As those who have read the Friday profiles have noticed, there is often some stray connection that I share [or imagine to share] with the subjects. Whether it's taking refuge in a the corner of a penthouse with America's prima ballerina, experiencing extreme g-forces with a seminal racing driver, attending an inspiring tale by a loopy sailor at a Boy Scout meeting, or simply sharing a neighborhood with a complete character, I feel as if I've spent time with people who have discovered some portion of happiness and that it's dependent on being unconcerned with common limits.
In literature, which certainly has its share of free spirits, it seems that the most free are those who write speculative fiction or otherwise trim the boundaries of reality in their prose. Whether it's through written stories, screenplays, teleplays, or even comic books, the free spirits of inventive fiction display their impatience with, or practiced ignorance of, the constraints by which the rest of us live.
Of that group, three come to mind in those moments when my day-dreaming conscience drifts in that direction. One I never knew, one composed a minor bit of lyrical prose that got me through Little League, and the third I tripped over in a dark movie theater in the Berkshires.
In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!
There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat.
I'm a free man. I don't wear anybody's collar. I'm not obliged to smile if I don't want to. That gives me a lot of perverse pride -- I really am a person who could stop doing what I'm doing right now, go off to Ceylon tomorrow and live among the fishermen. I make a living without having a job; I don't cater to anybody. I believe that's the hardest thing to achieve in this world -- any kind of autonomy, any kind of independence, any kind of freedom. So, I'm very, very proud of the fact that I'm an independent.
Alfred Bester was born in Manhattan in 1913 in the middle of the Russian/Ukrainian Jewish ghetto of the East Village. Embracing the freedom of the new country, Bester's parents ran a liberal, free-thinking household. This enabled his curiosity and subsequent education sufficiently to be accepted by the University of Pennsylvania and, later, Columbia Law School.
However, the law does not lend itself to free-thinkers and Bester quit Columbia and joined a public relations firm, through which he met his wife, Rolly Goulko, a Broadway and radio actress. They married in the mid-1930's and when Rolly created the role of "Lois Lane" on the radio version of The Adventures of Superman, Bester was introduced to a whole new arena for his talents. Namely, comic books.
Bester had been scribbling away on science fiction stories in his spare time, revealing his peculiar perspective on what is arguably the most creative form of prose. As science fiction stories may create whole universes that are built solely to satisfy the demands of the writer, with even the laws of physics regarded as mutable, Bester came to know the ultimate artistic freedom.
Bester wrote stories that were accepted for publication in the burgeoning pulp magazine market, appearing in titles such as Astounding Science Fiction and Thrilling Wonder Stories and impressing some established writers with his talent. Soon, the pulps would publish anything he choose to submit. When Rolly mentioned to him that Mutual was having trouble coming up with enough scripts for Superman, he began to write for her show, deftly adapting comic book stories for radio drama. So successful was he that DC Comics, the home not only of Superman, but of Batman, Wonder Woman, and many others, hired him to write comic books, eventually permitting him to re-work Green Lantern, one of their premier titles. It was here that he composed one of the best known, and most lasting, oaths in comics history.
For those who are unfamiliar of Green Lantern, he is a superhero who uses a "power ring" that is charged from a lantern [it's green, of course]. Bester felt that the act of charging the ring needed some sort of liturgical overtone, so he wrote an oath to be spoken during the charging. It appears above. The comic book character of Green Lantern has been in near-constant existence since 1940 and although he [or sometimes she] has gone through several incarnations, the oath composed by Bester that has been spoken by them all.
An aside: Our Little League team was sponsored by an industrial lighting company whose logo was based on a lantern. Since our uniforms were green, we wanted to be called the Green Lanterns, but instead were simply called the Tribesman Products team. How absurdly dull. So, in a moment of defiance, at the start of the games we would huddle about and recite the Green Lantern oath, much to the confusion of the coach and umpire.
Bester would continue to stretch his art, eventually writing two novels that still make the "Best of" lists, even into this century. The first, The Demolished Man, imagines a future in which all people are telepathic, yet carry different levels of telepathic ability and are, thus, segmented into a caste system based on those abilities. It was imaginative and, like the best of science fiction, used a fantastic world to evoke contemporary social issues. It would win the very first Hugo Award ever presented for the best science fiction novel of 1953, a milestone as the Hugo is a now-venerable and coveted honorarium.
A 1956 novel, The Stars My Destination, re-works the familiar plot of The Count of Monte Cristo with a structure built upon the quatrains of William Blake's poem "The Tiger". A tale of revenge and redemption, the novel made use of different types of font and spacing to capture the hallucinogenic world of the 25th century and introduced many story features and characters that proved to be influential in late-20th and early 21st century science fiction. It is admired by a surprising number of contemporary authors and considered by many to be the best science fiction novel ever.
It would be Bester's last novel for almost twenty years, as he would find steady work as a travel writer and editor for Holiday! magazine. After Holiday! ceased operations in the early 1970's, Bester returned to writing science fiction stories, again being nominated for prestigious awards.
In the late 1970's, Hollywood would approach him to write the screenplay for the Superman movie. As Bester always understood that Superman was not the tale of the red-caped fellow, but of Clark Kent managing life with Earthlings while attempting to improve their condition, they gave the assignment to a more conventional writer. That's a pity, as I would have liked to have seen his version.
Bester would die in 1987, celebrated within his field as an innovator and artist, knowing that he had made a lasting contribution to his literary niche.
However, the law does not lend itself to free-thinkers and Bester quit Columbia and joined a public relations firm, through which he met his wife, Rolly Goulko, a Broadway and radio actress. They married in the mid-1930's and when Rolly created the role of "Lois Lane" on the radio version of The Adventures of Superman, Bester was introduced to a whole new arena for his talents. Namely, comic books.
Bester had been scribbling away on science fiction stories in his spare time, revealing his peculiar perspective on what is arguably the most creative form of prose. As science fiction stories may create whole universes that are built solely to satisfy the demands of the writer, with even the laws of physics regarded as mutable, Bester came to know the ultimate artistic freedom.
Bester wrote stories that were accepted for publication in the burgeoning pulp magazine market, appearing in titles such as Astounding Science Fiction and Thrilling Wonder Stories and impressing some established writers with his talent. Soon, the pulps would publish anything he choose to submit. When Rolly mentioned to him that Mutual was having trouble coming up with enough scripts for Superman, he began to write for her show, deftly adapting comic book stories for radio drama. So successful was he that DC Comics, the home not only of Superman, but of Batman, Wonder Woman, and many others, hired him to write comic books, eventually permitting him to re-work Green Lantern, one of their premier titles. It was here that he composed one of the best known, and most lasting, oaths in comics history.
For those who are unfamiliar of Green Lantern, he is a superhero who uses a "power ring" that is charged from a lantern [it's green, of course]. Bester felt that the act of charging the ring needed some sort of liturgical overtone, so he wrote an oath to be spoken during the charging. It appears above. The comic book character of Green Lantern has been in near-constant existence since 1940 and although he [or sometimes she] has gone through several incarnations, the oath composed by Bester that has been spoken by them all.
An aside: Our Little League team was sponsored by an industrial lighting company whose logo was based on a lantern. Since our uniforms were green, we wanted to be called the Green Lanterns, but instead were simply called the Tribesman Products team. How absurdly dull. So, in a moment of defiance, at the start of the games we would huddle about and recite the Green Lantern oath, much to the confusion of the coach and umpire.
Bester would continue to stretch his art, eventually writing two novels that still make the "Best of" lists, even into this century. The first, The Demolished Man, imagines a future in which all people are telepathic, yet carry different levels of telepathic ability and are, thus, segmented into a caste system based on those abilities. It was imaginative and, like the best of science fiction, used a fantastic world to evoke contemporary social issues. It would win the very first Hugo Award ever presented for the best science fiction novel of 1953, a milestone as the Hugo is a now-venerable and coveted honorarium.
A 1956 novel, The Stars My Destination, re-works the familiar plot of The Count of Monte Cristo with a structure built upon the quatrains of William Blake's poem "The Tiger". A tale of revenge and redemption, the novel made use of different types of font and spacing to capture the hallucinogenic world of the 25th century and introduced many story features and characters that proved to be influential in late-20th and early 21st century science fiction. It is admired by a surprising number of contemporary authors and considered by many to be the best science fiction novel ever.
It would be Bester's last novel for almost twenty years, as he would find steady work as a travel writer and editor for Holiday! magazine. After Holiday! ceased operations in the early 1970's, Bester returned to writing science fiction stories, again being nominated for prestigious awards.
In the late 1970's, Hollywood would approach him to write the screenplay for the Superman movie. As Bester always understood that Superman was not the tale of the red-caped fellow, but of Clark Kent managing life with Earthlings while attempting to improve their condition, they gave the assignment to a more conventional writer. That's a pity, as I would have liked to have seen his version.
Bester would die in 1987, celebrated within his field as an innovator and artist, knowing that he had made a lasting contribution to his literary niche.
There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat.
Terry Southern was sitting somewhere in the dark of the Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Michael McCurdy and I were looking for him during the intermission of a benefit viewing of Citizen Kane, as Michael had mentioned that he was working on some illustrations for a new edition of some of Southern's older stories and wondered if I wanted to meet him. When I said "Yes", which came out somewhat strangled as I was trying to sound blasé and not like some immature fanboy, Michael waved his hand over the first dozen or so rows on stage right and said, "He's over there...somewhere. Let's go exploring." [Those of you who read our profile of Michael from a few years back may recall that exploration was his primary metaphor.]
As I had only ever seen one photograph of Southern, and that had been twenty years before, I wasn't exactly sure what he would look like. The standard of personal appearance had changed considerably between 1973 and 1993, plus he was twenty years older. Looking for a writer/artist type in the Berkshires didn't exactly narrow down the field as that was the look preferred by most of the residents. Heck, even the guy who repaired my boiler looked more like a Russian poet than an HVAC specialist. I mean, he wore a tweed suit to inspect the heating system.
It turns out that Southern helped me find him, mainly as his foot was in the aisle and I tripped over it. Having been raised in the UK, and despite the fact that leaving one's foot protruding into a dark theater aisle is ill-advised, I wound up being the one to apologize to the hefty, hairy, pale gray man who had just tripped me. In the middle of my apology, Michael came forward and said, "Hi, Terry."
Yeah, that figures.
Terry Southern, born in 1924 in Alvarado, Texas [whose tourist website lists only a two-time competitive barbecue champion as a "famous native son"], Southern would be one of those artists who floats through history, interacting in significant ways with a variety of people, from Existentialists in France to the Beats in Greenwich Village to the hippies in California. As the tastes of each decade changed, one could still find Southern creating stories in print and film, proving that the absurdist's world-view is timeless and universal.
After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, Southern used his G.I. Bill to study at the Sorbonne, but mostly to louche away his time in Paris' creative community. He met the familiar characters of the Left Bank such as Sartre, Camus, and Cocteau, and some of the better known members of the expatriate community, too, such as James Baldwin and almost every significant jazz musician of the bebop era, including Charlie Parker, Theolonius Monk, and Miles Davis.
During this period, Southern began to craft short stories that were well-received and published in George Plimpton's Paris Review, a literary magazine that eventually hired Southern to write profiles of trending members of the artistic community. This eventually necessitated a move to New York City, where Southern would louche his way through the well-known jazz clubs of Greenwich Village, becoming a recognized "regular".
While he did not receive the same immediate response to his short stories as he did while an expatriate, he continued to write and gained the support of William Faulkner and Nelson Algren, whose gritty novel The Man With The Golden Arm was a best-seller at the time. Harper's Bazaar, a late, lamented literary magazine, would publish a number of Southern's short stories and bring him to the attention of another generation, this time made up of independent film artists.
After knocking around Europe some more, now with a second wife, Southern began to write novels that were of limited interest to the reading public but of greater interest to so-called "new Hollywood". During the 1960's, the movies Dr. Strangelove, Candy, The Magic Christian, and Easy Rider could all boast of scripts by Terry Southern. In fact, although Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson would all claim that Rider was almost entirely improvised, that was mere ballyhoo in the style of old Hollywood as it now appears that they were following rather closely Southern's dialogue and plot.
In a further homage to old Hollywood, Southern was cheated out of any profits by Fonda and Hopper. Ah, the peace and love era.
By the 1970's, suffering from various illnesses brought on by the excesses of his life, Southern's output dwindled. His last moment of cultural relevance was when he was hired for a year or so as a writer on Saturday Night Live. As he was older than the other writers, and represented a style that was far too bawdy and not too cool for the youngsters, almost all of Southern's ideas were rejected. He stayed on the payroll, though, as he was personal friends with Miles Davis and William Burroughs and managed to talk both of them into performing for the show.
All of this was enough to get Southern featured in the most exclusive club of the 1960's: The cover of The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" album.
By the time I met him, in what would prove to be the final year of his life, he was spending the time on his farm just across the Connecticut border with occasional trips to New York. He did not look well and was distracted by the people around him. He did have one moment of animation, though. I mentioned to him that I had found a copy of his collected early short stories at a nearby used bookstore and had enjoyed them immensely. He smiled and said, "That was the best work that I ever did." He then turned to Michael and said, "Let's illustrate that one, too", to Michael's delight.
Unfortunately, and like so many of the projects in his last decade or so, nothing ever came of it.
An aside: I kept glancing at Southern's female companion that evening as I thought I recognized her from somewhere. After his death, as I read his obituary, I came to realize that she had been an actress in some of the beach and surfing movies of the early 1960's that are among my guilty pleasures.
On his way to teach a script writing class at Columbia in the fall of 1995, Southern would collapse and eventually succumb to a life that was extremely full, if not extremely cautious.
As I had only ever seen one photograph of Southern, and that had been twenty years before, I wasn't exactly sure what he would look like. The standard of personal appearance had changed considerably between 1973 and 1993, plus he was twenty years older. Looking for a writer/artist type in the Berkshires didn't exactly narrow down the field as that was the look preferred by most of the residents. Heck, even the guy who repaired my boiler looked more like a Russian poet than an HVAC specialist. I mean, he wore a tweed suit to inspect the heating system.
It turns out that Southern helped me find him, mainly as his foot was in the aisle and I tripped over it. Having been raised in the UK, and despite the fact that leaving one's foot protruding into a dark theater aisle is ill-advised, I wound up being the one to apologize to the hefty, hairy, pale gray man who had just tripped me. In the middle of my apology, Michael came forward and said, "Hi, Terry."
Yeah, that figures.
Terry Southern, born in 1924 in Alvarado, Texas [whose tourist website lists only a two-time competitive barbecue champion as a "famous native son"], Southern would be one of those artists who floats through history, interacting in significant ways with a variety of people, from Existentialists in France to the Beats in Greenwich Village to the hippies in California. As the tastes of each decade changed, one could still find Southern creating stories in print and film, proving that the absurdist's world-view is timeless and universal.
After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, Southern used his G.I. Bill to study at the Sorbonne, but mostly to louche away his time in Paris' creative community. He met the familiar characters of the Left Bank such as Sartre, Camus, and Cocteau, and some of the better known members of the expatriate community, too, such as James Baldwin and almost every significant jazz musician of the bebop era, including Charlie Parker, Theolonius Monk, and Miles Davis.
During this period, Southern began to craft short stories that were well-received and published in George Plimpton's Paris Review, a literary magazine that eventually hired Southern to write profiles of trending members of the artistic community. This eventually necessitated a move to New York City, where Southern would louche his way through the well-known jazz clubs of Greenwich Village, becoming a recognized "regular".
While he did not receive the same immediate response to his short stories as he did while an expatriate, he continued to write and gained the support of William Faulkner and Nelson Algren, whose gritty novel The Man With The Golden Arm was a best-seller at the time. Harper's Bazaar, a late, lamented literary magazine, would publish a number of Southern's short stories and bring him to the attention of another generation, this time made up of independent film artists.
After knocking around Europe some more, now with a second wife, Southern began to write novels that were of limited interest to the reading public but of greater interest to so-called "new Hollywood". During the 1960's, the movies Dr. Strangelove, Candy, The Magic Christian, and Easy Rider could all boast of scripts by Terry Southern. In fact, although Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson would all claim that Rider was almost entirely improvised, that was mere ballyhoo in the style of old Hollywood as it now appears that they were following rather closely Southern's dialogue and plot.
In a further homage to old Hollywood, Southern was cheated out of any profits by Fonda and Hopper. Ah, the peace and love era.
By the 1970's, suffering from various illnesses brought on by the excesses of his life, Southern's output dwindled. His last moment of cultural relevance was when he was hired for a year or so as a writer on Saturday Night Live. As he was older than the other writers, and represented a style that was far too bawdy and not too cool for the youngsters, almost all of Southern's ideas were rejected. He stayed on the payroll, though, as he was personal friends with Miles Davis and William Burroughs and managed to talk both of them into performing for the show.
All of this was enough to get Southern featured in the most exclusive club of the 1960's: The cover of The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" album.
By the time I met him, in what would prove to be the final year of his life, he was spending the time on his farm just across the Connecticut border with occasional trips to New York. He did not look well and was distracted by the people around him. He did have one moment of animation, though. I mentioned to him that I had found a copy of his collected early short stories at a nearby used bookstore and had enjoyed them immensely. He smiled and said, "That was the best work that I ever did." He then turned to Michael and said, "Let's illustrate that one, too", to Michael's delight.
Unfortunately, and like so many of the projects in his last decade or so, nothing ever came of it.
An aside: I kept glancing at Southern's female companion that evening as I thought I recognized her from somewhere. After his death, as I read his obituary, I came to realize that she had been an actress in some of the beach and surfing movies of the early 1960's that are among my guilty pleasures.
On his way to teach a script writing class at Columbia in the fall of 1995, Southern would collapse and eventually succumb to a life that was extremely full, if not extremely cautious.
I'm a free man. I don't wear anybody's collar. I'm not obliged to smile if I don't want to. That gives me a lot of perverse pride -- I really am a person who could stop doing what I'm doing right now, go off to Ceylon tomorrow and live among the fishermen. I make a living without having a job; I don't cater to anybody. I believe that's the hardest thing to achieve in this world -- any kind of autonomy, any kind of independence, any kind of freedom. So, I'm very, very proud of the fact that I'm an independent.
George Clayton Johnson is not as influential as Bester nor as well-known as Southern, but for a brief period in the mid-century television, he determined just how far our imaginations could be stretched by the developing medium.
Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1929 and dropping out of 8th grade, I'm not sure anyone thought that Johnson would amount to much. Indifferent about a career, after Army service Johnson traveled about working at odd jobs until he began to write stories for early television. After one of his scripts was produced on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Johnson began to receive more and more work until he, despite complete disinterest in such, found himself safely embedded in the middle class.
Since most of his stories could be classified as science fiction, Johnson became a member of the Southern California Writers' School, through which he met television pioneer Rod Serling. Impressed with Johnson's askew narrative vision, in fact inspired by it, Serling hired Johnson to write scripts for his new show, The Twilight Zone. Other shows would hire him as well, as he wrote for Route 66, Honey West, and Star Trek, his script for which would be featured in the first televised episode of what's now a popular culture mainstay.
An aside: He would play bit parts on my favorite childhood TV show, Sea Hunt, from time to time as he was buddies with Lloyd Bridges. How cool is that?
Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1929 and dropping out of 8th grade, I'm not sure anyone thought that Johnson would amount to much. Indifferent about a career, after Army service Johnson traveled about working at odd jobs until he began to write stories for early television. After one of his scripts was produced on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Johnson began to receive more and more work until he, despite complete disinterest in such, found himself safely embedded in the middle class.
Since most of his stories could be classified as science fiction, Johnson became a member of the Southern California Writers' School, through which he met television pioneer Rod Serling. Impressed with Johnson's askew narrative vision, in fact inspired by it, Serling hired Johnson to write scripts for his new show, The Twilight Zone. Other shows would hire him as well, as he wrote for Route 66, Honey West, and Star Trek, his script for which would be featured in the first televised episode of what's now a popular culture mainstay.
An aside: He would play bit parts on my favorite childhood TV show, Sea Hunt, from time to time as he was buddies with Lloyd Bridges. How cool is that?
 |
| Johnson on the right hanging out with some actor whose name I've forgotten. Bob...something? |
Johnson would also write the novels that were adapted into the movies Oceans 11 and Logan's Run. With these stories and others giving him a financial foundation that required little work to maintain, Johnson spent the remaining years of his life with an enviable ease and slowness, mostly spending his energies on working towards the legalization of marijuana in California. While not of a broad influence, he quietly supported up and coming screenwriters, briefly ran a counter-culture coffee house, and exemplified the L.A. brand of literary art for his generation.
That's not enough to get someone a write-up in a glossy magazine, but it is enough to be revered in the quiet world of writers, as is the case with all three of these artists, who through fantasy and imagination transcended common expectations and moved our cultural needle in the direction that has brought us all subsequent prose.
That's not enough to get someone a write-up in a glossy magazine, but it is enough to be revered in the quiet world of writers, as is the case with all three of these artists, who through fantasy and imagination transcended common expectations and moved our cultural needle in the direction that has brought us all subsequent prose.