Author Archives: Hal

Minkin, Playing with Money

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Back to Gumperstown. The bank. “What’s my balance? I think I’m overdrawn.” Foxes to the right of him, foxes to the left of him. Goddamn branch hires tellers the way restaurants hire waitresses. Sell some tit with the sausages to stimulate appetites, better tips, return trade. But a bank?

“You’re not OD’d.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You’re not overdrawn. This is your balance.” She passed him a slip of paper that read $126.23.

“Absolutely ridiculous, madam. I haven’t had that much in there in months. Why do I give you my money to play with?”

Lexicon. I usually rephrase as, “Why do I let you people play with my money?”

From Stephen Minkin’s excellent 1979 novel about play (“Ludics”), and Northern California in the late ‘70s, A No Doubt Mad Idea.

Heinlein, Class on Orders

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“One of the more interesting and thought-provoking courses given at the Academy was the class in writing orders—the most useful English Department course Heinlein ever got. Each midshipman was given a tactical situation for which he had to write an operations order. Then everyone in the class would pick it apart, trying to find a way to misunderstand the order. This process was called “Major-Browning,” after an officer in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War staff, whose sole duty was to misunderstand Grant’s orders. If the order got by Major Brown, Grant okayed it for release. At Annapolis, the Major-Brown test was pass-fail: if anyone could colorably misunderstand the order, the midshipman got a zero mark for the day. This process, with its panic-making incentive, “gave me a life-time respect for exact meaning of words and clarity of construction of sentences.””

— William Patterson, In Dialogue With His Century, Chapter 6

(This has got to be in one of Heinlein’s novels, because I knew this story long before I ever read Patterson. I just can’t remember which one. Comment below — preferably with a citation — if you know which one.)

Waldrop, Alternate Titles

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“Friends who know me get real tired of hearing me talk about the stories I’m going to write. And what they hear me call them are usually not the titles you know them by.”

“Like, “The Ugly Chickens” was referred to as “the dodo story.” “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll” was variously called “the doo-wop story” or “the piss-drinking story.” “I’m going to write a doo-wop story,” I would say. “Ike at the Mike,” on the other hand, was always called “Ike at the Mike.” “The alternate-Africa story” meant “The Lions Are Asleep This Night.””

“In my imagination, “What Makes Heironymous Run?” was always “the painter story,” and that’s what it says on the working title of the file folder with the research in it. (The research consisted mostly of looking at about 2000 Renaissance paintings until my eyeballs melted like lumps of Crisco in a skillet.)”

Howard Walrop
Introduction to “What Makes Heironymous Run?”
All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past

Lexicon, to a degree. “You know… The Africa story.”

NB: Yes, I know Bosch spelled his name Hieronymous. But in Strange Monsters, Waldrop spelled it Heironymous. Vast, multitudes, etc.

Vassar Miller, “Modesty”

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Sweating a little, like a dewy apple,
As round and rosy, always a shade disheveled,
Of whom one thinks, “There goes somebody pleasant,
Not beautiful, of course, but with an air
Like a small tune half-forgotten.”
                                                   A little
Lovelier than beauty, your face revealed
Or hid the sun for me — though now no face 
Does that — only the opening or closing 
Of my own eyes — still if I were to see you
Passing alone the street, I would come stand
Before you, arms hung limply at my sides
To say, “I love you, but it doesn’t matter.”

— Vassar Miller

Austen, Company

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“My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

“You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company; that is the best. Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.”

Jane Austen, Persuasion