Seen in the Macroscope....

[lblanchard]

I had a plot fragment from an older science fiction novel floating in my head, and threw myself on the mercy of the LiveJournal hive mind, which promptly yielded author and title: Piers Anthony, Macroscope. That sent me to Teh Intarwebs to get a plot refresher, to Amazon to order a copy of the book, and then to the Internet Archive for an online edition of Sidney Lanier's poems, which figure importantly in the novel, especially "The Marshes of Glynn."

This 1880s-vintage volume has a Memorial by William Hayes Ward at its beginning and there I found this delicious observation:

While we do not talk so much of genius now as we did a generation ago, we can yet recognize the difference between the fervor of that divine birth and the cantering of the livery Pegasus along the vulgar boulevards over which facile talent rides his daily hack.

In reading this Memorial, I also find that Lanier, a musician, was commissioned to write a cantata for the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which we consider to be more or less the end of the Greater Civil War Era here. Which makes it all work-related, sort of. (EDIT: Turns out he was commissioned to write a poem. Someone else did the setting, which looks like a piece of livery hackery to me.)

The Marshes of Glynn on Bartleby.com, from the Harvard Classics.
The Centennial Cantata, text by Sidney Lanier, music by Dudley Buck, from Google Books

Comments

[melvin-udall.livejournal.com]

Well that's annoying. I read it and remember nothing about it. At one point I went through all or almost all of his works. I can tell you the main plot points for the first 50 Xanth novels but have forgotten this story. Sad.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

The only other Piers Anthony I remember off the top of my head is the Xanth series.

See if any of these key phrases or character names from the novel tickle your memory:

Swinehood hath no remedy
The Traveler

Ivo Archer
Schoen
Brad Carpenter
Afra Summerfield

Here's a link to a piece about it that's pretty good:
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/6/brigg6art.htm

[melvin-udall.livejournal.com]

Not a one.

I even have a greater recollection of the story with the protagonist as an alien species of blobs.

*shrug* I may have to go back and look that up.