4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Part of the Best Of..., April 27, 2010
This review is from: The Best of Lucius Shepard (Hardcover)
When Lucius Shepard (who has accomplished the very remarkable feat, at least in the late 20th and early 21st century, of making a living writing mostly short fiction) burst onto the Science Fiction and Fantasy scene back in the late 1970s, early '80s, he brought with him a "voice" that recalled the poetic writing styles of Sturgeon and Bradbury in their heyday and mixed that with the literary sensibilities of writers like Robert Stone and Joseph Conrad. In fact, Shepard drew his biggest raves for the stories he wrote about the Vietname War, or the futuristic war stories that alluded to that conflict (most people even thought that Shepard -- who was probably living in Europe at the time, since he led an aimless, peripatetic lifestyle before being encouraged by an ex-wife to try his hand at writing genre fiction -- actually fought in the Vietnam War). His fantasy/horror tales set in South and Central America were also quite popular -- and well-written (and researched, as it was obivous Shepard had/has an affinity for those regions) --and also added to his reputation as one of the few genre writers who brought a truly literary quality to his work. Which makes it all the more ironic that one of the few stories Shepard will be remembered for will be "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule" (the dragon in that story, which is hundreds of feet long, and long dead in the physical sense -- but still "intellectually" malevolent enough to spread evil via it's "bad vibes" -- was an allusion to the Reagan administration and all the harm it caused). "Griaule" is truly a classic: not only for it's lush, beautiful writing -- a Shepard hallmark, and one of the reasons his prose so aptly conveys the beauty and danger of the jungles -- but because his dragon slayer sets about slaying the beast via art.
The stories immediately following in this "best of" collection cover the aforementioned territories he staked out via themes and settings: namely, Central and South America and the Vietnam War. "R&R", a Nebula-winning novella (which was turned into one of Shepard's rare, full-fledged novels, LIFE DURING WARTIME) is another classic. It takes place during a fictional, futuristic war in Central America (which is also addressed in "Salvador"). Ostensibly SF (the helicoptor pilots are fitted with helmets that seem melded to their heads, and which constantly spew out information that seems prescient), "R&R" (like "Salvador," "Shades," etc.) addressed, and addresses, the present: our unending need to conquer the world, to satiate our careless greed, and if the planet -- and a few people -- are destroyed in the process, that's just collatoral damage. Like many of his early stories, the plot of "The Jaguar Hunter" is simple: an aging hunter -- who was once able to see the beauty and magic in teh world around him -- has lost that ability due to relying on modern technology to hunt his prey. Only when he renounces that influence -- and gives himself over, completely --does that ability to see true magic return. A simple tale that is transformed via Shepard's verdant prose and sure-handed characterization into a story that is as powerful as a folktale.
Like the voice of the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, the "voice" of Lucius Shepard can lend his stories a sort of, wide-open range, Cecil B. Demille grandeur that few other writers can achieve. Often, he does that in one sentence, twisting and turning like the vines in the jungles of which he writes, rising and falling like the notes of a particularly well-tuned choir. When well-done, it's a beautiful thing, and can lend even the silliest notions (zombies, dragons, etc) an air of gravitas. Unfortunately, one can't sustain a long career on only one trick, otherwise one begins to look like, well...a one trick pony. Or an aging rockstar in one of those metal groups who is still trying to recreate the glory days. And that trick is all-too apparent here. Especially when laid side-by-side with Shepard's latest efforts
Between the late '70s and the late 90s, Shepard produced a very solid body of work.
Of late, his stuff has been hit and miss -- more miss than hit, sad to say. Unfortunately, whoever picked the selections for this work did a crummy job (if someone let Shepard do it, that was a bad move, since authors are always the last know when something of theirs is truly classic). Only two thirds of the stories in this collection can be termed "the best of": those are as follows
The Man WHo Painted the Dragon Griaule, Salvador, A Spanish Lesson, The Jaguar Hunter, R&R, The Arcevoalo, Delta Sly Honey, Life of Buddha, White Trains (a poem), Beast of the Heartland, Radiant Green Star and, maybe, Only Partly Here (a moving story about working in and around the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attack).
The other stories were either included because of their connection to Vietnam (Shades), their obscurity (Jack's Decline) or their newness (Jailwise, Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?, Dead Money -- which seems to be included only because of its link to GREEN EYES, another rare novel, Shepard's first -- and Stars Seen Through Stone). Like much of Sheapard's later output, "Stars Seen Through Stone" skirts the edges of greatness but manages to just miss, because of a penchant for going on a bit too long (usually in the middle of the tale).
So even if one allowed that "Stars" should be kept in this greatest collection, that leaves "Jailwise,' "Hands Up...", "Dead Money," "Jack's Decline" and "Shades." In a collection of only eighteen stories, that's nearly one third of the book! What's worse, there are GREAT stories that could have been republished instead: "Aymara" or "A Wooden Tiger" (from THE ENDS OF THE EARTH collection); "The End of Life as We Know It" (from THE JAGUAR HUNTER collection); and, especially, "Barnacle Bill, the Spacer", which won a Hugo award (from the collection of the same name) and "Over Yonder" (which won the prestigious Ted Sturgeon Award). And while a story like "Hands Up..." certainly shows off Shepards newer appreciation of plot-driven tales, it's nowhere near as great as noirish efforst like "Sports in America," "The Sparring Partner" or even "Pizza Man" (all of which appeared in "Playboy" magazine over the years).
Shepard may not get out of his creative groove -- sort of like one of the needle getting stuck on one of those of old vinyl records -- but his already produced body of work can stand for itself. If only the creator -- and any other editor -- would just step out of the way and let the truly best of rise to the surface. To add insult to injury, those paying for a limited edition got a tradepaperback "extra" which included "lost tales" -- stories not collected in one book or another. Which, in this reviewer's opinion, was a good thing in most cases -- especially with a stinker like "Skull City," one of Shepard's worst short fictions (there are plenty of worthwhile "lost" tales -- see the above-mentioned noir, crime fiction tales).
For now, here's hoping that Shepard get's his mojo back soon. The author recently wrote an unusually autobiographical, unusually frank, story: in it, the fictional narrator laments about writing genre fiction, instead of choosing to write mainstream work and be taken more seriously. It's entitled, "Dogeared paperback of My Life," in a collection called OTHER EARTHS. While the story, unfortunately, fell prey to Shepard's penchant for going on too long -- just when the story needs to start wrapping up -- and from a desire to sometimes seem "too writerly" (at one point, he jolts the reader out of the story by using the word steatopygian to describe a comely woman's butt), and while Shepard still starts and stutters at various points in this new tale, sparks of his earlier genius shine through (especially in the alternate worlds conceit).
As for the future: Here's hoping a paperback reprint editor will see the light and reorganize the table of contents of this collection -- until then, this remains only Part of The Best of Lucius Shepard.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Writer with remarkable insight into reality and fantasy, July 5, 2009
This review is from: The Best of Lucius Shepard (Hardcover)
When I was young I was always able to tell when I was listening to Brahms: not only would it be all romantic and blustery to my young ears, but there would always be a point during the piece that I was convinced was the finale, where the music had reached a climax and was about to dive into a speedy, victorious coda and come to an end. If I was still listening to the same piece ten minutes later, I could be certain it was Brahms. Only later, probably only in my late twenties, did I finally come to be able to hear the depth of Brahms's symphonic music and really fall in love with the sound world of those long, meandering pieces (particularly the piano concerti). Although the music is no less long-winded to my ears, I no longer mind so much because I don't want the dream to stop.
I feel like Lucius Shepard works in a similar way. His stories are jammed full of words - wonderful, poetic words - and he sure as hell takes his time wrapping up a story, and I'm not so sure how I would have felt about that ten years ago. But now I can't get enough. Shepard is capable of getting so much of a character's interior life onto the page that aspects of the story that are conventionally important in sf & fantasy - the far-out ideas, the magic, the macguffin - seem of secondary importance, and, in the lesser stories here, can even be slight distractions.
In this sense Shepard reminds me of Graham Greene, particularly because they write a similar kind of protagnoist: reflective, disillusioned, deeply flawed, weakness for women and alcohol, wearing the scars of a hard life. Shepard also shares Greene's taste for exotic locales. Although I'm pretty sure Greene never set a story in a near future central American vietnamesqe guerilla perma-war (as in "Salvador" and the intensely cinematic "R&R"), or the near future southeast asia of the traveling circus in "Radiant Green Star," or the white trash southern Florida of "Hands Up! Who Wants To Die?", there is nonetheless a similar fascination for the down and out fringe elements and an ability to make a place seem remarkably familiar, like a place we remember growing up, despite its foreign trappings.
At over 600 pages this book was a monster to carry around on my daily trek through the city, but now I'm kind of sad it's over.
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