Joanna Russ Interview with Samuel Delany (WisCon 30 event)
Participants
Joanna Russ and Samuel R. Delany. Sponsored by Broad Universe
Set-Up
Chip Delany was in a chair at the front of the room with a microphone. Joanna Russ was on a phone, connected to house sound system. On the screen was slowly flashing covers of Russ's novels.
Transcript/Notes
Original transcript by Laura Quilter -- please fill in, correct, amend as needed
Joanna Russ: I'm as close to phone as I can get
on screen: Joanna Russ & Samuel Delany - brought to you by Broad Universe
Samuel R. Delany: In my humble opinion Joanna Russ is simply one of the most important writers who has written in the United States in the last 50 years. she [applause] this is a writer who has produced works on the level of --
JR: hello? hello! (laughter in audience)
SD: -- produced works on level of Willa Cather, James Joyce - Davenport, William Gass ...
JR: Samuel, I can barely hear you.
SD: Well you & I may have difficulty hearing one another but the audience can.
SD: ... and she writes, among other things, sentences that are absolutely spectacular. a description of a spaceship which I quote endlessly to my writing students at Temple University where she's describing a star the big one was the platonic idea of a pebble carried inside out born of a computer and aspiring to the condition of mechanical opera. that is such a luscious sentence I don't think I will ever be the same. also there's a range & intensity of concern for the problems of women. feminism is to Joanna Russ the way marxism was to the great german writer Bertold Brecht. it is something innate to the concerns, not something that can be dismissed. not something - she makes - it already is of course incredibly important aspect of the world possibly one of THE most important aspects of the world -- but she foregrounds that importance, makes us understand it, in terms of the social portraits that she creates in her work. her first story, 'custom stale- appeared in m of f&sf in 1959 i believe that was - and went on to produce many many other wonderful stories, life for Emily, and then a series of stories that the barbarian; i thought she was afeared till she stroked my beard such a wonderful title that it had to be changed to ... stroke my cherry ... adventures of Alyx, which Joanna calls pre-feminist and I call spectacular story, ... We Who Are About To (one of my personal favorites) The Two of Them, On Strike Against God, ... etc. ... really brilliant study. so Joanna what are some of the things you've been thinking about lately.
JR: I don't know if I can tell you I'm still basking in all your praise.
SD: You deserve to bask. tell us a little bit about where you're living. what is Tucson like?
JR: Tucson is getting to a be a rather sprawling small city. desert. very hot in the summer. ... I just love it.
SD: do you like, do you enjoy Tucson?
JR: yes - not the city so much but the location and the skies, oh the skies. my friend: "yes Tucson specializes in that" [the skies]
SD: double bind situation
JR: yes that's awful. it's not the writers' fault. it's the economics of publishing now. what i've seen again and again is that a writer will do very fine early stuff really good stuff. and say okay I can make a living writing. but they then find themselves having to work too fast. words should not only be thought they should be felt thru and there just isn't enough time. people in that bind never do great stuff again. and if you don't do that, if you say okay i will keep my day job as they used to say in the theater, and i will just write what i damn well please, you end up working too hard.
SD: yes I can remember my first 5 books in 3 years and i ended up in a mental hospital. yeah it is a double bind and it is to easy to, you end up blaming yourself for it. any thoughts on changing it?
JR: no i don't know, I think it is an industrial capitalist problem. (applause) ... niche markets. didn't used to be true. 85 different little magazines all doing something different. A young man wrote to me and said that he had read Alyx and he liked it and he read another book of mine and he was shocked & horrified to discover that it wasn't the same thing. I know that's funny but it's like gor of gor the 56th book of the series and people will buy these things because they're familiar. but it used to be that you had to write what was being written a and it was crummy but it was a different kind of crummy.
SD: now authors are production points for a product rather than an adventure you get interested in following, which is what i always thought authors should be, adventures you follow to see where they go. what are some of the authors you find yourself returning to and reading whether fantasy/sf or other journals?
JR: mixed bag. in sf when I was younger I loved Heinlein b/c he was always doing something different, and the SF didn't disappear after the beginning of the book, it was being carried thru all the way. like the young man saying 'i did divorce my parents' - remember that?
SD: yes I will never forget it
JR: I go back to ... and some of Clarke's short stories and Chaucer frankly.
SD: yes you've always talked about Chaucer he comes up again & again. what interests you about a classical writer like Geoffrey Chaucer
JR: he has written some of the most perfect short stories in english if you can think of middle english as english. the 3 men who go out to kill death is absolutely a smashing thing, the shape of the story is perfect. ... the pardoner's tale.
SD: I'll go back and take a look at that one. Any other writers you find yourself returning to do give you solace or what have you.
JR: well some of the feminists.
SD: Like who
JR: The chalice and the blade which has marvelous early christian writing in it. i can't really think of it. actually i don't read nearly as much as i used to. it's very annoying to have to get up every 20 minutes. and -- wait a minute -- there's a punch line -- i found that after having a vcr for several years you can treat it just as a book. it makes a vhs just like a book. and now i have a dvd player . i have been going mad about Buffy.
wild applause.
SD: you have a lot of friends.
JR: i'm glad of that ... even tho it was created by a guy, it was one of those tv shows aimed directly at women, and it is NOT domestic, adventurous, and horror fiction, and comedy, and it's very well written i'll say. a feminist friend of mine wrote me from philadelphia and said you have to write this and you must - and i did and i loved it - i collected them on vhs tapes and i loved them and now i've bought them on dvd. and some of the things they talk about are extremely funny. there is a male character named spike who is a vampire - he is a sex object. he was doing an interview - telling about going to cons - and a whole bunch of girls who tried to tear his clothes off.
sd: 'vampires i have known.'
jr: i won't do it - very carefully done to make him a glamorous sexpot.
sd: anything else you want to remind us of?
jr: in buffy
sd: yes in buffy
jr: oh my gosh i don't know where to start. it's present-day setting. it has -- as i said it's a woman's thing, or female thing. there're these 3 women with one guy who's a friend and they give actresses wonderful things to do. like Anya the ex-vengeance demon who's trying to learn to be human and doesn't do it quite well. she has recently found out that not only is she human & american but also a capitalist. and these are all on the same level. very funny at times b/c trying to be a shopkeeper, she knows nothing about any of this, and has to learn.
SD: you make me want to go back & rewatch some episodes. when we were talking about things to talk about, you mentioned general problems of growing older as something we all do.
JR: that struck me among other things b/c i have arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome. and i have begun to understand the kind of writers who write about limitations and mortality. i don't have the books with me i forgot to bring them into the bedroom. but there are sort of two possibilities at least two for writers. one of them was Sarah Orne Jewett.
sd: country of the pointed firs
jr: she has this sense of characters, she does not condescend to them, which i love. just when you think you can look down on them they are smarter than you are. she wrote one story called the ?hellmouth holiday? which is almost heartbreaking b/c it's such a perfect day and it will never be repeated. i can't tell you the story b/c i will gobble if i do. the other one - good lord - i can't remember her name.
sd: are these writers, are you particularly interested in jewett, b/c of how she deals w/ age
jr: not just age, she deals w/ limitations of all kinds .. . mortality in particular.
sd: how do you experience limitations of old age - i'm 64 and can't do what i did before.
jr: i'm 69 and can't do what i sued to do before. thought i would put up signs around the house that said 'you are 70. stop it!'
laughter
jr: learn things you can't do
sd: or things you used to do 2-4 days now take 4-6 days
jr: things i don't dare to do. .... turning bionic part by part. just had surgery. don't go up a ladder; if you fall down you don't have muscles to cushion your body.
sd: odd thing to get used to that things are not there.
JR: by the way i should say that i love this kind of writing but it's not better than other kinds, it's just different. woman who wrote The Story of Avis / Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. i'm going to bring her up as another layer of the 19th century - and she writes about heroism; incredibly heroic achievements. not big things b/c she's writing about new englanders too, and these people are in a backwater, and the women are especially having a tough time of it b/c they have to marry and becomes wives and what gets them is finances.
sd: there is that way about how good fiction has always been about money aspects of money having it or not and what that does to you something yr own fiction has always been very much aware of. any thoughts about money and storytelling.
jr: no i don't think so. not at the moment.
sd: what about some of the fantasy stories that you have, you mentioned terri Windling who is here today, you mentioned Terri Windling's best fantasy collection and some thoughts you had about that.
jr: i think there's a lot of very fine fantasy being written. i don't mean unicorns & warlocks, but fantasy that comes into ordinary life. several of them live in toronto - a kind of vitality there that i don't know is in science fiction. see i have been out of the loop for a long time but i know that some of these fantasy stories are just thrilling.
sd: yeah there is a feeling that some of the energy that was in sf for a long time may have moved over to fantasy. it makes it a very interesting field for in my case to be rubbing up against the ages of
jr: yes thinking about your tales of Neveryon / boy does that resemble tolkien much more
jr: Esther Friesner is the queen of parody / deathswatch - this was your dark lord fairy princess, oh it was hysterical, it was just luscious. that was swatch as in a swatch of fabric. it was a pun.
sd: yes i see.
jr: so if you see any parodies by Friesner read them.
sd: we have been told. what else has been going on in your life of interests occupying your mind for past days weeks months
jr: mostly i have to keep about taking care of my body & keeping it functional & so forth. something i didn't used to have to do. ... i do exercise it. trunk exercises in morning and hip exercises in afternoon. ahh. very boring. they really are but they work they do good things so i keep doing them. there gets to be a point in your social life is much more with doctors than anyone else.
sd: i gather you're not doing much writing.
jr: not doing any - haven't been doing any for 10 years.
sd: talk about transition from someone doing writing to not
jr: i found out once i got CFS that writing takes an enormous amount of energy, it takes concentration, and this is a physical thing. i always used to wonder why when i finished writing i was so tired; i was only sitting down and writing. but now i can't concentrate long enough to do this. and i can't keep a whole thing in my head at the same time. and i f you're writing a novel you're keeping stuff in the back of your head for a year or two. and it's very difficult to find suddenly you can't do that. it took about oh let's see 8 or 9 years for me to kind of live with that comfortably.
sd: it's something that one way or another every writer will eventually have to go thru
jr: i find that the real solution is to be very self-indulgent. really. go to thrift shops, read books, watch tv, talk to your friends.
sd: do all those fun things that you weren't doing
jr: yeah when you were too busy
sd: at one point you said sf was a religious literature. can you comment on that?
jr: well there's the old phrase i don't know if it's still current, sense of wonder. the sesense of wonder of awe of the hugeness of the universe, it comes up in all sorts of places. the million names of god/arthur clarke. or 2001. it's -- writer's heroes, the protagonists tended to turn into the new messiah in the last page
sd: yes that's a fairly common trope i think we call it in sf
jr: yes it was a feeling of awe and wonder and gorgeousness and complexity
JR: i've just been rereading Asimov's tales of the black widowers - someone presents a problem to a bunch of science fiction guys. and the one who always solves it is the ... ... absolute stunner. it's too complicated to go into here but he did something like that in the singing veisl if you know the story. well it hinges on someone who goes to the moon for a month ... air and water and food and warmth with him. but there's one thing he can't take with him - the earth's gravitational field - and that is how the whole story is solved suddenly at the end and it just gives you chills when he does it right.
sd: there's something about solving anything that makes you closer to the universe. when you suddenly understanding something that you were butting your head up against you're suddenly closer to the way things work. in philosophical Heideggerian terms you remember being the way
sd: many moments in your own fiction when this kind of thing happens, certainly spectacularly presented in language toward end of we who are about to when protagonist is starving herself to death and she has vision of agape, hears music of spheres, she's never experienced them at that intensity.
jr: hold on a moment i'll be right back.
... JR: i'm coming back. [applause]
SD: okay joanna.
JR: I found the other book. the other writer is Mary Wilkins Freeman. she's the one who writes about heroism. anyway - Whoof! [JR may have been sitting down]- where were we.
sd: we were talking about sf your comment about sf as a religious literature. and i'd mentioned your ending to we who are about to
jr: it's interesting to me that one of the best editors in the field David Hartwell has a PhD in medieval studies.
sd: green knight
jr: kind of like something else i'd love to point out - people who seem to understand evolution of human society the best are evolutionary biologists like Stephen jay Gould - jared diamond / guns diamdons & germans -- they go right to the root of things without even having to read Marx. he says why was the first place where civilization developed first - wild crops that could be domesticated - animals useful that way. that's why. let's go on - this is going off on a digression.
sd: thinking of comments from your writing that stuck with me, one of them, related to this, Souls - that extraordinary novella about a medieval convent in which is run by the abbess radagunda which is besieged by norse vikings and basically she saves the place more or less or makes several attempts to save the people, and the abbess some of whom may not know the story - the abbess is an alien getting in touch with her inner alien - one night she's musing in her inner monologue, the people want religion that gives and gives but the true god is gods who take and take until there is nothing left but god. this was very powerful when i first read it and it remains powerful for me even today. i think in terms of the ending of we who are about to - phrase particularly resonant to you?
jr: temperamentally atheistic, no religion. one of the things i loved when i found it in college was information about taoism. they are mystics. when i was in my 30s and i was teaching at univ of seattle one summer the science fiction course you know the writing course i got to talking to one of the students who was also very much into this kind of thing and we drove several people nuts b/c we were saying things that were paradoxes, contradictions, and one of them said that A cannot be ... and got in a corner and pulled his hair.
sd: sometimes you have to do that
jr: but mystics have always talked in contradictions. a man asiatic who wanted to be shooter of golden arrows went to see greater of these who went to top of mountain. told first you must look at very very big things until they seem small and then you must look at very very small things until they seem big. and coming back to the guy's hut, the guy who wanted to be a great bowman or whatever, had left his arrows leaning against the hut, and the old man looks at this and says, oh one of those
laughter
JR: always gives me chills. it's the part where you know something so well and so completely but in an odd way you can't even talk about it. teehee this is what was driving him nuts. science fiction does this so well - end of childhood's end. mystics do so well - whole earth becomes light in the end.
sd: i think it was Willa Cather who said sometime that most literary writers get all the material that they're going to write about by the time they are 8 years old. and i've always thought that this is one of those things that alternate b/w seeming absurd and seeming insanely true. do you have any thoughts about that do you think the same age range applies to science fiction
jr: no. you learn a great deal by 8 or 9 but you're always putting other things in as you get older. i don't know if this happens in other literature but it does happen in sf.
SD: if all literature is in a sense the literature of childhood then i think that sf is the literature of adolescence.
jr: yes i've heard that from you before
sd: yes i'm not saying anything here i haven't said before. you were a Westinghouse winner in high school. can you tell us about the project?
jr: my dad built a long box for me w/ lights at the top and i grew a fungus in each compartment. and each compartment light had a different gel with colors red, blue, white, and completely dark. fungus produced different kinds of spores and produced them in different patterns depending on light. aspergillis janus, janus being two-faced, ancient roman god of beginning of year, two faces, one of future and one of past. different patterns - pie shaped,
sd: did you ever use that sort of thing in stories?
jr: i didn't. by the time i finished i thought it was terribly boring.
sd: story of yours i've always been very fond of a story called leapsite. basically a large winged creature hovers outside a window, it's made of, do we learn what leapside actually is in the story?
jr: no it's not in the story it's the title of the story. and it's an imaginary material made up by a Cornell architect. and whenever you had a problem you couldn't solve we said make it a leapside and change whatever variable you had. ... the story is in a way about fantasy in which fantasy becomes real.
SD: leapside is a great story and a great title.
SD: any of yours you find yourself still particularly fond of.
JR: hard to say - things change as time goes by. i will say this, i read most of them and i think they were pretty good.
applause.
JR: i have a few of those and think did i wrote that i have a few of those but not very many most are pretty good
SD: i think they're pretty good too b/c you're one of the writers i go back to read. can we talk about your novels, you don't talk about and chaos died much.
jr: yes. embarrassed. ... lots of stereotyped ideas about gay men. that didn't come to me until later. and marge Piercy put her finger on it when she said if you think of gay man as a woman it makes sense.
sd: those things don't bother me personally nearly as much as they do when the book came out
jr: yeah b/c the whole social surround has changed so much, you have changed, you can say the hell with them, whatever
sd: the result is that there are just spectacular passages, just pellmell, one after another thru the book, despite anything you might raise an eyebrow at, all sorts of wonderful things, like the passage i quoted. you say it embarrassed you; any parts you like?
jr: yes. i think the protagonist and one of the woman - evnuh - are walking thru the countryside - and i think the description of the countryside is very good
sd: yes some of the transition scenes i read them and my jaw drops even if i'm not in agreement w/ what he's transitioning from and to, it's great writing.
sd: it's also a poignant sympathy for the young that manifests itself in many stories
jr; oh yes
sd: but in particular the second inquisition, the story of the young lesbian girl in female man. just wring your heart out; they certainly wring my heart out. any special relationship in terms of your own life.
jr: yes i think so. i was discovering maybe a little later than that but also in that time discovering what they call the child within. and i discovered that i have one. i think everybody does. and this is not a separate personality, it's a kind of different personality, and she insists that she is the empress of the universe. then if she gets in trouble she comes and hides behind me and i have to take care of it. heh heh.
sd: your descriptions of the young woman in the second inquisition, and i'm trying to remember the epigraph in that story
jr: there is no second inquisition it starts, there damn well is
sd: something like if you can survive the opinions of the people in the small town in which you live you can survive anything. is what i took away from it. there is no second inquisition.
jr: i put a lot of autobiographical detail in that story. the town, the backyard, the little sort of couch or swing they sit on, stuff like that, the dance. all comes from stuff i've seen or lived thru.
sd: and stuff that feels incredibly real and has that ring of truth or as once i described it in critical writing it's not the ring of truth it's a whole gong of truth
jr: i felt very bad about not writing when i got sick and couldn't. the only thing i could do was finish the book what are we fighting for that i'd started much earlier.
sd: you did a great job
jr: well i'm beginning to be self-indulgent as i said. i like it. for example for someone like me who's lactose intolerant they are making the most wonderful imitation ice creams. and i find that if i eat too much of sugar especially chocolate i get a hangover. cartoon that expresses that - raven sitting over edgar allen poe and the raven says "sometimes"
laughter
SD: i don't know why i found myself repeating of all people Plato recently. and discovering that his idea of what education was for was to make your own world interesting to you.
JR: the more education you get the more interesting everything becomes
sd: do you still correspond with any of your old friends. i have been a very bad correspondent of late i know. i admit in public in front of all these people. are you on email at all?
jr: no. that's too much input. that's sensory overload for me. i'd probably become addicted or something like that. long-distance phone charges have really gone down. for something like $20 a month i can get unlimited long distance calling. so instead of writing i call people.
sd: do you have a good set of support in Tucson
jr: yes a small one. i have neighbors, one of whom is a children's book writer who has ms and uses a wheelchair. let's see, oh my goodness. i haven't really gone out to do this b/c i have been so easily tired that it's difficult.
sd: one of the things where i teach at temple university one of the things that's becoming, occupying a lot of very smart & interesting young scholars is disability studies. it's becoming something that's well worth one's time to follow. have you been looking at any of the work that people are doing with that?
jr: ... i have a lot of the early books about it. feminist disabilities mostly. i've been too busy doing it to write about it. having taught in academy for 25 years, i feel the way bell hooks does about it, when she says that universities and colleges are full of not very interesting very bright people.
sd: often that can be the case but sometimes i think they can be full of interesting bright people as well. interesting people are attracted to universities.
jr: yes that's true
sd: can you think of any particular local plans you've got over the next couple of weeks or months.
jr: not particularly. i'm trying to solve the old medical problems. ... solution ... the big one just being tired. if that's so life could be a lot better.
sd: sleeping can be fun. i say that as someone who's enjoying sleeping more and more every month. are there any other - you mentioned terri windling fantasy, are there any particular stories that struck you in there as interesting?
jr: yes but i can't remember titles and authors b/c i don't have it with me. one of the things that does seem to happen as you get older. memory just goes poof. story they tell about chronic fatigue syndrome. she's talking to doctor & trying to explain to him how strange. she says it took her four days to find watch. and he says people do misplace things and she says in the microwave?
sd: changes in memory are bizarre. i'm speaking from experience. i've often wondered whether the vaunted wisdom of old age is only speaking in generalizations b/c you can't remember the specifics.
jr: i don't know how long it took me or you to decide that the double bind in science fiction was economic, but i didn't know that in my 20s, i hadn't had that experience.
sd: but there is the one you did go thru - maybe you can give me some advice b/c i haven't figured it out - how do you write and teach at the same time
jr: you write & teach at same time by getting very tired. ... in a way i did do it and in a way i didn't. in my 20s i was a junior teacher, i was an instructor, and that meant that i didn't go to meetings and didn't have any voice in the dept but it was great b/c i had lots of time and energy. but as i got older and my rank increased i had less time. in my 50s if i got an idea for a story or a novel i'd say oh god not again i can't. ... not coming to meetings, not having enough honor students or advisees, i would just look sort of pathetic and say oh yes i'm trying but i wouldn't do it.
sd: that's probably what you have to do you have to break down and take the time for yourself which is hard to do if you're a labile friendly genial sort of person
jr: which i was not. i think what i did very self-consciously was teach the same kinds of classes all the time, creative writing classes all the time, so i didn't have to develop from scratch
sd: my greatest failing is that i do want to teach new things all the time - hmm. now i just want to think.
... questions from the audience.
Q - as someone who's 63 and in a mobile chair - i really appreciate your honesty about what you can and can't do.
Q - i was just wondering, i know you mentioned that your opinions of gay men used to very different & traditional, i was wondering if your opinions of transsexual women have changed since you wrote the female man.
JR: oh yes. oh yes it's almost as if my life as arranged itself to disabuse me of one prejudice after another. and all of these have gone b/c none of them were real really.
SD: do you want to say anything more about that or move on
JR: let's move on
aud: would you comment on the state of feminism today
JR: i don't really know enough about it to comment. i've been out of the loop. except for buffy. so about 10 years at least now so i probably shouldn't say anything.
steve: i've been pushing your book sat various people for many years. which book would you like me to push first, how would you like your works to be introduced to people.
JR: i think he would have to decide what kind of people they are and sort of what would not repel people but would pull them in
SD: i think that's what any writer would say. may i offer my own prejudices as someone who teaches joanna's work again and again. i'd say younger & less sophisticated readers really enjoy the adventures of alyx; more sophisticated readers like more sophisticated books like we who are about to, the female man, and two of them. and don't forget about on strike against god which is just as good.
JR: something about academics
SD: would she appreciate any correspondence and if so how do we contact you.
JR: well i don't really know what to say about that. sleeping 10 hours a night, i don't have really have much time to do it and i can't spend much time as i like. why don't you try and if i can write back i will and if i can't i'll write back and say i can't. see this is what happens when you get older, you stop giving really satisfying answers to questions. it all depends.
nnesi: i just wanted to ask if one of your indulgences includes music and if so what sort
JR: no it doesn't. i'm not sure why - i remember saying that the music you love is pretty much set by the time you're 30. i love baroque music, really love it, Rococo, all the way up to Mozart, and then Beethoven, and then i stopped dead. i think i discovered baroque music when everyone else was discovering -- ? -- i don't play particular music ... love tv, don't have much time. not one of those people who heard something and said it changed my life.
aud: what do you think of progression of situation you described in How to Suppress Women's Writing and do you think it's getting better.
JR: oh boy. again i really have been out of touch. i have the impression that yes it's getting better. i remember asking one of my classes at univ of washington about this and one of the young men said oh it's only okay to be a writer if you are like stephen king and make a lot of money. don't know what to believe.
SD: let me offer my two cents as someone in academy. what seems to be happening is that to make room for women writers is that notion of great writer itself is dismantled.
JR: well that's a great thing
SD: yes but i miss it. people now read volette or Middlemarch which i think have always been spectacularly good novels and think of them as if they're not particularly brilliant and i'm not sure that's good
JR: Molly Ivins & Barbara Ehrenreich are always saying that the attention span of americans is only 15 minutes
SD: at most
JR: it takes at least two generations to make an artist, in my case, maybe 3
SD: we've all appreciated what you've said, and all you've done, and thanks very very much for talking with us it's been stimulating and wonderful
anything --
aud: tell her we love her. wild applause.