Tepper's Twins

Essay: Twins in the Fiction of Sheri S. Tepper

Recognizing otherness is a recurring theme in literature because it reflects an experience we all share. Even in intimate relationships, as close as a family of parents and siblings, we can have that moment of feeling isolated, unknown to the others around us, or be baffled, unable to understand the motivations of our spouse. 

Even a twin may be a world apart from us.

I was swept with deja vu when re-reading Tepper's The Margarets recently, shortly after being reminded of the transgendered conjoined Korszyczy twins in Sideshow (see Inborn Nature vs. Nurturing Choice).

The eponymous protagonist of The Margarets is actually a series of split personalities in the flesh, clones, each one generated by a crisis-point in Margaret's life. As with the Korszyczy twins, one of the seven Margarets ends up physically male; the rest are female. Their life-experiences span a broad range of human experience. But that's not the only kind of twin that provoked my deja vu.

In this novel, Tepper gives to each Margaret who has children a proclivity for producing twins. They are usually conjoined twins, and when they are, each pair has one member who is deficient in some way. Some deficiences are fatal; others merely threaten the quality of life of the twin or the community in which they live. (Several of these "lesser" twins are sociopathic. A few are merely pathetic or parasitic.)

For all the flaws of the novel—Tepper has a habit of scattering deus ex machina plot points like sprinkles on a kid-party cupcake—this compelling glimpse of the almost-identical, yet strange other, along with the embodiment of zero-sum-game philosophy in Margaret's conjoined children and grandchildren, lifts the story above its shortcomings. I never reread it without seeing something new in the Margarets' interactions.

In Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the twin Other is concealed until nearly the end of the story, so I can't go into detail without spoiling the reveal. Nevertheless, the twin is there, and shares another quality with the Korszyczy twins and with Margaret's children. (I often visualize the scene of a willowy woman's shadow on a screen from The Golden Child at the parts of the story where the other twin appears. Eddie Murphy's character is attracted to the shadow-woman until he sees her clearly; perhaps that is a large part of the resemblance I perceive.)

For most of us, twin-less others isolated by our skins, the idea of sharing so closely with another is the stuff of fiction. The more credit is due Tepper for showing that even twins may be trapped behind their own eyes, cut off from sharing identically except with identical lives and experiences. 

We cast our shadows on a screen, but are rarely seen clearly. We fear being seen clearly, lest we repel those who are attracted to the silhouette. And we watch the screens around us intently, hoping for clues about what truly lies behind them.

We are, each and all, other. 

In Defense of Philosophical and Religious Fiction

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein

"It was a bit preachy..." "Author went on and on about personal beliefs..." "Just when I thought I understood the main character, they went off the deep end into religion, and I lost interest..."

There's something to be said for preaching to the choir: They get the message, you don't have to work too hard, and you can count on a rousing AMEN! at the end of your sermon. On the other hand, you finish with a sneaking suspicion that you haven't moved anyone off the point where they already stood. Who has been saved?

Philosophy and religion share some characteristics, after all. In the former, studies, explorations, thoughts and insights make sense of the philosophical space we have defined, and allow us to reach conclusions about its nature, within the confines of that pre-defined space. In the latter, studies, explorations, thoughts and insights make sense of the conclusions in which we rest our belief, and allow us to define its nature and extent, within the confines of that faith.

For both philosophy and religion, though, participants tend to be either preachers or members of the choir. A layer of fiction can make these insights available to those who are neither. In reading fiction, we take a step back from the tenets of faith or philosophical axioms, and interpose a story between them and us as readers. The story's characters, their actions and choices, make sense of the fictional space that has been created (and consequently, make the philosophical or religious space more accessible.) 

What C.S. Lewis did in The Great Divorce, for example, was to reveal that Hell is a choice made continuously in life (and after death), and that we can turn ourselves around at any point. Heinlein's Stranger In a Strange Land, on the other hand, posited that Heaven is accessible before death, if we let go of negative emotions and love each other. Ayn Rand's polemic Atlas Shrugged dismissed Heaven and Hell with the philosophy this world counted most; that doing one's best is the path to joy and salvation. 

You may take away a different message; that's much of the joy of reading such fiction. It doesn't matter what conclusions the characters come to, or even the one the story presents. What matters is the journey the author takes you on, from which you can take a longer, wider or deeper step into these thoughts than you would be able to on your own.

Why I Re-Read Favorite Novels

I am currently re-reading my whole collection of Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan stories. There's a reason that's specific to Lois McMaster Bujold and her Vorkosigan oeuvre, and there's a wider reason that pertains to every novel I've ever read and loved.

First, the specific reason: it's Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. A frequent motivator to reread earlier books in a series is the acquisition of a new novel in the arc. And ever since I began reading a large percentage of my new-book consumption to the Kindle, I can add the release in e-format of earlier books in a series to that reason, as well.

The broader reason, though, is that my love for a book or a series is triggered by more than a story. I'd like to share those "more" elements that make a book worth re-visiting, whether it is once or twice, or on a regular basis.

Characters

It's easy to fall in love with lovable characters; but I am also drawn to complex ones. They reward a re-read by revealing more of their nature each time I encounter them. I see additional facets of personality or motivation with each new reading. Villains may provide more appeal in this way than heroes, but in the Vorkosigan novels, it is Vorkosigan himself who is most complex. And if the latest novel in this series has little of Miles in it, I can still get my fix from the earlier books. 

World-Building

Vorkosigan's world is political-cultural as much as science-fictional. Bujold shares that ability to create a tasty culture with another author whose entire multi-novel series I feel compelled to re-read each time a new one appears: C.J. Cherryh and Foreigner. But the world a writer builds may be the familiar one we live in, with a single element twisted in an innovative way. Sheri Tepper has done this with The Fresco and The Family Tree, and they are two novels I return to on a regular basis.

High Concept

This is a harder element to pin down. I often do not know until several books into a series why one story-arc will qualify as re-readable and another will not, and the deep, broad, or delicious idea that recolors everything outside the novel for days after I read it is one. Tepper's novels have this, too—I need not agree with the concept to have it set hooks in my brain. Elizabeth Moon's Seranno and Vatta series qualify, for instance, with a cogent question. What changes would access to a real fountain of youth make in society? 



There are other considerations, like "moral" protagonists (Honor Harrington or Harry Potter, for example, whose less-complex main characters embody the moral of the story), or quotable thoughts—anything by Rand or Heinlein is a goldmine for quotes, as are all of the Connie Willis novels. But the three above are sufficient to bring me back, again and again, to relive the joy derived from reading a good book.

Even when there is not a new book in a series-arc.

Coping with the Crescendo

In the multi-year runup to the election this year, I watched the primary debates for both parties. 

Then I watched the candidate's debates, listened to the talk shows, read the Twitter feeds and the blog posts and the op-ed articles, online and in the papers. I carefully made my decisions, and voted first thing Tuesday. 

But this year, I departed from my previous practice with Presidential elections. I eschewed the minute-by-minute follow-up and analysis on the network and cable news channels Tuesday night. Instead, I watched movies last night. In between movies (comedies at that!), I checked the Google Election Results, with its simple count nd report of percentage votes tallied and electoral votes won.

And I checked it first at 7 pm, because we went out to dinner first, in a nice restaurant with no TVs blaring from the walls.

Guess what? I woke Wednesday morning without a headache, without a sense of depression, without feeling abused. And the results had nothing to do with it; living in California, I can pretty much assume that local and state-wide polls will go against my own choices. I try not scoff, because they're my neighbors. Though I do wish they'd quit putting their hands in my pockets!

All this is to say that I'm glad I unplugged before the final moments of this election. If nothing else, it gave me a couple of good movies to review!

The Coming Finale Letdown

That's neither "Final Meltdown" nor "Final Letdown," thank you very much, auto-correct! No, I'm talking about that vague, cast-at-loose-ends, depressed "what next?" feeling we can all expect by Wednesday morning.

Remember the final scenes of The Truman Show? After Jim Curry bid the viewers "Good morning, good evening, and good night!" for the last time, we saw all the obsessed, life-on-hold viewers lean forward and turn off their TVs. I think we'll all have a massive "Goodbye, Truman" moment, day after tomorrow.

Maybe not. This might be more like in the movie as Truman Burbank first realizes that his world isn't real, when the viewers remain mesmerized waiting to find out how it will really end. 

We could wake Wednesday to the prospect of a ballot contest like Gore v. Bush—Florida 2000, writ nationwide. There may be a Tammany Hall meltdown in our future, or a four-year Ken Starr redux to tune into. Whoever wins and however long it takes to decide the election, the real world will still be waiting. 

Because in the real world, no finale is ever final. There's always the cold light of day and the consequences of choices to face, after the lights go dark and the cameras stop rolling. 

Morlocks and Millennials

My friend Joe (not his real name, of course) recently complained that his adult children had both come home to live after graduating from college. Joe wasn't 100% sure how he felt about it for either child: Jane found employment and pays him rent, her brother is "still looking."

Jane and John (not their real names, either) are not unusual; millennials have even been dubbed "the boomerang generation," with an estimated 50% of them choosing to return to the nest. The last time this statistic applied may have been pre-World War I, in an age when more Americans were rural than urban and it was a standard living arrangement for several generations of the same family to share a single dwelling.

There are plenty of economic reasons for the phenomenon. But when Joe and I discussed this, I was in the middle of reading H.G. Wells' classic novel of time travel, The Time Machine. In case you are the one person in a hundred who hasn't either read it, or (more likely) seen the movie from 1960 or the one from 2002, the basic story concerns a scientist who invents a time machine, and travels to the far future of man. There he finds a gentle, beautiful race of people who "do not toil, neither do they spin." They play all day, and sit together in a ruined hall to eat fruit they have picked that day. 

At first, the time-traveler is charmed by them, but then he realizes these lovely children are as grasshoppers: they build nothing, plant nothing, preserve nothing; they have no plans for the future. He finds their handful of long-neglected books, crumbling to dust. They ignore a drowning girl, forcing the traveler to leap into the water himself to save her. He muses:

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay... [For] Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.

Eventually, he discovers that the decadent Eloi are not the last humans. There is a subterranean race, the Morlocks, who continue to work in their dark tunnels while the Eloi play in the sunshine. Wells portrays the Morlocks as cunning cannibals. They live off the sweat of their brows, but also off the Eloi. The scientist-traveler finds fellowship with the Morlocks and their curiosity: they are able to see the value of the traveler's machine, and capable of reverse-engineering it, were he to leave it in their hands.

What has this to do with boomerang millennials? 

I'm a Baby-Boomer myself, as is my spouse. But I observe this puzzling cohort, children of the Me Generation. In broad generalizations and likelihoods: Their parents were more likely to be "helicopter parents" than mine. As school-children they had braces, even plastic surgery; got contact lenses rather than glasses to correct their vision, wore $50 jeans and $80 sneakers. 

They had TVs (their own TVs, in their bedrooms); they had computers at home. We walked or rode bikes or the bus until we could afford a car and its insurance (often not until college); they were dropped at the door of grade- and middle-schools by parents until old enough for a driver's license. After that, they drove a car with insurance paid for by their parents, or car-pooled with similarly-endowed friends.

They borrowed money for college, either directly from the federal government, or via a federally-guaranteed private loan. Almost all carry smart phones; they use them to play games and music, watch videos, and trade images and messages about their lives and activities. They often delay employment until they can find a job that is "fun" or "rewarding," or a company-culture that matches their own philosophy and values. 

More than half thought Bernie Sanders was an excellent choice for President this year. 

From my crusty perspective—stay off my lawn!—many of the millennials are Eloi. Not all, of course, because some in every generation are born Morlocks. Some will always choose to be engaged despite the effort required—especially if the alternative is to be at the mercy of a system one can neither control nor persuade. 

I don't believe these boomerang Eloi will stay children, either; sooner or later each must step out of their comfort zone and move on to the stress—and rewards—of true adulthood. But Wells' observation gave me food for thought. Can we make life too pleasant for our young offspring, thus guaranteeing for them a future of permanent, unproductive victimhood?

What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall...

Some Like It Drag

What is the appeal of a guy in a dress? Comic and pathetic by turns, movie transvestites (as opposed to your everyday TV) possess some magic that can turn a drab story around, or sink a poorly-conceived flick into B-movie oblivion. Donning a dress can gain an actor kudos, or haunt his life ever after with innuendo and rumor.

Director Ed Wood (Glen or Glenda, Plan Nine from Outer Space) was a real TV in the most classic sense. To borrow the campy tagline from his transvestite mystery Glen or Glenda, Wood “...Loved Women So Much, He Dared To Dress Like One!” Johnny Depp was able to portray the disturbed director, complete with cashmere cardigans, without significant harm to his acting career. (Although Depp seems Teflon-coated in this regard, having also survived the raised eyebrows from wearing beaucoup mascara in several outings of the  Pirates of the Caribbean.)

The thoroughly-camp Rocky Horror Picture Show makes a dark hero out of the gender-confused alien Doctor played by Tim Curry. Thousands of otherwise-straight men around the world have put on his gartered-stockings-and-bustier-corset costume, and sung—in public—his paean to muscle love. Some of them have even returned their costumes to the shop afterward.

In one of its darker themes, Rocky Horror first makes the TV an alien, then reveals the allure of transvestitism to even the squarest among us. Cross-dressing, we learn, is about “absolute pleasure.”

In a far more traditional men-in-dresses theme, it’s actually about disguise. For Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, going drag in Some Like It Hot, a girl’s band was the one place their pursuers would never look for them. Comically-gentile antics of guys in dresses are predicated on these men's simon-pure-straight sexuality; it isn’t funny unless Curtis's drag-disguise conflicts with his desire to woo Marilyn Monroe, or if Lemmon is not trying to stave off the advances of Joe E. Brown.

Dustin Hoffman? Or Jane Fonda?

In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman took the disguise theme in a different direction. It’s not gangsters he’s trying to escape, but his own reputation. Here, again, is the conflict with the outward face and the inner desires, as Hoffman’s Dorothy character melds both the would-be-lover of a woman (Jessica Lang) with the object of a man’s affection (Charles Durning).

Some movies showcase the abilities of their actors by having them play both masculine and feminine roles. Diedrich Bader is genially goofy as Jethro Bodine of The Beverly Hillbillies, but truly hilarious as his cousin, Jethrine. And without the exquisite gay drag of three of George Hamilton’s five roles in Zorro, the Gay Blade, that movie would have been fatally overwhelmed by the all-caps dialog of Brenda Vacarro and Ron Liebman.

Like Jethrine Bodine, sometimes the guy-in-a-dress role is meant to be all female. The classic case is Divine as the coarsely-obese mother in Hairspray (1988). (Divine also had a male cameo as the high-school principal.) In 2007's remake, the musical Hairspray gave us John Travolta in the role as a rotund, yet surprisingly nuanced and nimble, Edna Turnblad. Travolta got the role after it was offered to Robin Williams, who turned it down. Perhaps Williams thought that his three gay/transvestite roles in three years (1993, 1995 and 1996²) were enough.

Nathan Lane used his dress-up performance to poke some fun at the stereotypes of masculine and feminine in The Birdcage. Interestingly, Robin Williams’ gig as the “masculine” partner of this gay couple was equally powerful and ambiguously-gendered. Where La cage aux folles, the film’s French progenitor, was focused on the conflict between family values and gay partnerships, The Birdcage moved this debate to the battle between image (especially political image) and substance.

The best (and worst) drag-queen performances portray these men as what they are. To see what I mean, watch the amazing performances that give us the lonely but coping-with-life Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) and Chi-Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) in To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Then contrast them with the scuzzy, sleazy, conflicted, lost men¹ of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the movie that spawned To Wong Fu.

Hugo Weaving's outing as a desperately lonely drag queen didn't stall his career at all. After Priscilla, he was the scary-stern Mr. Smith of The Matrix, and the scary-stern half-elven Elrond in The Lord of the Rings. And I’ve commented before on the fact that neither Snipes nor Leguizamo appear to have been hurt by their roles in To Wong Fu, but that Patrick Swayze’s star seemed tarnished by his stint as Vida Boheme. This is despite the fact that, even in a dress, Swayze managed to get in some bare-knuckle fighting and rescue a woman—perhaps the problem is that, as in Pretty Woman, “she rescues him right back.”

Not elfin at all, Mr. Smith in drag: Hugo Weaving (R)

To Wong Fu gives us the beauty and fun of life in drag, but reveals its secret heart of alienation, and yearning for something that can never be. In a more-brutal way, Priscilla does the same thing, minus the glamour and a (somewhat) happy ending. 

And if one is Hollywood and trite, and the other Australian and bitter, these are the usual two faces of transvestitism in the movies.

Now, I know I’ve left some out. Y’all jump in here and tell me about them!

Liner Notes:

1. Terrence Stamp in a dress has to be seen to be believed.
2. Robin Williams has escaped entirely any stigma from three roles where he plays gays, and one—Mrs. Doubtfire—where he appears, not just in drag, but in frumpy drag. His greeting to the three drag queens in To Wong Fu is perfectly gay: “Oh, my God! I’m like a compass near north.”

Rejected Books: An Essay and a Survey

I can count on the fingers of one hand the books I’ve abandoned after once beginning them. It takes the other hand and some toes to include books I’ve finished, then vowed never again to read that author.

See, I fall in love with books. I eat, sleep, breathe the protagonist’s problems, imbibe his ideals, yearn for her desires, mourn their losses. I trust the author I have met and loved before to take me on an interesting journey. I’ll make the connections, I’ll put in the hours, just take me along!

So when I do encounter a novel that I just cannot finish, I don’t think it’s just me. 

Gregory Maguire let me down with Mirror, Mirror, after I tripped with Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and Lost. I haven’t thrown out the book—yet—but I can’t get past page 46. The characters don’t engage me, and this is one time the retelling of the fairy tale is not refreshing, but boring. I’ll try again, perhaps some day when my reading well has gone dry. Meanwhile, it sits on my shelf, one prominent crease in the spine marking where it lay open on the coffee table for three weeks.

Richard Paul Russo is also on my wha’ hoppen? list. Ship of Fools has a great concept (a generation-ship whose crew have forgotten their origins, and encountered something that may be evil), and the author had done wonderful things with the cyberthriller Carlucci novels. But somewhere in the middle of Ship, the story simply grinds to a halt. You don’t care anymore, you just want off the boat!

I “try before I buy” with books, by applying the Rule of 33, although usually I only do this with a new or untrusted author. But long before I developed that rule, I read Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home. I devoured this book, because I had so enjoyed The Other. In fact, even my rule would not have helped me spot this one. The problem with Tryon’s book, for me, was what I call the “unexpected gross-out.” This is a shocking plot element that is unforeseen because the writer has carefully masked its approach, the authorial equivalent of burying a razor-blade in a sweet red apple.

I adore David Weber’s Harrington novels, and even enjoy his fantasy series that starts with Oath of Swords. The series about Earth's Moon as an alien secret spaceship, though, leaves me cold. Curiously, my spouse did love Mutineer’s Moon, and bought all the subsequent books. I, on the other hand, look at those novels and see a waste of time that could be better used telling us about Honor Harrington or her tree-cat Nimitz.

The final rejected book I’ll list here is from the pen of Larry Niven. I had such hopes of Scatterbrain, which promised a peek into the skull of this brilliant writer, but delivered an incoherent mush of essays and half-finished stuff juxtaposed with excerpts from his better-known stories. I’ve read everything Niven has published—the Ringworld, Smoke Ring and Known Space series especially. This is the only one I regret!

It’s not a long list. There are few others I could name—although I admit, it is easier for me to abandon Kindle books than physical tomes, it is not because I've rejected them outright. 

And now the floor is open for nominations from you. Are there any books that so repulsed you that you vowed never to read another word from the author’s pen? Please leave your nominations in the comments!