Editor and Publisher reported today on the bizarre correspondence which supposedly took place in 1952 and 1953 between Samuel Beckett, the existentialist author of Waiting for Godot, and Ernie Bushmiller, the cartoonist responsible for the newspaper strip Nancy.

This sounds much too weird to be true, but then again, stranger things have happened. After all, J.D. Salinger was supposedly a big fan of Gilligan’s Island. And this was Beckett, so you never know.

One letter from Bushmiller, provided by trusted comics historian R.C. Harvey, is quoted as rejecting Beckett’s ideas as follows: (more…)

Tom Toles, the editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post, finally returned from his vacation today. But for those of you who’ve been missing him these past weeks, that single dose might not be enough to assuage your withdrawal symptoms. So to help out, I thought I’d share this image from long ago and far away.

Back in 1973, as a freshman at the State University of New Your at Buffalo, I worked on the student newspaper. That was when what I wanted to be when I grew up was a journalist of the Pete Hamill or Jimmy Breslin mold, handing in three opinionated slice-of-life columns each week. (I never had to desire to be a writer of fiction when I grew up because I always was a writer of fiction; it wasn’t anything I ever thought I had to become.) Tom Toles was also on the staff of the paper, the resident genius. And even though he was brilliant, he was also a nice, sweet guy with no ego. How often do you see that? So he was loved by all, and everybody wanted to get him to illustrate their stories.

I got lucky once. I crossed the border into Canada to attend Cosmic-Con, a Toronto comic-book convention, and convinced my editor at the paper to let me do a feature on the event. (That boss? Howard Kurtz, whose name you may recognize now that he’s a political talking head and the host of CNN’s Reliable Sources.) Tom drew this piece to go with the article.

So for one brief (very brief), shining moment, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Tom Toles was also a superhero artist.

I dreamt this morning that I was sitting with friends in a stadium so huge that when I looked across the way I noted the rows on the other side descending so far down that I could not see the bottom and rising so high into the sky that they vanished into a mist. An announcer’s voice buzzed inside my head to tell me that attendance today exceeded 800 million people, which my mind accepted as a possible number in whatever world this dream was set. The voice promised us all a great show that day, and warned that if we wanted to pick up refreshments or go to the bathroom, we’d better do it right then, because the event was starting soon and we wouldn’t want to miss any of the action.

I stepped into the hallway behind me, not pausing to think what a crowd of 800 million people getting popcorns and sodas would be like. Only once I’d entered it, the hallway wasn’t that of a stadium, but rather that of a hospital. And I was suddenly dressed all in white, like an orderly. I had a picture ID clipped to my shirt, and when I flipped it up to peer at it saw that it was indeed my picture. I accepted the scene change, but also kept hunting for the refreshment stand and the restroom. Wouldn’t want to miss the show!

I wandered endless hallways and eventually came to a break room of some kind in which patients were seated at tables, some playing dominos, others watching the small TV that hung from the ceiling. And who should be sitting at one table but writer Gregory Feeley, performing the role of a patient advocate. He was telling an old man about his complicated insurance options. As I passed their table, Greg looked at me curiously, wondering how I had gotten there, but did not pause in his explanation to ask. We acknowledged each other with nods only, and as I moved back out into the hallway, I could hear him continuing on with his advice, the patter of his very competent spiel unbroken.

I woke while still wandering the halls, without ever finding that refreshment stand, and without ever learning what event could be so popular as to draw 800 million people to one location.

I just noticed that the following event is scheduled to take place on Friday at 9:00 p.m.

For me, this will take priority over everything else scheduled that weekend.

Bring your kleenex.

Tom Disch’s “Winter Journey”
(40 min.)
Almost exactly a year after the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor in September 2004, Tom Disch began writing a sequence of poems, which he shared on his blog. Eventually there were 31 of them. He titled the sequence “Winter Journey” after Schubert’s lieder cycle “Winterreise” (a work Naylor loved). Elizabeth Hand calls the sequence “an extraordinary efflorescence of grief … tragic, bitter, bleakly funny, romantic, heart-rending—and also accessible. I can imagine, by some divine fluke, the book becoming a surprise, posthumous bestseller—an irony Disch would have appreciated.” When the sequence was completed, Disch contacted friend and filmmaker Eric Solstein, and asked if a reading of the work might be videotaped to serve as a suicide note. At its conclusion, he said, he would kill himself, the attendant publicity hopefully contributing to the success of the recording. A deal was struck between Tom and Eric—the taping would proceed if the suicide were postponed for some indefinite period of time. This will be the first public showing of “Winter Journey.” The poems are to be published later this year, by Payseur and Schmidt, with a DVD of the reading included.

The Readercon committee has just posted the final program for the 19th iteration of what always turns out to be my favorite convention of the year. (I haven’t missed one yet.) I expect the sharply focused panel descriptions to spark lively discussions as usual.

You can find my photographs from last year here, and I look forward to seeing you there this year!

Here’s where you’ll be able to find me: (more…)

The ever-entertaining Paul Di Filippo has begun a new blog, which seems like the perfect time to share another of the artful collages his uses to befuddle the U.S. Postal Service. In the image at right, a band of thugs comes calling, which is exactly how my mail is usually delivered.

As for that new blog of his, it’s called Weird Universe, which, according to its mandate, “explores every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.” Paul’s co-conspirators in this new project are Chuck Shephard, who many of you already know as the brains behind News of the Weird, and Alex Boese, the curator of The Museum of Hoaxes.

If you head over there today, you’ll read about two-headed snakes, learn about the impending shortage of pink flamingo lawn ornaments, and sing along to an anti-LSD anthem.

In the mid-’80s, I collected science fiction, fantasy and horror quotes with the thought that I’d eventually assemble them into our field’s version of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Though I pitched that book to several publishers back then, I never succeeded in placing it, and abandoned the idea. (Besides, now that Gary Westfahl has published his wonderful Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits, there’s no need for my book anyway.)

As part of my mourning for Tom Disch, I paged through those old quotes to find the ones I’d culled from the works of his I’d read up until that time. Since you might be mourning, too, I thought I’d share some of them, so that we can collectively remember what we’ve lost. (more…)

Umberto Eco, scholar of medieval studies and bestselling author of such books as The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, was interviewed in the Summer 2008 issue of The Paris Review. (My wife gave me a lifetime subscription more than three decades ago, and it’s truly been the gift that’s kept on giving—something that George Plimpton wasn’t too happy about!)

He had fascinating things to say about memory, the creative process, communication, and more, but it was his thoughts on the future of reading which stood out for me the most.

As you’ll see, he’s full of hope for the future, even as others are running around in fear.

What do you make of those who proclaim the death of the novel, the death of books, the death of reading?

To believe in the end of something is a typical cultural posture. Since the Greeks and the Latins we have persisted in believing that our ancestors were better than us. I am always amused and interested by this kind of sport, which the mass media practice with increasing ferocity. Every season there is an article on the end of the novel, the end of literature, the end of literacy in America. People don’t read any longer! Teenagers only play video games! The fact of the matter is that all over the world there are thousands of stores full of books and full of young people. Never in the history of mankind have there been so many books, so many places selling books, so many young people visiting these places and buying books.

What would you say to the fearmongers?

Culture is continuously adapting to new situations. There will probably be different culture, but there will be a culture. After the fall of the Roman Empire, there were centuries of profound transformation—linguistic, political, religious, cultural. These types of changes happen ten times as quickly now. But thrilling new forms will continue to emerge and literature will survive.

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who feels that though the bottles into which we decant words may change, the wine of literature will always remain.

Tom Disch visited me in my sleep this morning. There was no sense of surprise in the dream, by which I mean there was no awareness that in real life he was dead, and that such an encounter would from now on be impossible.

We were sitting at a picnic table, much as we were during my moving one-on-one conference back at Clarion in 1979, which I shared about earlier here. We were in the backyard, not of my current house, but of the one I lived in from 1989 through 2004.

We were having a pleasant conversation, about which I’m sorry to say I remember none of the details. (That’s unfortunately often the way with dreams; the stuff I most want to remember fades upon waking.) But I do remember the twinkle in his eye, which was there during our whole chat, a twinkle which so many of you have mentioned in your posts in the days since his death.

In the midst of all this, it suddenly occurred to me that I was being a poor host. He had traveled so far, and I hadn’t offered him anything to eat or drink. So I apologized, and asked what I could get him. He said that he only wanted juice, so I went inside to get him some, filling a glass with cold orange juice from the fridge.

By the time I came back outside, glass in hand, he was gone.

And then I woke up, missing him.

John Joseph Adams has just posted the final cover to his zombie-themed anthology The Living Dead, which will reprint my Stoker-nominated novella “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man.”

As you’ll note, this is yet another cover on which I appear under my famous pseudonym “many others.” This time, I am share that pen name with such writers as Dan Simmons, Michael Swanwick, Jeffrey Ford, Douglas E. Winter, Joe Lansdale, Adam-Troy Castro, Andy Duncan, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg. Not too shabby!