FFB: DANCING NAKED: THE UNEXPURGATED WILLIAM TENN, V. 3, by Philip Klass (aka WT), edited by Laurie Mann (NESFA Press)

Philip Klass (1920-2010), who never quite 'fessed up to wanting to run a pun on the name "William Penn" with his pen name for much of his fiction and nonfiction writing (including some of the best and most influential satirical sf written so far, not least such short stories as "Child's Play" and "The Liberation of Earth"), was a genteel man, open and friendly and in all the good ways professorial, in meeting even bumptious long-term readers such as I...and, as this collection mostly of his nonfiction writing (with some early campus-magazine fiction and other bits) informs us directly and indirectly, who'd learned a few skills in the presentation of himself, as a man of great passions, over his years of teaching at Penn State (a university currently more famous for harboring an accused serial child-rapist for years, because the pampered head football coach thought the other guy useful) and elsewhere. The previous two volumes in this series from NESFA Press collected his fantasticated fiction; while this one by no means gathers all of his nonfiction, it seems a fair representation, including such reasonably famous highlights as his PS magazine essay "The Student Rebel: Then and Now" (an essay with new relevance in these de-Occupied times) and "The Bugmaster" (about electronic surveillance), apparently commissioned by Esquire or some comparable magazine but then spiked in favor of a similar staff contribution, which became probably the only piece ever published by the men's sweat magazine True to be collected in the then-equivalent of Best American Essays, in 1968. Also, such outliers as his short story "Murdering Myra" (from the cf magazine Suspect), a 1901 E. E. Kellett short story Klass suggests, in the essay that precedes it in the book, might've helped inspire Shaw's Pygmalion, an introduction by Klass writing student David Morrell, and an essay by Klass's brother, Morton Klass (a writer, editor and professor in his own right) help round out the book, which also includes excellent long interviews with Philip Klass by Josh Lukin and Eric Solstein.

This is a book which "jumped the queue"...I'd meant to read others this week, but in my typical time-crunch I kept turning back to this one, with its autobiographical essays about the early life of this British child-immigrant, his Marxist father having been an illegal alien here for decades after fleeing England for daring to volubly oppose WW1, and Klass himself only becoming naturalized, back in London no less, after entering WW2 military service; the continuing point of amused pride that he, Klass, had never managed to obtain a Bachelor's degree in his campus career yet served for decades as a full professor at PSU; his adventures in Greenwich Village in the '50s, hanging with Calder Willingham, Theodore Sturgeon, Judith Merril, Dylan Thomas and others; and the less happy duty of memorializing old friends (a selection of his obituaries is included, along with several of his introductions to his anthologies and the collections of others).

One of the few books I've cited in this series which is not out of print (though not nearly as well-known as it might be), and worth looking into even for those casually interested in Klass and the subjects he deals with.

from the Locus Index:
Dancing Naked: The Unexpurgated William Tenn William Tenn (NESFA Press 1-886778-46-9, Sep 2004, $29.00, 427 + vi, hc, cover by Bob Eggleton) Non-fiction collection of 36 articles and essays, many autobiographical, published to commemorate his being GoH at Noreascon 4, Worldcon 2004. Includes a bibliography of the author’s work. Introduction by David Morrell. Available from NESFA Press, PO Box 809, Framingham MA 01701; [www.nesfa.org/press]; add $2.50 postage.

iii · Master Class · David Morrell · in (*), 2004
1 · Myself When Young
3 · In the Beginning · William Tenn · ss The Evolution of William Tenn or Myself When Young, Pretentious Press, 1995
5 · Anecdote [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · vi Apprentice, 1939
7 · Eleven P.M. [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · vi Apprentice, 1939
9 · The Apotheosis of John Chillicothe [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ss Apprentice, 1939
15 · Incident Gourmandien [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · vi Apprentice, 1939
17 · Sonnet [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · pm Cargoes, 1935; restores author’s preferred text
19 · Personal Story
21 · Constantinople [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ts U.S. Catholic, 1994
31 · The Enormous Toothache · William Tenn · ts Stories, 1985
41 · The Frank Merriwell Compulsion or Winning the Championship the Hard Way [“Frank Merriwell’s Syndrome”] · William Tenn · ts Rogue Apr ’63
49 · What’s Wrong with My Daughter? [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ts The Reader’s Digest, 1992
53 · My First Deer · William Tenn · ts *
57 · Creative Fiction and NonFiction
59 · Murdering Myra · William Tenn · ss Suspect Detective Stories Nov ’55
69 · 8 Eyes on Strange New Worlds · William Tenn · ms Esquire, 1966
71 · The Bugmaster [“Mr. Eavesdropper”] · William Tenn · ar True, 1968
91 · The Student Rebel: Then and Now · William Tenn · ar P.S. Jun ’66
107 · Notes Toward a History of Science Fiction
109 · On the Fiction in Science Fiction · William Tenn · ar Of All Possible Worlds, Ballantine, 1955; revised from “The Fiction in Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Adventures March 1954
119 · Jazz Then, Musicology Now · William Tenn · ar F&SF May ’72
127 · An Innocent in Time: Mark Twain in King Arthur’s Court [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ar Extrapolation Dec ’74
143 · “The Lady Automaton” by E. E. Kellett: A Pygmalion Source? [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ar Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 1982, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982
153 · The Lady Automaton · E. E. Kellett · ss Pearson’s Magazine Jun ’01
171 · Welles or Wells: The First Invasion from Mars · William Tenn · ar Synergy SF: New Science Fiction, ed. George Zebrowski, Gale Group/Five Star, 2004; revised from an earlier version in The New York Review of Books 1988 as by Philip Klass
183 · It Didn’t Come from Outer Space · William Tenn · ar The Digital Deli, ed. Steve Ditlea, Workman, 1984
185 · Author Emeritus Speech: Given Here Without the Gestures, Intonations and Pauses Which Made It Moderately Funny in the First Place · William Tenn · sp The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1999
193 · Intros and Obits
195 · Introduction to Children of Wonder · William Tenn · in New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953
205 · Introduction to What Mad Universe [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · in Pennyfarthing; San Francisco, CA, 1978 [Fredric Brown]
215 · From a Cave Deep in Stuyvesant Town—A Memoir of Galaxy’s Most Creative Years [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · in Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction, ed. Frederik Pohl, Joseph D. Olander & Martin H. Greenberg, Playboy Press, 1980
219 · Introduction to The Ova Hamlet Papers [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · in Pennyfarthing; San Francisco, CA, 1979 [Richard A. Lupoff]
225 · John W. Campbell, Jr.: A Memoir [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ob Pennsylvania English, 1984 [John W. Campbell, Jr.]
231 · Sturgeon, The Improbable Man · William Tenn · bg Bright Segment, North Atlantic Books, 2002 [Theodore Sturgeon]
237 · Judy Merril [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ob Locus Nov ’97 [Judith Merril]
243 · Poul Anderson [as by Philip Klass] · William Tenn · ob Locus Jun, 2001 [Poul Anderson]
245 · Dancing Naked: The Interviews—and a Bit of PR
247 · A Jew’s-Eye View of the Universe · Dr. Josh Lukin · iv Para*doxa, 2003 [William Tenn]
279 · Eric Solstein Interviews William Tenn · Eric Solstein · iv * [William Tenn]
403 · Philip Klass: Wit with a Flair for the Incredible · Anon. · ar Penn Stater, 1973 [William Tenn]
409 · Klass Class
411 · Recruiting New “Huddled Masses” and “Wretched Refuse”: A Prolegomenon to the Human Colonization of Space · Morton Klass · ar Futures, 2000
423 · Bibliography · Laurie Mann · bi *

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

FFB: THE COMPLEAT OVA HAMLET by Richard Lupoff (as illustrated by Trina Robbins and introduced by Philip Klass aka William Tenn) among others...

It's 1977, and my friend Steven Durost has just flashed a copy of a magazine called Fantastic that he found in the Londonderry Junior High library...the June 1971 issue, no less (six years seemed very long before at the time), with a cover devoted to Poul Anderson's The Byworlder (editor Ted White always liked to keep things a bit mixed up, so the straightforward sf of the Anderson was in Fantastic while the borderline surreal fantasy of Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven was being serialized simultaneously in the sibling Amazing Science Fiction). I knew I had to read that, and that my father might want to check it out, as well...since it had one of the few unreprinted Larry Niven short stories in it, a collaboration with Hank (later Jean Marie) Stine called "No Exit," as Niven had with his 1960s and early '70s work temporarily dislodged Arthur C. Clarke as my father's favorite writer. Generally, it looked cool.
The librarian was happy to let me have the 1971 Galaxy, Worlds of If, and F&SF issues that someone, presumably a teacher, had left in the library sometime over those years, and not actually added to the collection nor apparently disturbed till Steve plucked the Fantastic (he liked the Fantastic Adventures pulp reprint in the issue the best, Festus Pragnell's "War of Human Cats"...well, it was strange and endearingly goofy), and Steve let me know when he was returning the Fantastic, and it was passed onto me for good as well.

And it was a fine issue of Fantastic, as it turned out...clever horror or surreal fantasy by Richard Peck, Ed Bryant (both at the beginning of their careers), and this odd, hilarious parody, "War of the Doom Zombies," attributed to an eccentric old woman supposedly named Ova Hamlet, who worked through her obvious alter ego, one Richard Lupoff (whom I knew as a contributor of a short novel to the clangorous anthology Again, Dangerous Visions). Fantastic would make much hay with Conan pastiches over the rest of the '70s, though entirely too many of them were by Lin Carter (or Carter in collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp, ready to begin his years-long argument with Robert Howard's supporters with his first essay on Howard and the first of his biographical and critical essay series "Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers," which would also run for years in the magazine)...but this "Hamlet" evisceration was far more savage than any of the Cimmerian's attacks on a foe. I dug it, to say the least. And while most of the Lupoff I would stumble across in new publications and the random back issues I would find were in other modes (I found his "Lupoff's Book Week" column in Algol/Starship particularly enjoyable, along with the fiction, the critical/historical nonfiction, and the odd anthology), I was always very happy to find a Fantastic back issue with a Hamlet story, and was bitterly disappointed that the shakeup at Fantastic and Amazing delayed indefinitely (it seemed) the publication of the promised "Two Sort-of Adventurers," taking on Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (the next-most-famous characters in sword & sorcery fiction, really, after Conan, and great favorites of mine). I (barely) caught word of the 1979 publication of the first edition of this collection, but didn't take sufficient initiative to seek it out specifically via mail-order (since in the southern New Hampshire/Boston and then the Honolulu suburbs, I had no walk-in access to true specialty shops in '79 and '80)...but it's taken me only four years to rectify this oversight with the 2007 expanded and revised Ramble House edition.
Phil Klass's introduction is unsurprisingly urbane, and adept in delineating the differences between parody, which requites capturing the flavor and rhythm of the work being critiqued, and burlesque and similar modes, which can simply mock. Trina Robbins, like Lupoff an important figure in comics as well as sf/fantasy prose and fannish circles, provides charming caricatures to go with most of the items here (including at least one new to this edition), though I miss the (Jeff Jones? Joe Staton? I don't have a copy of the issue at hand) illo from "Doom Zombies"'s original appearance. [Late bulletin: ISFDb informs us it was Bill Graham.]

The parodies are detailed (not quite completely) on the back cover:
J. G. Ballard: "In the Kitchen" (within the context of a parody of Judith Merril, as crusading editor of England Swings SF, here given as Isle of Man Swings SF)
Norman Spinrad: "Music in the Air"
Harlan Ellison: "Battered Like a Brass Bippy"
Robert E. Howard: "War of the Doom Zombies"
H. P. Lovecraft: "The Horror South of Red Hook"
Philip K. Dick: "Agony and Remorse on Rhesus IX"
Barry Malzberg: "Grebzlam's Game"
L. Ron Hubbard: "Young Nurse Nebuchadnezzer" (one of the items I'd read in another Fantastic back-issue, long before I'd ever seen an example of the "Old Doc Methuselah" stories...at least I'd seen Conan books and comics before the Howard story!)
Kurt Vonnegut: "The Wedding of Ova Hamlet"
Philip Jose Farmer: "God of the Naked Unicorn"
"John Norman": "Nosepickers of Dawr"
Fritz Leiber: "Two Sort-of Adventurers" (it was eventually published by White successor Elinor Mavor)
Stephen King: "Phannie"
and Mickey Spillane: "Death in the Ditch"

It's a great mix of nostalgia and newfound pleasure to have these all together, and note how few missteps Lupoff, one of our sharper observers at any given time, takes.
This book is not out of print, but Ramble House, and Lupoff, deserve your support in the offer of this fine, even necessary volume (I've been lucky enough to meet both the late Phil Klass and the happily still-writing Lupoff on a couple of occasions each, as well as host a scrap of Dick's writing here a few weeks back. If you find yourself moving on from this to Lupoff's more straightforwardly satirical or even utterly more straightforward work, all to the good...old fans of Ova will need to read Blodwyn Blenheim's account of Hamlet's recent course through life...and you get a photo of Hamlet, or just maybe Lupoff, as an infant in 1938 on the back cover, to boot...).

The Google Books "preview" and the Ramble House and Lulu pages.

For more of today's "forgotten" books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.