Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations

On Sep 26, 7:51?pm, "Dr. Rufo" <bay...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
In article <1190849698.105491.55...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Bill Patterson <WHPatter...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There are interesting moral and psychological ambiguities scattered
throughout that period of Heinlein's writing, where the reader is
(gambit) invited to take a position from which you can't really see
and evaluate the whole picture. I think Bill Lermer's relationship
with his father is one of these, even more interestingly pregnant than
this one.

Oh, yes. I reread _Farmer_ recently and the opening couple of
chapters always make my blood boil. George, as he explains
eventually, doesn't want to marry Molly so he can emigrate; he
wants to emigrate because he wants to marry Molly.

Why is that?

Molly was his draftsman. Earth society will see her as the
scheming secretary (all female employees are the equivalent of
mere dumb secretaries) who inveigles till she gets to marry the
boss. So George wants to take Molly to a place where there is
no one who knows she used to be his employee, and, mark you,
where there is no one who knows that he used to be married to
Anne.

Including Bill, whom he does his best to leave behind. If he
could just have left Bill behind on Earth, nobody on Ganymede
would know him and his family as anything but Mr. and Mrs. Lermer
and their daughter; he would have cut himself completely off from
his embarrassing past and everyone connected with it. He is
eventually shamed out of it, or the book would have ended very
quickly.

Thank you, Ma'am, I've never considered the interpretation you've
so ably presented.

If I were Bill, and figured out in time what George was up to, I
would have gone along with it, you bet. I would've stayed on
Earth, letting George shuck me and our whole history together
like a snakeskin, and I would never have communicated with him
again. (George had left Bill all his funds in trust, and couldn't
reclaim them.)

Well now, that wouldn't have fit with Bill's character as elsewhere
displayed in the book. It also ain't "what a Boy Scout would do" and
probably wouldn't have passed muster with being a "Boy's Life"
serialization.

Consider also the last scene of _The Puppet Masters,_ where Sam
explains that he and Mary have left their daughter behind on
Earth with her grandfather "where she'll be safe." Of course,
they're going to have other children on the trip. Meanwhile,
the daughter is only three or four and doesn't understand why her
parents are abandoning her. They don't seem to care, either;
she's just their genetic backup in case they don't come back.

In the original *published* version of PUPPET MASTERS [1951] (which
is included in the SFBC's A HEINLEIN TRIO) there is no child left
behind and the time between the end of the slugs on Earth and the
departure on voyage of revenge seems much shorter.
The abandoned little girl [and a lot of very much "darker" detail]
was in RAH's original version that didn't get published till much later.



Heinlein does seem to have had spells of thinking of one's personal
history, including one's children, as unnecessary ballast to be
jettisoned as needed. Good thing he never had any.

I agree, Ma'am, RAH mentions in at least two instances ("On the
Slopes of Vesuvius" and FRIDAY) that one ought to be prepared to
"abandon all your baggage and run/travel light" in order to survive.
Including a human child in the abandoned baggage is more than a
little insensitive.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"A little insensitive" -- understatement.

The only thing wrong with this analysis is that in going directly from
a character's psychopathology to the author's psychology skips quite a
number of steps of analysis and in this case at least I think has led
to the exact opposite of what's intended in the text.

If George Lermer trying to leave Bill Lermer back on Earth while he
emigrates to Ganymede is seen as a psychopathology -- an inappropriate
attempt to dispose of his son as an "inconvenience" or baggage to be
abandoned -- then that is posed as a _story problem to be overcome_ --
which is, in fact, exactly the structural place it occupies in the
book. The correct inference to be drawn from this is that if that's
actually what's going on in George's mind (and remember, we're looking
at an interpretation here, which is not a statement about the text,
but an extratextual way of organizing the material in the text),
_Heinlein regards it as inappropriate, too._

It's not the story of George's bildung, so we don't get George's
particular pathology dealt with in the narrative, but Bill does seem
to overcome at least some of his own codependency. And,
interestingly, this is another one of those stories like Citizen of
the Galaxy and The Puppet Masters, where the youth's individuation
crisis doesn't have him go off and do his own thing, but instead he
takes on his father's life-task -- which is surely interesting.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... So George wants to take Molly to a place where there is ... Including Bill, whom he does his best to leave behind. ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... The social model Heinlein was using to was the one he grew up with -- ...
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  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... Including Bill, whom he does his best to leave behind. ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... If I were Bill, and figured out in time what George was up to, I ...
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  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... I think Bill Lermer's relationship ... George, as he explains eventually, doesn't want to marry Molly so he can emigrate; ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... parents are abandoning her. ...
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  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
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