I actually purchased a book on Amazon. A book I’ve wanted to buy for nearly a year…
…the second volume of the Heinlein biography.
Got the first one through a generous reader a year ago, but it only goes through WWII which isn’t the period that interests me. Funnily enough that last link reminds me that the acquisition also coincided with an unexpected rainy day, just like today. I’ve been reading all afternoon.
Heinlein wouldn’t actually be an especially interesting character just in himself, I think. But he was important to me when I was a young boy. I switched schools a lot – graduated from the twelfth public school I ever attended – and one of the few points of consistency was that his Scribner juveniles were in practically every school library I hit*. In this sort of sophomore period of Heinlein’s career, when he was the darling of school librarians and before he ruined it all with Stranger in a Strange Land, he walked a fine line between entertainment and preaching and he walked it very well. I used to joke that as a boy I wasn’t so much raised as just allowed to happen. The protagonists of the Scribner books, which I read over and over, all had the same very peculiar thing in common: They had standards, morals and ethics which actually steered their actions, even when those actions weren’t in their immediate best interest. The stories all had happy endings, of course – these were kids’ books – but it wasn’t hard to see that the protagonists would have behaved the same even if it led them straight to disaster. Because it was the right thing to do. That was a new idea for me, frankly. I grew up on a steady diet of expediency and pain avoidance.
Never lost my taste for Heinlein books, even during his very last period when he frankly cranked out a lot of masturbatory dreck and I kind of wished he’d stop. I read it anyway. And of course after the Scribner period he became much more openly political, which is funny because his political views clearly changed over time. Radically, in fact. And there wasn’t much discussion of that, a subject on which I’d have welcomed discussion, because Heinlein had formed the habit of holding his private life very privately indeed. After he died in 1988 the reasons for that gradually came clear: He cherished some personal practices which wouldn’t have sat well at all with all those adoring school librarians. Would in fact likely have ended his career in the forties and fifties.
I didn’t care about that, but the politics always intrigued me. By what road did Heinlein start out a one-world socialist and end up virtually libertarian? While remaining a conventional nationalist patriot every step of the way? How do you even do that? We’re talking about a man who truly influenced my young life.
And oh by the way, was L. Ron Hubbard really a complete whacko**?
Anyway, it’s a rainy cold day and I’m all sweatered up, working on my fourth cup of hot tea, and reading about Heinlein. Hope your day is going at least half as well. 🙂
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*This was in the Olden Days, when schools had lending libraries and actually encouraged reading. Probably illegal now.
**Spoiler alert: Yes.
“…schools had lending libraries and actually encouraged reading.”
To be fair, schools still encourage reading, and do so with incentives like contests and prizes that I don’t remember them having when I was young. Unfortunately, they are not always successful in teaching kids to read. I really hate to see a person make it to adulthood without acquiring good reading skills along the way.
What was the association ‘twixt RAH and total-nutball LRH? And where do I find out about RAH’s practices of which some people would’ve disapproved? Lascivious, er, I mean, enquiring, minds want to know.
“masturbatory dreck” heh, nice turn of phrase. Someone told me he wrote that stuff in order to prove he could still write after having a stroke or some such.
Heinlein got me through some very troubling times at home when i was a kid. To this day I still reread his stuff when I need a lift. L. Ron Hubbard is my least favorite author. I remember on the third attempt at reading Battlefield Earth how disgusted I was. I gave up and tossed the book in the trash.
Robert, before he became a cult messiah Hubbard was a science fiction author. Not a very good one, if Battlefield Earth is typical, but still a writer at the same time Heinlein was coming up. They were acquainted, and Heinlein was familiar with Dianetics and saw it morph into Scientology. He was never directly involved, though, not being stupid.
Heinlein was easily my favorite author growing up. His fiction helped me think about and decide on my philosophy of life and anarchist leanings even then. Interestingly enough, I have re-read some of his work after 40 or 50 years, and see so much more (different) in them now. A great many of the principles and themes in that fiction are clearer to me, and more or (at times) less relevant to my life after all those years of experience. I think I “read into” more than he actually wrote or believed – given his changing views. I didn’t see that then, but it is fairly clear now.
My favorite Heinlein stories are “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” and “The Door Into Summer.” So many others are only a hair width behind those. I just read “Double Star” after many, many years… and it is interesting to note that Heinlein’s conclusion is much the same as yours, Joel. The ultimate answer to kings is a belly laugh. 🙂
Robert, Mr. Heinlein & his second wife had an open marriage, and Heinlein was a practicing (however much you could “practice” back then) nudist. I suspect a lot of the sexual matters in SIASL were based on experience.
Nowadays, of course, this rates a “so what” or a yawn from most folks, but in the 1930s & ’40s it could very well have killed his career had word gotten out. I find this particularly ironic: An author, whose working life is generally a private one, could have had his life wrecked, at the same time the big film studios had people on the payroll whose sole function was to cover up the indiscretions of actors & actresses, who by nature are in the spotlight whether working or off-duty.
http://www.hpbmarketplace.com/
Used books. A marketplace for small sellers. I started here when I found Charles Sheffield, then…I may have went a little crazy…