The Pleasures of Anthology, Part One

Maybe it starts with being a bookhound: from a young age I grew up in a house piled high with books, the collection of my college professor father and classical musician mother.  It’s no surprise that the collecting bug bit me early, and books are a natural item to accumulate: they’re mostly cheap; they can be status symbols, external signs of one’s intellectual achievement (unlike, say, comic books, which I have also collected, but which even now seem to demand a certain amount of explanation to the uninitiated); and they provide more entertainment or useful information for their price and weight than almost anything else.  I was accustomed to having old things around from a young age, so that didn’t bother me either.  As much as I enjoy brand new books and the big, luxurious bookstores that have (mostly) disappeared from the landscape, used bookstores and book sales are more interesting to me, because of that chance of being surprised by something rare, weird, or simply new to me.  I like to browse new books to see what’s out there, but I’m rarely moved to buy something I could get anywhere; but for an old, possibly out-of-print book, who knows if I’ll find it again?  I could go on about the smell of old books, or the thrill of the hunt, or the prospect of finding something really valuable, but to tell the truth those aren’t really motivating factors for me. (Seriously: for every old book you find that has that ideal scent of rich, old paper, there’s another one that smells of mildew or cigarette smoke. Gross.)

No, what fascinates me the most when scouring stacks of old books is the chance to fill in gaps in my knowledge, make connections between things I might not expect, and appreciate the many different kinds of publications (the styles of writing, the topics, and genres that were once popular, not to mention trends in printing, binding, and cover art) that can open windows to the past.

In many ways, a good anthology can offer the same pleasures in microcosm.  Reading a collection of stories or articles by a good editor is like being guided through a used book market by an expert hand, someone who knows where the good stuff is hidden, and is ideally a sympathetic soul able to handpick just the sort of thing you’re looking for.  Such a guide can offer a balanced combination of the familiar but well-loved, a few new items that continue in a straight line from where the familiar leaves off, and maybe something really mind-bending or challenging, something you didn’t know you needed to read until you found it.

If you read enough, the name of the editor alone might be enough to pique your interest, and these come in several flavors: many of the editors whose names I learned were publishing-industry lifers like Peter Haining and Martin H. Greenberg (compiler of an astounding 1,298 anthologies!).  Sometimes the editor is a well-known writer in their own right, their choices reflecting their influences, early favorites that inspired their own writing or informed their stylistic choices.  The book might be a chance to promote their friends’ work or expose readers to like-minded authors who are part of the same scene as the editor but not as widely known.  Or it could be an opportunity for the established writer to shine a light on up and coming talent, putting their seal of approval on the young writers’ work.

Sometimes, however, one gets the impression the famous writer’s name is simply on the cover to sell books, as when they are hired to write a short introduction and the name of the actual (less well-known) editor is in smaller type. If the word “presents” is in the title, chances are the famous author is a figurehead (as in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, a series Hubbard never actually edited and that has carried on under his name long after his death).  I don’t mean to be cynical: it’s the quality of the stories inside that count, and I’ve been known to purchase and keep books with stories I already have copies of for the sake of the insights in the introduction (which are sometimes sizeable essays in their own right).

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A subgenre is the anthology of the “best of” the previous year, selections either made from published work (as is the case for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American series), contest winners (the aforementioned L. Ron Hubbard Presents), or editorial fiat.  The Best American series has been published continuously since 1915, first as a showcase for short stories, expanded in recent decades to include topics such as mystery stories, sports writing, and even comics (since 2006).  One of the most popular titles in the series has been The Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited since its introduction in 2002 by Dave Eggers.  Filled with lists, humor, and random nuggets culled from real life (“Best American Lawsuits,” for example), it injects the McSweeney’s founder’s “clever . . . too clever” aesthetic into the hoary old “bathroom reader” format, like Harper’s Index on steroids.

In retrospect, these annual volumes can provide perspective on both the individual authors included in them and the genre (whatever it may be) as a whole.  It is interesting, for example, to see the name Stephen Baxter (for the story “Gossamer”) in David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF, a 1996 anthology (and beginning of an ongoing series) published with the goal of supporting actual science fiction (“Not fantasy.  Not science fantasy,” according to Hartwell’s introduction).  Baxter had garnered praise for his 1995 novel The Time Ships, an authorized sequel to H. G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine, but was as yet a new enough name that Hartwell felt the need to introduce him as a writer “in the hard science mode of Hal Clement and Robert L. Forward.”  Since then, he has won numerous awards and collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke; it’s unlikely a science fiction audience would be unfamiliar with him.

In contrast, one can examine volumes of the Best SF series edited by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss from 1967 to 1975 to see the rising tide of confrontational, psychedelic “New Wave” science fiction championed by J. G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock.  Even allowing for the difference in time, no one would confuse this series with Hartwell’s!

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One finds connections everywhere: one can read Sam Moskowitz’s biographical sketch of editor Alden H. Norton in the latter’s Award Science Fiction Reader, and immediately turn to Norton’s introduction to his own Horror Times Ten, wherein he recounts,

At lunch with an old friend, Sam Moskowitz, I happened to mention my problem [a paucity of decent horror stories for his planned anthology] and said: “Too bad you’re not an authority on the horror and terror tale as you are on science fiction.  If you were, you might be of some help to me.”  He choked a moment, wiped some sauce from eggplant parmigiana from his lips with a napkin, swallowed a glass of water, and finally managed to come up: “Oh, but I am!”

Not only did the authors and editors know each other, they could make their readers feel like one of the club by letting them in on these backstage dramas in introductory notes, in the letters pages of magazines, and in the newsletters and fanzines put together by amateur press associations and fan clubs.  An anthology could be much more than just the stories!

In Part Two, I’ll look more closely at one of my favorite anthologies, and the legacy of the magazine Weird Tales.

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Introduction

Welcome to my blog!  To explain what Medleyana is, it’s probably easier to explain what it isn’t.  Medleyana is not going to be a personal diary.  When I was a young boy I kept a diary, and I did my best to stay true to the “daily” aspect of the root word dies, even going so far as to backtrack and write entries for days I skipped writing, until I was trying to remember what I had been doing on days weeks before to catch up, and the whole thing started to seem ridiculous.  Life sometimes moves too quickly to record everything.

As a teenager, I tried again, this time with a “journal,” which sounded more serious and grown up to me, and which I told myself I wouldn’t feel compelled to write in every day (even though its root word, jour, also implies a daily use).  I would only write in it when I had something to say.  In addition to personal reflection, I wrote about musical or literary projects I was involved with, explored my creative process, and recorded my reactions to books I read and movies I watched.  With that freedom in mind, I was able to keep a journal into my late twenties; I might go weeks or months without writing, but when I did I felt confident I was creating something substantial instead of simply recording mundane details out of a sense of duty (although there were also plenty of mundane details recorded along the way).  The only real restriction I placed upon myself was that I wouldn’t go back and change or erase anything from a previous day: it would be a record of the moment, not an exercise in hindsight.

The end of this journaling phase came one day when my composition professor pointed out that I was spending more time and energy recording my ideas about writing music than actually composing.  At the time, I couldn’t deny the truth of that: I’ve always enjoyed talking shop with other composers and creators, and reading and writing about the process, and when you’re doing that it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re being creative and doing great work without actually finishing anything.  Perhaps that insight should have led me to change my major to journalism or creative writing, but I am nothing if not stubborn, and I put the journal away and committed to pouring that energy into music.

So why blog now?  In part, my life has changed so much since then that I feel more confident I can balance creative work and commentary; a few years ago, I made a conscious decision to focus on finishing smaller projects so that I didn’t have a new piece only once a year, and these short articles fit right into that ethos.  Also, a public blog is quite a different matter than a personal diary: I hope to begin a discussion, and my focus will be on aesthetic issues rather than my personal life or what I had for breakfast.  I won’t deny that shifting my work to the internet age has been awkward for me: I’m not too old to use computers by any means, but just old enough to be uncomfortable with the “share everything” spirit of the twenty-first century.  I can be a perfectionist, which is okay, but it has led me to keep a lot of work under wraps that I should probably just release to the world and accept that some of it will be liked, some disliked, and a great deal ignored.  That is simply the way things are now.

Perhaps more importantly, I am no longer teaching in the classroom.  In addition to teaching music theory and aural skills (ear training), the bread and butter of composers who are otherwise unemployable, I spent several years teaching music appreciation and music literature.  These classes were wonderful arenas for discussion and exploration (on my part, at least, even if students dragging themselves in at 8:30 am didn’t always feel that way), and I now find myself in need of a comparable outlet.  (Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with rhetoric about the internet being the world’s biggest classroom, or anything like that, nor do I mention my teaching experience to claim any special authority: on the internet, I’m just another voice.)

Okay, Medleyana isn’t a diary, or a classroom syllabus.  What is it?  I’ve subtitled it “In Praise of the Eclectic,” which sums up my interest in “inclusive” aesthetics, artistic and musical styles that draw influence and ideas from lots of different sources.  My interest is twofold. First, I’ve always been a sucker for formats that bring a variety of items under one roof: anthologies, omnibuses, samplers, miscellanies, and medleys.  Second, I’m intrigued by artistic styles that do the same thing, but which may appear on the surface to be unified, either transformed by technique or by the strong personality of a single creator.  There will be more on these subjects to come.  And in that grab-bag spirit, I reserve the freedom to throw in whatever else I might feel like writing (convenient, no?), but I’ll use tags to keep things organized as we go.

I’ll leave this thought in conclusion: I try to approach eclecticism, both as an audience member and as a creator, with the kind of attitude attributed to the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki in an oft-repeated anecdote (this version of the story is from Sally Wendkos Olds’ A Balcony in Nepal):

 I remember a story I heard about a young monk who saw his teacher in the dining room reading a book while eating his lunch.  The novice stood quietly by the older monk until he raised his head from his book.  “Yes?” “Excuse me, roshi,” the young monk said.  “But in your teaching this morning, did you not tell us, ‘When you eat, eat.  And when you read, read?’” “Yes, of course, I did.” “But, roshi here you are eating and reading!” “Yes, of course,” the elder replied calmly. “When you eat and read, eat and read.”  And he went back to his soup and his book.

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