Robert Shea
[This article is copied from a reprint in Robert Shea's zine, "No Governor." If you look under "Robert Shea Resources" at the right side of this page, you will see links to PDF files of all of the issues, which have material from Shea, Robert Anton Wilson and others. If you get interested in Shea, please take a look at my Robert Shea book, if you had not heard about it yet. -- The Management.]
Robert Shea has the write stuff
The Glencoe News, Jan. 3, 1985
Reprinted in No Governor No. 7, March 1985
By VIRGINIA GERST
If Robert Shea gets bored while reading a novel, he puts down the book, and tries to figure out what has gone wrong.
"Usually, nothing is happening in the story, or I don't like the main character because he's not taking charge the way he should," the author said recently.
For the 51-year-old Glencoe resident, literary analysis is more than an intellectual exercise. It is a means of ensuring that his own plots remain lively, that his own heroes seize control.
Since he sold his first story to Fantastic Universe magazine for $10 in 1958, Shea has earned at least a part of his living as a writer. A former editor at Playboy, he has been at it full time since 1978.
His first novel, "Illuminatus!," a three-volume science fiction tale he wrote with Robert Anton Wilson, was published in 1975, while "Shike," a historical work set in medieval Japan, appeared in 1981. Two other novels, both rooted in French history, are in various stages of completion.
All are produced in a small, cluttered office just off the kitchen of the two-story home he shares with his wife, Yvonne, a Chicago advertising agency executive, their 11-year-old son, Michael, and two family dogs.
The room is crammed with books, magazines and stacks of correspondence. A copy of "Dune" rests on a bookcase next to a volume titled "Zen," while the hum of his Apple IIe mingles with music from a cassette player on a shelf upon the wall.
"I can't say that every day I just rush to the word processor, but that's the ideal and it does happen sometime," he noted. "Other days, I have to cultivate habits."
Beginning at 9:30 a.m. today, and continuing for the following three Thursdays, Shea will help other writers cultivate professional habits when he appears as guest lecturer at the Off Campus Writers Workshop in the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave. Admission to each three-hour session is $5, or $14 for the complete series.
Meetings, Shea said, will be devoted primarily to discussions of the participants' manuscripts ("Honest criticism -- I've heard they've got built-in baloney detectors," he said.)
The gregarious writer also will spend time revealing "everything I know about magazine writing and writing historical fiction."
In the latter category, he is sure to place a great deal of emphasis upon plot.
"Authors have got to realize that the main thing is to be a good storyteller," he said over coffee in his living room, filled with Victorian antiques and framed photographs of Shea family ancestors.
"Particularly when you're writing historical fiction, it's easy to get carried away showing off how much you know, dragging a thing in just because it is an amazing fact. But it can't get in the way of your story."
Accurate portrayal of fact is important in fiction, said the writer, who researches his novels carefully, and plans a trip to France for his latest book, set in the Napoleonic period.
But accuracy is not always critical. Saul Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King," he pointed out, is set in an Africa that has nothing to do with the continent as it really is. "And nobody cares," he said. "It is such a wonderful piece of storytelling."
Shea takes best sellers very seriously. "They are fun to read, and that is the bottom line." And, while the long hours he has spent reading his way up and down best seller lists have not revealed any formulas for instant success, they have turned up some common characteristics among the published blockbusters.
"People are always in trouble and it is pretty bad trouble," he said. "Take 'The Thornbirds.' People suffer all the way through that."
The people, too, are crucial, particularly the hero, who had better act the part.
"Look at 'Shogun.' The main character is in a foreign land, he doesn't speak the language and everybody is hostile. In a situation like that, most people would lay down and die. But he doesn't. He is thinking all the time, about how to survive and prevail."
He has equally strong opinions about the villain.
"I want to like him as much as I like the hero," he said. "In real life, there really are no villains who set out to be villains. No one ever thinks they, themselves, are doing evil, and that is one of the truths I like to convey."
A graduate of Manhattan College, with a master of arts degree in English from Rutgers University, Shea has been reading and writing science fiction since he was a child growing up in New York City.
"I was the only kid in the neighborhood who read the stuff," he recalled.
He started selling stories, "at a penny a word," while in college, and met his "Illuminatus!" collaborator while at Playboy, where both were employed.
For their amusement, the men used to pass notes back and forth detailing the activities of the citizenry of an imaginary land of the future. One day, it occurred to them they might be on to something.
They were. The book, a combination of political satire, science fiction and fantasy, has developed what press releases call "a small, but highly intelligent cult following." Even better, when reissued as a single, very fat, volume in 1984, it earned a place on the trade paperback best seller list.
Shea planned his second novel to deal with a civil war in a faraway galaxy, but when his agent showed the five-page outline to a publisher, the publisher had other ideas.
"He said he liked the story, but that he couldn't bring out any more science fiction at that time," Shea recalled. "He said, 'How about moving it to Japan?' "
His wife recently had completed a course in Japanese history, and Shea leafed through some of her books, coming upon an historic period that paralleled the one in his outline. The result, "Shike," (pronounced She-K), has sold well, both on this side of the Atlantic and in nine foreign countries.
He may have changed his idea to get his story published, but he insisted he never would have done it had he not become fascinated witih feudal Japan. He counsels other writers to be equally intrigued by their subject matter.
"Many people see that romantic novels are selling, so they rush out and start writing romantic novels," he said. "But they're going to spend a year or maybe two or three on this work, and, if they are not interested in the subject, they are not going to be very happy."
If readers notice some elements of mysticism in his writing, it is no accident. Shea has been involved with mysticism ever since he read Ray Bradbury's "Zen and the Art of Writing," in Writer Magazine several years back. He now meditates 20 minutes a day, as a means of "getting close to whatever is out there, of trying to make contact with the ultimate reality.
"In his article, Bradbury implied that there was something about Zen that, if studied, could help people become more creative writers," he recalled. "So, like a lot of people, I got involved in mysticism thinking it would give me some practical benefit. But once you get into it, you lose that motivation. Writing becomes a way of getting closer to mysticism."
His basic goals, however, have not changed. He advises all writers to write as much as they can. Even if the work is not to be published, they should take pleasure in the process.
"I've never written for the literary critics, or to make a whole lot of money," he concluded. "I've always thought, 'Can I have fun writing this'?"
Robert Shea not only has fun, but he's managed to make a living at it as well.
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