Customer Reviews

Heart of Whitenesse

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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Howard Waldrop has been called "a national treasure" and after reading this collection of 10 stories it's not hard to see why. He has a fascination (perhaps an obsession) with twentieth century pop culture, obsolete technologies, and arcane ephemera that permeates his stories and makes for a unique reading experience. He is also a meticulous craftsman, and it shows in these finely written tales.

Waldrop creates stories out of seemingly absurd connections that no one else could imagine. The excellent title story conflates Christopher Marlowe, the Shakespearean era playwright who wrote "Dr. Faustus", and Marlowe the narrator of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", as CM takes a journey on the frozen Thames river in search of the real Dr. Faustus at the behest of Queen Elizabeth (in reality, CM actually did serve as a spy). Waldrop even manages to throw in a riff on Philip Marlowe, the detective in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep! No one else could have conceived this idea or made it work, yet in Waldrop's hands it becomes a classic story. "US" is a moving alternate history story that shows three possible lives that might have been led by Charles Lindbergh Jr (who in real history died as a baby during the infamous botched kidnapping). No other story I've read captured so well the loss of human potential when a life is ended prematurely. "Mr. Goober's Show" centers around a brother and sister who, in the early 1950s, accidentally view on an obsolete TV set a children's show that no one else may have witnessed, a viewing that changes the course of their lives. "Major Spacer in the 21st Century" begins with the downfall of the creator of a 1950 children's science fiction TV show as the McCarthy hearings begin, and picks up in the year 2000 in a world where Y2K really did lead to a technological disaster. As a result, "Major Spacer" is given a second chance to change the world for the better. These are just a few highlights in a collection with no weak stories.

This is Waldrop's sixth collection of stories, and my favorite by just a hair. I hope this book will be reprinted by a mass-market publisher so that more people get to read it. If you like this book, I would recommend that you search for his other collections, all of which are excellent.

If you like Waldrop's writing, I would also recommend short story collections by Avram Davidson (The Avram Davidson Treasury, The Other Nineteenth Century, Limekiller), Andy Duncan (Beluthahatchie), Terry Bisson (Bears Discover Fire), and Neal Barrett jr (Perpetuity Blues).

If you're not already a Howard Waldrop fan, here's what you need to know: Waldrop's a master of the short fiction form. His great--often very funny--writing shouldn't (and doesn't) just appeal to science fiction fans. He's a flat-out genius at connecting completely disparate fields of interest and finding just the right weird little connection to make them fit together perfectly in a short story.

This book is the perfect gift for those show-off friends who think they know a little about everything. Because odds are Waldrop knows more than they do. And he can twist and shape that knowledge into some darned amusing tales that are accessible to anyone. If you love pop culture and history, Waldrop is your go-to guy.

...and a finer writer there couldn't be, a finer fellow too.

If I could give it 6 stars, oh how I would. "The Heart of Whiteness" is my new favourite story and I think dear old Kit Marlowe would entirely agree. I have not been as delighted and chilled simultaneouslly as I have been by "The Other Real World"....if only "The Wolfman of Alcatraz" was also contained herein, but I am being picky again aren't I?

Howard is unique and SO very important. His books should be famous, but maybe the fact that his work is almost a secret thing testifies to how good it is? Or how dull American publshing might be?...Both perhaps.

Treat yourself to a whole new way of realizing just how good, sad, hilarious, intelligent and important science-fiction, alternate history and short stories can be, and all at once too. ;)

Back in the 1970s, one of the main reasons I tried never to miss ArmadilloCon was the opportunity to hang around as much as possible within earshot of Howard Waldrop, just listening to him talk. To anyone. About anything. He has the mind of a Van de Graaff generator, throwing off ideas and comments and observations of the most original sort, the kind of thing that makes his listeners pause and go "Hmmmm." As he demonstrates in all his fiction, including the ten in this new collection, he never forgets anything and seems to have a total grasp of popular culture within, and frequently before, his lifetime. And since he and I are almost exactly the same age, I'm always fascinated at his crystal-clear memories of things and people I can only vaguely recollect. And then there's his style; face it, the man could make a guacamole recipe mesmerizing. Take the title story here: There's Marlow, the narrator from Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_, there's Raymond Chandler's Marlowe, the private eye, and there's Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabeth playwright and spy. Mix `em all together and whattaya got? A trip up a river (instead of down) on an iceboat, a run-in with Dr. Faustus, and a Queen Elizabeth who steals lines from Bette Davis. And who else could write an existential story about pedal cars? "Us," my favorite, is a series of alternate-reality shorts about what happened to the Lindbergh baby who survived. And "The Other Real World," the most complicated story here, is also a lot of fun, though it requires careful reading to pick up all the references before you get to the give-away footnotes. If only Howard's rate of production weren't so bleeding slow!

Howard Waldrop's stories have never been in any sense ordinary. He often surprises not only with strange subjects, but also with the way he handles them. Although (and unjustly) not well-known with the larger audience, his stories have won him a steady following. These new stories have all the elements of the typical Waldrop, but while he is investigating historical possibilities -- things that might have been, had some of the details of our past been a little different -- he is also becoming more obscure. One needs an encyclopedia, and the afterwords to the stories, to fully understand them. A very interesting collection, certainly, but there is the overall feel that Waldrop is too much embedded in his own intellectual games.