Going Home Again by
Howard Waldrop
hbk out September 98
Published by St Martin's
(American edition - $20.95)
Howard Waldrop deserves to be famous. He should outsell Clancy and Grisham, his books should be stacked in big pyramidal displays in the front window of every bookstore, and Oprah should be flashing his
dust jacket for her slavering hordes to rush out and buy.
Do I like Howard Waldrop? Oh, yeah. I want to be Howard Waldrop when I grow up. Every kid should. The trouble is - as Waldrop bitterly points out in the introduction to his new story collection - the pay really sucks.
Waldrop is one of a kind. He publishes in science fiction and fantasy magazines (and wins lots of genre awards), but you'd be hard-pressed to find a less conventional genre writer. Waldrop's speciality, and what defines and confines him within SF circles, is the alternate history tale: stories of what-if, in which historical events and personages are tweaked and twitched ever so slightly just to see what comes out the other end. Lots of people write alternate
histories - it's become something of a sub-genre of its own but none do them as inventively or as cleverly as Waldrop (only Kim Newman, who mines similarly territory in his short stories, comes close). Others are more commercially successful at it, but that's because they tend to take an obvious approach to the material. Waldrop's angle is eternally, even perversely oblique. As he points out in the
afterword to "The Effects of Alienation": 'Most writers, when they write alternate-Nazi stories...do it to find out what would happen, to say, the U.S., the world, great historical figures. I wrote this to find out what effect Hitler winning World War II would have had on Peter Lorre.'
Therein you have Howard Waldrop in a nutshell.
In fact, "The Effects of Alienation " is a wonderful story, albeit one which is hard to fully appreciate if you don't know your Bertolt Brecht, Peter Lorre and Three Stooges, among other things. Which demonstrates both the fascination and weakness of Waldrop's approach to writing. All his stories are so steeped in detail and research, and display a richness of knowledge about the times and people he writes of, that few readers will be able to understand all his references. And occasionally a story will depend too much on those references at the expense of accessibility and storytelling. So that "Household Words; Or, The Powers-That- Be," detailing the experiences of an alternate Charles Dickens, simply escaped me - I'm not sufficiently well-versed in Dickens to get enough of the jokes and the story lacks weight without that understanding.
On the other hand, at his best Waldrop crafts his stories with such skill that even if you can't get all the references, the tales retain an unusual richness. I know nothing about Thomas Wolfe and only a little of Fats Waller, but found "You Could Go Home Again," in which Wolfe (who hasn't died when he did in our own time line) encounters Waller on a 1940 airship journey from Japan to Europe, both moving
and provocative. The characters have real life to them and the world constructed for them is utterly convincing. Reading it made me want to go pick up some Wolfe, which is more than any English Lit class
has ever done. Similarly, "El Castillo de la Perseverancia," about Mexican wrestlers fighting the forces of darkness, is a jokey affair which shouldn't succeed at all, but Waldrop makes it work magically.
He has a delicate touch for characterization and a near-perfect ear for dialogue - even when mouthed by the most absurd of characters.
Having raved so extravagantly about Waldrop at the start of this piece, I must admit that as good as GOING HOME AGAIN is, it is not his best collection. There is no single story here as brilliant as "The Ugly Chickens" from HOWARD WHO?, or "Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance?" from NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, but there is still plenty of good reading. "The Sawing Boys," a retelling of the fairy tale "The
Brementown Musicians," is just shy of great, and "Why Did?" is unforgettably puzzling. Only "Scientifiction" didn't work at all for me, and "Occam's Ducks" steps over the line into too much obscurity. Waldrop's aforementioned introduction to the book is a very instructive guide to the twisted world of writing and publishing, and Waldrop's afterwords to each story are little treasures to be
savoured.
In an alternate, Howard Waldrop world - which is to say, in a better world - every home would have a shelf filled with Waldrop titles. Why not make this world that world?
(
Jay Russell
- one of the greatest talents the horror industry has produced for some time… (Black Tears))
Going Home Again by
Howard Waldrop