This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is I), book review

This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is I)

Autobiographical sketch by Jack Vance

I really enjoyed reading this interesting and unpretentious autobiographical sketch by Jack Vance and highly recommend it to all Vance fans.  Published in 2009 by Spatterlight Press, it is only 188 pages long and is not a full autobiography.  But I found it engaging to read as it presented some of the highlights of Vance's very active and fascinating life.

In the Preliminary Remarks Vance refers to this work as a “memoir” and also as an “autobiographical sketch.”  He mentions that the work was initially recorded on tape (he was blind at the time) and that this memoir is “more of a landscape than a self-portrait-or at least a ramble across the landscape that has been my life.”  He explains that he does not focus that much on his writings or the process of writing and that “writing is mastered by practice and patience.”  He states that “many remarkable persons have wandered in and out of my life, and I have been fortunate enough to live through what is certainly an interesting and eventful epoch.  I have attempted to detail these persons and events, while at the same time perhaps conveying something of my attitudes toward life.”  He continues with humility, “The latter I have not done vehemently, nor even consciously; such is merely the inevitable by-product of telling one’s own story.”

In the beginning of the book Vance describes his early life.  He was born in San Francisco in 1916 and lived there for his first five years, after which they moved to his grandfather’s ranch in a rural area about fifty miles inland from San Francisco. He was the middle of five children.  Vance rarely saw his father but did not really miss him, his father being described by Vance as a “rather bluff, boisterous, self-righteous chap” and “a bit of a bully” who mostly lived apart from the family, first stationed in France with the Red Cross and later living in Mexico at a ranch.  After many years of being apart, his parents divorced and his mother was reportedly swindled out of her house by his aunt and father and was left with no house or income.  Vance’s mother sounds wonderful, however, and he had a great relationship with his maternal grandfather and had a fascinating uncle.  Despite being rather poor and having a broken family, Vance describes his childhood as being a happy one.

Vance mentions some of the many books he read when young and discusses his early passion for music, especially jazz.  This eventually led to his being a talented amateur musician who played the coronet and banjo-ukulele.  Vance also worked at many unusual jobs during and the Depression, including working in a silver mine, serving as a bellhop while wearing a suit, surveying land in the Sierra Nevada foothills, cleaning steam coils at a catsup cannery, maintaining a doodlebug that scrapped mud out of a pond, operating a bulldozer, and working on drill rigs.  In 1937 at the age of 21 he enrolled at the University of Berkeley as a physics major.  He soon switched to English and then journalism and obtained a job working for the journalism department while trying his hand at writing science fiction.  After a two years at the university Vance decided to go to work at a tungsten mine.  Soon he applied for and was hired as an electrician for the Navy in Pearl Harbor.  When they realized Vance was not very skilled as an electrician, they assigned him to do electroplating where he performed well.  Next he was given the assignment of degaussing ships magnetic fields so they will not detonate mines.  Vance worked in Pearl Harbor until he had saved enough money to return home and then quit and left for California where he arrived just a week or so prior to the Japanese bombing.  Next he worked at Kaiser shipyard and then spent the duration of the war in the merchant marines as a seaman.  Throughout the book Vance describes various unusual experiences, personal interests and fascinating characters.

Vance was also an avid world traveler, who travelled on a very limited budget but often stayed in exotic places for months at a time.  In one early trip, for example, he and his wife Norma boarded a Liberty Ship which they took from Oakland to San Salvador, then through the Panama Canal, eventually going to Barcelona.  After a stay there, they continued on to Casablanca, the Canary Islands, Timbuktu, Dakkar and Lisbon before returning home.  Vance’s wife, Norma, accompanied him on these trips and often assisted him with his writings.  After his son, John, was born the three of them, when they could afford it, went on lengthy trips to other countries, often staying in places for months at a time before returning to Oakland and their home in the hills which Jack built himself with assistance from family and friends.

Many lively travels, adventures and other events are described.  Vance, for example, was friends with two famous, science fiction writers who lived in the area-Poul Anderson and Frank Herbert.  The three of them built a houseboat together which they used to explore San Francisco Bay and connecting rivers.  Boats were such a major part of Vance’s life that he devotes an entire chapter (XI) to them.  In the last two chapters of the book Vance talks about writers he likes to read and describes some of his writings, his rules for writing fiction and which authors influenced him.

Vance’s passionate interests in sailing, jazz, travel, carpentry, ceramics, good food, family and friends are clearly evident throughout this work.  Some readers might wish that there was more content about Vance's inner thoughts and feelings and more insights into his writings and the creative process, but Vance makes it clear that this is not his main focus, and the book exhibits a refreshing unpretentiousness and lack of self-pity, even during what were obviously difficult times for Vance and his family.  He does make comments about his writings and the writing process throughout the book, but most of what he offers about his writings are in the five page Final Word that he had to be encouraged to add.

Vance does state in the beginning of the book that, "This autobiographical sketch is perhaps more of a landscape than a self-portrait."  He informs the reader that "I recognize that my reputation, such as it is, derives from literary production; however, writing has not been the sole function of my life and I am bound to report that this book offers little on the subject in the way of shop-talk."  If you approach this book with that in mind, you will likely enjoy reading it as much as I did.  I've read it three times so far and plan to eventually read it again. My rating: 5.

This book is in print and is published by Spatterlight Press LLC

Spatterlight Press LLC is a publishing company that was created by the family and friends of Jack Vance. So far they have published 62 high quality trade paperback editions of Vance’s novels (all except three Ellery Queen mystery novels: Strange She Hasn’t Written, Death of a Solitary Chess Player, and The Man Who Walks Behind.) and collections of his shorter works. These are all based on the Vance Integral Edition (VIE) which were extensively reviewed and edited to be as faithful as possible to Vance’s original writings. Many of Vance’s works were altered or heavily edited by book and magazine editors with even the author’s titles changed. Spatterlight now offers to the general public access to Vance’s writings the way he originally intended them to be. In 2023 they began issuing hardcover editions of the same works they had printed in paperback. They also have e-book editions available at: www.jackvance.com 

Other works are listed here:  https://www.jackvance.com/signatureseries/