Who Made Stevie Crye? (34 page)
Read Who Made Stevie Crye? Online
Authors: Michael Bishop
Tags: #Fiction, #science fiction, #General
In searching out a few online reviews of
Who Made Stevie Crye?
, I came across one that gave the novel its due for a high degree of creepiness, but that also said it felt too long for its substance. (I paraphrase to avoid using this writer’s plainspoken pan, “it dragged in the middle.”) Okay, fair enough, even if David Pringle listed the novel in
Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels, an English Language Selection, 1947-1987
(Grafton, 1988). But because that online criticism
is
fair enough, and because I drew that same conclusion a few years ago, I’ve tightened the text of
Who Made Stevie Crye?
by a few thousand words, without, I hope, gutting it of a single metafictional event crucial to its basic spookiness or to its even more basic humanity, embodied in the indefatigable person of Stevie Crye.
Forgive me for quoting the ending of the novel to you, which, presumably, you’ve just read (because you’d never read an afterword before you read the novel itself, right?), namely, “And she went downstairs into the many, many happy days remaining to her in this life, all of which were of her own composition. . . .” Followed, of course, by . . .
T*H*E E*N*D
—June 24-26, 2014
Pine Mountain, Georgia
*
A necessary postscript: More than two weeks after writing this Afterword, I sent it to my bibliographer, frequent editor, and unfailing friend Michael Hutchins, and he replied by noting that although he likes the piece, its “faux title page [of
The Typing
] was part of the file I sent you on November 5, 2010, which was prepared from an OCR scan of the novel” for the British e-book edition that appeared from Orion Publishing in 2013. Michael quotes himself as saying at that time, “As you will see, I’ve had a little fun with the front matter. . . .” by inserting this second title page into the file. (He also had some fun with the “Note on the Type” on the last page, just as publisher, editor, and book designer Patrick Swenson had some fun with the “NOTES ON THE TYPE(S)” in this new edition. Thanks, Patrick—for everything.)
Michael concedes that he took the text for the second title page directly from the novel (see page 278) and notes that he is pointing out these verifiable facts not to “get credit or acknowledgment” for conceiving the notion of the second title page, but simply to “set the story straight” for me. And I know Michael well enough to say that he writes the total truth here. Even so, I’ve let the text of the Afterword stand as you’ve just read it for three reasons: to finesse the fact that my publisher Patrick Swenson has incorporated revisions from me several times already (despite our tight schedule), to dramatize just how far from documentable accuracy our unaided memories can sometimes lead us, and to give Michael the credit he unequivocally deserves. Thanks, Michael.
—July 10, 2014
About the Author
Michael Bishop is the author of the Nebula Award-winning novel
No Enemy But Time
, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award-winning novel
Unicorn Mountain
, the Shirley Jackson Award-winning short story, “The Pile” (based on notes left behind on his late son Jamie’s computer), and several other novels and story collections, including
The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Retrospective
, edited by Michael H. Hutchins. He also writes poetry and criticism, and has edited the acclaimed anthologies
Light Years and Dark
, three volumes of the annual Nebula Awards collections, and, more recently,
A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-Five Imaginative Tales About the Christ
, and, with Steven Utley,
Passing for Human
. Soon to appear is his novel for young persons,
Joel-Brock the Brave and the Valorous Smalls
, dedicated to the Bishops’ exemplary grandchildren, Annabel English Loftin and Joel Bridger Loftin. Michael Bishop lives in Pine Mountain, Georgia, with his wife, Jeri, a retired elementary school counselor who is now an avid gardener and yoga practitioner. They share a house with far, far too many books.
