by Gene Wolfe
Afterword
Every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write to students. I don’t believe any of them has ever tried it, but I will explain it to you now. After all, you may be the exception. When I read about this method, it was attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who invented and discovered so much. Certainly I did not invent it.
But I did it, and it worked. That is more than can be said for most creative writing classes.
Find a very short story by a writer you admire. Read it over and over until you understand everything in it. Then read it over a lot more.
Here’s the key part. You must do this. Put it away where you cannot get at it. You will have to find a way to do it that works for you. Mail the story to a friend and ask him to keep it for you, or whatever. I left the story I had studied in my desk on Friday. Having no weekend access to the building in which I worked, I could not get to it until Monday morning.
When you cannot see it again, write it yourself. You know who the characters are. You know what happens. You write it. Make it as good as you can.
Compare your story to the original, when you have access to the original again. Is your version longer? Shorter? Why? Read both versions out loud. There will be places where you had trouble. Now you can see how the author handled those problems.
If you want to learn to write fiction, and are among those rare people willing to work at it, you might want to use the little story you have just finished as one of your models. It’s about the right length.
PARKROADS—A REVIEW
One hardly knows what to say about Parkroads. Released in 1939 and 1984, it violates many of the canons of cinematography and must be considered a failure. Yet it is impossible to understand this remarkable film without an enlightened awareness of its many inexplicable experiments.
Strictly speaking, it is without opening credits. Instead the credits, such as they are, continue throughout all six (possibly seven) reels, spoken by the cast at pseudoappropriate moments. For example, as Tanya (or Daisy) reclines beside Belvedere Lake, her face concealed by an immense straw hat, she is heard to murmur, “Choreography by . . .” Jonquils are tossed by the wind, but there is no dancing per se.
Parkroads is neatly divided into alternating sequences, though in a few instances an episode of one type is followed immediately by another, quite different, episode from the same sequence. The later episodes—appearing generally in the first half of the film as it has been released in the U.S.—were produced in Brooklyn in the mid-1930s, presumably between Roosevelt’s election and the dissolution of the NRA. They are set in Belgium (largely in Bruges) in the early years of the closing quarter of the present century.
The earlier episodes, in which each character explains or at least attempts to explain the plot, were completed in various parts of the Low Countries several years ago. They are laid in and around New York, and the effect of traffic simulated by putting cars, trucks, buses, and subway trains aboard canal boats is at times very pleasing. The plot (and unlike so many experimental films Parkroads has one and is almost too concerned with it) involves a Chinese family called Chin.
Or rather, it involves a Korean-Chinese family called Park, founded when a Chin daughter weds a Korean as the Chins pass through Korea while moving eastward to the West. A letter (possibly forged) received by another family in the Chins’ native village in Hunan speaks of a paradisaical “Golden-Mountain-Land.” Chin Mai and Chin Liang resolve to undertake the trip, and the rest of the family—parents, three sisters, and a grandmother—accompanies them.
They travel to Wuhan, Nanjing, and eventually Peking (Beijing). While working as scullions in the famous Sick Duck, they encounter a wily junk captain who promises to transport them to Golden-Mountain-Land in return for one of the daughters. (There is an amusing scene in which the three vie in bad cooking.) His choice falls on Pear Blossom, whom he sells to a brothel.
The remainder of the family takes ship at Tsingtao and crosses the Yellow Sea. They disembark at Inchon, believing the junk will anchor there for several days; it sails without them.
One of the remaining sisters, Cloud Fairy, is betrothed to Park Lee, a Korean. With the aid she persuades him to provide, the other Chins move on, vaguely eastward, to P’ohang and perhaps eventually to Japan. Cloud Fairy lives out the remainder of her life in the Land of Morning Calm but bequeaths to her descendants a yearning irresistible and indefectible.
Drawn by their inherited memories, they reach California but fail to identify it as Golden-Mountain-Land (if indeed it is). They continue eastward, hitching rides with disappointed Okies returning to the Dust Bowl. In New York (these are the episodes recently completed in Belgium) they are befriended by a Turk who tells them that the world is circular, being in fact the crater of a quiescent cosmic volcano, Mount Kaf, which surrounds it upon all sides. The slopes of the crater, says the Turk, are doubtless Golden-Mountain-Land, but to reach them it is necessary to walk straight through the world, whose roads have the trick of bending human steps. Frank Park nods and soon vanishes. This bald stating of its theme is perhaps the weakest element in Parkroads.
As already indicated, Parkroads has been released in six reels; they are so staged that it is by no means easy to determine the order in which they are to be shown. There is, of course, a conventional indication on the film cans for the guidance of the projectionist, but this is almost certainly incorrect. The incidents in Hunan now given in flashback may have well been intended, at least at one time, as the opening of the picture. The sequence in the public gardens of Ghent during which Doris is asked why she has embraced decadence and answers, “Directed by Henry Miller” (or perhaps Müeller), was surely intended as the last, or next to last. Publicity releases from 1939 assert that if all the reels are projected in the correct order, it will be apparent the Parks have discovered that the village in Hunan that was the original home of the Chins was in fact Golden-Mountain-Land; in short, that the paradise described in the letter was merely that of nostalgia. One hopes not.
If so, it is a problem readily amenable to mathematical treatment. Any of the six reels could be chosen as the first. Five then remain for the second, yielding thirty combinations. Four remain for the third—one hundred and twenty combinations. Three remain for the fourth, two for the fifth, and only one for the last—a total of seven hundred and twenty showings, surely not an impossible number.
However, there are references to a missing seventh reel. If such a reel exists, the number of showings is substantially increased (to five thousand and forty), and the reel must first be found. But it is probable that the veiled hints in the old press releases only mean that when the six reels are projected in the correct order someone will be inspired to produce a seventh, in which the Parks’ unwearied journeying returns them to the Far East.
In the brief space allowed me, I have been unable to comment on the performances of individual cast members, but it would be unjust to close without mentioning the late William Chang, who portrayed the captain of the junk. His scenes aboard seem initially grandiose. The vessel is too large, its mast impossibly tall, its rigging unnecessarily mysterious. Then we realize we are seeing it through the Chins’ eyes. The Chins themselves appear small, shabby, and awkward, Chang a demigod; eventually we realize we are seeing him and them through the junk’s eyes. Distributed by Unconscious Artists, Inc. Rated R. Two and a half stars.
Afterword
This story first appeared in a university literary magazine. To the editor’s intense delight, he received plaintive requests for months afterward. People—and particularly people who taught courses having to do with film—wanted to know where they could get it.
So would I.
Game in the Pope’s Head
A sergeant was sent to the Pope’s Head to investigate the case.
—From the London Times’ coverage of the murder of Annie Chapman, September 11, 1888
Bev got up to water her plant. Edgar said, “You’re overw
atering that. Look how yellow, the leaves are.”
They were indeed. The plant had extended its long, limp limbs over the pictures and the sofa, and out through the broken window, but the weeping flukes of these astonishing terminations were sallow and jaundiced.
“It needs water.” Bev dumped her glass into the flowerpot, got a fresh drink, and sat down again. “My play?” She turned up a card. “The next card is ‘What motion picture used the greatest number of living actors, animal or human?’ ”
Edgar said, “I think I know. Gandhi. Half a million or so.”
“Wrong. Debbie?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
“Wrong. Randy?”
It was a moment before he realized that she meant him. So that was his name: Randy. Yes, of course. He said, “Animal or human?”
“Right.”
“Then it’s animals, because they don’t get paid.” He tried to think of animal movies, Bert Lahr terrified of Toto, Lassie Come Home. “The Birds?”
“Close. It was The Swarm, and there were twenty-two million actors.”
Edgar said, “Mostly bees.”
“I suppose.”
There was a bee, or perhaps a wasp, on the plant, nearly invisible against a yellow leaf. It did not appear to him to be exploring the surface in the usual beeish or waspish way, but rather to be listening, head raised, to their conversation. The room was bugged. He wanted to say, This room is bugged, but before he could, Bev announced, “Your move, I think, Ed.”
Ed said, “Bishop’s pawn to the bishop’s four.”
Debbie threw the dice and counted eight squares along the edge of the board. “Oh, good! Park Place, and I’ll buy it.” She handed him her money, and he gave her the deed.
Bev said, “Your turn.”
He nodded, stuffed Debbie’s money into his pocket, shuffled the cards, and read the top one.
You are Randolph Carter.
Three times you have dreamed
of the marvelous city, Randolph Carter,
and three times you have been snatched away
from the high terrace above it.
Randolph Carter nodded again and put the card down. Debbie handed him a small pewter figure, a young man in old-fashioned clothes.
Bev asked, “ ‘Where did the fictional American philosopher Thomas Olney teach?’ Ed?”
“A fictional philosopher? Harvard, I suppose. Is it John Updike?”
“Wrong. Debbie?”
“Pass.”
“Okay. Randy?”
“London.”
Outside, a cloud covered the sun. The room grew darker as the light from the broken windows diminished.
Edgar said, “Good shot. Is he right, Bev?”
The bee, or wasp, rose from its leaf and buzzed around Edgar’s bald head. He slapped at it, missing it by a fraction of an inch. “There’s a fly in here!”
“Not now. I think it went out the window.”
It had indeed been a fly, he saw, and not a bee or wasp at all—a bluebottle, no doubt gorged with carrion.
Bev said, “Kingsport, Massachusetts.”
With an ivory hand, Edgar moved an ivory chessman. “Knight to the king’s three.”
Debbie tossed her dice onto the board. “Chance.”
He picked up the card for her.
You must descend the seven hundred steps
to the Gate of Deeper Slumber.
You may enter the Enchanted Wood
or claim the sword Sacnoth.
Which do you choose?
Debbie said, “I take the Enchanted Wood. That leaves you the sword, Randy.”
Bev handed it to him. It was a falchion, he decided, curved and single edged. After testing the edge with his finger, he laid it in his lap. It was not nearly as large as a real sword—less than sixteen inches long, he decided, including the hardwood handle.
“Your turn, Randy.”
He discovered that he disliked Bev nearly as much as Debbie, hated her bleached blond hair, her scrawny neck. Bev and her dying plant were twins, one vegetable, one inhuman. He had not known that before.
She said, “It’s the wheel of Fortune,” as though he were stupid. He flicked the spinner.
“Unlawful evil.”
Bev said, “Right,” and picked up a card. “ ‘What do the following have in common: Pogo the Clown, H. H. Holmes, and Saucy Jacky?’ ”
Edgar said, “That’s an easy one. They’re all pseudonyms of mass murderers.”
“Right. ‘For an extra point, name the murderers.’”
“Gacy, Mudgett, and . . . that’s not fair. No one knows who the Ripper was.”
But he did: just another guy, a guy like anybody else.
Debbie tossed her dice. “Whitechapel. I’ll buy it. Give me the card, honey.”
He picked up the deed and studied it. “Low rents.”
Edgar chuckled. “And seldom paid.”
“I know,” Debbie told them, “but I want it, with lots of houses.” He handed her the card, and she gave him the dice.
For a moment he rattled them in his hand, trying to imagine himself the little pewter man. It was no use; there was nothing of bright metal about him or his dark wool coat—only the edge of the knife. “Seven-come-eleven,” he said, and threw.
“You got it,” Debbie told him. “Seven. Shall I move it for you?”
“No,” he said. He picked up the little pewter figure and walked past Holborn, the Temple (cavern-temple of Nasht and Kaman-Thah), and Lincolns Inn Fields, along Cornhill and Leadenhall streets to Aldgate High Street, and so at last to Whitechapel.
Bev said, “You saw him coming, Deb,” but her voice was very far away, far above the the leaden (hall) clouds, filthy with coal smoke, that hung over the city. Wagons and hansom cabs rattled by. There was a public house at the corner of Brick Lane. He turned and went in.
The barmaid handed him his large gin. The barmaid had Debbie’s dark hair, Debbie’s dark good looks. When he had paid her, she left the bar and took a seat at one of the tables. Two others sat there already, and there were cards and dice, money and drinks, before them. “Sit down,” she said, and he sat.
The blonde turned over a card, the jack of spades. “What are the spades in a deck of cards?” she asked.
“Swords,” he said. “From the Spanish word for a sword, espada. The jack of spades is really the jack of swords.”
“Correct.”
The other man said, “Knight to the White Chapel.”
The door opened, letting in the evening with a wisp of fog, and the black knight. She was tall and slender and dressed like a cavalryman, in high boots and riding breeches. A pewter miniature of a knight’s shield was pinned to her dark shirt.
The barmaid rattled the dice and threw.
“You’re still alive,” the black knight said. She strode to their table. Sergeant’s chevrons had been sewn to the sleeves of the shirt. “This neighborhood is being evacuated, folks.”
“Not by us,” the other man said.
“By you now, sir. On my orders. As an officer of the law, I must order you to leave. There’s a tank car derailed, leaking some kind of gas.”
“That’s fog,” Randolph Carter told her. “Fog and smoke.”
“Not just fog. I’m sorry, sir, but I must ask all of you to go. How long have you been here?”
“Sixteen years,” the blond woman said. “The neighborhood was a lot nicer when we came.”
“It’s some sort of chemical weapon, like LSD.”
He asked, “Don’t you want to sit down?” He stood, offering her his chair.
“My shot must be wearing off. The shot was supposed to protect me. I’m Sergeant . . . Sergeant . . .”
The other man said, “Very few of us are protected by shots, Sergeant Chapman. Shots usually kill people, particularly soldiers.”
Randolph Carter looked at her shirt. The name chapman was engraved on a stiff plastic plate there, the plate held out li
ke a little shelf by the thrust of her left breast.
“Sergeant Anne Chapman of the United States Army. We think it’s the plants, sir. All the psychoactive drugs we know about come from plants—opium, cocaine, heroin.”
“You’re the heroine,” he told her gently. “Coming here like this to get us out.”
“All of them chemicals the plants have stumbled across to protect us from insects, really. And now they’ve found something to protect the insects from us.” She paused, staring at him. “That isn’t right, is it?”
Again he asked, “Don’t you want to sit down?”
“Gases from the comet. The comet’s tail has wrapped all Earth in poisonous gases.”
The blonde murmured, “ ‘What is the meaning of this name given Satan: Beelzebub.’ ”
A tiny voice from the ceiling answered.
“You, sir,” the black knight said, “won’t you come with me? We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You can’t get out of here,” the other man told them.
Randolph Carter nodded to the knight. “I’ll come with you, if you’ll love me.” He rose, pushing the sword up his coat sleeve, point first.
“Then come on.” She took him by the arm and pulled him through the door.
A hansom cab rattled past.
“What is this place?” She put both hands to her forehead. “I’m dreaming, aren’t I? This is a nightmare.” There was a fly on her shoulder, a blowfly gorged with carrion. She brushed it off; it settled again, unwilling to fly through the night and the yellow fog. “No, I’m hallucinating.”
He said, “I’d better take you to your room.” The bricks were wet and slippery underfoot. As they turned a corner, and another, he told her what she could do for him when they reached her room. A dead bitch lay in the gutter. Despite the night and the chill of autumn, the corpse was crawling with flies.
Sickly yellow gaslight escaped from under a door. She tore herself from him and pushed it open. He came after her, his arms outstretched. “Is this where you live?”