A Reading of "Song in a Minor Key" by C. L. Moore

This, unfortunately, is not a full short story, let alone a novel-- it is a vignette from an apparently never-completed Northwest Smith tale.

The Gothic Influences of C. L. Moore

When reading Shambleau and Other Stories as part of the Puppy of the Month Club, The Frisky Pagan, Jon, and I came across pernicious accusations that C. L. Moore's "Shambleau" was essentially a space-western--with all the anti-imperialism that this implies. Since reskinning westerns as space stories was more properly an artifact of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, this appeared to be yet another instance of science fiction critics aggressively forcing old stories into modern molds to find the earliest version of the modern form, a tendency that was already old in the Campbelline era.

To refute this, The Frisky Pagan and I turned to the words of C. L. Moore herself. From "Afterward: On 'Shambleau' and Others," found in The Best of C. L. Moore:

Midway down that yellow page I began fragments remembered from sophomore English at the university. All the choices were made at random. Keats, Browning, Byron— you name it. In the middle of this exercise a line from a poem (by William Morris?) worked itself to the front and I discovered myself typing something about a “red, running figure.” I looked at it a while, my mind a perfect blank, and then shifted mental gears without even adding punctuation to mark the spot, swinging with idiot confidence into the first lines of the story which ended up as “Shambleau.”  

For those who slept through English classes in college like me, Keats and Byron were second generation Romanticists, part of a movement of poets and authors that created, among other works, Gothic fantasies such as The Castle of Otranto and Frankenstein. Browning and Morris were Victorian poets (contemporary with the American romanticists Poe and Hawthorne) that adapted the lyrical and fantasy traditions of the second generation Romanticists into Victorian sensibilities. The distinction between the two periods is minor, as "One has difficulty determining with any accuracy where the Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century leaves off and the Victorian Period begins because these traditions have so many aspects in common." C. L. Moore had immersed herself in the classics from these men, and was familiar with the melancholy, mystery, individualism, and darkness that embodied their works and would soon be hallmarks of her own pre-Campbelline stories. And, as an avid Weird Tales reader, she would have also read reprinted works from Poe and Hawthorne in its pages. In her Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry tales, Moore would become one of the last flowers of the Gothic tradition in science fiction, writing before Campbell's twin revolutions in science fiction and fantasy removed these Romantic elements from American weird fiction.

But while this passage establishes the link between C. L. Moore and Romantic writers, a firm link between her and Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" has yet to be established by evidence. For that, the next few days will in turn examine "Rappaccini's Daughter" and Moore's "Black Thirst."

Stray Puppy: Tree of Life

A reposting of my Puppy of the Month Book Club article on C. L. Moore's "Tree of Life". I've been talking about going into more detail on this link to science fiction's gothic past for a while. Time to reintroduce the idea...

Northwest Smith is dry-gulched in a old temple by patrols. As hunger and thirst start playing with his mind, he see a strange alien girl crying about being lost. He decides to help her, leading her towards a tree mural. She then takes the lead, pulling him into a strange, gray land filled with trees. In the shadows, little people murmur, "beware of Thag..."

Once again, Northwest Smith is alone, once again he is in peril, once again he meets an alien girl, and once again, some thing wants to eat him. What should be formulaic still remains fresh on the strength of the monsters of each story. In this case, Thag is a superdimensional being currently shaped like a tree. It is just as predatory as Shambleau and the Alendar, and it farms its food in a similar manner to the Alendar. But it embodied a different form of malice from the other two.

C. L. Moore loves the Poisoned Garden trope. "Black God's Shadow," "Black Thirst," "Tree of Life," and "Scarlet Dream" each feature their own dangerous garden, complete with hidden perils. This trope has a long history in weird fiction, tracing back to at least 1844 when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "Rappaccini's Daughter." In it, a young woman, Beatrice, lives among a poisoned garden, guarded by her father and the poisonous plants. Giovanni falls in love with  her, but succumbs to the plants that have made Beatrice poisonous herself. The antidote he made to free her from the poisons of the garden instead kill her. (The text can be found here.) While "Black Thirst" is the purest example of Hawthorne's influence on Moore's storytelling, as it follows the same beats, the influence of the poisoned garden pervades her settings as a key element to the eeriness of her works.

All in all, "Tree of Life" was a solid story, even if Northwest Smith should be locked in a monastery for his own safety.

Check out the Frisky Pagan's take here.

Sci-Fi Radio - The Twonky By Lewis Padgett

"Lewis Padgett" is one of the better-known pseudonyms for the husband and wife team of Henry Kuttner and Catherine "C. L." Moore.

From the Book of the Dead: C. L. Moore

Where were you when you first read "Shambleau" by C. L. Moore? In his Book of the Dead, E. Hoffman Price remembers; he was there when Farnsworth Wright plucked it out of the slush pile!

Whenever Farnsworth found an outstanding story, his enthusiasm was wonderful to see. His talks on the fine points of each yarn made it seem that he was the author's agent, and I the prospective buyer. 

H. Warner Munn's horror story, The Chain, and Donald Wandrei's striking cosmic concept, The Red Brain, were things I had to read, at once, and be damned to sociality. The peak was reached in 1933, when he handed me something by one C. L. Moore. 

"Read this!" he commanded, the moment I stepped into the new editorial rooms at 840 North Michigan Avenue, in Chicago. 

I obeyed. The story commanded my attention. There was no escape. I forgot that I needed food and drink--I'd driven a long way. For nearly six years, I'd not lived in Hammond, as Farnsworth's neighbor. The stranger's narrative prevailed, until, finally, I drew a deep breath, exhaled, flipped the last sheet to the back of the pack, and looked again at the by-line. Never heard of it before. 

"For Christ's sweet sake, who and what is this C. L. Moore?" 

He wagged his head, gave me an I-told-you-so grimace. 

We declared C. L. Moore day. I'd met Northwest Smith, and Shambleau.

More Brackett and Hamilton from Tangent Online

Last week, I linked to Tangent Online's 1976 interview with pulp and science fiction giants Leigh Brackett and Edmond "World Wrecker" Hamilton. While that excerpt described the treatment of women in science fiction and science fiction by women, the authors of the adventures of Eric John Stark and Captain Future had much to say about their inspirations, the science fiction genre, and John Campbell.

Regarding their influences:

TANGENT: What other influences did you have besides Burroughs and Merritt? 

BRACKETT: I'd say Burroughs of course was the first one. I was introduced to Edgar Rice Burroughs at a very young age. And of course I immediately took the plunge and that changed the course of my life right there. 

HAMILTON: That was true of nearly all of us of that generation. We sort of grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs. I had read much other science fiction; I totally admired H. G. Wells. But Burroughs seemed to be the one we all tried to model after. I think Ray told us his first story was written because he couldn't―his family being hard-up at that time―he couldn't afford to buy the new Burrough's Mars novel that came out. He'd seen it in the bookstores but he couldn't afford to buy it, so he sat down and wrote it. 

BRACKETT: I think my first writing effort was somewhat the same. I was a great fan of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. I saw every one of his films over and over and over, and just loved Fairbanks. My favorite was The Mark of Zorro or something, and I wanted a sequel and there wasn't any, so I started writing one on little scraps of paper. Burroughs influenced me more―well, the Mars stories, all my Mars stories came out of Burroughs―I tried never to exactly copy his Mars, I tried to make it my own, but I think my fascination for Mars came from the fascination for his Mars. 

Now, Hammett and Chandler were very strong influences, and James Cain, whose style I greatly admired. I tried to use what I considered to be very good and very powerful in the detective story genre and use it in science fiction. “The Halfling” is very much in the detective story style, which seems to me to work out very nicely.

Notice that with the exception of Wells, all the stories, authors, and movies mentioned are found in the pulps. But not all of them were science fiction. Brackett in particular drew heavily from the detective pulps that inspired noir and the general adventure pulps like Zorro. Both drew from many wells, not just that of science fiction.

On the long term biases of science fiction awards:

TANGENT: What do you think of the different awards that have sprung up that they didn't have in the early days? Do you feel a sense of loss or anything since both of you have never won one? 

BRACKETT: No. I'm always happy for the people who get the awards. You know, I'd be delighted if I ever got one. I was up for a Hugo once on The Long Tomorrow. I don't know...I just don't worry about it.

HAMILTON: I'd be delighted to get one, too. I was also nominated for one, but most of our science fiction has been in the adventure/entertainment scene. If you don't have Big Thinks in it the people who vote on these things are not greatly impressed. If they can understand every word of it then it can't be great, you know? That's their attitude.

The more things change...

On working with John Campbell:

HAMILTON: Yes, he did try to do that, and that is one of the chief reasons I didn't like to work for John Campbell. I sent him one story and never again. He bought it, but I could not subordinate every idea I had into the Campbell formula. Added to which, he didn't particularly like his writers to be writing for the lesser science fiction magazines. Damn few could make a living writing for John Campbell. 

I admired Campbell. I testified to this the other night when we were talking about the old days. In fact, he was one of the great pulp magazine editors. Yet, science fiction did not begin with John Campbell. There were other editors, who may not have had as big an influence, although I think Tremaine was right up with Campbell there, in the early Astounding Stories. But, Campbell had kind of a dogmatic, rigorous mind; it has to be this way or that way, but it can't be that way. He was a difficult chap to work for. She sold her first stories to him. 

BRACKETT: And I still don't know why he bought them. They weren't very good stories. Unless he hoped he was discovering a new writer. Unfortunately I didn't go the right direction. I kept trying to sell him things because he was the top market, but when you wrote a Campbell-type story and it didn't sell then you had no place else to go with it.

They later pointed out that, despite all his efforts, Ray Bradbury never sold to Campbell. These comments, as well as those of Manly Wade Wellman's, require an article on their own.

On the pulps:

TANGENT: Were the pulps ever taken seriously by critics?

HAMILTON: They were, as a whole, cheap lowdown magazines and nobody cared much what was printed in them, but they gave science fiction a chance to expand its wings into all kinds of ideas. If you were writing for The Saturday Evening Post you found all kinds of taboos, whereas in the pulps, which few people cared about, anything went, just so long as it was effective. I think they were very good. 

The only time a serious critic paid any attention to the science fiction magazines was in 1930. A famous British essayist of that time, William Balitho (sp) came to New York to write articles for The New York World about the American scene. He was absolutely fascinated by the pulp science fiction magazines and he wrote a beautiful article, on that long ago day, on the pulp science fiction magazines. He was probably the first serious critic to mention Lovecraft's name. He said Mr. Lovecraft was a lot better than most of the serious novelists that they gave acclaim to. He added that a man who could read Galsworthy about society and Arnold Bennett about marriage and who can't read these crude little magazines is completely unliterary, without realizing it. And he ended up predicting; he said someday these magazines, or the tattered copies of them that remain, will sell for more money than the first editions of our most famous novelists of today. And that is true.

"Anything went, so long as it was effective."  This only serves to heighten the parallel between tradpub and indie with the old-fashioned slicks and pulps. But that, too, deserves another article.

On husband and wife collaborations in writing:

TANGENT: You mentioned this as your first formal collaboration. Why have you never collaborated before, in what ways were you an influence on each others work, and was there ever any feeling of competition between you? 

BRACKETT: No. 

HAMILTON: No, I don't feel that. Our collaboration has been more or less unofficial in this sense...she has done more for me than I have done for her. For years I worked on comics and I had a pretty heavy schedule. When I'd be trying to do a story I'd call her on over and say, “Leigh, nobody can do a scene like this but you.” (Laughing) But I never was as fortunate as Henry Kuttner. We were out visiting Henry and Catherine at Laguna Beach, and he was telling me he'd been having a hard time doing a novel; one chapter defeated him. And he sat there at his desk all day beating his brains out and couldn't get that chapter started, so he thought he'd go out and walk up and down the beach for several hours. The air was good but he got no ideas. So he walked wearily back to the house, got sat down, and there was the chapter, all written there beside his typewriter.(Laughing) I love to tell that story, so then I can accuse her. Actually, that was the best chapter in the book. It was a detective novel called The Brass Ring. When I talked to him just after the novel had been published, I said, “It was a good story, Henry, but the crowning point is the chapter where the man is murdered in the dark. You get the feeling of violence and sudden death in the dark. Terrific.” He said, “Thank you. My wife wrote it.” 

I said the same thing to Doc Lowndes up in New York years ago. He said there was one part in my Valley of Creation that was the highest point in the book. I told him the same thing, “Thank you for nothing. My wife wrote it.” She wrote just those three chapters.

Anyone know where I can find the modern version of Miss Moore?

C. L. Moore on Shambleau

I have a long interest in how writers construct their stories.  It is one thing to listen to an academic or critic discuss the art of writing.  But to hear from the writer herself, in this case Catherine "C. L." Moore, is a special treat.

The following passage by C. L. Moore assumes that you have read her story "Shambleau", published in Weird Tales in 1933 and frequently reprinted elsewhere. Fortunately, for those who haven't, the collection of the same name is January's Puppy of the Month at the Puppy of the Month Book Club, so there is a chance to soon catch up.  And, if the passage wasn't so long, I might have saved it for an entry at that blog.  But, Fair Use being as muddy as it is, I would rather not risk disrupting a group blog if I have made a mistake.  Besides, now I can indulge in a little commentary.

Moore's character-based approach fills in some of the gaps of Dent's master plot formula.  Dent relies on action, external events, and the hero's skill to drive the plot forward.  Moore still uses action, but also uses contrasts of character to not only drive the plot, but also to populate her stories and make her characters stand apart from each other. And from character comes motivations, which provide internal drivers for the plot as opposed to external events.

Also, she states that to be a good writer, you must be an avid reader.  This echoes advice given later by C. S. Lewis, Stephen King, and others.

From "Afterward: On 'Shambleau' and Others," found in The Best of C. L. Moore:

Midway down that yellow page I began fragments remembered from sophomore English at the university. All the choices were made at random. Keats, Browning, Byron— you name it. In the middle of this exercise a line from a poem (by William Morris?) worked itself to the front and I discovered myself typing something about a “red, running figure.” I looked at it a while, my mind a perfect blank, and then shifted mental gears without even adding punctuation to mark the spot, swinging with idiot confidence into the first lines of the story which ended up as “Shambleau.” 

The red, running figure in the poem had been a young witch pursued by soldiers and townspeople in some medieval village. In my story they had perfectly sensible reasons for killing her as soon as possible. 

I sat at the typewriter and heard distant bells ringing somewhere on the backstairs of my mind. The situation was wide open, and with no conscious mental processes whatever I surrendered myself to it and the typewriter. (This is among life’s most luxurious moments— giving the story its head and just keep your fingers moving. They know where they’re going.) 

Unfortunately, you can’t expect your unconscious to carry on for very long unaided. So far I have only promised to reveal where the ideas come from, not the story itself. So stay with me, pay close attention, and I’ll see what I can do. 

First, you have to read a great deal of the works you enjoy most. Much of it will be useless. But the trusty unconscious can be relied on to make lots of unseen notes, just in case. Mine did not fail me. 

I couldn’t let my character Shambleau go on running forever, could I? I had the whole scene in hand now— medieval setting, red, running figure, pursuing soldiers and citizens. But then what? 

Obviously she was going to need help— also a foil to set her off effectively and to give the story a shape it didn’t yet have. So Northwest Smith strolled onstage without even a glance my way, perfectly sure of what he was going to do about this. (Northwest Smith? Well, once I had typed a letter to an N. W. Smith, and the name lingered tantalizingly in my mind, waiting for this moment. What would a man named Northwest Smith look like? Be like? Occupy himself with? I soon found out.) 

To complete the triumvirate of lead characters to whom my typewriter introduced me that day long ago, a companion and foil for Smith slouched carelessly into view, thirsting for drink and women. His name was Yarol, and I cannot conceal from you that it is an anagram from the letters in the name of the typewriter I was using. But I like it anyhow.
Here we return to my conviction that you must read enough, enjoy it enough, to absorb unconsciously the structure of the fiction you like best. In this case Shambleau needed help urgently. There wasn’t any yet. The story required a backbone strong enough to support the plot, and Northwest Smith arrived on cue. For contrast with the seemingly helpless fugitive, “Shambleau” needed a strong, tall, romantically steely-eyed male. I think it was along about here my mind got devious and I realized that after his use as a defender was over she might just possibly spring her trap and destroy him. You will note that this gave my still unfledged plot a way to go after the rescue.

So Smith himself was going to need help. Preferably from someone as antithetical to Smith as Smith was to Shambleau. (Who needs two Northwest Smiths?)

Therefore, Yarol. 

And that’s how it all began.

Update:  This quote from the same article further illustrates her approach to writing.

All started out with some wild but malleable idea for which I had to choose a lead character strong enough to play the action against, which is what gives a story form.