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Fritz Leiber and the allure of the eccentric

Posted in academia, Benjamin Szumskyj, Bruce Byfield, Fritz Leiber, Fritz Leiber: Critical Studies, literary criticism, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, Benjamin Szumskyj emailed that his Fritz Leiber: Critical Studies, was now officially out of print. I turned sombre at the news, because that anthology marked the last remnant of my academic aspirations.

In any number of alternate universes, I am probably teaching English at some university. For years, that was my intention in this one. But finances, family, and a reluctance to work towards a doctorate put an end to those ambitions years ago. I was so disillusioned by academia that I even stopped my critical work on the American fantasist Fritz Leiber and emerged myself in the world of technical writing. All that survived was Witches of the Mind, the revised version of my master’s thesis, selling a few copies every year and being praised by the half dozen other people in the world who were interested in the subject.

Several years later, Szumskyj, then a semi-professional fantasy scholar, contacted me, praising Witches and eager to lure me out of academic retirement. Mostly, I resisted the temptation, but he did manage to coax from me a contribution for Critical Studies, “The Allure of the Eccentric in the Poetry and Fiction of Fritz Leiber.”

The writing of the article was a painful reminder of academic discourse; as Phred Nguyen, the member of the Vietcong in Doonesbury said when hearing Marxist jargon for the first time in a long while, I kept thinking, “Man, I’d forgotten we talk this way.” I enjoyed writing it as a prolonged daydream of what might have been, and I think I managed to say something original, but after it was done, I had no desire to follow up with more articles. Literary analysis was no longer what my life was about.

Still, now that the rights have reverted, I like the idea of giving the article a semi-permanent home. I’m posting it here under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license for any who might be interested in what else I write when I’m not discussing free software. After all, it’s not everyday that you get to read a relic of an alternate universe.

allure-of-the-eccentric-by-bruce-byfield

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Why I don’t belong to a writers’ group

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Personal, Uncategorized, writer's groups, writing, tagged , , , , on February 20, 2014| 2 Comments »

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to write. I took what I thought was a sensible detour and concentrated on teaching for a while, but every career change brought me closer to what I really wanted to do. Today, I make my living writing non-fiction, and I have managed to publish a few poems and stories – although admittedly fewer than I would prefer. However, one thing I have never done is join a writer’s group online or in-person.

I could do so easily enough, if I cared to. A whole industry exists to tell wannabe writers how to write, and many wannabes seem to enjoy hanging out with like-minded people. With a single phone call or email, I could probably wrangle at least an invitation to some sort of writer’s group.

Yet somehow, I never have. Although I have no trouble writing in a crowded coffee shop, for me writing is a solitary activity. By contrast, joining a group is a social activity, and the connection between writing and a writers’ group has never been clear to me. I’m not about to tell somebody else that they shouldn’t join a writers’ group, but the idea simply doesn’t attract me.

I know that I could get plenty of feedback if I did join a group. However, just because someone is a wannabe doesn’t mean that their criticism is worth hearing. The number of people who are useful as first readers is small in any group, and from occasional interactions with wannabes, I see no reason to think they would be an exception.

If anything, I suspect that assorted insecurities would make most members of a writer’s group somewhat worse first readers than the random assortment of friends and relatives I occasionally go to for an opinion now. More often than not, what I would hear is not how to improve a passage, but how the wannabe would write it, and why their suggestion was better than my implementation. If I did find some members of a writers’ group whose opinion was useful to me, I would still have to sit patiently through the criticisms from others that were no help.

More importantly, ever since I encountered a poet’s cafe when I was in high school, I’ve had the shrewd idea that writers’ groups are less about writing than the idea of being a writer. The groups do seem to produce more published writers than any random sampling, but they do appear to be places where people talk about writing more often than they produce a manuscript. Story ideas, hints about finding an agent, overcoming writer’s block, the latest software – the conversation continually circles writing, but only occasionally focuses on it.

Rightly or wrongly, I get the impression that wannabes are unconsciously hoping to find the shortcut that will turn them into writers overnight. Failing that, they want the support of like-minded people to reinforce their fantasy that they are moving closer to becoming writers. Yet at best, having writing ambitions is a hobby that justifies socializing and attending conferences.

This attitude clearly gives them pleasure, and I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong as such with living in the community of wannabe writers. Without any sarcasm, I’m sure that community can be very comforting at times. I just think that the fantasy is always threatening to become more important than having pages to send off for publication

For myself, I don’t have time for most of their activities. I don’t have time to talk about what I’m going to write, because I am too busy researching it, I can’t agonize over writers’ block, because I have deadlines. I suspect, too, that I will learn more about writing analyzing a novel that I admire and trying the techniques I observe that reading yet another article of tips.

Maybe other people have had different experiences of writers’ groups, and find them worthwhile. All I can say is that, for me, they seem too unconnected to writing to be a serious temptation.

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Lifestyle activism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, lifestyle activism, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 28, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Sadly, I’ve come to believe that most groups working for social change are dragged down by those I call lifestyle activists – people who believe the right principles, but who have no belief or interest in the possibility of change. Instead, their main interest is to define themselves and denigrate others by expressing activist beliefs.

For example, I recently read a conversation on Twitter about the shortage of women in technology. One lifestyle activist suggested that the problem was not that women weren’t in the field already. A man with a history of support for women in computing commented, “it’s a little more complicated, isn’t it? It’s systemic. It’s not like we just discard all the women resumes,” and the lifestyle activist accused him of patronizing her. He responded mildly, saying he was trying to understand, and she replied that she wasn’t “someone who gives a fuck about helping you.” After he politely bowed out of the conversation, she continued to make sarcastic comments aimed at what he had said.

It’s not surprising, of course, that an advocate for women in technology should get tired of continually hearing the same questions. Repetition of basic questions is rarely endearing. Nor should she be expected to welcome mansplaining – men telling her what she already knows first hand far better than they should.

Yet, at the same time, from the context, the man was obviously an ally. If he asked questions that were too common, he seemed open enough that – unlike most men with similar questions – he could probably be taught something. However, instead of taking the chance to educate him, the lifestyle activist leaped to the conclusion that he was as clueless as other men she had encountered and attacked him.

Not being a total stranger to activism myself, I’m tempted to ask the lifestyle activist what she expects. If you take positions that are outside the social norm, you shouldn’t exactly be shocked that people want to talk about them. You need to set borders so that you don’t spend more time answering questions than you care to and you may grumble in private about ignorant questions and even more ignorant outsiders – but the one thing you should never do is forget that, for other people, when you speak you represent your cause. If you are rude, what outsiders will remember is not that you personaly were rude, but that people who support your cause in general are rude. Those who want to help bring about change can never afford to forget the fact that, by being an activist, you invite others to view you as a teacher.

Sadly, though, the woman in this example was not motivated by any such understanding. Instead, the tenets of feminism were weapons for her personal use. She used them to lash out at a stranger in revenge for past encounters with others. If the idea that she might be hurting her own cause occurred to her, it had no visible effect on her behavior. Her reaction was so far beyond anything justified by the exchange that it looks like nothing except an expression of ego. If the man or anyone reading the exchange didn’t become hostile to feminism in technology, the reason has more to do with them than with her.

This kind of lifestyle activism is not new. George Orwell noted in the 1930s and 1940s that the English left had been out of power so long that most of its members were incapable of suggesting responsible policy alternatives. All they could do was condemn existing policies and reinforce their identity as leftists. You can can see the same sort of reaction today on the left, or in environmentalism or any other cause intended to create change.

Lifestyle activism is so prevalent that I think it explains why society as a whole is so slow to change. Too many of those who appear to be working for change are really busy feeling good about themselves at the expense of their alleged causes.

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Waltzing with Bears

Posted in "Waltzing with Bears", Bruce Byfield, Mythcon, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Four notes of “Waltzing with Bears,” and I’m there, hearing the song for the first time as it echoes through the middle of the night in the atrium of the Clark Kerr Conference Center at the University at Berkeley, with a couple of dozen people in every costume imaginable singing the chorus as they do their best to waltz.

The occasion was Mythcon XIX. I was in graduate school, with a travel grant to deliver a paper that would eventually become the first chapter of my thesis. Trish and I were staying at Greyhaven, where, Paul Edwin Zimmer had told us, we could stay in the dojo with six witches from Denver. His promise sounded like the start of a dirty joke, but it was true – although he hadn’t mentioned that the witches’ harps would be taking up most of the space.

We were so excited that we could almost have flown south without the aid of Cathay Pacific. About mid-afternoon, we pulled up in a taxi in front of Greyhaven, that famous center for fantasy writers, pagans, poets, Renaissance dancers, the Society for Creative Anachronism hanger-on. “It looks just like the cover,” Trish said of the house, referring to the Greyhaven anthology that had been published a few years back. As the taxi pulled away, I got the anthology out of my bag to confirm the fact.

My first impression was of a house that was semi-dark, piled high with books, and full of people coming and going. Paul, we were told, was not awake yet, being nocturnal, but I soon got lost in the bewildering array of introductions. Somehow, we ended up on the second floor’s porch, talking with Kelson as he build a cardboard boat for a play that would be performed at the conference. When we left, Vancouver had been enduring a hot spell, so we remarked at the pleasant coolness on the porch, although I don’t think Kelson quite believed us.

We felt a little out of depth, since we were meeting many people for the first time. However, Paul rose early to greet us – something that rarely happened – and soon we were off on a conversation that raced back and forth like a terrier out for a walk in the park, and back on familiar ground.

That night, the house held a party. The party marked the opening of Mythcon, but we were made so welcome that it almost felt like a celebration in our honor. Here were all these brilliant people, some of them famous in their own circles, like Vampyre Mike Kassel the poet and Brother Charles (aka The Mad Monk), and we were accepted as belonging to the crowd. It was people-watching on a scale that I had rarely managed before, and I was ready to make the most of it, brachiating from conversation to conversation like an orangutan. I hadn’t been so over-excited since I was a boy.

Mind you, I did worry a bit when an earnest-looking young Unitarian minister and his wife latched on to us, apparently as the most normal-looking people at the party. We weren’t used to thinking of ourselves that way, and the impression made me feel for a moment that our welcome was tentative. But I laughed off the feeling, and the party continued, with more people drunk on words than what was in their glasses.

We spent the next day exploring Telegraph Avenue, and in the evening walked up to the conference center for the official start of Mythcon. It felt like a more subdued version of the previous night, as we worried with Ursula K. Le Guin about our mutual friend Avram Davidson and met Mythies like Sherwood Smith and David Bratman for the first time. We felt so much at home, that somewhere in the evening I found myself volunteering to help with next year’s Mythcon, which was being held in Vancouver.

The next two days were given over to the scholarly papers. I attended some, but what I remember most were the endless conversations and the unofficial events, like the performers doing a dance based on Le Guin’s Always Coming Home, the play based on Diane Paxson’s Westria series in which Kelson and his cardboard boat appeared, and Don Studebaker appearing in his role as Mark Twain in an expensive-looking ice-cream suit and extemporizing answers to questions from the audience.

Most of all, I remember the bardic circles. These were parties where each person took a turn performing or reciting a song or poem, asked someone else to perform, or passed. Presided over by Paul Zimmer in full Scottish regalia, the circles were even more magical than the rest of the conference, going on until three or four in the morning, when we would stagger down the street to Greyhaven and collapse down in the dojo.

I believe it was the second night that the semi-professional singers joined the circle. A man and a woman, they were in High Renaissance costume, each carrying an outsized balalaika. They seemed much more accomplished than the rest of us, and I could see Paul worrying that they might discourage members of the circle who were shy.

Cunningly, Paul started the circle so that the turn of the professionals would come mid-way around, an hour or two into the first round. As they started, I had a momentary fear that would try to dominate, but instead they started playing “Waltzing with Bears,” making waltz-like motions and dipping cautiously as they tried to reconcile dancing with protecting their instruments.

Maybe it was the instruments that got to everyone. Or maybe it was the echoes in the atrium or the contrast between their bright costumes and the dark just beyond the windows, or all these things at once. But whatever the reason, Paul and a few others started dancing to the music as well.

At the end, everyone cheered and applauded, and asked to hear the song again. This time, almost all of us got up, some in suits and ties, others in cutoffs or Medieval or Regency costume. Everyone was laughing. I’m not sure that we didn’t hear the song three times, but before the second performance was halfway through, I doubt anyone was in a condition to count.

After a break, the circle continued another couple of hours. Nothing quite equaled “Waltzing with Bears,” but the members of the circle were mellow after the performance, gradually running out of energy close to sunrise. I think we got three hours of sleep that night, which made the trip home something of a challenge. But the feeling that we had participated in a golden moment lingered for another couple of days, and I have never quite forgotten the moment ever since.

I’ve seen my share of trauma and pain, but my memory of that performance reminds me that the wonderful and the unexpected have happened to me, too. At times, I even look at one of the many Youtube renderings of the song, wondering if it was really written by Dr. Seuss, as sometimes claimed. But after listening to the song, I turn quiet, knowing that the people who made the memory are dispersed or dead, and that I will never have another chance to go waltzing with bears.

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Why “aborigine” is a racist term

Posted in aborigines, Bruce Byfield, connotations, first nations, indians, Personal, racism, racism epithets, Romans, Uncategorized, Virgil, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I once heard someone claim that “aborigine” was a racist term for First Nations people. By analogy to “abnormal,” he interpreted “aborigine” to mean “not of the same origins,” and refused to believe me when I said it was simply Latin for “from the beginning” – that is people who have always lived in a land. However, after doing a little digging, I believe that he may have been right for the wrong reason.

I had always assumed that “aborigine” was a word coined by the builders of the 19th Century European empires. Recently, however, I found that the word was used by the Romans themselves since at least the start of the common era.

The best known use of the word is by Virgil in the Aeneid to refer to the original inhabitants of Italy. As you may know, the Aeneid gives Rome’s ruling class a heroic ancestry, making them the descendants of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who fled the sack of Troy by the Greeks and lengthy wanderings and adventures, settled in Italy. The Aborigines were the local people Aeneas found there, fought with, and eventually dispossessed.

Besides this myth of origins, “aborigine” also seems to have used outside of literature to refer to the city states and cultures around Rome that were conquered during republican times. Eventually, these cultures would absorb Roman culture and receive full rights as citizens, but as late as the last days of the republic, they were considered not quite as good as those born Roman. For instance, the lawyer and orator Cicero may have been a senator and even served in the highest offices of the government, but he was always known as a New Man, meaning someone not born in Rome, or with any pretense to nobility.

In both these useages, the innocuous-sounding word takes on a more unpleasant connotation. In both Roman literature and history, “aborigine” did not refer only to the first people who lived in a country. More specifically, it was a word applied to those conquered by the Romans.

When the word was revived in the days of European imperialism, anyone with even a few years of education was likely to have studied Latin, so this connotation would hardly have been missed. In using the word, the Europeans were comparing themselves to Rome, and the peoples of North America and Australia to those conquered by the Romans. If any were not conquered, they were eventually destined to be. Such a designation for other people is hardly unusual – after all, “Wales,” the English name for Cymru, originated in the Old English word “wealh,” meaning “slave.”

The word is inaccurate, of course. Especially in British Columbia, the First Nations were never conquered, instead being decimated eight or nine times over by disease until they could no longer resist Europeans settling in their lands. This fact remains a basic premise in dozens of lands claims.

However,even more importantly, the word implies that the First Nations are inferior. At the very least, it suggests that they are unfit to govern themselves, and should be controlled by others. As a racial epithet, it might be slightly better than “nigger,” but only because few people today are familiar with Latin, making the insult less obvious.

Still, the insult exists even if largely unknown. I strongly suggest that people banish “aborigine” from their vocabulary except when explaining the connotations, and use “First Nations,” as most of the people denoted prefer. Describing them as aborigines is no more accurate than calling them Indians – and even more insulting.

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Aggressive panhandling

Posted in begging, Bruce Byfield, homelessness, panhandling, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , on December 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

When the homeless ask for spare change, I generally give what I have. The fact that some of them are undoubtedly going to use my contribution to buy their drug of choice fails to bother me – I figure it’s none of my business, and I can’t be sure that in their position I wouldn’t buy a few hours of escape myself. But every now and then, I meet a panhandler who pushes hard, demanding more than I am willing or able to give.

It’s not that I imagine that parting with a dollar or two gives me any right to gratitude. They are probably frustrated by having dozens of passersby ignore them. Nor am I to blame if they conclude from my blandly wholesome face that I am an easy mark. But when someone pushes me, I turn stubborn.

Usually, the result is only being sworn at and maybe followed a few steps. Occasionally, though, I meet a panhandler whose stubbornness matches my own.

Once, for example, I was walking from the Chinatown-Stadium Skytrain station to Yaletown when a man approached me saying that he needed money for a bus ticket to Whistler. The bus was leaving in twenty minutes from in front of the Hotel Vancouver, he said.
I suspected he was lying – the excuse is a common one, and I happened to have looked up the bus schedule a few days previously. Yet I gave him a few dollars. It wasn’t enough for a bus ticket, but the deadline was a new twist, and I thought he deserved the handout for his creativity.

Immediately, though, he started demanding more. I said (truthfully) that I had no spare change or bills until I went to the bank. He then said he would accompany me to the bank, and started to walk along with me, alternately telling me long, rambling stories about his life and repeating his request for more money and cursing the selfishness of rich people like me who wouldn’t help him. My repeated insistence that he was not getting more from me apparently went unheard.

The time was early afternoon, but it occurred to me that an attempted mugging was a possibility. I made sure that he was never behind me, and kept walking at a steady pace, determined not to appear nervous or afraid, either of which might provoke an account.
At the bank, the security guards let me in, but not him. He backed away, yelling that I had promised him money, and I joined a long and slow-moving line of customers, even though I had no account at the bank. When he finally gave up, I left the line and got my money from the bank machine.

On Christmas Day, I met another persistent panhandler while waiting for the bus in from of The Bay downtown. I was sitting on the bench at 9:30 in the morning when a passing woman seemed to size me up in passing and return to sit beside me.

With a Quebecois accent, she poured out a series of reasons for needing money. She needed to get breakfast, she told me. She had two kids in a car a few blocks away who needed to eat. She wanted money to stay at a shelter. In a similar rush of contradictions, she said that she was a good girl, that she didn’t do drugs, that she needed the money to get to an addict support meeting.

I gave her what change I had. It was less than she said she needed, and she insisted I must have more money in my wallet. I said she could easily find the rest, and she insisted that the locals were not so generous. She suggested going to a bank machine, and I refused, pointing out that I was waiting for a bus. She said that the Virgin Mary had told her that I would be the person who helped her, and that if I bought a lottery ticket that day, I would surely win.

Over and over, I told her that she had had all that I was prepared to give. Over and over, she changed her story, as though a new one might make me change my mind.

Before very long in this development, others waiting for the bus had moved away – although not so far that they were unable to hear. I was starting to think that only boarding my bus would let me escape, when she abruptly gave up and stalked down the street, obviously furious.

Such encounters disturb me. I am reluctant to ignore those begging on the street, yet, at the same time, I dislike being pressured into doing something, or to be thought gullible. Usually, I spend several hours after them wondering if I have been arrogant or handled the situation well. Sometimes, I wonder if I should have been afraid rather than annoyed.

But I see no way of solving the dilemma to anyone’s satisfaction, so it is sure to happen again – most likely when I am tired or distracted and want nothing better than to be left alone and not to see such social problems first-hand.

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Deciding what to write about

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on December 5, 2013| 1 Comment »

Every now and then, someone takes a harsh view of my journalism – not my how-tos and reviews so much as my commentary. From some people’s perspectives, I am trolling, trying to deliberately create controversy, specifically in the hopes of getting more page hits on my articles. I never quite know how to answer such attacks, because they are so far from what actually happens that I doubt they would believe my explanations could possibly be true.

However, if I did try to explain, I would have to start with the fact that I am a writer, not an editor. Unlike an editor, I hardly think about page hits. Page hits may affect whether a given website continues to buy my articles, and occasionally an editor will veto a suggested topic on the grounds that it has never done well, but otherwise? Planning writing around page hits sounds all too likely to mean writing about topics that don’t particularly interest me, or about which I have nothing original to say. If I wanted to write that way, I would go back to writing technical manuals, which not only pays more, but also pays more regularly.

My first consideration when choosing a topic is whether I can write about it while it is still timely. Online articles are rarely current for more than a few days, and sometimes my other obligations or the complexity of what I would like to say mean that I have no time to do a particular topic. justice, even if it interests me. Rather than do a superficial job, in these situations I prefer to ignore a topic altogether.

However, for me, the biggest perq of journalism is that I get to write about what interests me, restricted only by the need for editorial approval. When I am generating topics, what I think about is: Am I interested enough in this topic to spend the hours that the story takes to write? Are the facts interesting and important to readers? Do I have any perspectives that are different enough from those of the half dozen or so others who might write on this topic that I can contribute something original to the discussion?

Unless I can answer all these questions with “Yes,” I usually avoid a story – which is why I only occasionally write about breaking news. (Well, that and the fact that living on the Pacific coast means that by the time I log on in the morning, writers living on the east coast have probably already filed their stories). I figure that a story that will bore me will probably bore a lot of readers as well, and fortunately most editors regard me as more than a reporter on the beat. Most of the time, most editors will trust my judgment on whether a story is worth writing.

Perhaps I should be flattered that my detractors think of me as a sort of Professor Moriarty of journalism, constantly engaged in manipulations of everyone around me in the fulfillment of some obscure but diabolical agenda. But honestly? I lack both the energy and inclination for the requisite plotting.

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Charles Edenshaw, Bill Reid, and the Northwest Coast Revival

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, art exhibits, Bill Reid, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Charles Edenshaw, Dogfish Woman, First Nations art, indian art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Charles Edenshaw exhibit currently at the Vancouver Art Gallery is a rare opportunity to understand not only one of Canada’s greatest artists, but also his influence. The odds are against these two hundred pieces being shown together again any time soon, but, while they are together, they allow visitors to observe the elements of Edenshaw’s style, such as his growing awareness of negative space as part of the design. Just as importantly, the exhibit shows the importance of Edenshaw in the development of not only Bill Reid, but of the entire revival of Northwest Coast Art in the last sixty-five years.

This is an outcome that Charlie Edenshaw (as he was known during his lifetime until a more formal version of his name started being used as a sign of respect) could hardly imagine. We know little of his inner thoughts, but, as he started his day’s work with a prayer, preparing to hunch for hours over his latest work, he seems to have had little concern beyond making a living for his family. In fact, he once said that he was so tired of carving that in his next life he planned to avoid it altogether. When a descendant was one of the few of his generation not to experiment with art, he was widely believed to be Edenshaw’s reincarnation.

Bill Reid never hid the debt he owed to Edenshaw. I suspect, for example, that Reid’s love of deep carving may have come from seeing Edenshaw’s argillite carving, whose cutbacks are so deep that you can often stand to one side and see daylight on the other side. If you are know Reid’s work, you cannot spend ten minutes at the Edenshaw exhibit without being haunted by a sense of familiarity. Reid was not being the least bit humble in his comments about Edenshaw; he was only stating the truth about his own development.

Two exhibits make that influence especially clear. Near the start of the exhibit is Edenshaw’s famous sketch of Dogfish Woman – done, if I remember correctly, at the request of anthropologist Franz Boas. Although acknowledging that we no longer know the story of Dogfish Woman, Reid adapted the design many times in his career. Not only that, but dozens of other First Nations artists, both Haida and non-Haida, have copied the same basic pose and design in the last half century.

The second exhibit is in a display case of bracelets near the end of the exhibit. In the middle of the case are two bracelets, one by Edenshaw and one done by Reid in 1956. They are supposed to be of two different animals, but the use of negative space and even most of the features are identical – and Edenshaw’s has the strongest sense of line. Early in his career, Reid clearly not only studied Edenshaw, but, as developing artists often do, copied him almost exactly – just as dozens have studied and copied Reid since. The next time I go to the exhibit (which is so overwhelming as to be impossible to comprehend in a single visit), I mean to watch for other evidence of the influence.

Besides an appreciation for Edenshaw’s work by itself, the exhibit is important for understanding modern Northwest Coast Art. I do not think that I am detracting anything from Reid’s reputation to notice such signs of influence; one reason that Reid is so fascinating as an artist is that he began as a copyist, and the depths of his talent only blossomed fully thirty years later, in the last two decades of his life. To see what Reid owes to Edenshaw does nothing except to offer more insight into the process of his development.

Just as importantly, as a key figure in the Northwest Coast revival, Reid himself continues to influence dozens – possibly hundreds – of artists. Considering his debt to Edenshaw, it would not be too much to say that, without Edenshaw, the revival either would have been stunted, or else not happened at all.

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The artisianal pride of typography

Posted in art, Bruce Byfield, craft, design, Personal, typography, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 1, 2013| 2 Comments »

When someone suggests that design doesn’t matter, I like to mention Jan Tschichold, whose ideas help to create modern typography and were considered so subversive that Nazi Germany gave him the choice of exile or imprisonment. I can’t say that typography was quite so important in my own life, but there was a period when it helped to keep me sane.

At the time, I was working as a technical writer, having realized that the reduction in tenured positions made academia a dead end. Technical writing was far more lucrative than teaching, and it taught me the importance of organization and brevity, but it was far from challenging. In six months, I had gone from a beginner to hiring my own sub-contractors, and I was looking for the next step.

I branched out into marketing, which quickly lead me to graphic design. I soon realized that typography was a craft in itself that most designers knew little about, and, the more I studied, the more fascinated I became.

Part of the appeal was the esoterica. To appreciate typography, you have to learn about ascenders and descenders, bowls and leading and all the details that most people see without observing. Moreover, the roots of typography were in the early Renaissance, although the modern concepts of design were less than a century old. If you had any hope of understanding what typography was about, you had to train your eye by absorbing obscure concepts that most people never even guessed existed.

Yet paradoxically – and contrary to what many believe – the point of typography is not to call attention to itself. In fact, design that called attention to itself can be called a failure by definition. The point of typography is to enhance the content, to make it more legible and, present it appropriately. Such goals are so contrary to those of our post-modern age that they seemed to me an example of art for art’s sake. After all, why else would someone labor over a design that, if successful, would affect people’s experience with only a handful ever appreciating what it accomplished? Such attitudes immediately commanded my respect. I wanted to understand what successful design was about.

Also, I soon realized that my growing obsession had a practical side. If I could design as well as write, I would become highly employable. I could market myself as an all-in-one service, combining writing, design, and project manager in a way that no one else was doing. Even more importantly, I would have enough variety in my work that I would rarely be bored.

It became common place for clients to tell me that they wanted accurate manuals, not pretty designs. Often, I was cleaning up after writers who thought the ability to put words on paper was all they needed, so the last thing clients wanted was someone else giving themselves airs. I did my best to deliver the hands-on accuracy that other writers avoided – but, for my own sake, I also gave clients well-designed manuals and help files without saying anything.

To my satisfaction, almost every client as they signed off would say some variation of, “I know I said I didn’t care about design – but damn, that design is something else.” I enjoyed giving them a little extra, and proving that accurate content and quality design were not polar opposites. To this day, I can look at my work from that period with artesianal pride at a job well-done.

Soon, however, my restlessness led me to management and finally to journalism. Both were satisfying in themselves, but neither gave much scope for design.

However, in the last few months, I’ve returned to typography, designing the book I’m writing and even designing templates for a client. I’ve probably forgotten more than I ever knew, and I never was more than an apprentice in the craft, but I find the work as satisfying as ever. As far as I’m concerned, combining writing with design is the closest I’m likely to come to what Bill Reid used to describe as “the well-made object”– a tiny piece of art in which I can demonstrate all my knowledge in every aspect of it.

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Returning to Billy Bishop Goes to War

Posted in Billy Bishop, Billy Bishop Goes to, Bruce Byfield, Canada, Canadian Nationalism, Eric Peterson, John Gray, Personal, Remembrance Day, Uncategorized, World War One, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Around Remembrance Day, I always make a point of listening to the orginal cast recording of Billy Bishop Goes to War. It’s a suitable observance, because I know of no other piece of writing that covers so many different reactions to combat.

If you’re not Canadian, you’ve probably never heard of Billy Bishop Goes to War, but it’s one of the most-performed Canadian plays of the last forty years. Originally written and performed in 1978 by John Gray and Eric Peterson, it’s a one man show (or one plus a piano player) about how William Avery Bishop from the small town of Owen Sound, Ontario went from being a perennial screwup to one of the leading flying aces in World War One. Revised several times since its first performance, the play draws heavily on Bishop’s own autobiography, as well as many of the jokes and traditions of the war. During the course of the play, the actor playing Bishop also plays over a dozen other characters, ranging from a female torch singer and a drunken cavalry officer in a bar to Alderman Lady St. Helier and George V, usually with a minimum of props, making the role unusually demanding.

The main character and setting are especially suitable for an exploration of Canadian nationalism. To several generations of Canadians, World War One was the moment when Canada established its own identity, as its recruits on the ground soon proved among the most effective of the Commonwealth troops, rivaled only by the Australians. Its fighter pilots were equally effective, with more Allied aces coming from Canada than any other country. In some places, the play celebrates this fact, with the peak of Bishop’s success being that “nobody asks me where I’m from / They’re happy for the men I’ve killed.”

However, what makes the play so effective is that, while it sets off to explore the subject of war, it never takes sides. Instead, it sets out to express all the various emotions with which soldiers face combat, beginning with the naivety of the new recruits suggested by the title, and moving quickly through disillusionment to the mixed pride and misgivings about becoming a survivor and a hero, and, finally, a has-been not much different from the clueless superior officers that the main character once despised.

Even the glory is qualified. True, at the height of his success, Bishop may crow, “Number One is a hero / Number One’s the hottest thing in town” as he is feted by London society. But the play undercuts such celebrations with other moments in which Bishop admits that he is “scared shitless.” Similarly, while Bishop sings about aerial combat being like a meeting of chivalric knights, he also mentions chilling moments when the death of an enemy unnerves him.

Nor, as he becomes famous, is he ever far away from the knowledge that the reward of winning a dogfight is only to “get a little older” – to push aside the inevitability of death for a short time before he faces it again. He is always facing the paradoxes that “the only way to learn survival is to survive” and that most of the emotions with which soldiers face war – religion, cowardice, hate – do nothing to help survival and may, in fact, prevent it. Instead, the key is a dehumanizing detachment, a cold determination to take whatever advantage available that Bishop is proud of at the same time as realizes that his fiancée at home would hardly understand it.

As with the individual, so with the big picture. The celebration of the king awarding him three medals on the same day is undercut by “The Empire Soirée,” which hints at the coming collapse of the British Empire. “The birth and death of nations, of civilizations / Can be viewed down the barrel of the gun,” the song suggests, and everyone is helpless to break the pattern: “All you and I can do is put on our dancing shoes / And wait for the next one to begin.”

In the play’s last moments, the story leaps forward twenty years to Bishop as a recruiter in World War Two, faintly surprised that the War to End Wars has been followed by another one. “But I guess we’re none of us in control of all of this,” he mutters into his drink, and the only summary he can muster is, “looking back, all I can say is that it was one hell of a time.”

In the introduction to the published version of the play, Gray suggests that this ambiguity is, in itself, typically Canadian. He talks about the bemusement of American audiences who expected the play to be either definitely pro or anti war, adding that as a Canadian who tends to gets lost in the complexities, such attitudes confound him.

That may be so, and as a Canadian, maybe I share Gray’s attitude. But what American audiences might find puzzling, I find a virtue. I am far more likely to fall into the anti-war camp than the pro one, but what I appreciate is that Billy Bishop cheats neither. Sentiments on both sides are taken into account, and, although no conclusions are reached, the result seems to me the kind of truth that is rarely expressed. It may not be a conclusion that is intellectually satisfying, but it seems accurate in a way that most literature about war fails to manage. The fact that it manages to do so with broad swipes of humor while being perennially popular only makes the play that much more of an accomplishment.

At a time when Remembrance Day is used by some to drum up support for military adventures on the one hand and for demands for peace on the other hand, I can appreciate a piece that does justice to all perspectives on war. If Remembrance Day is supposed to be a time for looking back at what soldiers have done and acknowledging what they still do, I find it only fitting that I try to do so with some accuracy – and Billy Bishop Goes to War helps me to do that.

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