I have never knowingly met an Esperanto speaker. I'm having trouble thinking of a casual situation where I might meet such a person. Have you ever conversed with an Esperanto speaker in a chance situation?
Not by chance, although I did once go to an Esperanto convention. I couldn't believe how many people were speaking the language like natives, not to mention the massive body of literature. It's a small community, but a very dedicated one—which is why I thought of dear old Hubski.
They're interesting folks, and not just for the desire to speak an artificial language. Esperanto has a utopian ideal behind it which means that Esperantists are very welcoming, voluble, engaged sorts of people. Languages like Tolkien's Elvish may be very beautiful and artistic, and languages like Klingon may have strong ties to fiction, but with Esperanto there's a strong community of people with actual goals. It's a weird phenomenon. No other conlang has ever been quite so successful, and believe me there have been a lot of them. What's more interesting, though, is that they've created a new cultural context. It may have started from nothing, but there's now a huge amount of original music and literature in Esperanto. I'm not here to evangelize for it, but I am definitely excited by its achievements. As you pointed out, I just wish there were more people I could speak it with. I'm more than a little rusty.
Is there some kind of "goal" for Esperanto as a language? I find this all very interesting and a little alien, but if you've got some resources handy, I'd love to check it out. I wonder if you might go into the weirdness of the phenomenon a bit more, if you don't mind.
The idea was to create a universal second language. It's not intended to be everybody's first language, but if everyone has Esperanto as a second language then you could travel anywhere in the world and talk to the locals. It's designed to be easy to learn, so it's very regular. In practice it's far easier for Europeans to learn because the vocab is very close to Romance languages. That's one of the major flaws with the system, but it's not a problem that there's any real solution to at the moment. If you want to find out more (and maybe see some samples of the language), lernu! has a lot of good information. In terms of weirdness… whew, that's a big question! I read a book called In the Land of Invented Languages, which is a brilliantly written history of artificial languages. Many of them were designed to improve human thought or communication. Most of them were either laughably crap or simply failed to take off. Esperanto is strange as one of the few success stories. I was taken aback at that Esperanto convention because I found so many people for whom this was a very real thing. They had a giant room stacked to the ceiling with books in Esperanto, including translations of The Hobbit and The Wizard of Oz. In Europe, especially in the early 20th century, Esperanto had a lot more traction than we imagine. I've found postcards of family members writing to each other in Esperanto. They even had their own currency. I find that kind of thing very weird, and oddly exhilarating. These people are mad — you'd have to be — and yet they've made their madness a reality. They make it work. I think that's pretty exciting.
I hope to contribute to a world where more instances of (benign) madness are made a reality. That is all very cool and thanks for the link, I will check it out. That writing from those postcards looks a bit crazy. Also, I dig the look of the header on your blog. Final question: Would you say that your experience with Esperanto contributed in any significant way in the creation of Radium Baby?
Yesss, more folks in the mad camp! Not enough people get excited by weird ideas. One of the things I like so much about Hubski is its idealism. I don't think Esperanto contributed to Radium Baby directly, but I like the set pieces in Radium Baby for the same reason I like Esperanto — their mad, exciting novelty. You can probably tell I love Egyptology, autogyros, radium cures, silent movies, silly music, and oversized mustaches. I didn't realize that kind of writing was possible until I read James Kennedy's sensational novel The Order of Odd-Fish, where his love of weird ideas explodes from every page. It's a really exhilarating experience. I know your own work uses a lot of surreal imagery and unusual juxtapositions. Is much of that influenced by the bizarre things in real life? Or is it the reverse, the bizarre things are in your head and you're putting them out into the world?
First, I think you're a pretty cool dude, StJohn and I liked Radium Baby. I'll save my comments about the book for the book club. Second, thanks for checking out my stuff, I truly appreciate it! In response to your question, I think life is bizarre in so many ways . . . and I love it. I really can't express how much I love it, so I try to and I try to connect to the world in that way and more especially I try to connect to the others inhabiting the world with me in that way. It seems like there's a maybe unconscious effort of humanity as a whole to catalog things, to tick them off as merely a part of the world we all share and in doing so, ends up making it "known" and therefore boring. I think that is also weird and not exactly wrong, but bewildering. I mean, everyone feels like they're weird and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like sharing that weirdness to find commonality is a huge part of communication, particularly writing.
Hah, many thanks, and I'm glad you liked Radium Baby. But more on that later… I try and stop by your blog every couple of days to check out the latest boogers. There's always something juicy. But I really like what you said, that the weirdness in life connects you to other people. I'd never thought of it like that, but you're right, we do connect with other people over our eccentricities. It always depresses me when people stop being strange. Some people just seem to make a conscious decision to be normal, and all of a sudden the person you really liked is just gone. thenewgreen recently wrote me a note that made my day. I hope he won't mind me repeating it, but his phrase was "the fight against normality". Keep that strange fire burning!