"The less a writer discusses his work - and himself - the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors and trapdoors with the utmost care." Vance in the afterward to "The Bagful of Dreams" The Jack Vance Treasury (2007)
August 28, 2016 would have been
Jack Vance's 100th birthday.
The man had an incredible gift to spin worlds from nothing and paint them with a palette of the most vivid language imaginable.
The man had an incredible gift to spin worlds from nothing and paint them with a palette of the most vivid language imaginable.
His work is so
compelling, in fact, that it’s very hard to remember that every word he wrote
after 1980 (a list that includes 11 novels, 27 short stories, and a number of
essays, forwards, afterwards, and footnotes) was written by a man who was
legally blind and growing steadily blinder. This bibliography is impressive
enough – but let’s not forget that in 1980 Vance had already been publishing
stories and novels for thirty-five years.
Vance reputedly kept
an arm’s length between himself and fandom, rarely exposing himself to real
world scrutiny. He is said to have compared himself to a stage magician, whose
power of illusion would be spoiled by revealing how his tricks were done. But I
sometimes wonder if the truth is that he was actually rather shy of the
attention he would have gotten if he’d put himself in the limelight.
