by Anthology
Didn’t hear from the clown again till 1959 when “Blacksword” appeared in Galaxy. But by that time I’d been writing professionally for three years, I was out of the Army, and I could afford to be charitable. Still didn’t know or care much about anything named Offutt (in those days the name was capped).
Who he was, and where he came from is contained in this revealing and semi-literate biography, presented here without comment by your editor, who is still working on the grudge from 1954 . . .
“The first thing we did was move from Louisville to this farm, where i grew up with a couple of coonhounds, 35 or so Holstein cattle, a bull with manners like a NYC editor, some horses, lots of tobacco and hay (fever for me), and a cat named Papa who went coon-hunting with Dad. (Raccoons. We i mean us Kentuckians don’t consider ourselves Southerners. Ohioans do. Tennesseeans consider us damyanks. What are you going to do? We supplied the leaders to BOTH sides of that godawful war.)
“I had a damned unhappy childhood during which i attended a 1-room, 8-grade schoolhouse for 4 years; waited at the mailbox every day after we sent off the Sears order; reigned as the most unathletic kid in the county (i got chosen next to last when we played ball; the little fat girl was chosen last, bless her, i was always sent to right field. That’s where the balls don’t come); was very short until i was 17 or worse, when i grew 8 inches in 10 months; committed the unpardonable sincrime of being awfully smart, as well as Catholic in a community devoted to stupidity and where the KKK had ridden only 23 years earlier—against Catholics! (The community was too small to afford Jews or Blacks, who keep Catholics safe in big cities.)
“We were also pore.
“At 17 i took a lot of tests and skipped my senior year of high school to enter the U. of Louisville on a Ford Foundation Scholarship. I graduated at 20. In the meanwhile i did a lot of stuff like playing bridge and poker and cutting lots of classes and being a virgin and president of my fraternity and the Newman Club and on the student council and editor of the Air Farce ROTC paper and Mng Editor of the school weekly. Uncle andy’s Advice column was a popular feature, honest to Abby! I also had lots of jobs; 3 in my senior year, simultaneously. In ‘54 or ‘55 i entered IF’s College SF Contest and won because Ellison had dropped out of college to become Symington’s aide, or something. My story ‘And Gone To morrow,’ laid in 2054, predicted trial marriages (would you believe it started happening a little earlier, like 90 years?) and other earthshaking stuff. I also said that there was no perfect government, but that a dictatorship comes closest. I still believe that, but prefer freedom and so write things that try to show how my favorite form of government could be better. You know, the one America used to have. I took no business courses, so i went to work with Proctor & Gamble until i outgrew it. I went into the life and health insurance business and by Fall of ‘68 i had agencies in three towns. Fortunately i was able to outgrow that, too. Oh, at around age 28 i also outgrew the Roman Church; Vardis Fisher helped a lot.
“I was always a slow starter. My second story was published in 1959, in Galaxy. (Despite the fact that it was mostly written on my honeymoon, my wife is still with me.) It was called ‘Blacksword’ and was about a man named that, not a weapon. Another one called ‘Population Implosion’ was picked for Ace’s WORLD’S BEST in ‘68, and you can now read it in Japanese if you’ve a mind to. There were other stories. My stories usually involve satire and resistance to Authority and attacks on Established Faiths (AMA, ABA, USA, ETC), which i guess indicates i must have had funny feelings about my coonhunten daddy who ran the house as if he were the Sheriff of Nottingham.
“I love to talk first and write second, and i do both because i have to. I’ve sold a lot of novels, under several names; i’m John Cleve, usually, when i write about goodole sex (which maybe i like better than writing and eating, come to think). I like to drink, too, and prefer Maker’s Mark and soda with lemon in season and gin ‘n’ tonic in the other season. I put lemon in everything i drink except beer and the gallon or so of sacchariny coffee i store away daily.
“Ours is an enormous old white elephant of a house with a living room the size of the standard FHA/VA house of the ‘50’s. It is on 3½ acres on a high hill in Haldeman, 8 miles from Morehead (which is about 8 miles from Salt Lick and 15 from Flemingsburg, so you’ll know). We call the place Funny Farm because there’s a wife i’m crazy about and four offutt-spring i endeavor to tolerate and a coonhound named Pompeius Magnus who prays to me every night because black-and-tans are like that (coon-hounds, not Irish, of which my wife is one). (We don’t raise anything except hell and kids.) I fully expect to have to defend the damned place from you lebensrauming scum from NYC and places like that, anyday soon. I fully expect LA to solve its own problem, and i will miss Atlanteans Kirby and Ellison and Geis and a few others.”
offutt is the author of any number of novels, about sixty totaled. He’s even managed to sell about forty of them. When I sat down to write this introduction, however, I found that offutt had cleverly avoided giving me the titles of any of them, and since only one (as of this writing) has appeared under his name—Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards—and a pretty fair country novel it is, too—I got on the phone and called him in Morehead, Kentucky, or wherever the hell he is. He was rather annoyed.
I see no reason why a man should be annoyed that you call him at 12:30 a.m. Los Angeles time, that is. In Kentucky it was 3:30 in the morning, and his wife, Jodie, answered the phone, so I said, “Happy Mother’s Day,” thinking that might placate her. I must say, for all that, andy offutt is crummy company at 3:30 in the morning. All he does is grumble.
But I managed to get some titles out of him. He was very reluctant. He felt my including the titles of his “erotic” novels was a cheapjack trick of yellow journalism. Not so. I happen to think the contemporary “erotica” scene has produced some very heady writing (if you’ll pardon the term) and some very interesting writers. Like David Meltzer and Michael Perkins and Hank Stine . . . and John Cleve, who is andrew j. offutt.
So he gave me a few titles. Barbarana, The Seductress, Mongol!, Black Man’s Harem, The Devoured and something he says should be written like so: the great 24 hour THING.
He’s also got some more sf novels coming out under his own name—The Castle Keeps from Berkley and Messenger of Zhuvastou from the same place, and Dell is publishing Ardor on Aros. As you can see, offutt writes a lot, and he writes a lot of “erotica.” (When I was writing that stuff, we called it “stiffeners,” but then, we weren’t Artists.)
Which brings me to the second large chunk of comment out of offutt himself. I include it here, recognizing that the introduction will be almost as long as the story it introduces, because it offers some very amusing and perceptive insights into the way a professional works.
Look: A,DV is something of a living entity. It is not merely a batch of stories cobbled up by a faceless dude trying to fill in the lag-time between his own books, with another group of faceless dudes submitting at random and hoping to make a buck. It is a great wild bunch of us sitting about and rapping till well into the wee hours, and when one of us gets it on in a sufficiently fascinating manner, we like to let him ramble on. So for all of you out there who think writing is this or that or the other thing, who have writing blocks and want to know what the mind of the writer is like, here’s offutt on his habits behind the typewriter. I think you’ll find it highly readable. Take it, andy:
“i have defined a writer as the happiest man alive, because he gets paid for doing his thing, his hobby, i wrote a novel when i was nine (cowboys, what else?), and stories right along, and a novel when i was 13 or so (Edgar Rice Burroughs, what else?), i wrote three novels while in college (pretending to be taking notes during dull lectures). Two of them still read pretty well. i graduated at 20.
“Cut to 1967. i had published a few short stories, solo and in unlikely collaborations; had put in several years with Proctor & Gamble until i out-grew that; had put in a year in the life insurance business and t
hen had gone into that same business for myself; had begun managing. Suddenly, after saying No about seven times, i finally said yes and took up the management of three insurance agencies in three different cities. Ripping up and down the highways. Holding meetings here and there. Playing Executive in motels (that’s a fun game too, and most players never outgrow it). i was a member in good standing of the crisis-of-the-day club. i was exhausting myself, mentally and physically. Too, i knew what my twice-daily Alka-Seltzering for that fluttery gut was in all likelihood leading to. Yet with the exhaustion came extreme mental stimulation.
“On weekends i was in sore need of relaxation.
“i relaxed in front of the Selectric. (i like the best machinery, too; the Mercedes and the Selectric are, although the Underwood P-48 and the SCM-250 i had for a year each were Bhad Nhews.) In six months of such heavyweight management, capped—and made bearable by—Saturday-and-Sunday writing, i created three short stories and 5½ novels. They started selling. i closed the out-of-Morehead agencies. Four months later i made certain other arrangements, and took a back seat in andrew offutt associates (unltd).
“Finally, in August 1970, i left the insurance business altogether. i did some designs, spent a lot of money, and had an office built in here at home, Funny Farm.
“i had been in the life/hospitalization insurance business seven years. In the final 20 months i managed, selling nothing because i did not try to (that’s true capitalism). In that same period i sold sixteen 50,000-word novels. Settings, times, subject matter, ‘type’ and even styles—I did a Victorian, for instance—varied.
“Since August 1967 i’ve sold just under two million words. In 1969 10 novels sold, over a half-million words. In 1970 12 novels, four of which, finally, were sf with my own name on them, and a couple of shorts and an underground-newspaper article. (Well, all right: Screw.)
“Until very recently, all my work was done on weekends, on the IBM. i would start at about 1:30 PM, sometimes a little earlier, on Saturdays. And write until dinner call: between 6:30 and 7:30. Interruptions were (1) frequent bellows for more coffee; (2) bathroom; (3) lunch: cheese and a little wine. Sunday’s schedule was the same, without lunchbreak. i wrote at a secretary’s metal typing table, at the top of the steps in the hallway of this huge old house.
“During the week there were other things to do: research, editing first-drafts and proofreading submission drafts. Sure, there are spurts; one Monday night in October i had an idea, and hand-outlined a novel while watching the NBC movie. Next day i typed that outline. Following night i read/changed/expanded that, while watching election returns. Wednesday i typed that: a long outline of 6500 or so words. Thursday i typed the first chapter, but had to stop to go make a speech. Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday i wrote on it, and finished it Tuesday. That novel’s writing was a happening, to me, and i enjoyed rereading it because it was created so fast i hardly noticed what it was about!
“Last summer, June 1970, i experienced my first Block, that ancient writer’s devil i’d heard about. Stupid; it was MY fault. The novel was 2/3 outlined, see, with the ending decided (although it got changed when i reached it), and the previous weekend had seen completion of a chapter, a section, and the outline. Simultaneously. Very neat. Very stupid. That’s the WORST place to stop. Stupid. i HANDED myself a block. It’s a book i feel deeply about, too; it came a little less easily than some. It’s the pretty-immediate future, as i see it, and regional (i live in Appalachia and most people who write about Kentucky ruralites don’t know what the holy hell they are typing about), drawing strongly, aside from personal observations/notes/thinking, from three books: (The) Territorial Imperative, Naked Ape, and Environmental Handbook.
“Anyhow, i blocked. When i came back to it the following weekend, for the first time in my life i could NOT pick up and get going.
“i fought. My brain fought back. i bathroomed three times, washed a pair of corfam boots, wished it were Winter so i could chop wood, separated original and carbon of the novel just finished for submission, got up and down, fixed more coffee. It was awful. i sweated. (i do not perspire. i have never perspired. i sweat. And no, you’re wrong: i weigh 154 at 6’ 1’.)
“i fought. i kept sitting down and trying to type. i snarled, cursed, cussed, obscenitized. Kept on fingering keys. (i use three fingers, one of which is on my left hand. It gets sorest.) i kept on. Come on, damn you!
“i PREVAILED! It had been awful. It had lasted 45 minutes, and now i know what a block is. i’d liefer forget, and i will never ever stop at a stopping point again!
“i can’t see that a block ever need be longer, assuming one has any control over himself at all. Ideas come out of the woodwork, daily, and who writes something he doesn’t WANT to write?”
Ellison again. Now you understand why I have allowed offutt to go on at such length. As a man who is just emerging from a very long Writer’s Block (for me), a Block that’s lasted about three months, I know how the poor soul felt during those terrible 45 minutes.
offutt, you arrogant sonofabitch, there are writers around whose pencil cases we can’t carry, who’ve been in blocks for years! Sturgeon has been through at least three that I know of, each one about three years long. Sheckley goes into blocks that drive him to the Costa Brava and keep him off the typer for a year at a time. William Tenn has been in a Block for at least the last ten years that I know of, living off the teaching abilities of Phil Klass. There are fans who jest about me and Silverberg “blocking”—for half an hour. But one day will come, smartass; one frightening, mouth-drying day when nothing comes. And then you’ll know what it is to suffer the torments of a hell you can’t even name. It’s like being nibbled to death by mice in Philadelphia. You straighten the desk, you clean the house, you listen to music, you reread Tolstoy, you pray, you go get laid, you come back and . . . nothing.
And it goes on and on.
You try to explain it to yourself and your friends and those who have you fish-hooked with deadlines, and they won’t believe you, because you’ve been arrogantly productive all your writing life. And you exist there all alone, trapped out on the edge of your mind; gone suddenly black and empty. It’s not that you don’t have ideas. Oh, hell, you have thousands of those. You’re as articulate, as clever, as facile as you ever were. You just don’t want to work. You stare at the machine and it’s loathsome.
And then, one day, for no reason you can discern, it breaks. The Block vanishes and you start bamming the keys again.
And at that moment, ANDREW J. CAPITALS AND ALL DAMNED OFFUTT, and all of you dainty dilettantes out there reading this, who think writing is something any schlepp can do, remember the words of Hemingway, who said, “There are three conditions for becoming a writer. He must write today, he must write tomorrow, he must write the day after that . . .”
offutt’s a writer. He writes. As this story, at long last, attests.
For Value Received
Mary Ann Barber, M.D., was graduated from medical school at the tender age of 23. Her Boards score set a new high. No, she isn’t a genius. You don’t know about her? Where’ve you been? There have been Hospital Board Meetings and Staff Meetings and even discussions of her case in the AMA and the AHA. Most important medical case in American history; frightening precedent. She’s been written up, with pictures, in LIFE, LOOK, PARENTS, THE JOURNAL OF THE AMA, HOSPITAL NEWS, TODAY’S HEALTH, READER’S DIGEST—and FORTUNE. Her father has turned down movie offers. He’s also been interviewed by THE INDEPENDENT, PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, RAMPARTS, THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER, and PLAYBOY.
It started twenty-three years ago when Robert S. Barber won a sales contest and received a very healthy company bonus. That was just before his wife Jodie was due to present him with their third child. Feeling expansive, Bob Barber suggested a private room for Jodie’s confinement. She agreed, with enthusiasm. Last time she had shared a room with Philomena, a mother of nine. Philomena had complained constantly about the horror of being a breeding machine. Jodie told her to
have faith—and stop. Philomena advised her that her Faith was the source of her problem.
Jodie entered the Saint Meinrad Medical Center in a room all to herself, rather than sharing one with another new mother in the American Way. The room cost ten dollars a day more than the money provided by the Barber’s group hospitalization insurance; privacy’s expensive! Nevertheless the ID card got them past the Warder of the Gates, a suspicious matron at the Admittance desk whose job it was to admit all patients impartially—provided they either possessed insurance ID cards or were visibly and provably destitute. There wasn’t any middle ground.
The baby, a hairless girl—at least she showed certain evidences of insipidly incipient femalehood—was born with the usual number of arms, legs, fingers, etcetera after a brief period of labor. She proved with gusto the proper functioning of her lungs and larynx. She also took immediately to breast-feeding as if it were the normal method. She throve without seeming to realize that her infantile neighbors wouldn’t recognize a mammary if they saw one.
Meanwhile the girls in the nursery went about their job: spoiling the infants entrusted to them by parents who had no choice and who would wonder in a few days how it was possible for a child to be born spoiled. The second part of the job of all hospital personnel involved, then as now, keeping the male of the species from both his chosen mate and the fruit of his loins. Robert Barber objected to this. Why his presence was forbidden while Jodie nursed the baby was beyond him. He’d seen ‘em before. As a matter of fact he considered them his.