Where to go with the autobio? Can I imagine being a woman? A businessman? A teenager? Buddha? A terrorist? A track coach? A tree? An ant hill? A marathoner? A puppy?
Probably only my real memories are worth writing, otherwise I’m just recycling received or second-hand ideas.
Coming back to the Dylan Memoir Model, I’m thinking it might be best to pick, say, five limited time periods, and to delve into each of these fairly deeply.
(1) Larva. A chapter during my year (age 12) in Germany where I realized I wasn’t weak or dull. I learned to cope on my own. Imagining the pine pollen in the rain puddles in Germany to be fallout from an atomic war. Worrying that I had worms. Painting myself brown with cocoa to play the black boy in the Huck Finn skit. The annoyingly insistent carpentry teacher, Brueder Rezas, wanting me to be licking the cocoa off my skin, urging me, “Ami: schlecken!” (“American: lick yourself!”)
(2) Artist. The marriage to Sylvia, our dual view. The grad school years. Discovering math, Zap Comix, Pynchon, hippiedom. Gödel. The night that Zappa record Chunga’s Revenge seemed to speak to me, 1971. Hearing whole Zappa songs in my head the car, no harder than understanding set theory. Creating Wheelie Willie.
(3) Transrealist. Isabel’s birth, relating to the fourth dimension and synchronicity—although I wrote about this birth already in All the Visions. Maybe a fresher fatherhood memory, something I haven’t written about. Or about transrealism. Life and science into fiction and fact. Back-to-back in Heidelberg: seminal works in two new SF subgenres: White Light (transreal), and Software (cyberpunk). And don’t forget Infinity and the Mind. My dream of finding crystals in the shale on the mountain slope I was climbing.
(4) Cyberpunk. Writer in Lynchburg, 1983 – 1986. Roland, the Vaughans, my career starting to happen, the birth of cyberpunk. The boat race, poling from L’burg towards Richmond. Talking in a field to that ex-MP guy John— what was his last name? Those kids from Richmond coming to see me, as if sent by Eddie Poe. The trip out West, effectively in telepathic contact with Sylvia as, over and over, we were able to find each other.
(5) Wizard. Retooling in Silicon Valley, getting up to speed, working three jobs, the Cyberthon. Falling in with the Mondo crew. 1986. Figuring out what computation means. Grasping the gnarl of natural life.
[Preying mantis face produced by sucking in my cheeks.]
But—why bother writing an autobio note at all? What am I supposed to get out of it? Self-knowledge. Bragging pleasure. Guidance. Publicity.
Working on these notes in the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting cafe. The guy at the next table has an ascetically shaved head, and he’s eating an abstemious salad of greens and goat cheese. Thoroughly, carefully, he chews a single wafer-thin slice of tomato.
It’s foggy every day in San Francisco this July, Sylvia reports, studying the paper.
A young woman at another table shakes her head, smiling. No health problems for her, not yet. I used to feel that way. Potentially immortal.
Who would really want to read a memoir by me, after all? It’s not like I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people who read the Contemporary Authors autobio note, which is online.
There should be some riddle whose answer I’m seeking by writing the memoir. What is reality? What’s the point of my life? How can I be happy? What did I learn by writing thirty books? What’s the missing book that I need to write?
July 18th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
intersperse it with science fiction stories, one that relate to stuff written in that chapter (new ones would be good). either that are write about some things you wanted to do as if you did.
July 18th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I’ve enjoyed biographies of Turing, von Neumann, Einstein, Alan Watts, A.E. van Vogt, Charles Babbage, Paul Bowles, … I think what interests me most is finding out what key experiences shaped their lives. For example, here’s a great (short) biography of A.E. van Vogt, by Alexei Panshin:
http://www.enter.net/~torve/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html
This gave me a lot of insight into van Vogt’s stories. One of the points that interested me was the influence of Alfred North Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World. I understand now how Whitehead’s philosophy seemed somehow familiar and comfortable to me when I first read it, because I had already absorbed some of his ideas through van Vogt.
I think autobiography is more difficult to write than biography. Autobiography tends to lack objectivity, omit negative experiences and character flaws, and (worst of all) self-indulgently wander. If you can write about yourself as well as you wrote about Peter Bruegel, then go for it.
These are the kinds of things I would like to know: What events or experiences got you interested in math? What got you interested in science fiction? What motivated you to go from reading science fiction to writing science fiction? Your novels hint at some experience with psychoactive pharmaceuticals: I bet there is some good biographical material there. You seem to worry a lot about mortality: I’m guessing you lost a close relative when you were young?
Briefly, this is what I want in a biography (but maybe I’m not typical): Describe the main events and experiences that shaped your personality and determined the major decisions that you made (pivotal experiences). I don’t want a list of facts; I want a kind of causal model.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I had read
[1] http://www.rudyrucker.com/oldhomepage/biography.htm
but not
[2] http://www.rudyrucker.com/pdf/autobiography2004.pdf
when I left the previous comment. Given [2], my comment isn’t really relevant. You’re welcome to delete it.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I think cuttlefish should make at least *one* appearance.
July 19th, 2008 at 6:51 am
yeah, we kind of believe our story informs our stories. it would seem more obviously so in your case. how about a fictobio? I sprang into the world fully formed and decided to write …
July 19th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
EA sez “I want those letters – in my garden! I pick them up?” see you soon! Keep on TRUCKIN!
July 19th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I read the autobio last year and thought it was interesting and entertaining.
Personally, I’ve always found what you’ve written about Lynchburg to be very funny and right on target. My father grew up there, and my late uncle lived in the area until last year. He once told about the one time he went to Falwell’s church and how, when it was time to pass the plate around, he and his wife tried to leave and found that the doors were locked –from the outside.
I read “Gnarl!” a couple of years ago, and the essay about your trip there brought that story to mind.
Whatever you write, enjoy it. I’m sure we will.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:00 am
‘Jerry’s Neighbors’ in “Seek!” that is.
Typing faster than I think again.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:27 am
I’d like to read a transreal and a real autobio in a 69 style edition! I love “Beneath the Underdog” by Mingus. I wrote a backwards autobio, that was fun.