by Jack Cady
Praise for Jack Cady:
"An exceptional writer."
—Joyce Carol Oates
"[Jack Cady is] a lasting voice in modern American literature."
—Atlanta Constitution
"Jack Cady’s knack for golden sentences is an alchemy any other writer has to admire."
—Ivan Doig
"Jack Cady is above all, a writer of great, unmistakable integrity and profound feeling. He never fakes it or coasts, and behind every one of his sentences is an emotional freight that bends it both outward, toward the reader, and inward, back to the source."
—Peter Straub
"A writer whose words reverberate with human insight."
—Publishers Weekly
"His structural control and the laconic richness of his style establish Cady in the front ranks of contemporary writers."
—Library Journal
"When Cady settles into yarn-spinning, his stories have the humor and comfortable mastery of Faulkner or Steinbeck."
—National Review
Introduction
Patrick Swenson
You’ve got to listen.
I certainly did. But more on that later.
I met Jack in the late 1980s when I took his creative writing class at Pacific Lutheran University; he taught there from 1985 until his retirement in 1998. I’m not a hundred percent sure about the timing, but I also (by quite a happy accident) took a correspondence writing course from Carol Orlock, his wife, at the University of Washington. For a number of years after taking Jack’s class, I’d spot him at various author events. He was always delighted to see me, and as ever, treated me with the utmost respect. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a more kind and generous person in my life. He had the most infectious smile; he always looked like a man who seemed to know the secrets of the universe, and he was just waiting for you to ask about them.
In 1995, I began publishing Talebones magazine, which featured stories of science fiction and dark fantasy. It was a semi-prozine, paying just one cent a word, but it was well respected and gained a following. I also ran a popular interview series every issue, conducted in wonderful fashion by the late Ken Rand. On my suggestion, Ken interviewed Jack Cady, and the interview appeared in Talebones #12 in the summer of 1998.
Five years passed. Out of the blue, in early 2003, Jack sent me a story, "The Parable of Satan’s Adversary." I was taken aback (in a good way), and read it with trembling hands. Oh, it was lovely fun. I published it as the lead story in Talebones #27, Winter 2003. It was to be the very last story he submitted to a fiction magazine market. Jack passed away from cancer in early 2004.
(Gordon Van Gelder, editor and owner of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, published Jack’s "The Twenty Pound Canary" the same year, but if I’m not mistaken, Gordon bought it much earlier than the story I bought for Talebones. And in 2004, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction published "Fog," a story found on Jack’s desk after his death.)
In 2006, I published an anthology of Ken Rand’s Talebones interviews called Human Visions, which included Jack’s interview, and in 2010 I reprinted "The Parable of Satan’s Adversary" in the anthology The Best of Talebones. The anthology was dedicated to both Jack and Ken, two writers published in the magazine who were now lost to me and the world.
But let me back up to that summer class at PLU. What I recall from the beginning was that Jack came in to the classroom in the early days of the course, feeling more than a little depressed, and explained that his dog Rufus had recently passed away. Some weeks later, however, he got himself a new pup, Molly, and the dog would be there at his heels every day when he came in to teach. He loved that dog, as he had loved the one before it. In this collection you’ll find the wonderful "Miss Molly’s Manners," a book of etiquette for dogs, dictated by a dog—Miss Molly Manners—and you’ll see how important dogs were to him.
What I remember most about what Jack taught is that the things required of a writer are all in relation to what ought to be eternal in this universe, regardless of cost or consequence. Writing is a painful experience. It should be. Writers shouldn’t suppress emotion. He’d sit us down and ask us to write a dramatic monologue where an eternal ought to be rose up. First person, of course, because we needed to get intimate. What does the character feel most? What does this person love?
These are some of the things you find in every Jack Cady story. He had an uncanny ability to understand the needs of the fundamental human being and transfer that to characters at the absolute base level. A character has essential needs, and Jack got in there and showed how the character expressed them. Some of the way I write now is in response to his belief that the writer should be a witness. A character might be horrible, but there is always a justification, a complete respect. You watch. You listen.
There is a wonderful sense of place in Jack’s work. He believed setting was even more important than character, because a character needed a place to be. Many of the stories in this collection are populated by ghosts and the people they interact with, and even ghosts have somewhere to be.
The ghost of a ghost must surely be a walking memory. I felt the many memories of darkness surrounding this hospital, this century, the lives and deaths that skip or trample or stumble across time; and darkness stood before me like a slab of slate.
(from "Kilroy Was Here.")
He gave respect to his settings, because he believed it was the only way for characters to come alive. He often quoted Joseph Conrad, who was famous for saying his task as a writer was to make readers see. If they could see, then readers could do the rest.
Jack taught poetry, and not surprisingly, his prose reads like poetry. He believed in economy and specificity. In class we wrote thirty word love poems and we weren’t allowed to use the word love. We wrote thirty word religious poems and we weren’t allowed to use the word God. He told us to go back to the poets of the seventeeth century, and the nineteenth century, and read poetry for the sound of it. Read it aloud for the "music" in it. Any good writer of fiction, he said, will have to go back to poetry. In "Poetry Makes Nothing Happen," at the end of this collection, he writes: "Poetry is the voice of love, of fury, of understanding. It does not preach. It does not pass laws, or throw anyone in jail. Poetry does not make anyone do anything."
In fact, Jack is famous for teaching the idea of using iambic pentameter in fiction as a powerful tool because no one knows you have it. At a high point in a scene, he would often end the paragraph in iambic pentameter to slam it home.
Look at this passage from "Kilroy Was Here" to see not only the poetry of his work, but the power of his description and narrative voice:
"Outside, in darkness, a storm rose on Shakespearian wings. Black feathers of storm rode gusts tumultuous as passion. Darkness surrounded, clasped; a coffin of wind and rain in which a man becomes breathless and shroud-wrapped."
Or this passage from "The Ghosts of Dive Bomber Hill:"
"And it is on such nights that visions, apparitions, and ghosts appear. Giant moths flicker pure white as they drift high above the road, and an occasional night-flyer, dark and invisible, splats against the windshield. Headlights bore into the mist, and if a man is not a fool he slows. But, he doesn’t slow much, because half of what he sees probably isn’t there."
When you read passages like that you realize you’re not alone. You’re with somebody. You’re with the narrative voice. Jack Cady always found the right voice. "You don’t choose voice," he said to us at PLU, "it chooses you and comes from the material." He understood the importance of the reader. He told us not to fall so in love with the characters that we forgot the reader, who needs to fall in to the same respect.
The same respect he had for readers he also had for young writers; he believed in them
not just because he was a teacher, but because our society needed a new direction. He believed we were a society very much in search of a way to get along, and he believed in the importance of the new American writer to set things straight.
Jack Cady is one of our best American writers. He wrote, and he listened. His voice came early, and when it did, it carried him through, story after story. I envy those of you reading him for the first time. Prepare to feel his respect for you as you settle in with his narrative voice.
Just listen.
Phantoms
Dear Friends
Being a letter to the I.R.S. wherein the author explicates his non-compliance with certain Federal tax regulations and details a number of Inalienable Rights
[This piece was originally published as a Copperhead chapbook for the American Bicentennial 1776-I976.
Special thanks to Centrum Foundation, Port Townsend, WA, where Copperhead is press-in-residence.]
March 27, 1975
Port Townsend, Washington
District Director of Internal Revenue
Seattle, Washington
Dear Friends:
Since we are about to become legal opponents I write to you something of myself and my beliefs in the hope that there may be understanding between us. I am resigned that there may never be agreement. Our rules conflict, but that does not mean that we cannot care for and respect the condition in which we find each other. Yours is a large agency of government. I want you to know that my quarrel is with the agency, not with anyone employed by the agency. What I must say in this letter about illegalities is directed to the agency and to our government. It is not directed to any single person or group of persons. That is one reason why I start with personal description and personal matters. I want you to know that I am not a statistic and that I do not consider any of you as nebulous, government enemies.
These were strange, windy days this winter. On the Washington Peninsula the rain held off through Christmas, the light on most days washed blue with touches of gold and red when I went downtown for morning coffee at a local cafe. When 1975 appeared it seemed that the wind picked up. The new year did not bring that much snow or rain, but the wail of the wind was like a continuing complaint. I reflected that it was not so much an ill wind, as a wind that complained of illness.
The wind kicks the high tide over the docks by the cafe. The water rolls in the channel, tumbling like a flow of gray, luminescent glass. By the door of the cafe is a newspaper rack. Before entering I always glance at the headlines and then try to think of something else. Sometimes I can succeed. It is a trick that a man picks up if he lives long enough.
The fact is that I really do not want to know what is happening in the rest of the world. What I really want is to live here in Port Townsend, work outside in all of our various weather, and watch the seasonal return of the water birds. Still, there is an exact appeal carried in those newspapers. They name people and events and places. The people are important. I think that most of them are not very different from myself. I enter the cafe knowing that if there is a loose paper about I’ll surely read it.
Slurping coffee. Morning smoke. Turning pages, and feeling the presence around me of those of my neighbors who also start the day in this manner. Sometimes there is a tourist group. It is quiet and seems almost like a religious gathering although we drink coffee instead of breaking bread. I read the paper, reflect that for forty-three years I have loved my country, and also reflect that for forty-three years my country has been training me to go to prison. That is a difficult thing to accept and it is lonely. I turn the pages and realize how much of what I read is not news.
It is not news that there are insecure men in high places. It is not news that the business of armies is to kill. It is not news that large corporations regularly engage in criminal activities.
What is news is that conversations between military, government and industry are becoming more intelligible. As this happens decisions that affect us here in Port Townsend and which also affect citizens all over the world are made with no regard to anyone as human being or citizen. Our President speaks of future war while our young sons are getting older. In the cafe cynical remarks are sometimes made saying that once more the nation will be called on to make the world safe for Standard Oil. I hear those remarks and wonder if the speaker realizes that a new dictatorship is forming.
After reading as much as I can bear, I finish my coffee and leave. The truck I drive is old. It smells of loam and tree cuttings, of fertilizer and newly cut grass. The thing chugs up hills because the compression of the old engine is shot. It is a truck with good steering, good brakes, and little else. Even so, it is in better condition than our government.
My day’s work may be grades or trees or plant beds. I’ll be working with leaves and flowers, with soil and irrigation. I think that since I quit being a teacher this is another good and honest way to make a living. I drive down the road, past the new billboard that reminds our local kids that when eligible they must register for the draft, and first I am angry and then I am sad. The people of this town have no international enemies. These people did not appoint a government to make enemies for them. My neighbors are peaceable people and murder or violence around here is quite remarkable. We get along, and for the most part I think we like each other. Hatred is not in our streets, and hatred for people in like towns across the world is not in our hearts. That is one of the good reasons why I do not want to leave this place for the scurryings of a government that continually insists on my loyalty while negotiating destruction.
It seemed necessary to tell you this before our first confrontation which will be the examination of my 1973 tax return. I expect the examination is prompted by my refusal last year to pay half of my income tax. I will refuse to pay half of the tax again this year, although because of withholding your agency already has most of the money. I refuse to pay half of the tax on various grounds, some of which are moral, some of which are legal. The refusal is prompted by the expenditure by our government of over fifty percent of tax monies on the maintenance and purchase and use of armies and weapons. Through its agency, Internal Revenue Service, the United States government seeks my complicity in the violation of twenty centuries of moral teaching. The government is in further violation of various international treaties and agreements, and is, in fact, engaged in crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.
These are serious charges and I make them not with indignation but with a great deal of personal pain. This is my beloved country. I have studied its history, its songs; and I have taught its beliefs and ideals. I think I have understood the real determination of freedom and respect that hundreds of thousands of its people have worked so hard to gain for others as well as for themselves. I know something about its religions, its painting and philosophy, its architecture and its politics. It is terrible to have to make those charges, because I know what its people have dreamed and believe I know that the dreams of equality and truth are still valid and alive. This affair of the tax is a trap. Either I believe in the United States of America as bastion of the free spirit, or I quit believing and simply pay my taxes. I am grieved to say that these are the charges, and I am even more grieved to say that the charges are so simply proved as to be prima facia:
The first charge is moral. The nation claims to be a Christian nation. Its code is, "One nation under God," and it proclaims that "In God we trust." I have observed that this is not true.
The Christian and Hebraic injunction, "Thou shalt not kill," is specific. It does not carry exemptions. The U.S. record in Korea (when I was a conscientious objector) and the later record of Vietnam demonstrates that the United States will kill at convenience. It will kill combatants and non-combatants alike. It will do so under the banner of maintaining a free world or to make people free, usually from the clutches of communism. In doing so, and without consulting the peoples involved, it will use bombs, gasses, explosives and napalm to destroy children. This is the record, and
the record continues to be endorsed by the U.S. weaponry in Vietnam and Cambodia. No morality can attach to such action no matter what plea is given that U.S. political theory is more sacrosanct than other political theories. I do not see that the much inflated communist bear is less moral than demonstrated U.S. action in killing children. To answer that our nation must be immoral because other nations are immoral is to align us exactly on the same level of violence and degradation that the U.S. pretends to deplore.
In addition, it is increasingly clear that economics and not the threat of communism is the force that keeps our military so well supplied. The irony of the imprint, "In God we trust," is on our coins; but now, even our coins are watered with base metal between slivers of silver. It has only marginally to do with my objection, but I will point out that our current economic ills derive from incredible overspending which certainly aids and abets communist governments. If there is competition with those governments then it is clear the U.S. will eventually lose. It will not lose through military engagements but through moral and economic bankruptcy. When a free people fears to depend on their moral strength and turn instead to weapons stockpiling then it is certain that expensive and very inadequate insurance is being purchased.
In writing that is usually reprinted as "An Essay on Slavery," Thomas Jefferson pointed out that the enslavement of human beings degraded not only those enslaved, but degraded the masters. His moral observation was exact. He pointed out that when one person is placed about another in such a relationship the dehumanization and brutalization was as strong for the master as for the slave. He wrote, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Approximately two hundred years later moral issues of the same import are before us. The first one is simply stated. The U.S. is still dealing in a kind of slavery by its dealings and support involving enslaving governments.