Tag: writing

The Marketeer

As I’ve commented in the past, John Scalzi is an amazingly good self-marketer. I’m not being sarcastic here at all, he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen, and I spent some time in the tech-invest world which is absolutely overflowing with self-promoters and would-be self-promoters. Marc Rein of Epic is probably the best I’ve ever known, but the fact that Scalzi managed to transform his mediocre and purely imitative writing into very profitable and award-winning science fiction career borders on magic.

And in this piece, which is ostensibly about the sexual assault allegations aimed at Neil Gaiman, he shows us how he does it, which is with a relentless focus on himself and how he wants the readers to view him.

In the wake of the various recent allegations involving Neil Gaiman, people have been both very sad that someone who they looked up to as an inspiration has, allegedly, turned out to be something less than entirely admirable, and are now looking to see who is now left that they can rotate into the spot of “the good dude,” i.e., that one successful creative guy who they think or at least hope isn’t hiding a cellar full of awful actions. One name I see brought up is mine, in ways ranging from “Well, at least we still have Scalzi,” to “Oh, God, please don’t let Scalzi be a fucking creep too.” Which, uhhhh, yeah? Thanks?

I have many thoughts about this and I’m going to try to make sense of them here, as much for myself as anyone else, so this may be messy and discursive and long (seriously, 3600 words, y’all), but, well, welcome to me.

3,600 words with one single reference to Neil Gaiman. It’s impressive, in its own unique way. What’s amazing is that the dimwitted SJWs will actually give credit to Scalzi for “addressing the issue” even though he’s done absolutely nothing but evade it to what is very nearly the greatest extent possible.

And the amusing thing about the piece is that literally no one idolizes Scalzi or is in any way imagining that the Ohio Doughboy can serve as an effective substitute for the brooding, Gothically-dreamy Mr. Tubcuddle. Gaiman is the apex version of Scalzi, with similarly self-marketed and manufactured success that is an order of magnitude greater. But both charlatans – and they are not only both charlatans, but self-admitted charlatans who suffer from Imposter Syndrome – are masters of persuasion and self-promotion.

One must give credit where it is due, after all. They’re both very good, they’re just not very good at what most people erroneously believe they are good at. And while some of Gaiman’s fans are falling for it, others already see through the would-be self-appointed replacement.

I find Scalzi’s post problematic. To me it’s a big hint that Scalzi himself may have issues – not with abuse, but he may be letting his fame and the occasional adulation get to his head.

While he acknowledged ‘Neil fucked up’, his main post is ‘please don’t idolize me’.

I’m sorry, but as someone who has some experience with fame and recognition in my own scope (I can’t reveal anything else, for obvious reasons on this type of sub), I feel that this is an extremely disingenuous take. As I said to one of the mysterious new accounts that I argued with here, no one who achieves that level of fame does so by wallflowering and accidentally dropping themselves into it. Curating your image of yourself is hard work that takes requires a constant habit. Otherwise, you’ll be forgotten.

Does Scalzi think that the problem is being idolized? That fans sometimes see the person whose art they consume is a hero? Then he can publish his art anonymously. Wattpad exists. J.K. Rowling tried publishing under a pseudonym, so did Doris Lessing. A person who reached that level of fame worked to gain prominence.

And I still find what he said about Neil insufficient. It makes it sound like all Neil did was cheat on his wife like once or twice, and not manipulate his image to shield his alleged predatory behaviour over a course of decades.

And while Scalzi doesn’t actually say it, it’s almost as if he’s implying that the problem is that Neil’s fans idolized Neil. (And not: Neil constructed this image that can be idolized – as any person who desires fame would be constructing out of themselves – and then abused it). I’m sorry, but can we please remember that famous people are not your friends? Every step of fame is constructed by the person who desired it. If Scalzi has reached a point where he has fans who idolize him, he worked to achieve it. If he doesn’t want it anymore, stop working at it.

Honestly, I didn’t really care about Scalzi prior to this, but this way of weighing in on the Neil Gaiman scandals (turning it around to make it about himself) and the weird mass downvote I got on the Neil Gaiman sub just gives me a bad impression of the whole thing.

But that’s what Scalzi quite literally does best. He turns EVERYTHING around to make it about himself, without shame, hesitation, or regret. That’s the entire basis for his career and his success.

UPDATE: A Gaiman fan points out that Scalzi happens to be friends with a lot of serious creeps.

Dude’s had at least four friends be ousted as creeps in 4 years, the last couple of them within 6 months of each other, at least 3 of them male writers with some serious clout in the field and one of them a big deal in fandom/Worldcon/Hugo. Some soul searching seems in order as to why you keep finding self professed friends of yours being ousted as creeps, maybe?

DISCUSS ON SG

She Knows Some Bad People

This is a short piece about Neil Gaiman by a woman with whom I was briefly acquainted; I also knew the “Mike” to whom she refers, and even spent quite a bit of time talking to him about Traveller at the one science convention I ever went to, which I believe was called Minicon. He had contributed a few adventures to Marc Miller’s excellent SF game, and I was interested in obtaining the video game rights to it. Elise was a bit of a character, as she attended the Minnesota writers workshop that consisted of Lois McMaster Bujold, Pat Wrede, Joel Rosenberg, Bruce Bethke, and Peg Kerr, among others, at which I was a guest for a few months in the mid-90s. However, I was always a bit confused as to what Elise was doing there, as she never wrote anything and didn’t appear to ever read anyone else’s work either. I don’t believe Mike aka John M. Ford belonged to the writer’s group, or if he did, he never showed up while I was there.

The one thing I remember about Elise was that she was what I consider to be a full-time professional feminist. So, if she says she didn’t know Gaiman was up to the various shenanigans of which he has been repeatedly accused, I have absolutely no doubt that she didn’t, because she struck me as the sort of woman that is obsessively interested in complaining about every form of male oppression. Which tells us that Gaiman was more than a bit circumspect in his predations, and that he was very much a self-controlled and intentional stalker of insecure and starstruck young women.

I’ve known Neil Gaiman since the very early nineties, when Mike said a friend was coming to a local book-centric fantasy convention and that we should look after him. Apparently he sounded trepidatious or something; Mike said something about how of course there were the comics but the friend said he’s only written one book and he only wrote half of that. Sure, Mike, we can make your friend welcome. So we did. I wrote elsewhere about how this left me for some years with a habit of checking in on Neil at events or when he had a recording session where I worked. I’d go by to see how he was doing, ask whether he’d eaten lately, see if he needed anything. I didn’t quite march over and tell him to put on a sweater, but it was like that. (He always had a leather jacket; a sweater wasn’t necessary.)

Over the decades there were shared meals in various cities, late night convention conversations, visits to the house, gatherings and parties, some with musicals written by Mike because Neil had made a typo on the invitation too good for Mike to resist. For many years I’ve navigated to Neil’s house by singing the American Pie filk Mike wrote about Neil’s invitation to his annual Guy Fawkes Day party which contained the driving directions. One verse ended “The tower lights will be alive; you’ll see the house as you arrive. But do not park upon the drive!” because that last bit was emphasized on the invitation.

Mike and Neil meant a lot to each other. Back in the day, watching the two of them talk writing at a restaurant or sushi bar or a room at a convention late at night was a true delight. When Mike died, Neil helped me through the aftermath. He gave one of the eulogies. He did kind things. He wrote a foreword for Mike’s posthumously published book Aspects which was pretty much another eulogy. He told me it was the hardest thing he ever had to write, and that we were very lucky to have had Mike in our lives.

One time at the house Neil gave me beeswax from his beehives. I used it to make pendants where meteorite dust was sealed into tiny corked glass bottles with the beeswax and sterling silver wire. Stardust in a bottle.

For decades, my metric for buying a new pair of glasses was that whichever one made me wonder what Neil would think of it was the one I’d probably buy.

He took me to my first Tori Amos concert many years ago.

So yeah, I’ve been friends with Neil for somewhere upwards of three decades.

After the news broke, I walked through my house, and every room had something Neil had written, or some art or music that he had introduced me to, or something he had given me. He’s woven through so many memories, with Mike and without. I looked through various correspondence, all the notes with “So much love to you,” all the snippets of news and shared silliness. Years. Decades.

And you know what? Not one bit of that cancels out any of what the survivors say. He’s been my friend for a long time. And I believe them. Which is a tangled set of feelings from one angle, but from another perspective what rings true to me is clear. I believe them.

When I see people saying “Oh, everybody knew,” I shake my head. Everybody did not know. I didn’t know. Nobody in any of the whisper networks told me, or warned me, or asked me to help anyone who had been hurt. And I never figured it out for myself. When the news broke, I was shocked.

Thinking back, I wondered whether anyone had thought he must be OK to be around because of people like me who were his friends. It’s happened before. I don’t like being used as cover… What I say to my friend when we next talk will be between me and him. What I most want to say is “You know fairy tales. You WRITE fairy tales. What did you think was going to happen??”

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The Sound of a Sea

Hark! What’s that you hear? We submitted the hardcover edition of A SEA OF SKULLS to the printer last night. I’ll review them next week, and assuming they pass muster, we’ll release it into the distribution system. You’ll be able to purchase them from directly NDM Express, of course, as well as from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local bookseller. At 299,434 words, it’s a slightly longer book than ATOB in terms of word count, although with the much more efficient layout program we have now, it only clocks in at 760 pages. We do plan to do a revised version of ATOB so that the interior styles will match more precisely, but probably not for a month or two.

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FJOTRA

Fjotra did not object, in principle, to learning about the gods of her new people. She had known from the time her father, the Skullbreaker, sent her to marry the heir to the southern kingdom, that she would have to learn many different new ways. The language was different, but she was young enough to learn it without difficulty. The food was considerably more abundant and flavorful, and her palate did not take long to adapt to the various meats and breads and sauces that were much to be preferred to the salted fish and charred game of her home islands. The clothing was lighter and more comfortable, and she adored wearing silk and cotton dresses in the place of the crude leather and canvas clothes that had been worn by Dalarn women since the coming of the Aalvarg had made raising sheep for wool and growing flax for linen impossible. Even the weather was much more gentle than it customarily was in the windswept Wolf Isles.

But despite the best efforts of Father Francois, who took great pains to talk her through the nonsense, she could make neither heads nor tails about the gods of the southerners. They worshipped a god who was both dead and alive, who was both father to himself and son to himself, and also took on a third form that was nevertheless the same as the other two. It wasn’t that the idea a god had different forms was foreign to her; the Aldaföðr had a hundred names, from Arnhöfði to Völundrómu, and each name represented a different aspect of her people’s greatest god. But despite his many aspects, he was merely the first among a host of gods, and Fjotra particularly venerated Valfreyja, the beautiful goddess who was queen of the Choosers of the Slain.

Continue reading “The Sound of a Sea”

Indeed

Even if Vox Day rather than Rachel Johnson had 1st reported the accusations against Neil Gaiman, I hope I would have believed K and Scarlett once I read/heard their testimony & the damning statements from whomever communicated Neil‘s response. I say that as someone who owes a lot to Neil.

You know it’s getting serious when SJWs are getting to the point that they would, even hypothetically, consider believing your favorite Dark Lord rather than the self-appointed social justice saint and LGBTQFP+ ally Neal Gaiman. The ironic thing is that I’m very far from the only one on the Right who knew that he was an overrrated creep all along. Consider what I wrote publicly back in 2018 when I first got into writing comics.

  • If you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman. When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road.
  • It’s pretty simple. I am a better novelist than Neil Gaiman by almost every reasonable measure. Anyone who has read a sufficient variety of both our novels will recognize that pretty easily. Gaiman writes a variant of the same book with the same sort of characters almost every time. Even his Sandman is a Gary Stu of sorts. I have much wider literary range and can write everything from haunting shorts that could almost pass for modern Maupassant to murder mysteries to epic military fantasy. I don’t write myself into my books and I can even successfully pull off the “you genuinely think he’s dead but actually he isn’t” trick without cheating or magic or medical science or anything but pure literary sleight of hand. George Martin can’t do that despite repeated attempts. Gaiman can’t do it either. And as for Murakami, I have been writing a literary novel inspired by his style for years, although since I am not Japanese, it is more likely to feature a wedding than a suicide. I have no idea when it will be finished, if ever, but I think I might be able to pull it off. And if I can’t get even reasonably close, then I won’t publish it. I admire Tanith Lee. I admire JRR Tolkien. I admire John C. Wright. I admire China Mieville. I admire Alan Moore. I admire Umberto Eco. The only thing I admire about Gaiman’s writing is his ability to give everything the flavor of a fairy tale. That’s not nothing, it’s actually pretty cool, but it’s very far from the most significant thing. Sure, he sells a lot more books, but then, Dan Brown and Katie Price sell even more and I don’t have any respect for their literary abilities either.

The reason so many people on the Right knew Gaiman was a creep while no one on the Left did is very simple. We believe the art reflects the artist. They reject the connection between the art and the artist.

And, obviously, they are wrong.

It is, however, mildly amusing to observe that the way SJWs ritually disavow a formerly beloved author is to repeat “F— Neal Gaiman” as if it is a formal anathema.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Media Won’t Talk About Gaiman

And I think we have a pretty good idea why, based on the arrest today of a top BBC news presenter:

Former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has been charged with child pornography offences after 37 indecent images were allegedly shared on a WhatsApp chat.

Scotland Yard confirmed the 62-year-old broadcaster was facing three charges of making indecent images of children between December 2020 and April 2022.

Police said Edwards was arrested on November 8 last year and charged just over a month ago on June 26 following authorisation from the Crown Prosecution Service.

Edwards – who helmed royal and political events at the BBC before resigning in April – has been bailed and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court this Wednesday.

According to the charge sheet, Edwards is accused of having six category A images, 12 category B pictures and 19 category C photographs on WhatsApp.

And yes, it’s pretty much all of them. The evil guys don’t want to talk about the wicked guys, they prefer to systematically target the kind of people who will call them out for what they are.

And they tell you what they are. You just have to believe what you read. Consider the following, written by the accused himself, Mr. Tubcuddle:

Today I had my photo taken, for an American Library Association Series of author photo posters. (The poster won’t be out for months. You’ll need to get something else in the meantime, like their Sherman Alexie poster. Or their Orlando Bloom READ poster. Or their P. Craig Russell Sandman poster.) The photographer explained that she was going to do a straightforward photo (which she took), and that later she wants take some more imaginative ones — me looming from the darkness, me with paint or ink dripping from my hand, that kind of thing. And then she mentioned that she wanted to also take a photo of me as the mythological or literary character of my choice, and wondered who I’d like to be.

“Red Riding Hood’s Wolf,” I said, because I went perfectly blank, and that was the first thing that popped into my completely blank head. So I’m going to be Red Riding Hood’s Wolf in a photo, although this may not be obvious to anyone except the photographer and me.

Afterwards, she asked why…

I honestly didn’t know, so I started writing, to try and figure it out.

I think part of the idea of Red Riding Hood’s Wolf (why her wolf? Possibly because I was given a Ladybird book containing the story of Little Red Riding Hood, when I was an infant, and that was the first time I’d encountered the image of a wolf standing on his hind legs. He wore a jacket, at least in memory he did, in the paintings, and was talking comfortably to Red Riding Hood, who was chubby and pretty, and much older than I was, and I could absolutely understand what he saw in her, and for me Sondheim’s song “Hello Little Girl” was already beginning to come into existence, as text not subtext: obviously, this meeting was to be the start of a beautiful friendship, one that would last — girl and wolf — forever). The wolf in the story represents an awful lot of stuff — the danger and truth of stories, for a start, and the way they change; he symbolises — not predation, for some reason — but transformation: the meeting in the wild wood that changes everything forever. Angela Carter’s statement that “some men are hairy on the inside” comes to mind: as an image, in my head, it’s the wolf’s shadow that has ears and a tail, while the man in wolf form stands in his forest (and cities are forests too) and waits for the girl in the red cloak , picking flowers, to come along, or, hungrily, watches her leave…

There’s a woodcutter, and an axe, but at the start of the story, the wolf is waiting again, and he’s just fine.

When I was a boy, when I grew up I wanted to be a wolf. I never wanted to be a wolfman. I didn’t really want to be a werewolf, except for a few years in my early teens. I wanted to be a wolf, in a forest or in the world.

Later, as an adult, I remember encountering the story of Red Riding Hood in its original form, a French version that predated the cleaned-up ways of telling the tale I’d already encountered, and the bleak sexuality of the story came through: when she encounters the wolf in her grandmother’s bed, he eats and drinks her grandmother with her, then tells her to take off all her clothes and throw them on the fire — she wouldn’t be needing them any more, — and, finally, she joins him in the bed naked. And then, with no more ado, he eats her. And there the story stops, sometimes with a direct moral — not to talk to strangers — and sometimes without it. The story disturbed me, and I put it into Sandman, in the Serial Killers’ Convention story, where it represents a number of things at once, and is also itself.

The wolf defines Red Riding Hood. He makes the story happen. Without him, she’d just be another girl on her way to her grandmother’s house. And she’d leave her goodies behind, and come home, and no-one would ever have heard of her. But he’s not just her wolf: he’s all the wolves on the edge of the world, all the wolves in all the stories, all the wolves in all the dreams of wolves; flashing green eyes in the darkness, dangerously honest about what he wants: food, company, an appetite.

And if I could be any literary figure, I think, today, I’d be strangely happy to be him.

TRANSLATION: if they get him for breaking the law, it’s going to because the girl was underage.

UPDATE: Oh, the irony. I was banned from commenting at /r neilgaimanuncovered because the moderator read my biography on Wikipedia. La, whatever shall I do? Anyhow, I’ll continue to mine the subreddit for information, but now they won’t get what we dig up without reading VP and Fandom Pulse.

Feminists are such retards.

FEMINIST: Why won’t men speak out against rich, famous men attacking young women?

EVERY FEMINIST ALLY: -total silence-

VD and JDA: Rape and sexual assault are bad. Neil Gaiman is also bad.

FEMINIST: Shut up shut up shut up! Not you, you’re too evil! Now, why won’t men speak out against rich, famous men attacking young women?

UPDATE: The poster and photo referenced in Gaiman’s blog post. He’s just one fedora short of euphoria. Now you know why only losers and overweight, insecure goth girls ever thought he was cool.

DISCUSS ON SG

How to Wreck an Epic Fantasy

George RR Martin was never, ever, going to finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. But introducing too many perspective characters and excessively widening the story isn’t the only way to screw things up. Now, I personally thought THE WHEEL OF TIME started out mediocre and only got worse from there, but it’s interesting to see the suggestion that it was ruined, not once but twice, by two different authors.

I loved Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan growing up. LOVED IT. MULTIPLE REREADS of the series, even when I wasn’t prepping for the next release. I read it as much as some other folks (me included) reread Harry Potter.

Here is how WOT went down:

Books 1-5 were AMAZING. So was Book 6, but Book 6 did intro, in a minor way, elements/characters that came to be very unpopular. People argue about the JTS book, whether it was Book 6 or 7 (majority argue book 6, but I disagree). From Book 7 on it was a long, meandering trek into the wilderness, wherein popular characters were minimized, unpopular characters/subplots were given tons of coverage, and new characters no one cared about were introduced. The main characters hardly interacted during this time.

Then the OG author DIED. He’d had a long illness, and fans were told that he’d left behind a detailed outline to finish the story, that only lacked being fleshed out by another author. Brandon Sanderson, a then up and coming (he’s since arrived) fantasy writer was tapped to finish the series alongside the widow (who was also the editor of the OG author). Instead of one follow up book, it quickly turned into 2 follow up books. Then it blossomed into 3 books. Fine. Whatever.

Especially since book 1 (under the new guy, book 1 of 3) was so good. A return to the 1-5 level of quality in the minds of readers. Then Book 2 came out. And things got shaky. There were a few iffy sections. But we all sort of explained it away because the author had to arrange pieces on the board to get ready for the finale.

And the last book was straight up terrible. Series ruining terrible. Terrible to the level (and I’m not alone in this) wherein I have not since picked up a single book in the series, and I used to read the entire series (or, OK the first 5-6 books) every 18 months or so. Fan sites saw traffic dip by 80+ percent. Long gestating talk about spinoff novels/stories died instantly (and there was speculation that the widow and publisher were vetting writers and workshopping plots). Again, this all died instantly and permanently.

That detailed outline we’d been told about was, instead, 2-3 legal pads of freeform notes. No organization.

That is where GOT is. The author has written himself into a corner, and has no idea how to end it. All he knows is that he doesn’t know what to do, and that his most likely idea was widely panned in the TV show. He’ll never finish.

I’ve heard this from multiple sources, including some who have worked with him directly on ASOIAF-related products. However, I stand by my original analysis, which is that Martin made a technical and structural mistake that was the initial cause of the problem, which was introducing too many perspective characters. If I recall correctly, he went from 9 in the first book to 22 in the second; ironically for all his bloodthirsty reputation, Martin’s problem is that he doesn’t kill off enough of his perspective characters.

Brandon Sanderson sells incredibly well, but he would not be able to fix the technical problem with the series and bring it to a proper conclusion. I could do it, being sufficiently ruthless to resolve the situation, and I even know how I would do it, but I’m probably the second-to-last person on the planet who would ever be asked to do so. And I’ve got to wrap up ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT properly in A GRAVE OF GODS.

Chuck Tingle, of course, would be the last.

DISCUSS ON SG

We Tell You Who We Are

Whether we want to or not, whether we try to disguise ourselves or not, the writer always tells the reader something about himself. This is a very astute observation from a member of the club that dare not talk about Neil Gaiman:

There was a writer whose books I loved–incidentally he is respected and talked about by NG. I had a chance to meet him at a multiple-day convention over a decade ago.

During that trip, this writer behaved sneakily and shittily toward my friend (much how NG’s behavior is being described now). At the time I was so disappointed but I figured that I loved his books and could separate the art from the artist.

Only I realized, reading his new work and trying to reread the books I’d loved, that I could see the tells in the writing. How the main characters behaved, how women were characterized, etc.–I could see him crafting justification for his characters’ behaviors that echoed his own. And that was the end of that for me.

I think the work usually reflects the creator behind it, but sometimes it takes clarity elsewhere to really see what is there.

“Sometimes it takes clarity elsewhere to really see what is there” is absolutely correct. Because what’s there is always there, but the reader is not necessarily seeing it in a relevant and meaningful context. Even when the writer explicitly warns you.

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds.”
– Neil Gaiman

For distinctly different values of “unimaginable” and “amazing”, of course. On that note, it might be interesting to know what those of you who read my fiction believe you have gleaned from it concerning my own inadvertent literary confessions, as I’ve generally tried to avoid self-inserts since my earliest attempts at fiction.

Then again, some readers never see anything at all, no matter how loudly the writer trumpets his shortcomings and evildoings. Who wants to tell this poor woman the bad news?

I’m autistic, and for the longest time the collected works of Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman were my special interest. That’s still true, but just feels different and complicated and ickier. GRRM had better not pull any shit because I can’t take any more of this!

Yeah, so, there’s a reason for those two Rs…

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Definitely on the List

If I ever go back to Japan, I will be sure to visit the Murakami Library.

Murakami’s writing is known for its combination of the surreal and the mundane, and architect Kengo Kuma designed the Haruki Murakami Library – situated on the campus of the writer’s alma mater – with this in mind. Natural materials are juxtaposed with flowing, futuristic lines to evoke a sense of stepping into the celebrated author’s world.

The Audio Room is where fans can listen to a selection of records once featured at Peter Cat, a Tokyo jazz bar Murakami ran with his wife before finding success as a writer. Next door in the Gallery visitors will find Murakami’s complete works in numerous languages, free to read inside the library.

Upstairs, the Lab offers a peek inside the small recording studio used by Murakami to produce his former radio show, alongside an area for listening to the author’s books in audio format. This floor also houses the Exhibition Room, which features limited-time exhibitions related to themes and motifs from Murakami’s writing, such as architecture and jazz.

The basement floor houses a recreation of the author’s home study and the Orange Cat Café.

One might be a bit wary of the librarian, however…

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Bad Literature as Predictive Model

We know that movies and television shows have been used as a revelation of the method by the wicked in order to avoid occult karma for their actions by openly confessing them in a plausibly deniable manner that the public will not believe. But six decades after it was written, this section from the dreary, Gamma-infested slog that is A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, written by an author who was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 11 years after his suicide, tends to strike the modern reader as ominously predictive of the current state of affairs in the increasingly degenerate nations ruled by the evil inverts of Clown World.

Dear Reader,

Nature has sometimes made a fool; but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making. —Addison

As I was wearing the soles of my desert boots down to a mere sliver of crepe rubber on the old flagstone banquettes of the French Quarter in my fevered attempt to wrest a living from an unthinking and uncaring society, I was hailed by a cherished old acquaintance (deviate). After a few minutes of conversation in which I established most easily my moral superiority over this degenerate, I found myself pondering once more the crises of our times. My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing.

“Stop!” I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. “This is madness.” But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy.

There on the worn stones of the Quarter I enlisted the aid of this wilted flower of a human in gathering his associates in foppery together behind a banner of brotherhood. Our first step will be to elect one of their number to some very high office—the presidency, if Fortuna spins us kindly. .Then they will infiltrate the military. As soldiers, they will all be so continually busy in fraternizing with one another, tailoring their uniforms to fit like sausage skins, inventing new and varied battle dress, giving cocktail parties, etc., that they will never have time for battle. The one whom we finally make Chief of Staff will want only to attend to his fashionable wardrobe, a wardrobe which, alternately, will permit him to be either Chief of Staff or debutante, as the desire strikes him. In seeing the success of their unified fellows here, perverts around the world will also band together to capture the military in their respective countries. In those reactionary countries in which the deviates seem to be having some trouble in gaining control, we will send aid to them as rebels to help them in toppling their governments.

When we have at last overthrown all existing governments, the world will enjoy not war but global orgies conducted with the utmost protocol and the most truly international spirit, for these people do transcend simple national differences. Their minds are on one goal; they are truly united; they think as one. None of the pederasts in power, of course, will be practical enough to know about such devices as bombs; these nuclear weapons would lie rotting in their vaults somewhere. From time to time the Chief of Staff, the President, and so on, dressed in sequins and feathers, will entertain the leaders, i.e., the perverts, of all the other countries at balls and parties. Quarrels of any sort could easily be straightened out in the men’s room of the redecorated United Nations. Ballets and Broadway musicals and entertainments of that sort will flourish everywhere and will probably make the common folk happier than did the grim, hostile, fascistic pronouncements of their former leaders.

Almost everyone else has had an opportunity to run the world. I cannot see why these people should not be given their chance. They have certainly been the underdog long enough. Their movement into power will be, in a sense, only a part of the global movement toward opportunity, justice, and equality for all. (For example, can you name one good, practicing transvestite in the Senate? No! These people have been without representation long enough. Their plight is a national, a global disgrace.)

Degeneracy, rather than signaling the downfall of a society, as it once did, will now signal peace for a troubled world. We must have new solutions to new problems. I shall act as a sort of mentor and guide for the movement, my not inconsiderable knowledge of world history, economics, religion, and political strategy acting as a reservoir, as it were, from which these people can draw rules of operational procedure.

Boethius himself played a somewhat similar role in degenerate Rome. As Chesterton has said of Boethius, “Thus he truly served as a guide, philosopher, and friend to many Christians; precisely because, while his own times were corrupt, his own culture was complete.”

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A Man of Sound Opinion

One of the greatest science fiction grandmasters of his generation shares his very sound opinion of some popular works of genre fiction, including two of his fellow grandmasters.

I was crushed on the Wheel of Time like a hindoo sacrifice being crushed by the great god Juggernaut.

Why could I not finish? This one is also hard to explain. The characters theoretically should have been a lovable as the picked-upon orphan-boy in HARRY POTTER, or the smart-but-shy Hermione. I mean, come on, a farm boy with a dread destiny, his honest blacksmith friend, and their friend who is good with dice. Not to mention Aes Sedai and way-cool ninja swordfighting moves and magical gateways and Dark Lords galore. But it never clicked with me: I was slogging halfway through the fifth or sixth book (yes, I stayed with it that long) when I realized that I wanted the main character to die because he was out of his mind, I wanted the gambler fellow to die because he was turning all dark and crooked, and I did not care of the blacksmith fellow lived or died, because he was spinning his wheels not doing much of anything. Somewhere along the way, I had lost all sympathy for all the heroes and all their goals–if they had goals. I mean, I had clambered up a mountain of thousands of gray pages, and I was still waiting for that “Council of Elrond” moment when Some Wise Mage tells Frodo-lite what the quest is. No one seemed to be doing anything and no one had a plan. And I wanted all of them to die.

Now, in all fairness, this last might not have been a fault of the author. I am a cruel and sadistic man, like many readers, and I only read when I am a foul mood, either right before a gladiatorial game or an afternoon of kitten-stomping. So maybe it is just me.

But Rand-al’Thor really did get on my nerves after a while. He seemed a character simply too small for the role. If Ranma Soatome has been the Dragon of that world, the Dark Lord Bumbershoot (or whatever his name was) would have at least been booted in the head before five books ground wearily by. If Paul Mu’ad-Dib had been the dragon, by then would have at least disrupted the spice production. SOMETHING would have happened.

I, too, hated THE WHEEL OF TIME. Hated, hated, hated it, and finally gave up partway through book seven. To this day, I still harbor a perfectly rational and well-merited hatred for Rand al-Thor, who is arguably the very worst protagonist in all of fantasy fiction, and the question is only arguable because I have not read, and will not read, anything by SuperMegaGamma Patrick Rothfuss, although based on the descriptions and reviews of others, it is possible that, as difficult as it is to imagine, the protagonist of Rothfuss’s work is even worse than Robert Jordan’s loathsome lead character.

I will say that while Wright’s distaste for China Mieville’s PERDIDO STREET STATION is perfectly understandable and justifiable, I do not share it, and I consider Mieville to be one of Wright’s very few peers in the field. Very different, very much darker, and very much not on the side of the angels much less Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but a first-rate fantasy author nevertheless.

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