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47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Far More Than Meets The Eye, August 25, 2009
This review is from: This is Me, Jack Vance! (Hardcover)
[Update:] This autobiography won the HUGO AWARD for Best Related Work 2010.
For anyone new to Jack Vance, this is the interesting lifestory of a prolific author of celebrated imagination and originality, containing a good measure on his globetrotting treks and oft ex-pat lifestyle, written with Vance's renown fluidity and style, easily holding the reader's interest steadily throughout. The book features an annex of 65 photos. It is a respectable feat for Vance to write this from the summit of age 93 (being effectively blind as well), commanding a writing career spanning some 66 years, and it is wonderful to relish whatever rare star-born crystal "IOUN stones" he generously chooses to share. (We should all hope to reach such venerable age, much less write a coherent, well-written book.)
But for ardent Vance-fans there perhaps is an unlooked for tact taken by Vance, for he eschews to "talk shop" (p.7) or relate much about specific novels and works, nor supply revelatory depth about his preeminent writing career. However this must NOT be construed as anything UNexpected, for as evidenced by every interview Jack Vance ever did, he has consistently been disinclined to discuss his works at length, but would rather that they stand on their own. (In the preface to The Best of Jack Vance he declares he does not like "to discuss, let along analyze" his stories. Likewise he has been notoriously reticent [in comparison to peers] to embark on self-promoting campaigns.) Such admirable integrity, as it were, he has carried characteristically into his autobiography, albeit to yowls of his steadfast fans (myself included).
Yet there is PLENTY in this 'bibliographically quiescent' lifestory for any fan comfortably familiar with Vance's marvelous corpus. Out of what he does relate about his life, one can now, with this autobiography in-hand, cull & glean the many influences, antecedents and inspirations to his fantastic stories. THAT, exactly, is what makes this book worth buying. That is exciting.
Following is a recapitulation of these influences, antecedents and inspirations to his writings. It's rather comprehensive, in order to demonstrate just how many there are. However, readers are welcome to skip over all this to the last four paragraphs, below.
In Chapter 1 ("Ch.1"), the rural locale of the Green Lodge Ranch is clearly the founding inspiration to the 'Californiana' of his Joe Bain mysteries (The Fox Valley Murders; The Pleasant Grove Murders; and [in unfinished draft] The Genesee Slough Murders). From Ch.2, the inlets, "sloughs", marinas and numerous islands are utterly evocative of The Fens environs of his book Trullion: Alastor 2262 (Hugo Award nominated). In Ch.3, his fascination with Japanese language, where he digresses a tad to "explain the intricacies of the Japanese system" (p.59), is an obvious progenitor to his book The Languages Of Pao, with its thesis that language precedes conceptualization. Out of Ch.4, his memoir on seamanship as a merchant marine solidly establishes his `sea legs' for such novels as Showboat World and Cugel's Saga (Gilgames Award winner, Best Fantasy Novel 1987), and his anecdotes on portages brings to mind his book Space Opera, plus his duology Ports Of Call and Lurulu. Similarly his talk of ship crews is prototypal to all these plus the first chapter of Big Planet; and ship-life he relates surely yields his credible shipboard depictions in such stories as "The Gift of Gab" (Chateau D'If And Other Stories). Real life Captain Reisendorf, "portentous and grim" whereby Jack came to "admire and even revere this doughty captain" (p.71), is surely archetypal to Henry Belt in one of Jack's own favorite stories, "Sail 25" (Future Tense). Leeriness about being cast overboard and adrift at sea (p.74) finds later realization in his mystery-suspense The Dark Ocean.
In Ch.5, Vance relates about his eventual assay into fine carpentry, which was "interesting and often delicate work, at times requiring the skill of a surgeon"(p.85), certainly an underpinning for his reverent woodworking appreciations in his excellent novel Emphyrio. Also from Ch.5, Vance's involvement with pottery and his "Ceramic Center" project is the antecedent background for "The Potters Of Firsk" (Lost Moons), and for a key element in his mystery The View From Chickweed's Window. (And tantalizing by virtue of being written in rare 1st-person, his protagonist in Strange Notions articulates a notion to take up ceramics.) Ch.6 recounts about travel to Morocco (late 1950's) and the diverse peoples of North Africa, precursory for the setting and characters of The Man In The Cage, winner of the Edgar [Allen Poe] Award for Best First Mystery Novel in 1960. Within Ch.7, description of an anthropologist becoming stuck in an 'L' turn inside a cave discloses a claustrophobia that is explicated years later in quite similar terms in The Killing Machine. His penchant for boats (see Ch.11) inspires invention in many stories, be they sea or space, (the salesroom of assorted space yachts from novel Maske:Thaery jumps to mind); his houseboat (Ch.7) evokes Mad Poet Navarth's abode from The Palace Of Love. The Vance's many ocean-cruises, to include their Panama transit, clearly bear influence on The Dark Ocean as well as some of the Tschai series. Vance's lifetime appreciation for the Oz books (both Ch.1 & Afterward) finds fanciful outlet in his mystery, The Madman Theory, via a model railroad layout that re-creatively transverses an otherwise faithful depiction of the Land of Oz. Likewise, his hobby interest in chess finds expression in the mystery A Room To Die In. All of these are strong and telling correlations.
Further instances can be seen as follows. From Ch.1, Vance's youthful enthrallment with kite-flying (p.16) (no less the later balloon college prank, p.54) very likely provided that seminal spark leading to his sophisticatedly visualized diligence (air-balloon) transport system in the Durdane trilogy (e.g., The Anome). Also Ch.1, a childhood knack at stilt-walking (achieving "the extreme of eight-foot stilts", p.16) possibly percolated into air-walking sandals "stepping as if walking on stilts" from Slaves Of The Klau (original text restored in the re-titled edition Gold And Iron), or anti-gravity webs enmeshed into feet as in The Languages of Pao. Out of Ch.2, his height-defying daring in walking up the cable to the top of the Bay Bridge tower embraces an audacity echoed but amplified to astonishment in "Sjambak". Further from Ch.2, his foray as a young man into mining and gold dredging become expressed with the young prospectors in "Three-Legged Joe" (The Augmented Agent), mining enterprise of "Hard Luck Diggings" (The Complete Magnus Ridolph), fantastic mineralization on a planet in The Five Gold Bands (first published as The Space Pirate), upwelling again with "Sabotage On Sulfur Planet" (Lost Moons), and perhaps influencing the 'hunt' for crystal sequin-clusters (The Dirdir) and tunnel complexes from The Pnume (Hugo Award nominated). A technique from his stint as a rodman in surveying is utilized in "Ultimate Quest" (The Dark Side Of The Moon). Indeed, all his assorted early work-experiences (Ch.2, and also Ch.3 electronics repair in Hawaii) appear to resurface in his protagonist from Son Of The Tree, a young jack-of-all-trades who asserts confidently, "I'm a good mechanic, machinist, dynamist, electrician. I can survey, work out stresses, do various odd jobs. Call myself an engineer."
From Ch.3, Vance's early attraction to astronomy finds expression in much of his writing, some exemplars being "First Star I See Tonight" (Light From A Lone Star), the remarkable star & planetary systems from Star King, stellar navigation as key to the plot in The Killing Machine, and the elaborate multi-sun system of planet Marune (second Alastor Cluster book). Likewise his expertly self-constructed overhead star chart (later, Ch.4) likely flourished within his Alastor series into that widespread pastime of "star-watching" so endemic throughout his inhabited star cluster. From Ch.3, his dip into college newspaper production finds later articulation with the Cosmopolis and the Extant magazines from The Book Of Dreams. The near-campus vicinity of his Alma Mater (UC Berkeley) forms the setting for his mystery The Four Johns (or in the UK as Four Men Called John). (Just as the San Francisco coastal area forms the setting for Bird Isle, [originally published as Isle of Peril].) College gets creatively reformulated in "Assault On A City" (Lost Moons) with the Academy that presents its curriculum via walking conduits, upon which transit is "dictated by assimilative ability". The hair-brained "Thumbwaggers' Club" hitch-hiking excursion is evocative of the misguided, ill-equipped "bonter" foragers from Wyst: Alastor 1716 (third of the Alastor trilogy). From Ch.4, gambling and the Australian "Two-Up" game call to mind the gambling refuge of Maust (The Dirdir), and Jack's initial encounter with skullduggery (p.69) is purely Cugelesque without doubt. His enthrallment in viewing the strikingly sheer Andes Mountains may pose as the inspiration for many of his off-world landscapes, most notably Throy (book 3 of the Cadwal Chronicles).
By Ch.7 the Vance's live for a period (1964) in Tahiti, forerunner for the locale of his mystery The Deadly Isles (1969). The vast Pacific Ocean is clearly the inspirational source for "The Kragen" (1964), later published in book-form as The Blue World (Hugo Award nominated 1966). Travel among South Pacific islands also finds reflection in the story "The Secret" (1966) (Green Magic: The Fantasy Realms of Jack Vance), as well as the salient setting of his Torpeltine island-chain from "Freitzke's Turn" (Galactic Effectuator). In Ch.8, travel through Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains seem redolent of the orogenic...
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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A casual walk through the life of Jack Vance, August 8, 2009
This review is from: This is Me, Jack Vance! (Hardcover)
Jack Vance has for decades been a writer I've greatly admired, as much if not more than any other I can think of. Famously reclusive, it seems that now, in his nineties, he has finally decided to share a little of his private life. And he does, giving us a sometimes fascinating, sometimes repetitive accounts of houseboats, travels abroad, old friends, and family members. What he does not give is anything much in the way of insight into his fiction. He warns the reader early on that there is not much "shop talk" here ... fair enough; I wasn't looking for a how-to book. What I was hoping for was some idea of what he thought about his various novels and characters, maybe how his fiction affected his life, other than just by financially supporting it. Forget it -- very little about writing at all, except a brief piece at the end, which he says was forced on him by his "entire general staff, including advisers, adjutants, and amanuenses." He does give a brief list of characters that he liked (including, interestingly, Baron Bodissey, who, as far as I can make out, never appeared as a character at all, but rather as a sort of narrative voice-over). The writing is graceful, of course, as anyone who reads Vance will expect. He disclaims style, but the style is elegant as always and, also as always, there is the sense of a certain reserve.
I had hoped for more, but the book is a pleasant enough travelogue, with many, mostly warm -- sometimes humorous -- stories about old friends; this memoir is perhaps intended more for people he knew than for his readers. At one point, he even says he no longer feels like the same person who wrote, as he puts it, all that "junk." At his age, and with his achievements, maybe he has earned the right to feel beyond it all. In the end, all I can say is, Thank you Mr. Vance for a lifetime of good reading, and for helping keep alive my sense of wonder. I really enjoyed that "junk."
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Vance:courageous and unassuming, October 27, 2009
This review is from: This is Me, Jack Vance! (Hardcover)
Mr Vance's book - written, like many of his works, while he is blind -gives insight into the triumph of his spirit against adversity, a finely achieved survival which would make a model for Adam Reith's times on Tschai! He tells us of journeys, wanderlust, difficult working tasks. In these you can see the roots of scenes and themes in his books,like jazz,boating on rivers, houseboats, chance, and enchanting, encounters.
If you are looking for a catalogue of his writings and rhetorical analysis of his techniques you will be disappointed - a short final chapter is all you get, because his whole life seems to have been bound up with his writing. And he is throughout generous in his recognition of his late wife Norma's contribution to the stories.
He lists some of the authors that influenced him; he considers the novel his chosen form: as to style, he discovered writing to please yourself (not editors) yielded better results, and he lays down one supreme canon: "the mark of good witing, in my opinion, is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written... the images flow into his mind as if he were living them. The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence". That humble "in my opinion" marks the innate decency of this man wno is one of, if not the, greatest creators of the myths we need for living in these times. Those guests who chatted over their food while he gave one of his rare talks on writing would have done better to listen.
For here is a man whose writing moves on three levels at once -adventure story, imaginative working out of living myth for our age, and profound insight into our human condition with its ferocity and commitments, and its heroes who above all never forgive.
The impact of this book grows on you: without pretention, without fuss, recording the little triumphs and defeats of his life, a very great man here displays his unassuming courage: he is moving, apparently unregretting, onto the final stretch of the journey to annihilation we all must take, where the secrets of a hidden and magical power gleam amidst the darkness of Ultimate Nothing.
This book is made great by its author: buy it, read it, and above all read his works. Then through thought and imagination you may bring yourself to a greater understanding of your life, greater than you will ever get from religious text and professional philosophising.
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