Call and Response: They Eat Squid, They Don’t Worship Them…
Received via website feedback form:
Dear Mr. VanderMeer, I have to admit right off the bat that I’m not terribly familiar with your work; though I’ve seen your name on the shelves at stores and on various contents pages while thumbing through anthologies, the only real contact I’ve had with your fiction comes from book reviews. But I recently noticed something unintentional about my own (unpublished) writing, and I figured the best way to find the answer to the question it raised was to ask you directly (it will make sense in a second). I’m an aspiring writer and I’ve been working on a novella recently. After watching a documentary about the ocean I decided on a whim to give the society about which I was writing the quirk that they venerated octopuses as sacred animals, and to make their faith and culture full of octopus-imagery. I thought I was being terribly original, but recently I remembered reading about your own Ambergris stories, and the importance squid have in Ambergris.
However, I don’t remember enough about the details of the squid’s importance to the people of Ambergris to accurately gauge if I need to change my story around. I’d go and read the stories themselves, but I don’t want anything else about them to accidentally creep into my own society of cephalopod-worshipers. So I suppose my question is this: if a new writer like myself writes about a society that sees the octopus as an analogue to the sacred cow of India, is that too close to what you’ve written for comfort? I can honestly say it wasn’t my intention to lift the idea of a cephalopod-venerating society from you–I just happen to like octopuses– but if it turns out that’s what I unconsciously did, I’ll go back and give the folks living in my little town a non-cephalopod to worship. I wouldn’t want anyone, least of all yourself, to think I was trying to take your ideas and pass them off as my own. Thanks very much for your time. [- Name Withheld]
Response:
Nobody in ambergris worships squid. They eat them…I have also been in situations where I didn’t want to read something before writing something. But you will need to go back and read City of Saints after you finish to make sure. [I thought it was nice of him to ask. - Jeff]
January 11, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Of course, worshiping and eating an entity are not mutually exclusive. ;)
January 11, 2009 at 9:13 pm
This is true! Look at Catholicism!
January 11, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Ha! That reminds me of the day we baptized my first child, and I was sitting next to my brother-in-law, a good atheist from Alaska, from a long line of atheists (four generations I think). Anyway, I was sitting next to him, giving him the play-by-play of what was going on.
Sez Don: What’s he doing now?
Sex me: Oh, he’s preparing the altar for the sacrificial meal.
Don: Really? There’s a meal?
Me: Of course there’s a meal. It’s a mass. And wine too. Cuz, yanno. Wine.
Don: Oh, so what’s on the menu?
Me: A dead guy.
Don: Oh.
Me: But don’t worry. It’s not you. Yet.
And then we splashed water on my kid and had cake. It was lovely, actually.
January 11, 2009 at 9:45 pm
LOL! Great story. jv
January 11, 2009 at 10:29 pm
If I ever get an email that comes remotely close to rivaling this one’s awesomeness, I’m printing it out, framing it, and hanging it in my writing room.
January 11, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I wonder if the person writing the feedback has ever heard of H.P. Lovecraft.
January 11, 2009 at 10:46 pm
CA–i did wonder about that. there is some definite cephalopod worship competition. luckily there is less than, say, for war stories.
January 11, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Because I love the octopus chiefly, I will gladly point out that in plural they are octopi. Octopuses are several eight-legged cats. Although this spell-checker appears happy with both versions.
C’est la vie!
January 11, 2009 at 11:09 pm
That’s fantastic! Now I’m goign to stare longingly at my e-mail box for days…
January 11, 2009 at 11:19 pm
yes that is true re octopi but verisimilitude requires verbatimness…ssss…ssss.
January 11, 2009 at 11:20 pm
I got an email once (that I saved, I see) from someone who decided that since I was listed as a mod for the Wheel of Time site wotmania (despite me not modding that particular section devoted to that series at the time) who asked me the following question some months after the author Robert Jordan’s death in 2007:
“hi im driving from florida to maine and would like to visit his grave how can i find where he is buried?”
Errr….
I think I’d rather be asked about which cephalopods I could write about in a story.
January 12, 2009 at 9:07 am
Jeff, since you mentioned that writer’s inquiry regarding the use of squid in a novel, I might as well bring up this question, which I’ve been thinking about asking, but wondering if it’s too trivial.
A section of my blog is called “Weird Tales by Bill Ectric” and when I came up with that, some time time ago, I suppose I meant it as a take-off on Weird Tales magazine, thinking that the magazine is so venerable by now that it was okay to use the term. Like when someone says, “The Audubon Field Guide is the bird-watcher’s Bible” everyone knows they aren’t talking about the real Bible. You don’t think anyone would interpret my use of “weird tales” as an implied connection with the magazine, do you? Or maybe I should change it.
Now, about the novel I’m writing, Canary, about a detective in the city of Whalebile.
(no)
Kelly, my wife’s sister and her Greek husband are members of the Greek Orthodox Church. I couldn’t attend the Baptisms of their first two children, as they all lived in Greece at the time, but when their youngest child was baptized here in Florida, it was quite impressive. The table in front of the priest had candles, a big silver bowl for immersing the baby, a tall ornamental bottle of olive oil, and another tall bottle (water, I think). My young son said, “It looks like he’s going to make a salad.”
January 12, 2009 at 11:11 am
I think Ann could probably answer the WT question better–she’ll no doubt be checking out the blog sometime in the next couple of days.