Introduction to
TISSUE

James Sallis's stories may be the only ones in this book to have two Afterwords. One at the front, and the other at the rear.

I do not find it inconsistent that such a departure from form should be attendant on the work of Sallis, rather than that of any other of the forty-one authors in this book. Jim Sallis is clearly one of the most important writers produced by our genre in some time. His arrival on the scene was a matter of discussion and high expectation long before his first story was published. Unimpeachable critical sources who had read Jim's work in manuscript spread the word: we have something outstanding here.

The promise has been overwhelmingly fulfilled. Jim's first book of short stories, A Few Last Words (Macmillan, 1970), drew the following comment from Publishers' Weekly—until recently not the most knowledgeable judge of what was worthy in sf, and whose reviews are still marred by the distasteful use of the abbreviation sci-fic—"There's a freshness and life about most of the writing here that breaks some molds, particularly those that use the weariest of science fiction conventions, and makes Sallis pleasant and surprising to read." This was the least complimentary of the reviews A Few Last Words received. The Virginia Kirkus Service was unstinting in its praise, comparing Sallis to some of the greats of all literature.

Yet this singularity of talent is not the prime reason why I find it fitting that rules must be broken for Sallis, even though it informs the feeling. Sallis seems to me a fascinating life-study. And as he leads his life, so does he break rules. Not always, I'm sorry to say, to his benefit.

Jim Sallis seems to me, in a textural sense, one with F. Scott Fitzgerald: the early promise, the critical success, the brilliance of work, and the inenarrable urge to self-destruction.

In Dangerous Visions I spoke at some length of writers I knew personally, dealing with them not merely as creators, but as human beings; in a (possibly misguided) spirit of proving to readers that the works they admired emerged from some very real places. An attempt to demonstrate that words do not simply burn themselves on paper, but come with pain and enormous effort from human beings. I was pilloried on occasion by critics who felt it was not my place to examine the men and women behind the stories; I ignored the reprimands. It seems to me imperative that everyone who reads the work of these special dreamers understands that there are reasons why a certain story is good, or bad, or derivative, or original. The reasons are always the writer.

And further, informing the readership of the motives and drives of the human behind the story, permits each of us to expect only what writers can give, not what we want them to give. In this way we deal more correctly with the reality of a writer's capabilities, without expecting some new and glorious height each time out, without expecting more of the same kind of story that pleased us previously, without expecting {lawlessness or perfection. Lautrec once said, "One should never meet a man whose work one admires; the man is always so much less than the work." In the main, I take that to be a tragic truth. Dostoyevsky was a reprobate, a gambler, a wife-beater, a deserter of his children, a man who borrowed from his friends and then invariably stiffed them. Yet he wrote The Idiot and The Possessed and Crime and Punishment. So all is forgiven. Poe was heir to very nearly every vice known to Western Man, ending his life tragically and with fearful untimeliness. Yet he wrote "The Masque of the Red Death" and so we revere him.

It is quite possible that speaking of Jim Sallis in the same tone as Poe and Dostoyevsky is not overblowing on my part. His early work indicates a mind and a talent of uncommon dimensions. And so, to the end that he escape the fates that were meted out for Fitzgerald and Horace McCoy and Thomas Heggen and Dylan Thomas and Randall Jarrell, let us speak for a moment of James Sallis, in the spirit of love and admiration, almost as an open letter, in hopes the cautionary tone will be noted.

Jim is a gentle man, with that central core of violence that feeds off the need for recognition, approbation, success. Because he is gentle, he is capable of frightening moments of madness in which the frustration of his needs breaks out as senseless activity, followed by a withdrawal into self that is non-productive, alienating, terrifying to Jim and to those who love him and wish to see him succeed.

The drive for stature and accomplishment whips him to the taking-on of multifarious projects, and the attendant pressure paralyzes him, disallows his satisfactorily completing them. It is a cycle of desperation in which the failure to accomplish what he has sworn to do, sends him into a pit depression from which he can emerge only by divesting himself of the responsibilities. And once having regained control over his scene, he understands that he has foregone the approbation he needed to sustain him, and he starts the cycle again.

In this way he struggles from light to dark and dark to light, spinning off only those sparks of brilliant work that circumstance and chance permit to be born. Denying him that which he seeks so desperately, and denying us the concerted and sustained efforts we so hungrily want from him.

Part of this nightmare has been formed by us, the writers and critics and readers who knew the name Sallis before we knew the man and his capacities for handling his own life. We praised him, as Fitzgerald was praised, without reservation, unstintingly. To his detriment.

In a letter to me dated 17 March 1970, Jim said, "And while I'm at it, I should thank you for mentioning me all the time—in intros and like that. Appreciated, greatly."

I revile myself for so doing. It only set him up as the dragon to be slain. It only intensified the pressures on him. It only made him seem greater than a man, larger than life, Olympian in dimension. It was a selfish thing for me to do—an unconscious need on my part to reaffirm that greatness can come from speculative fiction. Using James Sallis as the judas goat.

As I write this, Jim Sallis is in retreat. He took over the administration of the Clarion Workshop from Robin Wilson, transferring it to his alma mater, Tulane University. He edited an anthology. He half-finished two novels for which he had been contracted some time before. The pressures built, and he went into retreat.

This open letter, then, is waiting for his return. It says to Jim, take care. Go slowly and try to ignore the demands put upon you by an anxious audience, half waiting for your success, half hoping you fail—as streetgawkers hope the suicide will take the dive. And to his audience it says, let the man alone. Let him move at his own pace, in his own time; let him become what he will become without having to play to the gallery. It says, do not kill this writer. He may well be one of the significant ones.

James Sallis was born in the South in 1944. He attended Tulane University, then lived in London for a year editing the prestigious experimental sf magazine New Worlds, with Michael Moorcock. He lived in Iowa, and he lived in New York. His work has appeared widely in such publications as The Prairie Schooner, Transatlantic Review, Orbit (five of the eight volumes as this is written), Quark, and many anthologies. When he was married, he lived in Boston. He has a son, Dylan, 6 years old.

Jim prepared two Afterwords to his stories. The one I chose of the pair submitted appears at the end of the Sallis dual entry. The other, which should not be lost, appears here, precisely as he instructed it be printed:

Box 5, Milford, 17 Mar 70.

Harlan,

Sorry as hell that this is late. But when you called I'd just been asleep about three hours: foggy as hell, hardly knew what you were saying, took me a couple of hours to shake the cotton out of my head and at least an hour more to move my body around. Also sorry if this is not exactly what you want. But if I'd been awake, I'd have warned you that I have a thing, very strong, about 'editorializing' on my own work: I refuse to do it. But, for you, I tried. Though perhaps somewhat obliquely?

I'm enclosing, in fact, two different afterwords. I like the first—begins, It's March 16, 1970, goes on to my leaving NY. I don't care much for the second at all. (But send it to cover eventualities.) Hope the first is acceptable, and that you like it at least a bit. [It's really a lot closer to the story than it first appears, by the way.]

Two points: Please note the setting, as marked. I want it just that way, okay? (Flush left, one line space between grafs, the poem dropped on to the next line and spaced three, etc.) Second: Please take care that the Polish words are printed exactly as they appear herein; this is most important!!!

To check . . .I hope you've remembered to cut the last line (which is also the last paragraph) of "53rd american dream". (So that the story ends: ' . . .and the children loved her.') The last sentence (beginning 'Genevieve') is to be dropped, and becomes the last paragraph . . .IS THAT CLEAR? Please let me know. Again, most terribly important!

ALSO: the two stories, their titles that is, are to be in lower case, as I wrote earlier. Okay?

And do I get to see the Introduction you write? Hope so. (I trust you'll make it obvious how brilliant, incomparable, etc. I am, of course.) And while I'm at it, I should thank you for mentioning me all the time—in intros, and like that. Appreciated, greatly.

Sorry, incidentally, to blow my image by not having a girl with me. But as you'll see from the afterword, she had to go to work at seven. (Which is in turn why I'd had only 3 hours of sleep, naturally.)

Again, sorry to be late. Let me hear from you and meanwhile, do good things. Or great ones.

MUCH LOVE,

à les étrangers

I don't like to talk about my stories: they must stand, or fall, on their own, and as they will; and the very act of having written them obliterates, for me, any necessity they may once have had, or that I may have had, to speak—which is to say, that their existence precludes, at least in part, the necessity of their existence. So there's only this, from Guillevic,

Toi, ce crêux

Et définitif.

Moi qui rêvais

De faire équilibre.

—which is, always, the

impulse. And "Its material realisation—to use the correct expression—consists basically of a projection of reality, under favourable conditions, on to an irregularly tilting, and consequently distorting, plane of reference" (Boris Vian). And asked why they were written, why they exist, I should have to answer de même que Robbe-Grillet: that I wrote them to discover why I wanted to write them.

And now, they're yours.