DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Voice of the Imagination, whole no. 36, October 1944

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Voice of the Imagination, whole no. 36, October 1944

Page 10

10     VOICE OF THE
notice has finally stepped from under with characteristic decision, using a logic-tight argument against VoM nudes as his lever. I cannot but agree with the argument. If you cannot employ Varga or Turner don't give us these appalling substitutes. Even sauciness needs a certain flair to be brought off successfully, & none of these show it - not even the flock of rump-branded little girls belonging to the K-Ranch. Taste is what is lacking (especially in that infantile conception, the circus freak, with tripod legs & udder things too). I'm not pretending no nudes is good news, but please think of academy walls rather than latrine walls. But a break with fandom is not just a break with these rather wearisome things I have listed above. It is a break with a whole world, a whole structure of romantic associations inhabited by old, known friends of affinitive outlook. And they are a rare group, these friends: I have travelled over 12,000 miles recently & met hundreds of new people, but I have met no one else who had that outlook or would not be lost & bewildered if put amid the group. This is not to say that I haven't made friends--life-long friends, I believe, in some cases--of many witty, amusing & intelligent & knowledgeable people. I have only to read "Alert" to see that you have made alert of new friends too, & perhaps are becoming conscious for the first time of the world existing outside stf. These people outside call that "reality." It is the place we are supposed to be hiding from with our heads in the sands of stf. When we come up against the hard "realities" of life our stf. nonsense is supposed to be knocked out of us, & we put away childish things & become men. "I have grown out of fandom...." Actually in most cases these words mean the fellow has grown out of the more juvenile aspects of fandom: all the above list, & the badges & fancy-dresscaps at conventions & sich. I'm sorry for he who really has grown out of--which  means grown away from--the fan outlook. There's nothing in that hard, real outer-world that is not enhanced & rose-lit & made wondrous by the cosmic view: every sunset may be made more significant when thoughts are aroused about Martian & Venusian sunsets or "The Further Vision" in Wells' "Time Machine"; every new discovery of science means so much more when the practised eye sees also the possibilities arising from it; the moon is not just a lantern in the night sky: it is a challenge; the stars are not pin-pricks on paintings: they are parts of the key to the whole universe if they can only be examined & fitted together; music is not a pastime: it is a wordless, universal language; the great novels, e.g. "War & Peace", are not something apart: they are attempts to see mankind whole, to classify it, to put it in relation with Time Past & Time to Come; even sitting in our little family groups around the fire, we are not just Pop & Mom & the kids: we are fellow travellers & explorers through time & Space & the mysteries therein.
Do I sound out of touch with reality? I have known reality. Once I lived on bread & jam alone because I could afford nothing else, & walked miles to save car fares. I worked for 10 years at the Stock Exchange & saw the ways of wealth. I have been in the richest & poorest houses. In the army I have grown intimate with all types of people from miners, laborers, slaughterhouse-men to professional soldiers, musicians, college men & boxers. I have watched these men in peril of death & I have seen them die, not always pleasantly or easily. I have been near enough to death myself more times than I can remember. I have known life at its greatest discomfort in water-logged fox-holes for months at Anzio, soaked in the unceasing rain with no hope of drying, hungry, freezing, & constantly shelled, bombed, machine-gunned & mortared for make-weight. In these conditions I have striven to write books & lost them. And re-written them painfully & lost them again. I have known utter loneliness & also the heart-warming comfort of gatherings of friends. I know what love, marriage, & parenthood is like, & what it is like to be separated from these things year after year, & what it is like to lose a son. I've crossed all the seas except the so-called Pacific, lived with Arabs, studied the teaming life in the very sower of civilization, the Nile Valley, gazed & wondered at the Sphinx & the Pyramids, crossed the Western Desert, fought through Tunisia, lived in Sicilian farmhouses on the slopes of Etna, travelled far & wide in Italy, seeing Naples & not dying & witnessing Vesuvius in no pleasant mood, wandered the streets of dead Pompei, seen the Grandeur That Was Rome, the Grandeur That Is St. Peter's, the anything-but-Grandeur that is the Italian peasant's home. Consider one evening not so long ago. I had just seen the Noel Coward film "This Happy Breed." It was London in the raw, an actual slice of the real London I knew so well. I carried this environment into the Rome Opera house with me. There I saw an Italian opera with a largely Italian audience. My view passed from the Cockney's eyes to the dark brown Italian ones. I saw as they. After the opera the orchestra played Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony. Now I saw Life & Death through the eyes of that great sentimental Russian. After that I got into intimate conversation with the fellow next to me. A lively talkative Hawaiian from Honolulu. He described his home-life so well & with such imagination that i spent the next half-hour in Honolulu. Join the Army & See the World!

All this sounds a bit melodramatic. I only want to prove that stf. is not just a bolthole for people escaping from life. I have lived a fair amount, & stf. has lost none of its essential meaning through that experience. To men the imagination is somewhere nearer the heart of things than "reality." Said Flecker: "Without vision, the people perish..." The fan outlook si my idea of vision. I want to keep in contact with fans. Without strings of 4e puns, Bob Tucker's inspired lunacy, the keen analysis of Speer, the good nature of the hardworking Morojo, the Rabeleisian (?) jocularity of Les Croutch, the immensely readable efforts of the Daugherty's & Widners & many others--Lord; how ordinary life would become!
As one who several times nearly went with last lingering, longing looks, & would no doubt have soon done so had it not been for this evening alone with VoM & the meditation arising from same, I swear to you, 4e, who yourself are standing with one foot in Fort MacArthur & the other roughtly in the direction of the LASFS -- I am separating from the Separist Movement!
###

Saving...

10 VOICE OF THE notice has finally stepped from under with characteristic decision, using a logic-tight argument against VoM nudes as his lever. I cannot but agree with the argument. If you cannot employ Varga or Turner don't give us these appalling substitutes. Even sauciness needs a certain flair to be brought off successfully, & none of these show it - not even the flock of rump-branded little girls belonging to the K-Ranch. Taste is what is lacking (especially in that infantile conception, the circus freak, with tripod legs & udder things too). I'm not pretending no nudes is good news, but please think of academy walls rather than latrine walls. But a break with fandom is not just a break with these rather wearisome things I have listed above. It is a break with a whole world, a whole structure of romantic associations inhabited by old, known friends of affinitive outlook. And they are a rare group, these friends: I have travelled over 12,000 miles recently & met hundreds of new people, but I have met no one else who had that outlook or would not be lost & bewildered if put amid the group. This is not to say that I haven't made friends--life-long friends, I believe, in some cases--of many witty, amusing & intelligent & knowledgeable people. I have only to read "Alert" to see that you have made alert of new friends too, & perhaps are becoming conscious for the first time of the world existing outside stf. These people outside call that "reality." It is the place we are supposed to be hiding from with our heads in the sands of stf. When we come up against the hard "realities" of life our stf. nonsense is supposed to be knocked out of us, & we put away childish things & become men. "I have grown out of fandom...." Actually in most cases these words mean the fellow has grown out of the more juvenile aspects of fandom: all the above list, & the badges & fancy-dresscaps at conventions & sich. I'm sorry for he who really has grown out of--which means grown away from--the fan outlook. There's nothing in that hard, real outer-world that is not enhanced & rose-lit & made wondrous by the cosmic view: every sunset may be made more significant when thoughts are aroused about Martian & Venusian sunsets or "The Further Vision" in Wells' "Time Machine"; every new discovery of science means so much more when the practised eye sees also the possibilities arising from it; the moon is not just a lantern in the night sky: it is a challenge; the stars are not pin-pricks on paintings: they are parts of the key to the whole universe if they can only be examined & fitted together; music is not a pastime: it is a wordless, universal language; the great novels, e.g. "War & Peace", are not something apart: they are attempts to see mankind whole, to classify it, to put it in relation with Time Past & Time to Come; even sitting in our little family groups around the fire, we are not just Pop & Mom & the kids: we are fellow travellers & explorers through time & Space & the mysteries therein. Do I sound out of touch with reality? I have known reality. Once I lived on bread & jam alone because I could afford nothing else, & walked miles to save car fares. I worked for 10 years at the Stock Exchange & saw the ways of wealth. I have been in the richest & poorest houses. In the army I have grown intimate with all types of people from miners, laborers, slaughterhouse-men to professional soldiers, musicians, college men & boxers. I have watched these men in peril of death & I have seen them die, not always pleasantly or easily. I have been near enough to death myself more times than I can remember. I have known life at its greatest discomfort in water-logged fox-holes for months at Anzio, soaked in the unceasing rain with no hope of drying, hungry, freezing, & constantly shelled, bombed, machine-gunned & mortared for make-weight. In these conditions I have striven to write books & lost them. And re-written them painfully & lost them again. I have known utter loneliness & also the heart-warming comfort of gatherings of friends. I know what love, marriage, & parenthood is like, & what it is like to be separated from these things year after year, & what it is like to lose a son. I've crossed all the seas except the so-called Pacific, lived with Arabs, studied the teaming life in the very sower of civilization, the Nile Valley, gazed & wondered at the Sphinx & the Pyramids, crossed the Western Desert, fought through Tunisia, lived in Sicilian farmhouses on the slopes of Etna, travelled far & wide in Italy, seeing Naples & not dying & witnessing Vesuvius in no pleasant mood, wandered the streets of dead Pompei, seen the Grandeur That Was Rome, the Grandeur That Is St. Peter's, the anything-but-Grandeur that is the Italian peasant's home. Consider one evening not so long ago. I had just seen the Noel Coward film "This Happy Breed." It was London in the raw, an actual slice of the real London I knew so well. I carried this environment into the Rome Opera house with me. There I saw an Italian opera with a largely Italian audience. My view passed from the Cockney's eyes to the dark brown Italian ones. I saw as they. After the opera the orchestra played Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony. Now I saw Life & Death through the eyes of that great sentimental Russian. After that I got into intimate conversation with the fellow next to me. A lively talkative Hawaiian from Honolulu. He described his home-life so well & with such imagination that i spent the next half-hour in Honolulu. Join the Army & See the World! All this sounds a bit melodramatic. I only want to prove that stf. is not just a bolthole for people escaping from life. I have lived a fair amount, & stf. has lost none of its essential meaning through that experience. To men the imagination is somewhere nearer the heart of things than "reality." Said Flecker: "Without vision, the people perish..." The fan outlook si my idea of vision. I want to keep in contact with fans. Without strings of 4e puns, Bob Tucker's inspired lunacy, the keen analysis of Speer, the good nature of the hardworking Morojo, the Rabeleisian (?) jocularity of Les Croutch, the immensely readable efforts of the Daugherty's & Widners & many others--Lord; how ordinary life would become! As one who several times nearly went with last lingering, longing looks, & would no doubt have soon done so had it not been for this evening alone with VoM & the meditation arising from same, I swear to you, 4e, who yourself are standing with one foot in Fort MacArthur & the other roughtly in the direction of the LASFS -- I am separating from the Separist Movement! ###