The Perfect Host (56 page)

“The Martian and the Moron”:
first published in
Weird Tales
, March 1949.

Sturgeon’s introduction to this story in his collection
Alien Cargo
(1984):
This is one of the first writings after that long period of silence
[1941-46; but there is reason to believe it was witten in 1948].
Oddly enough it comes out as comedy—sheer joyous comedy for itself, with no effort to be metaphor or anything else but itself. The events concerning the cessation of all broadcasts during the near approach of Mars in the ’twenties, did indeed happen; and back in those days of newspaper articles about guys who built crystal sets into peanuts, of 100-foot braided copper antennas enabling you to pick up Chicago all the way from Philadelphia, late at night, of cats-whiskers and variocouplers (anybody out there know what a variocouple is? I mean, was?) back in those days, there was surely more than one
radio buff with flanged-up equipment like that “dad” built in his basement. As for that girl—I think I met that girl one time at a party. Nov shmoz ka pop!

In his 1965 childhood memoir (published in 1993 as
Argyll
), TS describes at some length his youthful passion for building and operating crystal radios. Certain very specific details used in “The Martian and the Moron”—the UX-11 tube and picking up WLS all the way from Chicago and learning later
that I probably yanked it off someone else’s receiver by antenna induction
—also turn up in the autobiographical account. But unlike the Dad in the story, Sturgeon’s stepfather was not a radio bug; in fact in
Argyll
TS tells the story of
getting in bad trouble over one of my radios
. This occurred because he told a local radio station about his clever rig that allowed him to keep his hobby a secret, and the announcer broadcast
the whole story, horsehair antenna and all. Few orgasms in my life have so transported me
. But his joy turned to terror when he realized his parents were listening to the broadcast in the next room. His radio and antenna system and workbench were all taken away from him. The gruff but loving father in “The Martian and the Moron” is strikingly different from the cruel stepfather portrayed in
The Dreaming Jewels
, written later in 1948.

In the David Hartwell interview in 1972 Sturgeon says Cordelia
was drawn largely from life
. The paragraph in this story where the disillusioned narrator says,
I remember wondering smokily whether anyone ever loves another person. People seem to love dreams instead
, reveals that this is another in the long series of stories in which TS tried to
investigate this matter of love
. Indeed, Sturgeon overtly draws a parallel here between the son’s love for the Cordelia he thinks he sees and the father’s love for his amateur science project. In various interviews and speeches Sturgeon has insisted that his study of “love” is not confined to sexual love but includes, for example, a man’s love for a bulldozer.

“Die, Maestro, Die!”:
first published in
Dime Detective
, May 1949. Author’s original title was “Fluke.” We know this because that’s how the story is listed on a handwritten list of “1948 Income” that survives
in Sturgeon’s papers. (This list also provides a basis for guessing at the sequence in which his 1948 stories were written.) The copyright page of
E Pluribus Unicorn
suggests that TS intended to use the original title when the story was included in this collection; one imagines the publisher then talked him out of it (and forgot to correct the copyright page).

Since I have noted that 1947’s “Quietly” foreshadows significant aspects of
More than Human
but not its “homo gestalt” theme, it is noteworthy that “Die, Maestro, Die!” is explicitly focused on the idea (Fluke’s idea) that Lutch Crawford did not die when Fluke drowned his body, because he lived on stubbornly in the musical “unit” of his band. Fluke’s problem is to find out what he can change in order to destroy that seemingly immortal
gestalt
. This is as far as I know the most specific exploration of the “homo gestalt” theme in Sturgeon’s work before he wrote
More than Human
. It is particularly interesting that Sturgeon’s interest in the concept evidently began with his observation of the nature of jazz bands he encountered in the 1940s … because members of the Grateful Dead and the Byrds and other important 1960s rock groups have stated in interviews that the novel
More than Human
and its description of “bleshing” was to them the best and perhaps only description they encountered anywhere of what they were experiencing by working as a musical/creative/social group or unit or entity. “Phil Lesh had read
More than Human
by the time he joined the band that became the Grateful Dead. The book didn’t exactly provide a blueprint for group consciousness, but it suggested to him that the possibility existed. Still, like the characters in the novel, the Grateful Dead didn’t see the extent of their collective potential at first. ‘We didn’t declare it,’ said Lesh in 1983, ‘It declared us.’ ”—David Gans, in
Playing in the Band
(1985)

Among a pile of what Sturgeon called “maunderings” (ruminations on paper in an effort to come up with story ideas) Noël Sturgeon and I found in a cache of her father’s papers in his former home in Woodstock, was a sheet of paper that evidently immediately preceded the writing of “Fluke.” Atop the page is TS’s address (
one seventy three monroe street new york two
) and the date (
April
20, 1948
). Then a heading:
THE BENEKE STORY
. Under that is the following text, broken up into paragraphs as you see here:

Hutch is dead. Shorty Glincka, alto man, picks it up. He had been arranging for Hutch. Hutch’s wife, Fawn, is the thrush. She just soaks in the music from this band, which is kept as close as possible as it always was. Hutch has disappeared; she hangs on to the idea that he might walk in again. and the band has the same idea … there’s one guy who is a great comfort to her—Twill
.

Glincka gets killed by a hit-and-run driver. The orchestra continues to play; hires an arranger. The guy quickly learns to style like Hutch; it becomes obvious that the distinctive tone of the orchestra comes from the instrumentalists. The guitarist gets attacked. That almost kills the orchestra; they get a filler for the spot, though, and go on. Then the trombone loses his lip, literally
.

All through this Twill is holding Fawn’s head
.

Windup: Twill killed Hutch, psychopathically thinks Hutch isn’t dead until he can kill the distinctiveness of the band
.

Mech gimmick: final orchestra performance where Stan’s guitar is standing on his chair. Orchestra plays around his part; on the second chorus the guitar comes in srong and Twill’s reaction gives him away. Recording of selection has been made, and engineer has wiped out all but git part; plays recording thru guitar amplifier
.

Under this is the beginning of another maundering, headed
CAT SKINNER STORY
. So Sturgeon was still in the process of trying to find a story that would “write itself” and be marketable, when he wrote the above. I am certain that what we know as “Die, Maestro, Die!” did indeed write itself once TS decided to use Twill/Fluke as the viewpoint character/narrator, and wrote the opening paragraph.

Sturgeon’s keen interest in progressive jazz orchestras is further demonstrated in a letter he wrote on May 11, 1948, to Stan Kenton (c/o Capitol Records):

Dear Stan Kenton
,

Can you admit honestly that you have made a mistake?

If you can’t, then resign. Resign from your place in my estimation as a phenomenon, as a free man among men chained, as a
synonym for the progressive, the experimental, the singular exponent of new directions
.

In the name of quality, in the name of aesthetic consistency, of truth at its artistic truest—admit that you have been wrong. And then in the name of all the verities, correct your terrible error!

THIS IS MY THEME is a remarkable work. Lyric like that is thirstily needed now, and the music—you know about the music, and why you do music like that. These lyrics suit that music—an astonishing feat in itself. I know of two works which match it—the extraordinary FACADE SUITE of Sitwell and Walton, and THE MEDIUM of Gion-Carlo Menotti
.

The thing that makes murder in THIS IS MY THEME is the rendition of the lyrics by June Christy. Let this not be read as a personal criticism of June Christy or of any of her other work; she has always justified your judgment. But she is completely unsuited to a work of this kind. Had she been confined to a monotone, even, she might have done the trick—that may even have been effective, letting the words, not the diction, carry the message, even as these black and white letters carry my message to you. But the emotion she pretends to put into her recitatif is nothing real; if she feels it, she lacks the ability to transmit or even to transmute harmonically the deep beauty of those flexing, fluxing words. What you have here, then, is an artistic offense far worse than, for example, Freddy Martin’s treatment of Tschaikovsky; for at least Tschaikovsky’s work has fine renditions extant for reference, while your masterpiece has none
.

You will not always be where you are. You will be greater or less great, but only at this period can you reproduce the mood, the music, the instrumentals of your curent organization. You will change, your outfit will change—and suddenly it will be impossible to duplicate the greatness of the almost-great thing you have done
.

Please, then, while you can—re-record THIS IS MY THEME with someone else doing the vocal. There are a thousand known people who could do it adequately—and probably a hundred thousand unknowns, to whom the assignment would be a great chance. That is a side issue, however; the important thing is to put this
astounding work on the plane it deserves. It is being laughed at and ignored—not as were Satie and Ravel and Honegger, for sheer difference, but for its one gaping flaw, a ridiculous incompetence in one component part
.

Do it at any cost, and quickly: “It is later than you think!” and remember—THIS IS MY THEME is greater, far greater, than Stan Kenton, and deserves his best
.

I ardently wish to keep myself from intruding at all in this matter, but I am compelled to say that this is written for no reason at all except my high regard for the high roads of esthetic expression, and my complete disgust with any “almost.” I have no nominations for this new vocal job, and ask only that you talk this thing over with yourself within the framework set forth here
.

Sincerely
,

Theodore Sturgeon

Kenton’s reply to TS begins, “First of all I want you to know that out of all the mail I have received, either praising us or otherwise, I don’t think I have ever received one more sincere than yours. This I appreciate.

“I realize fully and completely my mistake and wish there was some way to un-do it, but it is just not possible. The current recording ban makes recording music of any kind completely out of the question …”

Although it has often been said, by Sturgeon and others, that most of his stories are about love, he has also written a number of major stories that explore the nature of hatred. “Die, Maestro, Die!” is a prime example, as noted by Betty Ballantine (his editor on
More than Human
and several other books) in her appreciation of TS published in
Locus
after his death: “Someone has said, and many have made their own discovery, that Ted always wrote of love. I think also that there was a perverse element in him, drawn to the scarlet thread of tragedy in the human condition, from the haunting quality of ’Bianca’s Hands’ to the pitiless cruelty of ‘Die, Maestro, Die!’ to the grand symphony of human idiocy that he put together to create
More than Human
.” And by Samuel R. Delany, in his Foreword to the second volume of this series: “Dealing with
such an awesome communion [his ongoing ‘syzygy’ theme], Sturgeon might well want to keep himself oriented toward love. It would be rather heady, if not horrifying, to explore that communion without such a fixed point to home on—though a few times Sturgeon has given us a portrait of this communion with the orientation toward hate (‘Die, Maestro, Die!’ and ‘Mr. Costello, Hero’), and these are among his most powerful stories.”

Later in 1948, when Sturgeon began his novel
The Dreaming Jewels
, he would return to the theme of hatred and the graphic image of the chopping off of a person’s fingers.

“The Dark Goddess”:
unpublished until now. This manuscript was among Sturgeon’s papers with a letter dated June 18, 1948 from the Fiction Editor of
Cosmopolitan
Magazine, who says, “Dear Mr. Sturgeon: I very much regret that your manuscript was not one of the twelve winners in the
Cosmopolitan
Dark Goddess short story contest. However, I think you will be pleased to know that it was among the final hundred seriously considered out of almost six thousand which were submitted. We shall be glad to consider any stories which you may write in the future, and want to thank you very much for this excellent attempt.” Together with the ms. and this letter is a photo of the dark goddess figurine as described in the story, so evidently the contest was to write a story inspired by this picture/object.

On the title page, Sturgeon typed: “THE DARK GODDESS by Theodore Sturgeon.” Under this is typed: “Subtitle:… MORE TO A MARRIAGE …”

The author’s own unconventional ideas about marriage are hinted at in a letter he wrote to a lady-friend named Marcia on Dec. 29, 1946:
My wife is with me always, and yet she is known to me by different names. For a long time she wore a garment called Dorothe. My wife, who is always with me, could be touched and spoken with through the garment called Dorothe. My wife was with me in this form for several years, and just as there is change in all things that are truly alive, so there was change in my wife and in Dorothe. For three years or more they changed together, and my wife wore the
garment called Dorothe with grace and distinction. But then Dorothe changed, while my wife followed her own growing, and the garment began to fit badly. Not badly—differently. Dorothe was good and my wife was good but they grew increasingly apart. As a result my wife took off the garment called Dorothe and became invisible. She has been a strange wife to live with since then …