Customer Reviews

Going Home Again

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4 star:		(1)
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I'm another dyed-in-the-wool Waldrop fan. If you search elsewhere, you'll see that I've reviewed another of his books with very high praise. But this one has troubled me somewhat. Some of the stories are utterly remarkable, with some truly outstanding writing. Well, *all* of them are quite well-written, researched to the hilt, and then laid out for the reader to grapple with. And grapple we do.

I can't help but compare this Waldrop with the one I met in 1988. This one is far more cynical. This one has withdrawn into his own interests completely. This one is much harder to relate to. If anything, he's an even better writer than he was before. (When you do get what he's writing about, it's a knock-out blow!) Perhaps I should say, he's more eccentric?

But, I think I agree with another reviewer here, in that I wondered several times...WHY was this story written? Does it stand alone, if one is unfamiliar with the research? Some of them do, yes! Others maybe do, maybe don't. Still, his senarios remain completely convincing, and one feels compelled to see them through. Overall, well worth the read (definitely!), but not as classic as his earlier stuff.

Howard Waldrop's latest collection of "alternate reality" SF defies all convention. His "what if the Nazis won WWII" story brings Shemp Howard, Zero Mostel, Peter Lorre and Brecht's widow together in an absurdist play about a journey to Mars, the Red planet. Fats Waller and Tom Wolfe hang out on a dirigible. Three Mexican luchadors fight off ancient Aztec gods. That's just the beginning. Each story also has an afterword which also solves the riddle of the alternate reality and gives an insight into Waldrop's writing process. Waldrop's books never hang around the stores for long (he has about $6 in his bank account) and his stuff can be shelved under Science Fiction, Literature or anything else. I found my copy under Hunting/Fishing. Buy it on-line before it disappears!

Howard Waldrop is an American treasure, and like most, seriously overlooked. Although considered a "science fiction" writer, Waldrop isn't so easily categorized (a likely reason for his not being well-marketed). Anyone who has read and enjoyed the works of Kim Newman, Christopher Moore, Bradley Denton, William Browning Spencer and Terry Bisson will find something to like in Howard Waldrop and "Going Home Again" is a good place to start. Actually, it's the _only_ place to start unless you search for the classic, but sadly out of print, collections such as "Howard Who?", "Night of the Cooters" and "Strange Monsters of the Recent Past." Get this one now before it joins those titles.

Howard Waldrop's output is extremely limited. In fact, the appearance of more than three Waldrop stories in a single year is considered by many to be one of the signs of Armageddon. Waldrop is a craftsman, sometimes nurturing ideas for years before he sits down to write. He is a genre unto himself--each story is unique.

This collection is proof positive of all the statements made above--his craft and painstaking attention to detail are evident in every sentence. Over the course of nine stories, Waldrop entertains and enlightens, casting a spell over readers. You don't read a Waldrop story, you experience it. As James Blaylock states, "...most of them keep resonating as memories of experiences lived rather than read."

Four of the nine stories in this volume deal with alternate histories. "You Could Go Home Again," finds author Thomas Wolfe and musician Fats Waller returning to the US after attending the 1940 Olympics in Japan. "Household Words; Or, The Powers-That-Be," describes Charles Dickens at a public reading of "The Christmas Garland," an alternate version of "The Christmas Carol." Accompanying these tales are "The Effects of Alienation," a story Waldrop wrote "to find out what effect Hitler winning World War II would have had on Peter Lorre", and "Flatfeet!," a tale which, among other things, explores the theories of German philosopher Oswald Spengler, who argued that civilizations are subject to the same cycle of growth and decay as human beings. Each reads as though Waldrop is recounting actual events, convincing the reader that even if these things didn't happen, they certainly could have.

Other stories include "The Sawing Boys" (a reworking of "The Brementown Musicians"), "Occam's Ducks" (a look at black American film actors of the 1920s), "El Castillo de la Perseverancia" (an "SF wrasslin' story"), "Scientifiction" (wherein a member of a race of intelligent insects visits our reality), and "Why Did?," (featuring Benjamin Compson, Lenny Small, Rhoda Penmark and Holden Caufield as inmates of a unique asylum). Whether dealing with fairy tale writers who speak perfect Runyonese, paying tribute to his favorite character actors, or working with emotionally and mentally disturbed characters from American literature, Waldrop writes with authority and panache--his creativity is a true marvel (this is the reason the story descriptions are minimal, since part of the pleasure in reading these stories is watching the plots unfurl). Combining seemingly disparate elements into a cohesive whole, he extracts every drop of story value from his subject matter.

In his introduction, Waldrop says that "the stories, contrary to the popular notion, have gotten harder, not easier to do as time goes on." He obviously sweats the details, which explains both the quality and paucity of his output. It's also clear he feels compelled to write, despite the fact that "You absolutely cannot make a living writing short stories..." Be of good cheer, though, because Waldrop promises to keep writing as long as editors keep buying and readers keep reading. I'm not worried about readers, because Waldrop makes fans easily. Editors, however, should take heed--it would be a crime to let a natural resource like this go to waste.

What do the following have in common?

Keystone Kops, vampires, werewolves, mummies, and Oswald Spengler! ("Flatfeet!")

Three masked Mexican wrestling heroes must save the world from El CARNE Xipe, El MUNDO Grosero, and El DIABLO Peligroso in a "FREE-FOR-ALL WRESTLING/STYLO TEJAS DEATH-MATCH/ con Barbed Wire!" match! ("El Castillo de la Perseverancia")

Charles Dickens reads his classic story, "The Christmas Garland," featuring Eben Mizer, Giant Timmy, and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Current, & Yet to Come! ("Household Words; Or, The Powers-That-Be")

The Bremen Town Musicians, Damon Runyon, and the ever-popular art of the musical saw! "Zex! Bleaso! Shut your goozle or you'll have to do a minute! ("The Sawing Boys")

Thomas Wolfe listens to Fats Waller in the passenger lounge of the dirigible, TICONDEROGA, on his way home from the Tokyo Olympics of 1940! ("You Could Go Home Again")

All of these stories and more appear in this outstanding collection by one of my favorite writers. Dubbed "the resident Weird Mind of his generation" by THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD, this book got the following review from LIBRARY JOURNAL: "Clever, humorous, idiosyncratic, oddball, personal, wild, and crazy...Recommended."

"Wowee!" said Fats. "Talk about a rumpus! My old heart can't take much of that."

Years ago, back when Howard Waldrop and I both lived in the middle of Texas, I made it a point never to miss ArmadilloCon in Austin. All the Texas science fiction writers were there, plus writers from Oklahoma and New Mexico and Louisiana (there were, and are, more of them than you might think), and the climax of the weekend was always The Howard Waldrop Show. Howard would read a recently-completed story (which might have taken a decade to write) to an SRO audience, complete with costumes and visual aids. In addition to always being great fun, you could absolutely count on hearing a story that was never less than superior. It has been argued by folks who ought to know -- many of them other writers -- that Howard Waldrop, the Trout-Hunter, is among the very best science fiction writers of his generation. The problem is, most fans of hack writers like Robert Jordan have never heard of him. The problem is, Howard's rate of production makes a glacier look like an Olympic sprinter. He's written one novel and co-authored another in the past thirty years (he has two more he's been working on for several decades), but his forte is the short story, of which this volume is the fifth collection. All the nine stories here are well worth reading, though my favorites are "Scientifiction" and (especially) "Flat Feet!," which combines Hollywood, Attorney General Palmer, and Oswald Spengler. Waldrop is droll, arcane, erudite, and extremely inventive, and his stories require some knowledge and participation on the part of the reader; maybe that's why today's younger sf readers don't appreciate them. But they don't get much better than this. Long may he wave.

I'd heard people talking about Howard Waldrop, but I'd never read him before (except maybe one story). Wow, he really is as good as they say, definitely weird and some of the stories take some work to figure them out, but when you do, they're great. And the introductions are just as interesting.

Since this is the 4th Waldrop collection I've read, one might think praise would be effusing from me. Yet, I confess I don't get it. His stories are well-written, if lacking in narrative tug. The are well-researched and he pays readers the compliment of assuming they are intelligent, yet none of this doesn't matter since he changes the facts to suit his alternative-reality urges. Of all I've read in the past, only one story - "The Ugly Chickens" - has the feel of a classic. Anybody can rearrange the past (including the literary/mythic past) - in Waldrop the point that's missing is "Why?"