Our pal Morgan “The Morgman” Holmes just dropped his new review of the latest biography of Robert E. Howard on the Arkhaven Comics site. Keeping his hand in, even as he populates his own Substack site with the extensive archives of posts he did for the old REHupa blog — with plans to begin moving years of posts he did for Castalia House over, as well.
I only skimmed around in the Will Oliver bio of REH, since I know almost all that material well enough. Couldn’t believe that certain of Howard’s greatest stories don’t even get a mention, much less coverage, in the main text. But he’s going for a meat-and-potatoes life, the day-to-day, not so much the life of the mind — although that creative life is the major reason anyone would be tempted to start a biography of a writer.
In particular, Morgan doesn’t seem too happy with the tedious roster of ancestors, an unhappy holdover from James Boswell long ago kicking off his Life of Dr. Sam: Johnson with that sort of thing. Boswell became synonymous with biography, largely because he hung out with Johnson and captured so many of his witty remarks for posterity — he got the man down on the page. People trying to do the same sort of thing seem to forget summoning up the person, and instead go after blocks of info on all those ancestors. Capturing lightning in a bottle is harder than copying info out of census books.
When I did my biography of Charles Willeford I decided to leave out the ancestors — and the possible scenes I could do where baby Willeford takes his first steps. Made the call because that material is boring as hell. And in Willeford’s case his ancestors didn’t mean anything to him. He was an orphan, pruned from the family tree. Mention his parents who died, and the grandmother he lived with for awhile, and you’ve got it.
Because I left out the ancestors some people seemed to think that I wasn’t doing a “real” biography. Hey, Bozzie had all the ancestors!!!
Many other people, however, have personally thanked me for leaving out the boring first 40 or 50 pages in a bio they always skip.
Will the next guy to attempt a Life of Howard regurgitate the ancestors and detailed descriptions of Cross Plains, Texas? Or get on with it?
