Introduction to
TOTENBÜCH

Provincial, monomaniacal twits that we be, here in the flashy world of sf, we like to think we did it all ourselves, without even a good wash behind the ears from the waters of the mainstream. Yet how many times have we validated our existence to scoffers and critics with sponge-wringings of 1984, Brave New World, On the Beach, The Child Buyer and final, hysterical recourse to Vonnegut—who left us—and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land—the least worthy of all his many novels? When pushed to the wall, we try to obtain approbation and legitimacy by recourse to those works of sf written by men from outside our little circle.

Now sf is valid, it is legitimate, it is taught and analyzed and people write their Masters' theses on Delany and Aldiss and Sturgeon. And though it pains us to have to admit it, we did it only partially on our own hook. We managed to swing along into the golden land riding the hook with Wells and Hersey and Huxley and the rest of the big boys.

Yet even thumbscrewed into admitting our debt to the non-specialized writers who dabbled in our form and came away (as did all of us) richer for the experience, we still deify second-raters who will permit the words "science fiction" to be emblazoned on their book jackets, while ignoring the writers sui generis from outside sf, who have influenced us most strongly these past two decades.

Donald Barthelme, David Ely, W. S. Merwin, John D. MacDonald, Vladimir Nabokov, Carlos Casteñada, John Barth, John Fowles, Shirley Jackson, James Joyce, George P. Elliott—ignoring for the moment the inescapable debt we all owe to Poe—all have influenced to greater or lesser degree the kind and style of sf we are reading and writing today. Yet when we totemize the seminal and germinal influences, these names seldom, if ever, find their way onto the lists of admiration. But none of us would be writing as we do, today, had these writers not spread their pollen of special dreams.

And at this moment in time, the most innovating force working on new writers is that demonstrated in the unbelievable fictions of Jorge Luis Borges.

Though Borges has been writing for over forty years, it is only recently that the Literary Establishment (and even more tardily the sf Establishment) has come widely to appreciate the labyrinthine intricacies of the Borges ouevre. Along with the new vitality of the unpredictable, the intense and the magical Borges, the finest writing in the world today, the most important, the most different and the most inventive, is coming to us from Latin America. Fuentes, Neruda, Julio Cortazar, Cesar Vallejo, Ernesto Sabato, Juan Banuelos, Gabriel Garcia Marquez . . .these are the names of the knights of the pen who have cast aside the regimens of European thought and attack, and boldly sought out their own ways.

But more than any other, Jorge Luis Borges has influenced with the mysticism and potency of his work, an enormous number of younger writers. They could have no better model from whom to work. Because no one can imitate Borges. He is very much like John Campbell in one important way: he gives only the ground-plan. Going in his footsteps is virtually impossible, and when attempted is so disastrous that even the imitator realizes it before he has finished his Borges-like story, and he tears it to shreds, and then takes what lessons there are to be learned, and goes his own way.

In the purest sense, Borges is a teacher. To read him is to learn. If you have not discovered him, I urge you to obtain at once The Aleph and Other Stories 1933–1969 (Dutton).

One who has learned from Borges and the other Latin American brilliants, is Al Parra. I met him at the University of Colorado in 1969, and upon reading "Totenbüch" instantly bought it for this anthology. More than any other story in this collection, it shows a direction for speculative fiction that can truly be called "dangerous" because it is fresh, demanding, powerful and strangely unforgettable. I know of no one who has read this story in manuscript or galley who has not mentioned it with awe and delight. Many have found it beyond their powers of comprehension—for it is a story that demands the reader approach it fastidiously—but none have thought it irrelevant or slight or purposely obscure. They have recognized the hand of a talent here, and they have been driven to read it again and perhaps a third time, to finally unearth the burning truths buried in its metaphors and allegories.

I venture to say that ten years after many of the stories in this book have passed from memory, the reader will still recall "Totenbüch" with a shiver, and know without question that he or she was touched by a probe from another reality-plane.

And I must point out the regality of the story. There is a pervasive feeling of quality, of eminence and respect the story generates.

As an editor, I feel deeply honored to be able to present Parra to a wider audience than may previously have found his work. And as an introduction to what I consider the real New Wave of fiction, this story is a treasure.

Mr. Parra delivers the following data on himself:

"Born and raised in Key West, Fla. Both sides of the family Cuban (great-grandfather, Pedro E. Figueredo, composed the national anthem, and was executed for his pains). Educated at St. Joseph's, University of Florida (BsJ, MA), and University of Iowa (MFA in August 1970). Worked at news editing and writing, college teaching, four years in Far East with the Navy, and some odds and ends like construction and shrimp boat labor. Married Lois Mitchell (Madison, Wis.) and have four children—two girls and twin boys. 1969, had Harcourt, Brace & World Fellowship to Colorado Writers Conference and Florida Faculty Development grant to Breadloaf. Now on a teaching assistantship through Iowa Writers Workshop, University of Iowa, in Vance Bourjaily's workshop. Will be included in Directory of Young American Writers, though as I'm not under thirty, don't know what they mean by Young. About the name: christened Armando Albert, but the Armando got lost in the shuffle between church (Episcopal) and state records. Since my blood is Cuban, I feel entitled to append my mother's family name also.

"Publications include: 'Sanchez Escobar at the Circus' (SS), Quartet, Fall, 1967; 'Cross-Country' (SS), Laurel Review, Spring, 1968; 'The Lake at Hamilton's Bluff' (SS), Kansas Quarterly, Winter, 1968; 'This Side of Bahia Honda' (SS), Four Quarters, Jan., 1969; 'The Almond Tree Swing' (SS), Fine Arts Discovery, Spring, 1969; 'The Estevez Holograph' (SS), Kansas Quarterly, Winter, 1969; 'Put Down for Jack' (Poem), 3rd Prize, Writers' Digest contest, 1969; 'North Atlantic' (Poem), Dekalb Literary Arts Journal, Accepted for future pub; 'The Golden Bone' (SS), Forum, Acc fut pub; 'King Kong: The Art of Loving in the Promised Land' (Essay), Dekalb Literary Arts Journal, Acc fut pub; 'Pie de Palo: Relacion' (SS), Transatlantic Review, acc fut pub."