About Me: 2013 Edition

Mark Finn is an author, actor, essayist, and playwright. His biography, Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, was nominated for a World Fantasy award in 2007. His articles, essays, and introductions about Robert E. Howard and his works have appeared in publications for the Robert E. Howard Foundation, Dark Horse Comics, Boom! Comics, The Cimmerian, REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, The Howard Review, Wildside Press, and he has presented several papers about Robert E. Howard to the PCA/ACA National conference, the AWC, and lectures and performs readings regularly about Howard, comics, and popular culture in general.

Finn is the author of two books of fiction, Gods New and Used and Year of the Hare, as well as hundreds of articles, essays, reviews, and short stories for The University of Texas Press, RevolutionSF.com, Greenwood Press, Dark Horse Comics, Wildside Press, Monkeybrain Books, and others. Current projects include Fruit Ninja and SCOUTS! for Ape Entertainment and a story for Monsterverse’s Bela Lugosi’s Tales From the Grave With longtime friend and collaborator John Lucas. Forthcoming projects include an essay in The Apes of Wrath from Tachyon Press, a story in Tails From the Pack from Sky Warrior Books and a short story in Ray Guns Over Texas for the 2013 WorldCon.

When he is not working in Howard Studies, he writes comics and fiction, dabbles in magic, acts as a creative consultant for media companies, and produces and performs community theater.  He lives in North Texas (over the movie theater he owns) with his long-suffering wife, too many books, and an affable pit bull named Sonya.

Happy 107th Birthday, Robert E. Howard

Author's Note: This is an artifact from the time capsule. In 2002, I was finishing up my first year in REHUPA and I wrote this review/rant in my 'zine for the month of December.  Please note the date--2002. I am pleased to report that since then, much of what I am kvetching about in this article has come to pass. Some of it, incredibly, was done by me. Other pieces and parts were picked up by others. And while I was not the first, nor the last, person to issue such a call to action, it was a shot in the arm for some folks. I've been a member of REHupa for 11 years now, and I didn't think I'd make it to year two. Shows what I know. One thing I have always tried to do is lead by example. And one of the things I've always tried to do is to do right by Robert E. Howard. Looking back on the radio shows, Blood & Thunder, all of the articles and essays, and now the ongoing academic push, I feel I've done just that. Read for yourself and see just how far Howard Studies has come. 

Happy Birthday, Bob. Thanks for the inspiration.

 A Bad Reputation: Robert E. Howard and the Indifference of the Academics

The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers

By Lee Server ISBN: 081604578X

From the early days of dime novels to contemporary mass-market paperbacks, pulp fiction is a vital part of popular culture. This volume offers a survey of the scores of well-known and unsung heroes of popular literature. It seeks to cover the entire spectrum of pop literature's greatest entertainers and artists; the multimillion-copy bestsellers; and the inventors of the modern genres, such as the western, the hardboiled detective novel, the spy thriller, science fiction, horror, the legal thriller, crime fiction and the erotic/romance novel. The work also profiles colourful but lesser-known underground figures, as well as a wide variety of talented paperback authors who were never given their due. Each of the 200 entries includes a brief biography along with a list of the author's writing credits. The authors covered include: V.C. Andrews; Ray Bradbury; Jackie Collins; Lester Dent; Ian Fleming; Erle Stanley Gardner; David Goodis; Zane Grey; Chester Himes; Louis L'Amour; H.P. Lovecraft; Mario Puzo; Jacqueline Susann; and more. (REPRODUCED FROM CONTENT ON AMAZON UK)

It was a new book, fresh off the presses, and I had it in my hands. Clearly, this book had my name written all over it. It was also written by Lee Server, and that name was familiar. It only took a second to realize that this was the same guy who had written Danger Is My Business back in 1993, the first illustrated book about the Pulps since Tony Goodwin’s titular effort in the 1970’s. Server had also written Over My Dead Body, about the lurid paperback novels of the 1940’s and 1950’s, and Baby, I Don’t Care, a great biography about Robert Mitchum.

Ever curious, I eagerly flipped to the H section. There he was, roughly two pages worth: Howard, Robert E. The entry was a mixed bag. I won’t reprint the article verbatim for reasons that will become apparent below, but I will show some highlights, both good and bad.

Howard, Robert E.

(1906-1936) Also wrote as Sam Walser

Robert E. Howard, one of the great discoveries of the magnificent pulp magazine Weird Tales, wrote larger-than-life fantasy adventure tales for most of his brief but dazzling career. Much of his work belongs to a genre now called “sword and sorcery,” a category Howard himself helped to invent.

Robert Ervin Howard was born in 1906 in the small Texas town of Paster. When he was nine, the family moved to another small community, Cross Plains, where he would live with his mother and father for the rest of his life. Interested in writing from a very early age, he was greatly inspired by books of western lore. The pulps had begun to come into their own as Howard reaches his teen years. It was the heyday of Adventure magazine, Western Story, and other publications that offered a battery of new, imaginative, and innovative fiction writers, like Talbot MUNDY, with his combination of exotic locales, bizarre adventures, and touches of the occult and the magical, and his fearless, mighty superhero from the ancient world, the seafaring Tros of Samothrace; Harold Lamb, with his sweeping historical sagas and thundering warriors, Gordon Young, with his two-fisted, nihilistic, globe-trotting warriors; and H.P. LOVECRAFT, with his grim, disturbing horror stories and their stark portrayals of evil. These and other writers of the day would spark Howard’s own bursting imagination to empower his writing and the amazing body of work to come.

Outside of the typographical error of “Pastor” for “Peastor” and the exclusion of Howard’s other pseudonyms, these first two paragraphs aren’t so bad.

It was to Lovecraft’s pulp home, Weird Tales, that Howard made his first professional sale, Spear and Fang, which was printed in the July, 1925 issue. It was a momentous occasion. Howard would become a regular contributor to Weird Tales, and would also come to be known as one of that unique magazine’s three greatest contributors, with Lovecraft and Clark Ashton SMITH (though many of WT’s other regulars also had their rabid acolytes). Howard, unlike the other two members of the triumvirate, saw himself as a professional writer, and did write for other publications and in other genres—straight adventure, westerns, boxing stories—though he did not have much success in breaking into the mainstream prestige pulps (such as Adventure, Argosy, and the like). In retrospect, the ornate, daring, out-of-the-mainstream pages of Weird Tales were the perfect place for a writer as different and powerful as Robert E. Howard.

His stories were intensely imagined, action-packed, ruthless, and blood-drenched, written in a vivid, harsh, muscular prose. He created an assortment of fierce, pitiless warrior-heroes. There was Bran Mak Morn, leader of the Caledonian Picts against the legions of ancient Rome; Solomon Kane, an Elizabethan Puritan, battling savagery and sorcery in darkest Africa; Kull, a king in the antediluvian Atlantis; and his most popular and still thriving creation, Conan, the barbarian adventurer.

Okay, two more paragraphs that I won’t quibble with. Factually acceptable and not misleading in any way. So far, so good, from Mr. Server. But I had the strangest feeling I had seen some of this before. Especially in the next long paragraph, which talked about the Hyborian Age and how Howard jumped around chronologically in telling the Conan stories. He quoted from Conan in “Queen of the Black Coast,” the passage about life being an illusion and burning with life. “I love, I slay, and am content.” The next paragraph is very interesting.

Physically, Howard had grown up to be a powerful-looking young man who might well have served as a model for the illustrations of the sword-wielding heroes who strode across his pulp stories. But there was psychic autobiography at work in those pages, too. In dreams Howard often saw himself as an ancient barbarian, and some of that self-absorption and passionate identification with the character gave Conan and other Howard characters their vivacity. It is part of the mythos of Weird Tales, part of what put that pulp in a category apart from all others of the 20’s and 30’s, the hectic golden age of pulp hackery—the notion that writers like Howard were stranger characters than the other pulp pros, in some way or other more closely a part of the material they invented, whether from artistry or psychological disturbance. For the readers, anyway, the result was stories that could have an intense, hallucinatory force and yet felt very real. Howard put readers right inside those barbaric, imaginary landscapes. His typewriter caught the blinding glare on flashing steel, missed no splash of crimson blood, described landscapes that were at once familiar and bizarre, but three dimensional, pumping with life.

This is damning with faint praise, in my opinion. It’s nice that Mr. Server notes that there’s a mythos to the lunacy of the WT writers, but doesn’t really refute anything said about Howard. His comments about Howard’s prose are spot-on, but again Server leads with the crazy vibe. Apparently one can’t write well unless they are bonkers. The next paragraph continues this thought.

Fantasy and “weird” stories and publication in the marginal, little-read Weird Tales was not considered a particularly admirable accomplishment in some areas of America in the 1930s. In the constricted community Robert Howard lived in, writing for Weird Tales—particularly as a result of the sexual, bosom-heaving cover art of Margaret Brundage—looked not unlike writing pornography. (Adding insult to injury, Weird Tales was often very far behind in its payments to contributors, even—or perhaps especially—to regular contributors like Howard.) Though as a young man he participated in the typical masculine rites of hunting, fishing and drinking, Howard was not a typical Texas boy at all. With his brooding, his daydreaming, and his bizarre imagination, he clearly stood apart from the simple farmers and small-town mentalities of Cross Plains, and was generally thought to be something of a strange duck among the locals. Howard once wrote, “It is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign to the people among which one’s lot is cast.”

This is now the third usage of the word “bizarre” in this article. Clearly, it’s the only adjective that really applies to Howard and his work, since it’s so frequently referenced. And while the facts in the above paragraph may be accurate, the slant in the writing shows that Mr. Server is at best uncaring or at worst antagonistic about the details of Howard’s personal life. The very next paragraph:

Howard was known to have been unusually devoted to his domineering mother. He was prone to bouts of despairing self-reflection and spoke of suicide on a number of occasions (though depression did not seem to slow his productivity, as thousands of pages of prose, poetry, and correspondence flowed from his battered Underwood typewriter).

In the spring of 1936, Mrs. Howard became gravely ill. On the morning of June 11, after a sleepless night at his comatose mother’s bedside, Robert was informed that she would never recover. At the typewriter in his workroom he wrote some lines of poetry, then went outside to the family’s ’31 Chevrolet sedan. From the glove compartment he took out a Colt .380 he had borrowed from a friend, thumbed the safety, placed the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

There it is. Howard and his mother. Again. What’s nice about this is the intimation that Howard wasn’t depressed enough to not write, just depressed enough to kill himself over his mother.

The next paragraph is a long quote from Jack Scott (and that same anecdote, yet again, about the lines and the coroner). Following that is the eulogy from Farnsworth Wright that ran in Weird Tales. The article ends with a completely inaccurate bibliography of Howard’s works, the only parts of which that are correct is the list of the Conan stories. All other material is mislabeled, missing altogether, or just wrong.

As you can imagine, this entry angered me and sent me into my own books, looking for my copy of Danger Is My Business. There, on pages 43-45, I found just about the same information, in a different order, as what was listed in the Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. To his credit, Mr. Server had updated his material slightly, removing the reference to “his love life—or lack of it—has been the subject of much speculation” just prior to mentioning his domineering mother and unusual devotion. So, it’s a step forward, I suppose, but in my mind, it’s still a baby step.

The fact is, Mr. Server simply reworked what he had already done some ten years ago and stuck it in the book. While there was no mention of, for example, Cornell Woolrich’s alternative lifestyle in his entry (it must have just slipped Mr. Server’s mind), I can’t think of any reason why Mr. Server would have wanted to rewrite any of his material on Howard...especially since no one has published anything to the contrary in any visible form since 1993.

There have been exceptions, to be sure. James Van Hise put out a great book a few years back (The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard) that was, in fact, a collection of scholarship from REHupa. I have a second printing of the book, because the first printing sold out. After I got my copy, I never saw another one again. Then there was Cross Plains Comics’ Short Biography of REH, written by our own Rusty Burke. Sold primarily to comic shops, it was marketed more like a graphic novel/art collection than any kind of serious scholarship. We can count in this short list The Whole Wide World, based on One Who Walked Alone. It got an art house release and then went straight to...well, laserdisc. No current DVD plans at this time, at least not that I have heard. Let’s see, have I left anyone out? Oh yes, Wandering Star. Currently aimed at the collector’s market, with affordable trade paperbacks due out in the next year or two...hopefully.

This in no way diminishes the value of the above work. I enthusiastically supported and publicly applauded all of the above endeavors, and will continue to do so. But on the thirtieth anniversary of REHupa, and on the heels of Leo Grin’s well-reasoned rant about how much money these newsletters cost and how many copies of REHupa are to be distributed, I say to you that we are doing it wrong.

Every time Howard gets omitted in anthologies like The American Fantasy Tradition, every time Howard’s name and deeds are crucified by idiotic directors on special edition DVDs, every time the inaccurate facts and “crazy” bias of Howard’s biography get reprinted over and over, we all write emails, articles in REHupa, and bitch to each other and to our significant others. Well, it’s our fault that it happens.

How long has Dark Valley Destiny been out, been available in shops? In 2003, it’ll be twenty years. Isn’t it time for a new Howard biography? How about some serious examinations of his work, his influence? Better still, is there any reason at all for these kinds of things to not be available to as many people as want to see them?

There is a pop culture/American culture association, made up of college professors and other academics, with national and regional groups. I stumbled onto their listserv and told them I was a writer. They signed me up. I’m stunned at the paper topics that get presented; it’s stuff that we wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Buffy and Lesbian Culture. The Role of Board Games in the Twentieth Century. I’m not kidding. There was an X-Men question that ran through the listserv about two months ago. College professors and doctors with PhDs were scrambling to wax factual about Magneto.

Is there any reason that anyone can give me why some, if not all of the REHupans, aren’t involved with this organization? Has anyone introduced themselves to Carlton Stowers, who wrote that great article about REH in the free Dallas weekly last year? Where’s your website with your section devoted to your REH scholarship? Going to Cross Plains isn’t going to cut it, not if you are looking for a literary conversion. Put your face out there. Write your book (or finish it) and then speak to others about it. We need to be who people ask about Robert E. Howard, not Lee Server, or John Milius.

All of you are accomplished writers, with passionate arguments about REH and a strong desire to see his name restored and his literary works made available. It is time to reach out of the bubble and step forward with your knowledge. Sitting on your hands isn’t going to do it; not anymore. If we want to repair Howard’s image, we need to assume that no one else is going to do it for us.

I intend to present a paper on REH at the 2004 Southwest Pop Culture/American Culture Conference. I want some, if not all of you to be there with me. Let’s wake up the rest of the academic world and restore REH’s place in literary history.

Our Abusive Relationship With Firearms (and Why Breaking Up is Hard to Do)

Jones' incendiary delivery managed to completely
obscure any real points he made during his appearance.  

I really didn't want to write a blog post about this, especially after so long a meaningful absence, but after watching Austin-based conspiracy-ophile Alex Jones lose his marbles on National Television the other day, I realized that while we do seem to be having a discussion about gun control, it's really more of a shouting match engendered by the lunatic fringe.

I know, I know, tensions are high, and why not take away automobiles, and only criminals will own guns, and look what Hitler did, and blah blah blah blah. Yeah, I get it. Everyone is mad. And I know so many gun owners--that I know personally--are worried about this. I'm very surprised that this fear is even on the table. Worse--Texans...TEXANS...are fearful.

Let me tell you why this is all ridiculous.

Catching Up Just in Time to Cross it Off

I know I haven't posted anything in months, but I can explain myself: I've been writing my ass off. It's funny but I've never been able to balance out the blogging (which, weirdly, I'm not getting paid for) with writing assignments that actually bring me a paycheck. It seems I can do one or the other, but not both.

I resolve to work on that in 2013. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Despite this year just sucking for personal bad news, friends' bad news, and in general bad news, I got a lot done and really pushed myself in terms of promoting me as a writer. That turned into a lot of writing assignments, everything from commercial website writing to landing a gig as the Fruit Ninja writer for Ape Entertainment. I got to work on some long-time dream projects, placed some short stories and articles into some anthologies, and entertained my usual bewildering array of interesting offers, all of which I said "yes" to, in the hopes that they came to pass. They haven't yet, but you never know.

I'm going to try and build on that momentum for 2013. My convention schedule is aggressively full right now and includes a trip to San Diego, Washington D.C., Rochester, Minnesota, and San Antonio, Texas. And that's not the half of it.

For now, I've got a few days left on 2012. I intend to spend it cooking, writing, and resting. It's a big year coming up. All of the Apocalypses (apocalypsi?) are behind us now. There's nothing left but to play the cards we are dealt. I fully intend to rake the pot in for myself.

Hope you all have a safe and prosperous New Year. I'll see you after Elvis' Birthday!

Our Political Climate: Elvis Clones, Area 51 and the Necronomicon

In the days of my misspent youth, I was fascinated with conspiracy theories. My first, and favorite, was of course, Area 51 and the Roswell UFO crash. After all, I was a child of the seventies and space was on every kid’s brain. UFOs and governmental cover-ups found their way into all of the popular television shows of the day. Where do you think Mork and Mindy came from?

I was too young to hear about the faked moon landing conspiracy theory that eventually found its way into that great O.J. Simpson vehicle, Capricorn One. It’s probably just as well. Whatever marginal entertainment value the idea of a faked space program contained, there was just too much facts, evidence, and truth to give it much credence.  I think that’s part of what makes a good conspiracy theory. There has to be a lot of interesting coincidences, or incidents that can’t be explained, or questions that have no answers, in order to be really compelling.

My FenCon Schedule and Why You Should Care

This is my first appearance at FenCon IX this year and I am really happy to be attending as a regional guest. This year I really expanded my "local show footprint" to include some shows that have asked me to attend before, but I was unable to due to other commitments, time, funding issues, etc.

If you've never been to FenCon, and you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, click on the link above and consider coming out for it. There's a good group of folks running it, and a nice, wide spread of guests, so there really is something for everyone.

The other reason why you should come out is pure selfishness on my part: I want to see you. I have so many friends in the Metroplex area that I never get to visit with. Even if you just come hang out at the bar, I would love to be your evening's entertainment. So, think about it. And hey, while we're on the subject, here's my panel schedule, below:

The Future of Comics Friday  8:00 PM  Addison Lecture Hall

FenCon Squares Saturday  10:00 AM  Trinity I - IV

Autographs Saturday  11:00 AM  Gallery

Reading *Brunch With Barbarians!* (See Below) Saturday  12:00 PM  Pecan

Sherlock v Holmes Saturday  1:00 PM  Red Oak

WTF, Zombies?!? Saturday  7:00 PM  Pecan

50 Years of Web-Spinning & Smashing Saturday  8:00 PM  Live Oak

80 Years of Conan Sunday  2:00 PM  Addison Lecture Hall

But It's Funny! Sunday  3:00 PM  Red Oak

*Brunch With Barbarians* is actually my reading slot and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editor Adrian Simmons' reading slot mooshed together to make one hour long happening. We'll have food and drink for anyone who wants to come listen to our readings from Noon to 1 PM on Saturday. That's right, we're THOSE guys.

My Political History

Author's Note: This is the beginning of an exploration of my political beliefs. They are mine, and it took me 38 years to figure them out. You may feel inclined to comment on them, or even ask questions, and I would encourage you to do so, provided that you: (a.) avoid the trap of name calling and absolutes, and (b.) write those comments as if we're having a discussion. If you think I've grossly overshot and missed the point, then by all means, let's talk about it. But if you think I'm wrong because I don't see it your exact way, then frankly, I don't want to hear it. I'll do you the same courtesy of not trying to tip your sacred cows, as well. Remember: you can't reason someone out of a position that they did not reason themselves into in the first place.  With all that said, if you're interested in what I have to say, then press on!

VanderMeer's Weirdness and the Lovecraftian Zeitgeist

I just read an excellent post by New Weird champion Jeff VanderMeer regarding the pervasive and clinging influence of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction on the modern Weird Tale. It's a thoughtful post, and I recommend you check it out. Jeff made several good points that I want to speak to. Lovecraft was recently (and perhaps rightly) canonized into the American Literary pantheon, where he joins fellow pulp author Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, among others. With this indoctrination came a flurry of critics and reviewers who took gleeful aim at Lovecraft's exposed backside and planted their boots firmly. Call him a racist, sure, but it doesn't stop him from being widely read, nor from joining the ranks of authors that includes Jack London. Most people--make that, most free thinking people--are able to contextualize what they read and account for situations and language that are outside of our modern experience. Were that not the case, we'd never get through Heart of Darkness. Or Huckleberry Finn. And I don't see those books coming down off of the Classics wall, either.

So, Lovecraft is here to stay. But what are we really getting for our money? I'll tell you what we're not getting. We're not getting his writing style (like we did with, say, Raymond Chandler). We're not getting his driving, rhythmic prose (Lovecraft was more interested in a pile-up of words to create a sense of dread). We're sure not getting any kind of enlightened or original thinking regarding, um, anyone not a white Anglo-Saxon protestant. So, what's left?

We get Cthulhu. That's the takeaway for most people. And honestly, it's really the only thing worth taking. Subtract the Cthulhu Mythos from Lovecraft's corpus, and what's left? "From Beyond," "Herbert West: Reanimator," and a handful of Dreamlands books that owe more to Lord Dunsany than anything else.

The Cthulhu Mythos is Lovecraft's invented mythology of vast, mathematically improbable aliens who are locked in an eons-old struggle for supremacy, and who are so unfathomable to humanity that the more we find out about them, the more we realize we're not the center of the universe, and thus the more we go insane. It's this idea that make Lovecraft ideal reading for any teenager with entitlement issues. What could be scarier for a fifteen year old but to learn that the world doesn't revolve around them?

But it's become much more, and thus, a lot less, than that. For all of the other Mythos stories that Lovecraft wrote, the eponymous Cthulhu rules the roost. He (it) was the subject of only one story, "The Call of Cthulhu," but that story has torn free of his wood pulp tomb and taken on a ubiquity that would make Justin Bieber envious.

Cthulhu has become a self-generating meme, a thought bomb that infects all aspect of popular culture as generic symbol of ultimate evil. And the stuff you can buy to show that you're in on the joke is too numerous to mention: dice bags, t-shirts, glassware, ski masks, books, games, comics, music, stickers, and so much more. It's enough to make you go crazy. Yeah, I went there.

I know that the vast proliferation of Cthulhu merchandise out there really chaps S.T. Joshi's ass; here's a guy who campaigned for over a decade to bring Lovecraft's work into an academic and more respectable light. Imagine how he feels whenever he sees a pair of Cthulhu house slippers at a convention. Or the eleven-thousandth bumper sticker that says "Cthulhu 2012: Why Vote For the Lesser of Two Evils?" A slogan, by the way, that has been around at least since 1988. I know because I had that bumper sticker on my Volkswagon Beetle. What scared the hell out of a generation of authors and readers is now a throwaway joke. No, worse, it's the punchline to a throwaway joke.

I think I know exactly where Jeff is coming from in his article--maybe not so much from pop culture and a little more towards reading and writing. He writes: 

The shadow of Lovecraft blots out and renders invisible so many better and more interesting writers.  The point isn’t to reject Lovecraft, but to see Lovecraft with clear eyes and to acknowledge that weird fiction should not and simply cannot begin and end with one vision, created by a man who passed away in 1937.

And he's 100% correct. I think just about everyone went through, or will go through, a Lovecraft phase. I think it's somewhat necessary, because so much of Lovecraft has permeated the pool of influences. How much of it sticks on you, and what you make of it, of course will vary greatly. What made those initial stories so revolutionary was the fact that no one else in the 1920s and 1930s, with the possible exception of Harry Stephen Keeler, was thinking the way Lovecraft was thinking. Those stories took us to a place in Lovecraft's head space that was creepy and frightening to visit. I think that's a defining characteristic of what comprises a weird tale--it's getting into a head space, or the nexus of two seemingly incongruous trains of thought, and watching them blow up into one another.

There's a literary term that is bandied about in the Texas SF/F community: Texas Weird. It signifies that, without exception, we're going somewhere that no one else thought to go to because we're not in the same head space as the author. This applies whether you're reading Scott Cupp, or William Browning Spencer, or Joe Lansdale.

I know there's other examples galore. I merely used Texas Weird because it was close at hand. Reliance on Lovecraft as one of the ping pong balls in the giant metal bingo hopper of your imagination is fine. When you start using this formula:

Nerdy Bookish Guy + Strange Old Tome x monster with unpronounceable name /

 Guy goes nuts = cornball ending

Then you have lost the fight already. This is tired thinking and it was played out when Lovecraft was still alive. He lived to actually interact with and indulge his pastichers. Hell, he encouraged them. The only one of his correspondents who actually got the substance of what Lovecraft was trying to do was Robert E. Howard in his story, "The Black Stone," and Lovecraft said so himself. Everyone else copied the plot points and changed the names like a Great Old Ones Mad Libs game. And yes, I'm talking about Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, and so many of the other writers on Lovecraft's Christmas card mailing list.

But that's not the problem, not any more. The problem is that Cthulhu Mythos fiction has become its own genre. Think about it. There are rules, expectations, conventions. We expect certain things to happen, and they do. It's sad, really, when you think about it.

Jeff also wrote:

Part of moving past Lovecraft’s influence is also to acknowledge that his definition of “the weird” isn’t as applicable to modern weird — that, in essence, we need a new manifesto, even if it is a fragmented and various one: a kind of anti-manifesto in that the need here is to explore the boundaries, the interstices, as well as the center.

I think it's pretty easy to come up with a non-Lovecraftian weird tale canon that includes him as one of the many authors who contributed over the years. Certain stories from my dim and distant past come instantly to mind. Stephen King's "Lawnmower Man," for example, really disturbed me when I first read it. So did Clive Barker's "New Murders in the Rue Morgue." Both of these shorts take a very left of center approach and when you get to the reveal, you never see it coming. They are, in a sense, traditional horror stories, if you look at them as a series of beats. But their content is what makes them so weird.

Of course, your mileage will vary on the above, but I know you can think of other examples where you read the story and it was just so foreign and so obvious an idea at the same time that it literally bounced around in your head for a while. That's what good weird fiction should do. Kelly Link does it, and does it well. So does Jeff. There are a number of modern-day practitioners of the weird tale, and so many more waiting to take a shot. But as long as people are making and buying Cthulhu plushies, this will be an uphill battle.

Living with Women: Bathoom Time

If you should hear in the upcoming weeks about me being found dead on the toilet, and authorities are baffled as to what might have killed me, I want you to copy and paste this article into the Crimestoppers tip line and pick up a quick hundred bucks. It'll be my parting gift to you, and it will also allow my spirit to rest from beyond the pale, with you having solved the mystery of my toilet death.

The following is a true story:

My home is entangled with estrogen. My wife is a woman. Our niece, currently living in the guest bedroom, is a woman. My dog is a teenage girl. The Bunker of Love is literally festooned with womanly accoutrements. Chief among them are candles. This is closely followed by scented oils and a tinderbox worth of incense. These things are deployed swiftly and often, usually shortly after I walk in the door from a day of running around and being sweaty.

Strange Days, Indeed...

What a weird-ass day.

Mondays usually stink on ice to begin with, but there must be something going around. It's as if, in response to the mild relief from the heat wave we've been under in Texas, someone cranked up the crazy to eleven instead.

Walking With Blinders Through The Last Book Sale, part 4

In case you missed them, here's  Part 1  Part 2  and  Part 3

The auction as seen from my seat.

Saturday started with a potato, egg and bean burrito breakfast and a frantic drive into Archer City, slightly faster than the law allowed. Cathy was riding shotgun with me this time, to help keep me in check, and also to look over out a few shelves that we both agreed would be great to have...if the price was right.

Which, it turned out, it most definitely wasn’t. All that was left of the Booked Up stock was art and history, fiction and poetry, and some misc. collecting books, and four crummy shelves of science fiction, and the like. We had a cuckoo idea that the big, oversized art books would just go zipping out the door for the minimum cost. Heh. Yeah. That didn’t happen.

As soon as the bidding opened up, the numbers were popping. The auctioneer was surprised when the shelves started selling for between $300 and $500 a lot. Well out of our price range, no matter how good the value was. And it was a steal. But I had a strategy up my sleeve.

I paid attention to the lots that I wanted, and I wrote down the titles of the books on those shelves that interested me. Then, when the shelves sold, I pulled the buyer aside and asked, “Are you a dealer?” The answer was always “yes.” I then told them all what I wanted was a few books off of X shelf, and would they be interested in selling them to me? The answer was always “hell yes.” So I wrote down the lot number, the book title, and even the price I’d pay for the books, with instructions to contact me after the auction. It was genius. And it worked like a charm.

I passed out six or eight of my business cards, and passed notes back and forth like a naughty fourth grader, all throughout Friday and Saturday. If they all bear fruit, I’ll probably end up spending at least a couple hundred bucks on single tomes in the next four to six weeks. This was useful not only for me but for Cathy as well. She hates to lose out on auction bids, and this was a nice consolation prize for her.

Larry, talking about The Last Picture Show.

Throughout all of the goings on, both during the preview week and the auction itself, there was a constant refrain of “Where’s Larry?” usually uttered in a sibilant half-whisper. I’d seen him several times, usually in passing, and always looking a little freaked out by the enormity of what he’d set in motion. On Friday and Saturday, he was positively beset on all sides by a clutch of reporters, hovering around him like horseflies. You could just look at his face and see that it made him uncomfortable, so he did as any right-thinking Texan would do when confounded by flies; he stayed in motion.

Larry flitted, in and out, back and forth, for two days straight, never staying long, and only occasionally sitting down. I think it was equal parts survival and curiosity, but I have to tell you, he looked tired. He had a heart attack in January of this year, and that will take its toll on you. But I could see it on him, this kind of weariness. It made me wonder if there was another reason for The Last Book Sale. Suddenly, the title took on a morbid connotation. Was this Larry’s way of handing us twenty dollars as we were on our way to Mexico? Had he finally become Sam the Lion?

No. Throughout the weekend, everyone was assured that the main store, Booked Up #1, would remain open, its stock on hand for perusal for anyone curious or with a taste for the good stuff. Larry himself spent a lot of time in Booked Up #1, when he wasn’t being hounded by reporters or folks wanting an interview, or a photograph, or—of all things—a signature.

More than one person, perhaps sensing my Inner Texan, or maybe hearing me speak with familiarity about the town and the operation, asked me where Larry was. They always explained that they just wanted to ask him about X or Y, or they needed a photograph, or wanted blah blah blah. I was cautious in pointing him out to these people. The majority of them weren’t bidding on the auction. As such, I felt they had little claim to his time. Listen to me, like I’m his press secretary or something. I sent only one guy over to Larry, a professional photographer who assured me he would be unobtrusive.

I did this partially to ease the pressure on the man, but also because in my tenure as a Booked Up customer, I learned early on that when Larry was in the house, he was not “the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show.” He was Larry the bookman. Different guy altogether. If you had a question about stock, or what he just bought, or how often he comes across Dell map backs, or the value of Frank J. Dobie books, or anything else along those lines, you could have a great and interesting conversation with the man. But come at him, head bowed, tattered copy of Lonesome Dove in hand, murmuring, “Mister McMurtry, your book meant so much to me...” and he had no time nor use for you. I know, for I saw it first hand one day during an early visit.

Looking around at the inadvertent circus he’d created, I know he was cringing inside at what he had wrought. So I endeavored, in my own tiny way, to take some of the pressure off of him, as much as I could. Just my little way of saying “Thank You” to the guy who wrote Cadillac Jack. As it turned out, Larry was on his best behavior that weekend. He was tired, of course, but he was very gracious about interviews, photos, and even a few autographs.  I noticed that most people who needed any of the above were quick to get in and get out, in deference to his health and his legendary temperament.

The wall outside of Booked Up #4.

The oversized art and design books went for way more than we could spend, so I sent Cathy off to write down the titles of what she really wanted, the better to make a side deal with the winner. I cooled my heels listening to the history books sell for cheap, or a lot, depending on what country was being auctioned off. The Chinese history books, for example, were out of my price range, so I made a side deal with one of the winners, a woman I’d been previously chatting with about the sale and my interest in same. She was amendable to selling me the one book I really wanted, and so I took great pains to explain to her, via notes, that I was a collector of the author, Robert Van Gulik, a former ambassador to China, who wrote a series of mystery novels set in historic China featuring Judge Dee, a clever court official who throws the cold light of reason upon seemingly supernatural occurrences. She seemed baffled and a little put out until I told her that the name of the book was The Sex Life of China, by Robert Van Gulik. I included the parenthetical note, “Don’t Judge Me!” to let her know that this wasn’t some weird pick up line, and thankfully, she got the message loud and clear. 

The last big section to sell was the fiction section, and both me and the auctioneer were stunned when the minimum bids weren’t even enough to tantalize people into picking up stock. I had one shelf earmarked, full of Jim Crace books that I didn’t own, which were worth more than fifty dollars all by themselves. No one else wanted it, so I bid on that lot and picked it up, happy as a really happy thing that is happy.

From fiction, looking into history and beyond. Booked Up #2.

It was weird. This was fiction. I would have thought that it would be the section to go for the most. In fact, some shelves did go for a couple hundred bucks, but it was impossible to know what they were fighting over. In previous trips, I’ve bought Thorne Smith and Damon Runyan books for thirty and forty bucks a piece. There’s always a hidden gem here or there in the fiction shelves, and I never passed them up on any of my trips. Oh well. I noticed other collectors doing the same thing I had, buying a section or two, just because, and grinning when they got the books for so cheap.

Some mixed lots and a few reference sections closed out the auction, and everyone applauded weakly, too drained by the experience to do anything else. I was in Monty Hall mode, cutting side deals and looking for one particular bidder (who turned out to be a buyer for Powell’s, I think), who outbid me on one of the last two lots I wanted. Granted, I only wanted half of the books on the shelf; science fiction and mystery fiction reference books, which ran across two shelves. The rest of the two shelves was a set of leather bound journals. I had a hunch the guy who outbid me was wanting those journals, and seeking him out, I was right.

I explained to him who I was and what I wanted, and we went to the two shelves in question and agreed to a swap, right then and there. With three auction staffers watching, he scooped all of the old leather books off of my shelf, and replaced them with the reference books I wanted. Simple, really.

Elated by my success, I tried like hell to get some of the book buyers to come out, have a drink, keep the carnival-like atmosphere flowing, but suddenly the book nerds reverted to type, averting their eyes, shuffling nervously, and muttering something about needing food and sleep. Whatever, losers. The people I’d been talking to all weekend, or had met during the course of the weekend, were all from different places, and as it turned out, going back to those places. I really wanted a post mortem on this experience, if not a dead dog party, and it just wasn’t going to happen.

As I waited in line for my turn to pay out (a lengthy, hour long process, as you can well imagine), I was engaged in conversation by a guy who came looking for me. He was one of the bidders vying for the Jazz lots. We struck up a conversation around that, exchanged business cards, and I told him about the Jack Teagarden museum and he let me in on his research project. We agreed to try and help each other.

While talking over the sale, I mentioned my bittersweet notion that I had helped destroy the thing that I loved. He shook his head and said, “Naw, man, you gotta think of it like this: Larry’s setting those books free, man. He’s got good book Karma for the rest of his life, man.”

The simplicity of that notion fairly stunned me. Here Larry had traveled all over America, and he’d bought up all of these bookstores and private collections, and gathered together this, this, this solid mass of books, fully forty years of pressure on top of them, and then in one very big bang of a gesture, he just sent them back out to the farthest reaches again. It was cosmic. It was beautiful. I smiled and agreed with my new friend. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“It’s the only way to think of it,” he assured me.

I’m smiling as I write this. Even Monday Morning Quarterbacking it, his point is valid. Archer City had served its purpose, allowing these books to collect, and pile up, and become the legendary Texas version of the Library of Alexandria, y’all, and it gave Larry a place from which to operate in relative solitude. But at the end of the journey, the snake eats its tail, the universe resets, the Alpha becomes the Omega, which becomes the Alpha.

Years from now, someone else will take up the quest that Larry put down. Whoever it is will gather the books up and build another repository of information, and it will take decades. It probably won’t be in Texas, but who really knows? I won’t be around for it, but I hope that when it comes time for them to retire, they will remember the story of The Last Book Sale and do the right thing.

Walking With Blinders Through The Last Book Sale, Part 3

In case you missed them, here's  Part 1 and  Part 2  

After lunch, my friend Tim met me at the auction. Tim had been with me at the preview last week, and so he wanted to come watch the human panoply of events unfold, if only for a couple of hours. We snuck him in without a guest badge and were able to actually get seats, since, as predicted, some people were only there for The McMurtry 100.

Everyone filed in, all loopy from lunch, and the bidding resumed. Apparently the auctioneer and Larry had a conversation or something, because suddenly the opening bids were fifty bucks for shelf lots. And a funny thing happened; an auction broke out. People were jumping in at fifty bucks, and hanging in until $150 or $200 or even more, depending on what section was being auctioned.

A great many shelves went for fifty or seventy-five bucks. And believe you me, our auctioneer made his displeasure known. I won a shelf lot of miscellaneous art books, oversized picture and travel books (there were ten books I wanted on that shelf) for fifty bucks. I bid, and I was the only one, and when it was clear that no one else was jumping in on it, he said “Sold, fifty dollars to Bidder Number THREE.” Just like I was the fat mailman on Seinfield. What did I do? Anytime there were no takers, he pulled the lot, refusing to go below fifty dollars. Hey, I can’t blame him. Fifty bucks for two hundred books is a steal...if you can sell all two hundred books. If you’re just buying ten books, then it’s five dollars a book, and while that’s still a good price, you’ve got a hundred and ninety bricks to get rid of or they will take up too much space on your shelves.

This is the crowd after it thinned out on Friday.

Tim and I kibitzed with each other and my fellow bidders while we waited on some lots to come up that I was bidding on. I had two lots in particular that I was gunning for, and would not be dissuaded from acquiring them, right up to the limit of my budget.  I paid strict attention as my section loomed near. The music section, which was going more or less just like everything else: minimum numbers and a scowl of frustration from the auctioneer. But I was bidding on two shelves full of jazz books, and I knew in a Murphy’s Law kind of way that if any section would go for more, it would be the jazz books.

And I was right. I got the first lot well within my budget, since it was mostly jazz, but not completely. When he started the second shelf, I cockily raised my card and heard the auctioneer start rapidly talking and pointing. All of a sudden, he’s looking at me and saying, “Now a hundred...” I kept my card up, and every time it came back around, I kept my card up, but it was happening so fast, I didn’t have a chance to turn around and see who the hell was bidding me up.

Finally, everyone dropped out, and I won the lot at the limit of my single shelf budget. Victory, sure, but now I wanted to know: had I missed something on the shelf? Was there some sort of rare, out of print, first edition Jazz tome that I missed when I was looking the shelves over? There were dealers in the room, and it’s no stretch to acknowledge they knew the market better than me.

During the next break, I strolled over, after saying goodbye to Tim, who was satisfied that the shelf lots he’d picked out all went for way more than he was willing to spend. It’s nice to know you’ve got champagne tastes, I think. Anyway, I took a look at the shelves, joining about a half dozen other people, who were just as curious as me. No one had any answers. The woman who bought the very next shelf, rock and country, was the same woman we’d eaten barbecue with the night before, and she asked me if I wanted anything off of the shelves. I quickly checked all of the Elvis books and saw that I had them, and politely thanked her and declined.  A bidder came up to me and gave me his card, so that I could contact him if I wanted to let any—ANY—of the jazz books go. He was just a fan, it turned out. We were all scratching our heads.

I will skip to the end of the mystery for you: on Saturday, I found the other two bidders. One was a musician, who came in just for the Jazz books, and he dropped out at about $150, and the other was a book dealer and jazz fan, who was bidding for himself, because he just wanted the books. The bottom line: people who read also like jazz. In my case, I just happened to line up with some fellow enthusiasts. When I told them the books were going into a museum, they all felt a lot better about the fate of the books, and apologized to me for running up the bids. All is fair in love and war and book auctions.

With my major lots taken care of for the day, I took a break from the floor and ran into the documentary film crew, who asked if they could interview me. We found a kinda quiet place in one of the other buildings and I told them my favorite Larry McMurtry story and they told me that they were planning to do the film festival route and make this something that could go into theaters. Cool. I like it when people are serious. We did about thirty minutes, all together, and then I rejoined the auction.

“What number are they on?” I asked one of the guys in the back of the room. He told me that they had finished with Booked Up #4 and were about to start on the contents of Booked Up #3. Wow, I thought, they are moving and grooving on this. I sat down, for the chairs were more and more plentiful as the day wore on, and looked over my list. As I did, an unpleasant thought ricocheted through me like Lee Harvey Oswald’s magic bullet.

I looked around at the long, tall shelves, all laid out in a grid like the walls of some labyrinth of old, and I realized that the next time I came to Archer City, this building would be closed and the shelves empty. My favorite Booked Up was going away, and I helped to dismantle it. Me being here was working against my own self-interests.

My Own Personal Labyrinth.

See, I am a regular (insofar as Archer City is concerned) at Booked Up. Ever since we moved to Middle of Nowhere, North Texas, some six years ago, I’ve been going twice a year, without fail. Sometimes more if I was showing a guest where Archer City was. It was a getaway for me. A place to go to recharge the batteries, reconnect with literature, find strange reference books I didn’t know I needed (and a few that I did), and in general spend a day, hanging out with one of my most favorite things of all time, books. Just being in the bookstores at Archer City was enough for me. It was always a nice day trip for me.

And I would be lying if I didn’t get a vicarious thrill out of updating my Facebook status to the groans of envy from my other book-minded friends in Austin and the Metroplex.  They knew the reputation of the place. They were aware that going was akin to a pilgrimage for the Texas Literary Set. I always respected Booked Up, but I don’t know if I ever really appreciated it before now. And it was coming apart before my eyes. Son of a bitch.

My wife joined me after the auction closed for the day. They made it through two buildings in one day. Tomorrow, Booked Up #2 would sell, and that would be that. I expressed some of my concerns to her, but the excitement of seeing James McMurtry live trumped all. We’d gotten tickets, you see, and this would be our first time to see him live.

I won’t go into it, because as it’s been famously noted before, writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Let me just say this: if you like strong songwriters who write about things of substance, and use language like a surgical scalpel, and you like songwriters like Dylan and Springsteen, you need to check out what James McMurtry does. Go onto whatever you’re buying music on, and click on his songs and listen to the samples and know that he is every bit as genius a storyteller as his father is.

We drove home invigorated and talking about the show. After all, McMurtry played “Choctaw Bingo” and we agreed that it’s pretty much a perfect song. Tomorrow was the final push, the last hurrah, and as you can expect, I tossed and turned for hours before falling into a restless sleep.