his By His Bootstraps hommage.
morganuci: He’s a negative, since he hadn’t entered before leaving.
SedaGave: lol
BPRAL22169: I”m here — I seem to have gotten multiple invites
AGplusone: [we’re picking on you tonight. You showed leaving the chat room twice.]
aggirlj: Popular guy/
BPRAL22169: I think I’m in an AIM room right now rather than the AOL:one.
AGplusone: We’re waiting for Doktor to come back.
aggirlj: That’s a good thing Bill.
AGplusone: Or Diktor, or what’zname?
morganuci: Diktor, isn’t it?
BPRAL22169: That’s it — just closed all the windows.
AGplusone: And paint all the mirrors.
DavidWrightSr: Can someone send me the log?
aggirlj: Will do.
georule1861: DW better answer that one as he reviewed it at heinleinsocity.org!
BPRAL22169: Indeed. I forget: what time did you start today?
georule1861: Diktor
AGplusone: 6 PM PDT
BPRAL22169: Ah. I could actually have been on time, but I just got home and needed a nap.
aggirlj: sent
AGplusone: naps are good
DavidWrightSr: What By His Bootstraps?
BPRAL22169: Naps are good. agreed. And sometimes necessary. 45 minute rejuvenates.
morganuci: We’re really talking about TEFL. But it’s a wide-ranging discussion
aggirlj: Bill having problems coming and going in the chat room.
aggirlj: To DW
georule1861: I’m a big fan of naps.
georule1861: Churchill won WWII with naps, he claimed.
AGplusone: I’m suddenly a fan of watering my cat. Tim: may we for 5 minutes?
BPRAL22169: Perhaps he should have taken them in WWI
aggirlj: Okay with me, brb
morganuci: Sure, this is a good time to break.
DavidWrightSr: Got it thanks. Yes, I need to catch up on the discussion.
georule1861: Oh, Bill, don’t get me started.
SedaGave: I thought he won it with gin?
georule1861: Not his fault.
BPRAL22169: (Actually I always thought he got an undeservedly bad rap about Gallipoli)
georule1861: No, Johnny Walker Black was his tipple.
georule1861: In large quantities.
georule1861: The goddamn Admirals chickened out.
AGplusone: brandy and cigars. Gin and ciggies was for the working class.
SedaGave: But brandy for b’fast, yes?
georule1861: They loved their ships more than their country.
BPRAL22169: Yeah. “Sounds like a great plan — now we’ll do it without the air support. It’ll be great.”
georule1861: Mines got them.
georule1861: And a lack of intestinal fortitude.
georule1861: By the time the really nasty shit happened Churchill was resigned.
AGplusone: What was the wine they used to get when it was sailed nearly around the world? Stored in holds?
AGplusone: Some kind of Port?
BPRAL22169: I think you mean Sherry
aggirlj: Yes, they still make it.
BPRAL22169: Both sherry and port were done that way
georule1861: The rumor is Churchill drank a fifth of JWB per day.
AGplusone: Takes a lot of alcohol to run his high-octane brain.
georule1861: Which goes a long way towards explaining why he always pronounced it “Narzis”
aggirlj: lol
georule1861: Well, I always think of what Lincoln said when told that US Grant was a drunk.
BPRAL22169: Order my other generals a case of what he’s drinking?
georule1861: He said, “Find out what he drinks and said a bottle to each of my generals”
georule1861: *Send
BPRAL22169: Yeah, that’s it.
AGplusone: If he’d used cork in his gaskets like the rest of us, but, no, Winnie had to use cooper.
AGplusone: So they wouldn’t blow, but when they blew …
AGplusone: his war time secretary spent most of her time ‘suggesting’ he calm down and be nice
jilyd has left the room.
AGplusone: or wtte according to a nice PBS thing I watched recently
georule1861: He was a piece of work.
georule1861: Been to Blenheim?
georule1861: We went the first time we went to UK
georule1861: And his grave.
georule1861: Nice little churchyard, nothing too fancy.
morganuci: Should we get back to it?
georule1861: Sure.
morganuci: OK. Earlier, I asked if there were significance to the fact that the Tale of the Twins Who Weren’t was told to Minerva. Any takers on that?
SedaGave: Tim, (looking back to your question) I think LL specifically put a lock on the Dora story and shared it only with Minerva, but was talking in the open (if only to Minerva, but open for memoirs) on the tale of the twins who weren’t?
georule1861: I tihnk he was doing a couple things there.
BPRAL22169: Do you think he’s trying to talk Minerva into — or out of — something? LL always has ulterior motives.
georule1861: One, Minerva wouldn’t try to jump his bones.
georule1861: And secondly, I think he sensed that Minerver wanted to be human.
georule1861: And he wanted her to know what that meant.
JJ Brannon: Obviously, TEfL is a reverse 1001 Arabian Nights
BPRAL22169: I was thinking: being designed for something doesn’t matter.
georule1861: Well, he even says that at a point, doesn’t he, JJ?
georule1861: Early on?
AGplusone: Thing about being a human was: humans weren’t omniscient, and the computer in Boondocks and on the roof was … saw, heard, knew everything
JJ Brannon: He calls her Scheherazade
georule1861: He senses early on that Minerva loves Ira.
AGplusone: That always boggled my mind, JJ. Getting the one who wants to die to tell stories to keep him from wanting to die.
JJ Brannon: But he becomes Scheherazade in the telling
AGplusone: Having the King tell the tales …
georule1861: I dunno, David. My own experience with older folks is they love to tell stories and feel that there experience is valued.
georule1861: *their
aggirlj: The other part of that was interesting, having his rejuvinator mentor be someone who was dying too.
BPRAL22169: He does inversions a lot
georule1861: So I don’t find that unusual.
AGplusone: to the computer slave who he might wish to kill every night by using the suicide switch.
georule1861: That was the nasty trick.
morganuci: Yes, that’s good. RAH was always reversing or inverting things, like the view of science and mythology of the elders in Orphans in the Sky.
georule1861: He did kill himself several times and they wiped it from his memory.
georule1861: If you had Ira’s power would you do differently?
aggirlj: [Geo, is that in TEFL?]
AGplusone: “Not in my day, Geo. In my day we had to tell our tales walking uphill through the snow both ways, and it froze our breathes which kept us tight lipped”
georule1861: Yes, it is, JanE.
georule1861: “Suicide is every man’s right”
aggirlj: Gawd, there is soooooooo much.
georule1861: And they mention he’s suicided at night several times and they wiped the memory.
georule1861: But don’t forget, this isn’t like current day.
BPRAL22169: Well, Heinlein was skeptical about “rights.”
georule1861: They *knew* they were making him healthy again.
AGplusone: Of course if Laz is Catlum you couldn’t stop Catlum telling the tale with a two by four.
georule1861: There’s no Kervorkian factor here.
AGplusone: Reading Catlum, I keep saying, “No Mas, Señor. No Mas!”
georule1861: Presumably eventually he’d have been healthy enough to be released and if he was still bound and determined, he cold have done it then.
georule1861: They were just buying a little time.
BPRAL22169: Yes. Special case: zest for life was in his genes, and they knew it.
AGplusone: Poor Jeans.
SedaGave: That’s why I’m stuck in the middle of CCA, AG
AGplusone: All the riverboat wives …
BPRAL22169: I foudn the middle of CCA hard to get through — too many tall tales for me.
AGplusone: “No Mas, Señor. No Mas!”
BPRAL22169: Just so.
SedaGave: *nods
aggirlj: I want to know how you get that ermalu(sp?)
BPRAL22169: But the bit about leading his family into the cave was interesting. I think there was an Arthur Burke serial in Astounding Stories thatused that — input into Methuselah’s Children somewhat.
aggirlj: or whatever that thing is./
BPRAL22169: You mean the tilde over the ‘n’?
aggirlj: ty, ty, ty
AGplusone: Fraser does Catlum better with Flashman I think … off-the-way thought.
AGplusone: wall
AGplusone: On a Mac, use Option-n before you type the letter.
aggirlj: (Thought something like that, thanks)
AGplusone: õ
morganuci: How about on Windows?
AGplusone: Yer doomed, Tim … blue screen of death!
aggirlj: On that note, I have to go, regretably. I will look forward to the rest of the log. Bye Gents.
SedaGave: lol
morganuci: Bye, thanks!
SedaGave: G’nite!
aggirlj has left the room.
JJ Brannon: Alt+0241
JJ Brannon: Thus ñ
JJ Brannon: numbers must be tapped on the keypad
AGplusone: é, , ®, ?, ¥, and other keyboard by using option. Don’t know if windows has anything like it.
morganuci: Also, Control + ~ (which is usually shifted) then release then n.
SedaGave: seems like a lot of work for a tilde 😉
JJ Brannon: é
JJ Brannon: Alt+233
georule1861: Those were the symbols on the temple in Sixth Column, I bet.
georule1861: j/k
AGplusone: óíá and so on.
BPRAL22169: a
AGplusone: ÷==µ?vç?O
BPRAL22169: nom
morganuci: Back to the subject. The book contains a lot of point of view swaps. What do you think of it as a literary device? Does it work in this setting?
georule1861: Hmm.
JJ Brannon: There’s an Accesories applet called “character map”
SedaGave: It works fine for me
georule1861: I think arguably TEFL is the most ambitious lit’ry speaking since SIASL.
georule1861: And that’s part of it.
georule1861: In fact, I’d put those two together that way.
BPRAL22169: The basic plan of that particular book has so many compartments, POV switches are fundamental to the way it’s told.
SedaGave: RAH was wonderful at that…POV swaps….he bounces from 1st person to third seamlessly
AGplusone: It is. New Wave as breaking out all over, including outside New Wave.
BPRAL22169: Frame-and-anecdote, for instance, is only one of the organizing principles. It’s overlayed with several progressions, for instance.
georule1861: Bill, would you agree with that? SIASL and TEFL as two most purely litry ambitious?
AGplusone: Found it interesting that the original manuscript of Number didn’t bother to tell you who was POV each chapter, let you figure it out.
BPRAL22169: Yes — and they are in a sense bookends, dealing essentially with the same subject(s)
georule1861: Okay, you need another para there Bill.
georule1861: For the log.
georule1861: 🙂
AGplusone: Which is why I came up with the grasshopper Grey Voice comparison.
SedaGave: Well the POV switching in NOTB was distracting, to me
BPRAL22169: Sorry? I thought you were asking me to unpack that but that doesn’t seem quite right . . .
AGplusone: Why I think editorially in the published Number they used the lead off tag each chapter.
BPRAL22169: In NOTB, the whole point of the exercise was multiple-first-person, a technical problem he was working on — other writers were too — Coover, for instance. Sturgeon did it too in Godbody.
AGplusone: Pinchon in Gravity’s Rainbow is truly distracting.
BPRAL22169: It was a technical problem a lot of people were working on at the time. Heinlein’s preferred mode of attack was cinematic.
georule1861: Well, dunno about David, but I wanted you to expand a bit on the bookends comment.
BPRAL22169: Oh. One way of thinking about it is both Stranger and TEFL are “about” the three laws of thelema: 1) Do what Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law; 2) Love is the Law, Love under Will, and you can see Stranger is 1)
BPRAL22169: and TEFL is 2). The third law is Every Person is a Star — and that goes pretty well with TEFL, too.
BPRAL22169: All of the stories in TEFL are about different ways of loving, including that most difficult one to talk about, expansive, cosmic love that doesn’t need even affection or direct contact to manifest itself.
BPRAL22169: I think that’s 30 on that subject.
AGplusone: “All that groks is God” is functionally equivalent to Gray Voice’s “You are playing chess with yourself, and again have checkmated yourself. You are referee … Morals your agreement with yourself … ”
AGplusone: And “to thine ownself be true”
BPRAL22169: Yes. Exactly. I think Heinlein is hitting Emerson’s Over-Soul idea over and over again.
morganuci: OK. I see 1=Stranger more than 2=TEFL, though. But I’m no Thelema expert.
BPRAL22169: I’m not an expert either. but it could well be that he has what he said in Stranger in mind and so goes on to expand on the subject, adding in new stuff.
AGplusone: Notice how over time everyone becomes Lazarus …
BPRAL22169: The thing is, I think the whole World As Myth, taking its cue from TEFL, is about the Thou art God theme.
SedaGave: NOTB using the 3rd law? All RAH character’s seem to put in a small cameo, at least
AGplusone: or groks Lazarus … in the share water sense
BPRAL22169: Which is why Jubal Harshaw showed up.
AGplusone: To Write the Story, Bill?
AGplusone: “Front!”
BPRAL22169: In the esoteric sense, a “star” is a fragment of the central fire of the cosmos, the primal intelligence, the meaning of everything that exists.
AGplusone: Unk Lazarus in a Bucket?
BPRAL22169: I hadn’t thought of it quite that way, Dave, but, yeah, that works.
BPRAL22169: Certainly his function in the last two books is to be the Speaker of Absolute Truths.
AGplusone: Like the Reporter that follows around behind the Star at the Convention?
BPRAL22169: Nice — I hadn’t thought of that.
JJ Brannon: No, no! The /Relatively /Absolute Truths…
georule1861: /me that was my first letter to Spider, btw. When he had Uncle in a Bucket to start a book.
AGplusone: “In the beginning was the Word … ”
BPRAL22169: The most important absolute truth Jubal has to say in the last two WAM books is “Everything you know is wrong.”
georule1861: The thing that amazes me is how true he stayed to the ’41 Denvention speech for another 47 years.
BPRAL22169: . . . and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . .
georule1861: It’s all right there.
AGplusone: Sometimes Rufo pops in to say that, to Colin, frex, since he was so good doing it with Oscar.
georule1861: Tho, really, it’s all there a few years before that in For Us, the Living
BPRAL22169: It goes back even farther, Geo — yes, I was just about to say FUTL
AGplusone: Yeah, forty of ’em.
AGplusone: Or thirty in the time of TEfL
georule1861: It’s hard to argue he changed. The world changed around him. Him, not so much.
AGplusone: Brin wrote an essay recently on blog. Heinlein, everytime they pigeonhold him, he ‘changed,’ by being contrarian.
BPRAL22169: (That reminds me, David Wright has done a new print version of the 1941 speech; if we can get permission to publish it)
AGplusone: which was to say, he stayed the same, contrarian.
georule1861: That was his constancy, David.
georule1861: Actually.
georule1861: He fricking hated the guru role.
AGplusone: Listened hard to the CD?
georule1861: Anytime he thought that YOU thought he’d said something permenent he ‘d screw you over just to show he hadn’t.
AGplusone: Any significant changes?
DavidWrightSr: Yes, plus have original manuscript
georule1861: And that’s RIGHT THERE in the Denvention speech.
georule1861: He says THINK FOR YOURSELF.
BPRAL22169: Yeah, I’ve been talking to a libertarian for the Reason Heinlein profile, and pointing out that Heinlein was an iconoclast more than anything else. Everybody sees him as a professional mirror — like me, like us.
BPRAL22169: Not significant changes, but interesting things that got left out in one edit or another over the years.
BPRAL22169: little bits of this and that.
AGplusone: [thanks for the copy btw … but we keep saying that to them, think you they’ll ever get the point?]
BPRAL22169: The asides to Leslyn, f’rinstance.
BPRAL22169: It’s a point NOBODY wants to get.
georule1861: If I had to point at the quintessential essence of Heinlein, I’d point at what he said to Schulman.
AGplusone: Yeah, I’ve noticed those.
georule1861: “There are no final victories”
BPRAL22169: Everybody wants to be *certain* and there are no certainties.
AGplusone: Only certainty is “maybe the horse will learn to sing”
georule1861: You change as the circumstances require and apologize to no one for it.
georule1861: Tho if folksie, “Don’t argue with the weather” has eseentially the same meaning.
AGplusone: hubris
AGplusone: don’t fight with your fate … do you think that’s Heinlein?
BPRAL22169: The libertarians want him to have performed a conventional evolution and discarded his early socialism and come to their rather narrow idea of market economics. Nope, didn’t happen that way. His socialism was
georule1861: Did he believe in fate?
BPRAL22169: Jeffersonian and individualist.
georule1861: He was communitarian.
BPRAL22169: Yes — a communitarian individualist.
georule1861: He just didn’t let it stop him from being an individualist.
georule1861: Exactly.
georule1861: You’re no fun to argue with Bill!
georule1861: 😉
BPRAL22169: Agan, this is straight out of Emerson.
AGplusone: Gotta go get Dinky. Can’t let him die. Maureen wouldn’t like it. “The Lieutenant wouldn’t like it.”
morganuci: OK
morganuci: If love is putting someone else’s happiness above your own, how many examples of this by LL are there?
AGplusone: The Lieutenant said, “Take out the patrol.” Next time, Join the Navy.
BPRAL22169: That may be a poor way of stating the proposition. The formulation Twain and Heinlein used was “someone else’s happiness is essential to your own.” There are a lot more examples
morganuci: OK, agreed.
BPRAL22169: of LL doing something to make someone else happy, than of him making himself sad at someone else’s happiness.
BPRAL22169: The foolery with Dora, for instance, comes to mind right away.
SedaGave: yes
AGplusone: which follery, which Dora?
BPRAL22169: When they’re going off to settle Happy Valley
morganuci: And earlier we discussed his going into WWI even though it had no interest for him, only to please Mau (and Gramps)
AGplusone: Why are there two children named Elf?
georule1861: Having “knowledge” of Laz and Lor
georule1861: Despite his hangups
BPRAL22169: Well there’s a bit in that, too, about finding out that he wasn’t very aware of his own real values. That’s the kind of thing that can sneak up on you.
BPRAL22169: Weren’t the Elfs in different generations of different families?
georule1861: Two children?:
AGplusone: Yes, they were.
georule1861: Dora and Lazarus eldest daughter was Elf, wasn’t it?
georule1861: Wasn’t she sitting with Dora when she passed?
SedaGave: Dora lost one, didn’t she?
AGplusone: and one of the three at first unnamed brats in Boondock when Justin arrives is an Elf.
AGplusone: Elf II doesn’t do nuthin’ but why the name?
georule1861: Because, that’s why.
BPRAL22169: Hmmm. Might fit in with the changeover to mythic names —
georule1861: Probably either Minerva’s daugher.
BPRAL22169: galahad, hamadryad, Ishtar, etc.
georule1861: Or Minerva told a story.
AGplusone: Minerva, Athena, Galahad …
BPRAL22169: These men are becoming Gods and Heroes.
AGplusone: Or Laz is again the Father. Everyone becomes Laz.
georule1861: If you have Time Enough to Love, then you have time enough to learn too.
AGplusone: Da Capo. Slither, slither, slither, h-sssssss.
georule1861: Immortality is the primary feature of godhood, isn’t it?
AGplusone:
BPRAL22169: Robert Graves in The White Goddess makes a point of “unashamed public sex” as being a sign of divinified humans. T
AGplusone: Ginny:
georule1861: But did cheerfully in 1973
AGplusone: Ben Caxton goes bonkers when an implication sinks in
BPRAL22169: I think it just wasn’t to his purpose at that point.
BPRAL22169: Yes, but remember CAxton is hiding his true emotions — homosexual panic wasn’t what was really going on.
AGplusone: wasn’t jealousy about Gilliam solely
AGplusone: No? You weren’t quite that age in the 60s.
AGplusone: close but you cigar may not have been the right ring size
SedaGave: It would have been a very different book had Mike & the Nests been open to homosexuality….the book might not have seen the light of day, in 1961…as it was, it’s been ocassionally banned, I think
georule1861: Maybe “bridge too far”
BPRAL22169: I think the polymorphous perverse that shows up in TEFL has something to do with the Men as Gods theme, too. Remember, it’s the breaking of taboos that marks gods.
georule1861: A little “I’m not THAT wild-eyed” wink by the author while he clubs you over the head with his other subversiveness?
BPRAL22169: I think it would just have involved him in a debate that wasn’t to his purpose in 1961 but was to his purpose in 1973.
georule1861: That’s a good formulation.
BPRAL22169: The Story Rules in Heinlein’s timeline.
AGplusone: Well, in Camelot, Lancelot was a major masculine figure, but Galahad could sing and dance better, just didn’t get much of a role.
AGplusone: When Heinlein, in which one was it, talks about being a boy scout that one time … it showed me that when I read it the 1920s musta been a lot more liberal growing up than the 1950s.
georule1861: Well, it was.
BPRAL22169: You can say that atain.
georule1861: Them flappers were wild cats.
AGplusone: In the 50s, It Was Simply Out of the Question. (Not unheard of: three boys at a Catholic boarding school I attended got expelled, but … )
georule1861: The pendulum is a definite marker in American history, yes?
AGplusone: (there was Never Any Doubt they were going to get Expelled. Question was: would the priests crucify them first?)
georule1861: Ouch.
georule1861: Either/or would be kinder!
georule1861: Of course, now they’d be head of their class at the seminary.
georule1861: Oops. Did I say that out loud?
AGplusone: Not devious enough to make Cardinal tho.
AGplusone: Or head the FBI.
georule1861: Well, no, not if they caught.
georule1861: The ones who don’t get caught make Cardinal.
AGplusone: or outed
georule1861: Tim, we need another questin!
AGplusone: Tab Hunter played Danny Forrester in that Uris novel. When he was outed, was end of the line for him.
morganuci: We’re getting close to our appointed quitting time. I have another batch of prepared questions, or we could save them for next time.
SedaGave: Oh, I have a quick observation, on Tertius, Tim, may I?
morganuci: Sure!
georule1861: I have a fresh Laphroaig, so I’m flexible
morganuci: I’ll have to bow out at 9, I’m afraid.
SedaGave: Justin comes to Tertius carrying digital media, movies (or the like), new entertainment from Secundus…
SedaGave: .LL advises they’ll fetch a high price, but will be copied (pirated) as soon as they hit the market…sound familiar?
georule1861: That’s not new in Heinlein. . .
georule1861: Farnham’s Freehold.
SedaGave: Oh, I meant the piracy aspect
georule1861: Ah.
DavidWrightSr: No piracy there. No copyright laws on Tertius.
georule1861: Still, the IP/copyright/piracy issues are pretty prescient at the time.
AGplusone: Wouldn’t mind being the only person available to teach bridge …
SedaGave: Oh, that’s right….LL even mentions the lack of copyright laws
georule1861: Given that even the Apple ][ is several years away.
BPRAL22169: By that time he had been around the world five times — to Hong Kong several times. I believe he knew better how the world wags.
AGplusone: “back when everything was still–in fifty percent of the households–black and white”
georule1861: Yet Ginny was found of rattling the copyright/IP sabre.
georule1861: *fond
georule1861: Tho much more rattling than drawing.
AGplusone: fond* is a very odd way
BPRAL22169: RAH was personally strict about copyright — woulnd’t let her share her tapes off the radio.
georule1861: Yeah, but just for instance.
georule1861: A guy, with permission, rights a nice play about one of the juveniles.
georule1861: I think Starman Jones, but I may be mistaken.
georule1861: With permission.
georule1861: It wins a prize.
georule1861: A cash prize of $500 or $1,000, I forget which.
georule1861: Ginny was pissed he didn’t offer 1/2.
georule1861: Because that wasn’t covered in the agreement, by her view.
georule1861: *writes, of couse. Geez.
AGplusone: Worse … I thought you were going to tell me he just didn’t have any rights. Like that one running on YouTube I think.
georule1861: There’s a very definite sensibility of being generous yet feeling they were taken advantage of.
georule1861: Giving limited rights and unlimited rights being claimed.
georule1861: So to speak.
AGplusone: Example: years back, some people were doing a radio reading, with voices for Red Planet. Idea was blind kids could be taught. They asked me to get permission from Ginny, so I did, and she gave it. Then we found they planned to
AGplusone: sell and distribute it wholesale and make it a fundraiser to raise more funds for better projects. “When Ginny come down from the ceiling … ”
morganuci: I’ve gtg—feel free to continue (I’ll read the logs later).
SedaGave: Nite, Tim, thanks!
georule1861: nn, Tim!
AGplusone: Next meeting subject?
morganuci: Well, shall we hit this one more time, or move on?
georule1861: Sounds very much like the Gerrold story, David.
AGplusone: Not him.
georule1861: Tho since he apparently will be in KC, maybe I’ll avoid that one!
georule1861: I think we’ve done TEFL pretty well.
AGplusone: They learned a little, Geo. Next time they agreed to limits you put on the CD.
georule1861: Tho only you know what you have left in the question bank, Tim.
SedaGave: Anything else in mind? I just read TMIAHM again….makes me want to start a revolution, 😉
AGplusone: I’m so tired of that lovely old fraud de la Paz.
morganuci: Mainly, q’s about incest are what I have left, following David’s lead on AFH.
AGplusone: I don’t think anybody wants to talk zucky, Tim.
georule1861: Didn’t see them, but I’m mostly “that stinker trying to get a rise” on that questin.
AGplusone: Couldn’t get a rise out of even Rufo … tried hard.
morganuci: OK. You guys keep talking and come up with a book suggestion for next time, or else I’ll think of something and post it.
morganuci: Nite!
morganuci has left the room.
SedaGave: Nite!
AGplusone: night
BPRAL22169: I think I’ll bug out, too. Nice making a meeting again.
georule1861: “next month but one in KC!” Bill!
AGplusone: I thought I’d get Rufo with My God why hast thou forsaken me … but
SedaGave: Nite, BPRAL!
BPRAL22169: Giao
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
AGplusone: night Bill
georule1861: I’m out too. Ta.
AGplusone: Got the log David
georule1861 has left the room.
AGplusone: Night Rick
DavidWrightSr: Got it plus the firsr part Jane sent me.
SedaGave: Nite, all!
SedaGave has left the room.
AGplusone: ‘kay, going to sleep
DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 12:05 AM EST
AGplusone: Nite
AGplusone has left the room.
End of Discussion
