Email correspondence from Marty Halpern, author of A Meeting With Jack Vance, Conducted April 15, 1989, published in Paperback Parade number 17 (March 1990), pages 42-44. Reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright ©1996 by Marty Halpern. All rights reserved.
Mike Berro wrote:> Let me know the fanzine issue number or date, and if you know somewhere I > can get a copy. I'd love to see the interview. I've heard about his house; > sounds fantastic. How did you get to meet him? Is there any additional > info about him you can "spare"? Inquiring minds want to know.It's Paperback Parade Issue 17 and came out in March 1990. Actually, I was shocked when I realized this had been published so long ago, and my meeting with Jack Vance at his house was actually in mid-April **the previous year**!! It took the editor/publisher of this fanzine nearly a year to get my mini-article/interview in print!Well, you're really not missing much as the whole thing only encompasses a couple of pages.
I actually don't recall how all this came about. I guess if I dug through a cabinet of correspondence I could probably find out... I believe I wrote him just an informal letter once I tracked down his address, and asked if he would be willing to sign some books for me if I shipped them to him. I'm pretty certain I received a phone call from his wife, Norma (a real sweetheart), and she invited me to the house. I went with another friend once I got her permission to bring someone else along.
The house is built into the side of a hill. There is a very large stairway once ascends upon entering the front door. This stairway takes you up to the living quarters. We sat in a dining area, around a table. Three sides had oddly shaped glass windows, the fourth side was a small balcony that looked out over the kitchen below! Jack took us back into the living room. The ceiling was comprised of hand-tooled wooden tiles, each measured around two-feet square if my memory serves me well. Jack talked quite a bit about this ceiling, including where the tiles came from, but so long ago, I just can't remember the country or how he came about them.
Norma was very cordial, offering us munchies and drinks. His son John was near at hand most of the time, too.
Did you know that Jack is a potter by hobby? When we arrived he had been downstairs (ground level) in his studio where he has a potter's wheel, etc. When he came upstairs to greet us when we first arrived, his hands were covered in greyish white from the clay he had been working with.
Jack writes on a computer, obviously, but since he is legally blind and has difficulty seeing, he works with a huge font and software that speaks the words he has typed. Not sure how all this works, though, but evidently his son John has a lot to do with helping Jack on the computer.
You know, Jack himself may not be on-line, but it's possible his son is. You might want to send a note to Patrick Nielsen Hayden at TOR (I believe his email ID is xxx@xxxxx.com) and see if he knows if Jack, or Jack's son John are on-line. Explain that you have a Vance web site and would like to share this with the Vance family. Hey, it's worth a try...
Cheers,
- marty
Followup: I sent a message to Mr. Hayden, and he replied that he was unaware that the Vances might be online. Marty has agreed to send me a copy of the interview, and has graciously allowed me to reprint it here. I will be contacting the editor of Paperback Parade to enquire about a group purchase of issue #17, and will post the result.
Followup: You can now view the entire interview, transcribed by Mark V Grieshaber, and HTML'ed by yours truly. You can also view a scanned images of a xerox of the original article (with Vance signature), if you have the patience for huge images.