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desperanceMy friend Joel Lane has died, reportedly in his sleep. He was fifty years old.
His health has not been good; I didn't see him in Brighton as I'd been hoping, and various friends there told me that he wasn't doing too well, but nevertheless. I am ... shaken to the core.
We've known each other twenty years, Joel and I. We had an awkward start, a diffident, difficult late-night confrontation at my first-ever con [he felt that genre fiction really hadn't needed another gay psychopath, which was statistically true; I felt that my own work really had needed one, which was statistically also true], and we built a slow friendship over years, over meals and drinks and letters, which was never quite comfortable but always, always important. I'm not sure Joel was comfortable with anyone, or that he made anyone comfortable with him: he was edgy, nervous, political, vulnerable, sharp. Never the brightest light at any gathering, but always the guy I gravitated to, to kill a bottle of vodka and talk about '40s pulp noir or '70s rock or the slow death of English education or some beautiful ridiculous boy. He could be wickedly funny or savagely malevolent or heartbreakingly tender or deeply insightful; he could be drunk or horny or lost, and I loved him.
Also, he was one of the finest writers we had. The industry won't notice that he's gone, but those of us who knew, we'll always know what's missing now.
His health has not been good; I didn't see him in Brighton as I'd been hoping, and various friends there told me that he wasn't doing too well, but nevertheless. I am ... shaken to the core.
We've known each other twenty years, Joel and I. We had an awkward start, a diffident, difficult late-night confrontation at my first-ever con [he felt that genre fiction really hadn't needed another gay psychopath, which was statistically true; I felt that my own work really had needed one, which was statistically also true], and we built a slow friendship over years, over meals and drinks and letters, which was never quite comfortable but always, always important. I'm not sure Joel was comfortable with anyone, or that he made anyone comfortable with him: he was edgy, nervous, political, vulnerable, sharp. Never the brightest light at any gathering, but always the guy I gravitated to, to kill a bottle of vodka and talk about '40s pulp noir or '70s rock or the slow death of English education or some beautiful ridiculous boy. He could be wickedly funny or savagely malevolent or heartbreakingly tender or deeply insightful; he could be drunk or horny or lost, and I loved him.
Also, he was one of the finest writers we had. The industry won't notice that he's gone, but those of us who knew, we'll always know what's missing now.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-11-27 04:55 pm (UTC)