James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon

This book is a delight. I would go so far as to say it is the best biography I have ever read (not that I've read a great number). Philips has presented an exhaustive but not exhausting account of the life of Alice B. Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., aka Racconna Sheldon. This is a comprehensive work at over 400 pages of smallish print. One gets the feeling that Philips has done the job almost to perfection. What makes this book so amazing? Firstly, the subject, Alice Sheldon, is fascinating. This is much more than a biography of a science fiction writer (although it is that too); it is a chronicle of a difficult and ultimately tragic life. It would be hard to read this book and not feel for Sheldon, who 'lived inside her body as though inside an alien artifact.' Sheldon's lack of comfort in her own body is palpable in these pages. One can sense her dis-ease. Philips presents this difficult material sympathetically, correctly asserting that Sheldon's life is indicative of the changing landscape of sexual politics in twentieth century America. The various sections of Sheldon's life are interesting in themselves. For example, the chapters on Africa are fascinating, as is the material on Sheldon's mother, Mary Hastings Bradley (who I'd never heard of, although she was a famous writer in her day). 'Alli's' life is overshadowed by that of her successful mother, and the older woman's presence hangs over these pages. By the time we finally get to Sheldon's own writing career, more than half the book (and half her life) is over. This enables us to see the ephemeral figure of 'James Tiptree Jr.' in the context in which he was concieved. One funny thing about this book is that Tiptree's writing career is made to seem almost like an afterthought, or a not-entirely successful experiment. This is strange because most readers of this book will come to it thinking of Tiptree as one of the greatest writers in SF history (which 'he' is). But although Tiptree garnered the Hugos and Nebulas in quick time, none of it was much comfort to Sheldon. Here, again, one can sense Sheldon's dissatisfaction with her creations. A slight criticism of this book, in my mind, is that Philips spends little time addressing the themes and ideas in the stories themselves. It is almost as though the author of the biography does not quite appreciate the value of the stories to the extent that many of Tiptree's readers do. Stories like 'A Momentary Taste of Being' and 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever' are surely some of the greatest in the English language. It may be that in not coming from a SF background, Philips sees Tiptree's writing in the context that Sheldon herself may have seen it in. OK I am speculating, but Sheldon was clearly not content with having written these fabulous stories. As Philips makes clear, Sheldon 'meant it' when she wrote about death again and again. The ending to this book, which deals with the circumstances of Sheldon's murder of her husband 'Ting' and t

A few weeks ago, Julie Phillips published James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. Last week I spotted Richard Ellmann scouting the MLA conference for penniless, amoral grad students who might be willing to swap a hit for a really good letter of recommendation. Just kidding: he's been dead for almost 20 years. Nevertheless, the premiere literary biographer of our day has a serious rival. His specialty was bringing difficult figures to luminous life on the page. Julie Phillips has done the same for a character who seems too far-fetched to be real: the blonde Chicago debutante who became a chicken farmer, the first white child to trek through the Congo who grew up to be a suicidally depressed devotee of Dexedrine, the Army major and CIA analyst who was also a gifted artist, the battered teenage bride who earned a PhD in psychology, the reclusive male SF writer who turned out to be a middle-aged housewife in McLean, VA. It would be easy for a biographer to get lost among the many masks of Alice B. Sheldon, or to be dazzled into idolatry by her flashing surfaces. Or, most likely, to choose one mask, one surface, as the Real or True or Important one, relegating the others to obscurity. Phillips never makes this mistake: she deals fairly with all the faces she mentions, and she examines the interplay of masks, emotions, gender identity, sexuality, and behavior with genuine insight. Alice Bradley's parents were characters straight out of a 1920s film: dashing socialites who were also daring explorers. Her mother, Mary Hastings Bradley, was a superb raconteuse, expert markswoman, noted beauty, and very successful writer of both popular fiction and travel/adventure books. (I wonder if this book will bring her writing back into fashion.) Alice's father was a prosperous lawyer and a naturalist. Their expeditions took them through Africa and India, mostly on foot, and they brought their small daughter Alice along. Generally 6-year-old Alice was carried in a litter; she learned early to say, "Put me down!" in a number of local languages. Less excusably, Mary used her daughter as a central figure in two books about their safaris. (Alice in Jungleland and Alice in Elephantland, which young Alice herself illustrated.) Alice's experience of those early travels included helplessness in the face of constant danger (she alone of the party had no gun) and unspeakable terror at the death she saw all around her. In contrast, she was treated with wonder by the Africans, who had never seen a white child before, much less an adorable blonde Shirley Temple, and with patronizing affection by the various white dignitaries who entertained the explorers whenever they reached a city. (Yes, they packed plenty of evening clothes for these festivities. This was before the days of excess baggage charges.) That disconnect between how Alice experienced the world and how others saw her role would have been difficult enough, but her parents subscribed to the

The first Tiptree story I ever read, long ago, was "The Women Men Don't See." There was no blood, no gore but the effect was nonetheless like the proverbial bucket of cold water. "Who IS this person," I thought, to write like this? And then there was "Love is the Plan and the Plan is Death" and I was hooked, permanently, on the intellect behind these stories. And so, now, thirty years later, I at last get to meet this person, and finally have some dim understanding of who James Tiptree, Jr. really was. I say "dim understanding" because as good as this biography is it still leaves the reader haunted, haunted by the dramatic yet tragic life of U.S. mid-westerner Alice Sheldon, who saw things the rest of us didn't see, and then tried to tell us about them. **

I probably shouldn't have done any driving for a day or two after reading Julie Phillips' biography of James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon. I was too distracted with thoughts of this life, this complicated amazing person, that had suddenly elbowed itself into my own. I'll never again be able to tell that thrilling, easy story that I've told way too often -- of the woman who wrote under a man's pseudonym and who, when she decided to write under a woman's name, couldn't get published without Tiptree's recommendation. That story now feels like the gloss it is, and so much less interesting that the real one. It's a holographic biography -- At times I felt like I could freeze the action. put down the book, and walk all around this 3-dimensional, fully fleshed out person. Ali revealed slices of herself to most people, seldom letting them see more than the single persona; she was constantly disguising herself, always performing, even for herself. Readers of Julie's biography are privileged to a much wider view: sadly, a view Ali never may never have allowed herself. The room had been lit up and the photo had become a hologram, the voice had become many voices.

A first quality piece of writing. The details of Sheldon's Tiptree persona are laid out with elegance and clarity. If you care about science fiction, you need to know Tiptree. To do that you need to read this biography. Be aware some story endings are revealed. Enjoyable from start to finish, most elucidating. Don't miss this impressive result of Julie Phillips' ten year archiological dig.