Some of Us Grow Up

I have a short week and a lot to do, no FNFFA this week. But Friday night reminds me of Saturday night and Saturday night reminds me of “Saturday Night Live”, which in turn reminds me of National Lampoon, the magazine. I don’t know if it is still published. Somehow, a few decades ago, a copy came into my possession and was stored away in a stack of early ‘70’s vintage Sports Illustrated magazines (I think this was before swimsuits were “sports”) and a single well-preserved copy of Marvel Comics’ “Two-Gun Kid”. The Two-Gun Kid story and art hold up over time. The SI’s are interesting for the history. But looking at the satire magazine, I can’t imagine that I ever paid money for such a disgusting pile of humorless stupidity. My excuse is, if I did buy it, I was probably drunk or high.

Satire is perhaps the most difficult kind of humor to get right. I know. I’ve tried and failed miserably every time. I can sometimes sustain a bit of irony for a sentence or two, but in extended pieces it tends to fall apart, just collapse under its own weight. Maybe it is just a personal problem. Looking through that old Lampoon, I tend to think not. The magazine contains nothing that I would call “satire”. There are some things that are gross and/or shocking. There are a few pieces that turn things around backwards in the tradition of Erehwon, but they don’t really work and they aren’t funny. They are just stupid, and stupid is only funny if you actually respect your subject.

For example, contrast a couple of “minority” comedians: the great Bill Cosby and the, uh, well, extremely bitter Margaret Cho. Essentially Cho hates the people she tries to skewer – people like me. Because she has such a low opinion of her target, she cannot make it real, it has no resonance. Cho and her audience are “laughing” at a caricature that is so far from being real I can’t even identify it as human, certainly not as myself.

Consider Cosby on the other hand. Listen to an old Fat Albert story from some of Cosby’s early records. They are still funny – a little more nostalgic than they were perhaps but still funny, even if you’ve heard them a dozen times. Bill Cosby loved his characters. He could see the humor in what they were and what they did, but he respected them. They were caricatures lovingly drawn and the details overblown made them more loveable – not grotesque.

Cosby is an adult who looks back lovingly on childhood and adolescence, seeing the beauty and the humor and helps us understand ourselves. Cho is an aging adolescent who tries to mock adulthood, wisdom and maturity but fails since she does not understand any of it.

All of that brings me to my actual subject: Robert Heinlein. Admittedly I have lost track of how many degrees of separation that is, but here we are. Generally, Heinlein’s work is divided more or less neatly into two segments. His early novels are sometimes known as “juveniles”, written for what we call today the “young adult” market. These works include Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers, Farmer in the Sky, etc. The later works are themed differently -- Stranger in a Strange Land, Glory Road, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Farnham’s Freehold, and the Lazarus Long stuff.

Tunnel in the Sky is a good little SciFi book – the tone matches the theme and the character. Heinlein’s voice is pitched well for the story. The plot is fairly solid and the characters are adequate. You can say the same thing about Starship Troopers which is a little more “mature”, but is still appropriate to Heinlein’s voice. Honestly, I don’t remember the other juveniles that well -- Tunnel in the Sky was always my favorite.

When it comes to the later novels, Heinlein begins to lose me. Farnham’s Freehold is a deeply flawed book. The plot is not just weak, it is atrocious. I was actually ticked off when I put the book down. I had been scammed. The problem was that Heinlein tackled an idea he couldn’t handle. It might even have been a good idea but it was beyond his voice and capacity. He just flailed using his reputation like water wings and went no where. Give him credit, I suppose, for jumping in but it was painful.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has a better plot with better character development. Again, it’s a good idea and at least manages to convey Heinlein’s libertarian beliefs with some passion. It is probably my favorite of the later novels, along with Glory Road, where, once more, Heinlein’s voice was well matched to the material. It was predictable and plodding at times but I didn’t feel cheated at the end.

Having read Stranger in a Strange Land, I could not bring myself to tackle any of Heinlein’s Lazarus Long works, though Stranger is in some ways Heinlein’s best. The title, of course, comes from Moses when he names his first-born son, Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew for “a stranger there”, saying, “I have become a stranger in a strange land.” (See Exodus 2.) Heinlein brings his protagonist, a human child born on Mars and raised completely apart from humans by the Martians back to earth. Michael Valentine Smith becomes a Christ-like figure, but one whose morality is skewed relative to human tradition. There’s lots of free sex. There’s cannibalism. Heinlein gives us the word grok. It’s a powerful vision and aligned well with the ‘60’s mentality.

Never trust anyone over thirty.

The trouble is Heinlein was still writing a juvenile. In all of his later works that I have read, his voice never changed. Heinlein never grew up. Stranger probably has the most complex characters Heinlein ever created. His insight on an alien mind in a human body is thought-provoking and well-done. But he just could not keep from being a seventeen-year-old boy. Heinlein carried that chip that most adolescents have on their shoulder around all his life. He never made peace with adulthood. He was never able to say, “Yeah, well, maybe the Old Man was right about a few things after all.”

“Write what you know”, so they say. We’ve all been children. Some of us grow up.