forty years later, and we’re dancing still

Í’ve just been reading Poul Anderson’s Operation Luna. My initial reaction, about two pages in, was “This author is clëarly a happily married man.” (It had to do with the viewpoint character’s description of his 42-year-old wife, after umpteen years together.) It’s pretty much the same reaction I had to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I know there’s a difference between an author’s viewpoint and that of his or her character, but I also think you probably can tell at least a little of an author’s experience by what s/he is capable of writing. (Only a little, given that these are the people who get paid for using their imaginations.) In this case no great litcrit skills are required and it’s impossible to know how opinion is influenced by known fact; it’s well known that Anderson was and Scalzi is long and happily married. (It’s probably also safe to assume that a hypercompetent redheaded character named Ginny is intended as a tribute to the wife of another famously happily married SF writer.)

Of course there are writers, not happily married themselves, who have created wonderful fictional marriages – Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter and Harriet Wimsey are an obvious example. The Wimseys’marriage has longevity too; Lord and Lady Peter are still the center of each others’worlds after seven years of marriage, in Sayers’ short story Talboys. I would say that the Wimseys seem more idealized, more cerebralized, than Scalzi’s or Anderson’s couples – but then again, that’s Sayers’ style anyway. She was a very cerebral writer, and especially by the end of the series, Lord Peter is a bit of an idealized man. I’ve certainly never met a conversationalist of his caliber (I have heard of a few, such as the writer Mike Ford) though I have met men with as much respect for their partners (and married one). But again, it’s all too easy to theorize after you have data.

It would be interesting to know how Emma Bull and Steven Brust’s collaboration Freedom and Necessity was written, as a test. I’d guess each author ended up going over every word in the book, but I’d love to know who originally wrote Jamie’s incomparable letter to Susan – whether it was Bull (another writer known to be very happily married – these SF writer types may be good marital risks after all!) or Brust, who as far as I know is not now married. I can’t think of other valid tests – can you?