Bobby Derie has a new and comprehensive survey of “Robert E. Howard in the Biographies of H. P. Lovecraft”. The first half usefully steps us through how Howard gradually crept into the Lovecraft biographies, as decades of scholarship put the peices together. In the second half Derie surveys what uses various recent writers on Howard and Lovecraft appear to have made of the best biographies, and Derie finds most recent efforts wanting in some way. He usefully includes the two recent biographical Lovecraft graphic novels in this assessment, though gives the nod to one and finds only some slight dramatic licence in the other.
I’ve taken the liberty of using his final paragraphs as a source for a handy guide list:
* Don’t take De Camp at face value. Though pioneering, and with direct access to those who (hazily) remembered the 1930s, he didn’t have all the facts. Remember also that he was embedded in a particular cultural and publishing milieu, and that you need to know enough about that to spot where and how it’s influencing the text.
* Find out what the best recent Howard biographies are, read them and use them.
* Make sure you’re using the accurate Howard texts for the fiction.
* Read the volumes of Howard letters and Howard-Lovecraft letters.
* Don’t go in for heavy over-reliance on I Am Providence. A very great source, yes. But not if: i) you’re just rehashing it so as to crank out another tick-box article for your academic C.V.; and ii) you are assuming it’s exhaustive and that it’s ‘all that it is possible to say’; and iii) you’re assuming that certain key events (such as the rejection of “Cool Air”) haven’t been recoloured by new facts found since publication.
