The Dead Man

Publication(s)

Front Matter from Sir, October, 1965.

The taut and absorbing story, "The Dead Man" (page 12) is the work of author, GENE WOLFE.

Gene studied mechanical engineering at the "hard-nosed" Texas A & M, left for Army service in the Far East, entered the University of Houston upon his return to civilian life, and received his B.S. under the G.I. Bill.

Gene is 34 years old, married, and now makes his home in Ohio where he works in research and development for a large corporation.

Writing is a hobby for Gene—"a most absorbing hobby" which has proved to be both successful and rewarding for him. Having been born in Texas, his future plans include a home in that state (which he hopes to design and build himself), a trip to India for both research and pleasure, and a chance to raise Afghan hounds.

Among his hobbies are hunting and coin collecting.

We liked the sense of immediacy and the ring of authenticity Gene was able to get into his story, and we think you will too.

Wolfe's Introduction from Wondrous Beginnings, Editors Martin H. Greenberg and Steven H Silver, 2003.

Deadeye: Writing "The Dead Man"

By Gene Wolfe

The little black card file that holds the index to my library has ten cards headed Biography. There are perhaps thirty titles to a card, so you see. Furthermore, I have actually read many of those books; and though I hate to admit it, Most are flawed. Nearly always it is the same flaw—between page and page the part we most want to read is missing.

Let us say that the subject is an actress. There will be a chapter on her antecedents and several chapters on her girlhood. The last will end something like this: "In spite of that C- in Theater, Emma resolved to go to New York and try her luck."

And the next will begin like this: "Well before the year drew to a close, Emma was starring on Broadway." The part we really want to read, the part we bought the book to read, isn't there.

For me, this is it.

In May of 1954 I rotated out of Korea. I was discharged a month after that, and was able to enroll at the University of Houston thanks to the GI Bill. In 1956 I graduated, and Rosemary and I were married. She was working as a secretary, I as an engineer; we had no money beyond our salaries. I had written for a college magazine before I went into the Army, and I decided to try to write a book and sell it so that we could escape from our furnished attic.

By January of 1965 Rosemary was no longer working, and we had three children. We were renting a lovely little house on an unpaved street by then, but money remain very tight. I had written an unpublishable mystery novel and a number of short stories, including "Trip Trap," which would eventually be my third sale; but I had sold exactly nothing. For reasons that I have forgotten utterly now, I had to go downtown and meet someone for lunch—I no longer know who. I phoned him from the lobby of his building; he said he would be along in a minute or two and I sat down in one of the chairs the building provided for people like me and picked up a copy of Reader's Digest.

It contained a fascinating article about crocodiles. In it I learned that they could not chew, and that they dug dens in the soft banks of rivers, dark and muddy caves in which they stored their prey until it had decayed enough for them to tear away the putrid flesh and gulp it down. When I was still a child, the fear of death had been laid upon me by Rudyard Kipling's "The Undertakers," and as I read this article, the memory of that sinister tale returned with a vengeance. When I returned home, I wrote the story you are about to read.

Six magazines rejected it; the seventh took it and paid me eighty dollars. Eighty dollars was a great deal to us in those days, but the mere fact that “The Dead Man” had sold meant far more. For close to ten years I had been trying to sell what I wrote before going to work, in the evenings, and on weekends to augment an income frequently stretched to the breaking point. My little story is only words on paper now, one of millions of short stories published almost anonymously in thousands of magazines; but I ask you to treat it gently just the same.

In the darkness of 1965, it sang of hope.

Summary

The experiences of an Indian peasant killed by a crocodile. This is Wolfe's first published story.

Analysis

  • Wolfe learned that crocodiles must let their meat rot to soften it enough to chew; that fact inspired this story.

< The Grave Secret | The Young Wolfe | Mountains Like Mice >

The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories | The Hero as Werwolf >

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