Tuesday, January 29, 2002
The Sandman: Book of Dreams is finally available in paperback. But the new edition hasn't bothered to update any of the author's biographies, which are about five years old at this point. For those of us who were just getting started when the hardback was released, that makes for pretty weird reading. For example, it says my first novel, The Five of Cups, was published by Transylvania Press. Maybe in an alternate reality somewhere. Anyway, five years hasn't diluted the power of the best of these stories, pieces like John M. Ford's "Chain Home, Low." Of course, the book also includes my first "big sale" (and probably the story that landed me the Dreaming gig), "Escape Artist," which is also included in my second collection of short fiction, From Weird and Distant Shores, which is now shipping from the publisher (hint, hint).
A friend of mine spent Saturday in Manhattan and, after a trip to the Met and Central Park, she made her way downtown to Ground Zero. Someone was selling postcards of the WTC towers in flames, collapsing. I hear something like this and I wonder, how much longer can I stave off the cynicism I've been fighting all these years?
I've been looking back at my post from the 27th and I'm very disappointed in it. I should start writing these entries sometime in the afternoon, when I'm not so tired, when the caffeine and work and stress haven't worn me so thin and I can still find the right words and follow my arguments all the way to their conclusions.
". . . eloquence escapes me . . ." What's that from?
The Police. "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."
These thoughts on the necessary contrivances of fiction have led me back round to that greatest literary contrivance of all, the plot. You see, the plot and I have been having a tug of war for about nine years now. I deny its validity. Why should fiction follow such an artifice as a plot, when the world doesn't, and the best fiction should mirror the world, or at least our truest perceptions of and wishes for the world. Maybe that's it. We wish plot upon our messy, directionless lives. Rising action. Falling action. Tidy beginnings, middles, and ends. Prologues and epilogues. The reductive logic of life as a sensible string of linear progression.
Threshold wanted very badly to eschew plot almost entirely, in favor of something more genuine. But I don't think my publisher was ready for the Mulholland Drive of dark fantasy (or was Mulholland Drive the Mulholland Drive of dark fantasy?). But I did resist the temptation of explanation, mostly. I know that they're the cornerstone of a good "horror" novel, but when you begin to pay attention to alleged real-life encounters with the unknown it quickly becomes clear that, more often than not, there are rarely explanations, one way or another. Encounters are brief, puzzling, and inexplicable. A light in the sky. A ghostly figure at the side of the road. A whisper in a dark room when you've not said a word and you're certain you're alone.
I quite enjoyed the film adaptation of The Mothman Prophecies, which I saw this past weekend, and the film has reawakened a lot of thoughts about Threshold and my writing in general that I'd let slip away into the background. In some ways, it did what I was trying to do with Threshold and didn't quite succeed. Better luck next time.
Oh, a special thank you to Jennifer, who's been coming along behind me and sweeping up after my messy spelling. It's a dirty job.
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