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 Post subject: Lindskold's Biography of Roger Zelazny
PostPosted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 10:12 pm 
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Lady Scryer
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I have been reading the biography of Roger Zelazny as written by fantasy writer Jane Lindskold. It has been fascinating reading.
Here is the cover blurb to give you all an idea of what it is about...

quote:
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Rich in biographical detail and comprehensive in its coverage of Roger Zelazny's works, Jane M. Lindsold's study will be appreciated by science fiction fans as well as students and scholars of Zelazny. Lindskold's thematic assessment of the author's more than 30 novels and numerous short stories is informed with her extensive correspondence with him; Zelazny's letters to Lindskold provide insights into his maturation as a writer, his approach to story development and style, his choice of protagonists, and the influence of his personal interestes, his wide reading, and his life experience on his work.
Lindskold begins with a biographical sketch, tracing Zelazny's interest in writing to his boyhood in what was then rural Ohio. She then follows his evolution as a writer from his years in college and graduate school and his stint in the National Guard and at the Social Security Administration through his attainment of professional success and his decision to move to Santa Fe, where he now resides.
An entire chapter is devoted to Zelazny's "education", which he continues today through a program of reading fashioned after Leonardo da Vinci's design for self-education. Mythology, psychology, world history, ecology, and Buddhist philosophy all find their way into Zelazny's work as a result of his intensive reading. In other chapters Lindskold examines the influence of other Zelazny interests - jazz, the visual arts, the martial arts, and poetry, particlularly his own poetry - on his prose.
Lindskold also explores Zelazny's treatment of female characters and takes up the charge made by some critics that Zelazny's heros - all but one of whom are male - are cast from the same mold. Through a close analysis of such mythical Zelazny figures as Francis Sandow in Isle of the Dead, Conrad Nomikos in This Immortal, and Billy Blackhorse Singer in Eye of Cat, Lindskold argues that while certain motifs do recur - the protagonist is immortal, for instance - the personal history and inner life of the heros continually evolve.
If there is one theme to which Lindskold returns again and again, it is that of evolution: the evolution of Zelazny as a writer through a vigorous program of self-development, and the consequent evolution of his work as he moves his characters through different times and spaces in an effort to convey and comprehend what appear to be the unlimited horizons of the human experience.
____________________________________________________ ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: Lindskold's Biography of Roger Zelazny
PostPosted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 8:57 pm 
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I am amazed at how well rounded and how well read and educated a man Zelazny was...
SOME of the things listed as having inspired the Amber books, for example include:
the view of the Sagra de Christo Mountains from his home in New Mexico
(they are part of the Rockies, and one of them gave him the idea of the big mountain Amber sits upon)
downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico (he even knew exactly which hotel rooms belonged to Luke and Merlin and meticulously described real rooms, real restaurants, real streets, etc. in that part of the book)
The Dark World by Henry Kuttner, which directly inspired large parts of Nine Princes
various legends about Charlemagne (inspired in part Avalon and the character Ganelon)
a painting of a red '57 Chevy by an artist named Polly Jackson
a comic book character named John Gaunt
woodcuts by Yoshitoshi Mori (as was the one taken from Corwin by Eric)
his collection of playing cards and tarot cards
jazz music
a World War 2 song called Lili Marlene
New Mexican guiatarist Bruce Dunlap
martial arts, of which Zelazny studied many...

A tidbit I found interesting that Zelazny was once a smoker. When he would need a pause from writing he would smoke, and so would his character...so when you see one of his characters light up a cigarrette, so was Zelazny at that moment of writing his story.

I think I am going to have to track down a Zelazny book called Eye of Cat. It sounds very interesting, as it is loosely based upon Navajo mythology and set in part in Canyon de Chelly National Park and in the American Southwest. And since I will be there in six months, it might be very fun to read before I go there. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: Lindskold's Biography of Roger Zelazny
PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:31 pm 
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Another thing I found interesting was that Zelazny's first love was writing poetry. He began as one, and his first published works were poems. He switched to short stories and novels because he wanted to make a living as a writer, and there was much more money to be made in that sort of writing. As soon as he began making enough money from his stories and books to support himself, he quit his job with the federal government and devoted himself to self-education and to writing.
Of all of his books, only one was written for personal satisfaction and enjoyment alone, and that was Creatures of Light and Darkness. All of his other books were written with an eye to publication. Creatures, which reads more like a tone poem than a novel, and with its passages of poetry and wild creativity, is his one product he wrote to please himself alone. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: Lindskold's Biography of Roger Zelazny
PostPosted: Thu Apr 01, 2004 1:16 am 
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And maybe one would want some information without reading Jane Lindskold's biography. If one goes to Jane Linskold's site www.janelindskold.com/ and go to the biography link one will find some wonderful information about Zelazny's (1937 - 1995) and Jane's relationship. (reading it one can tell this had a huge effect on her).

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