Howard Waldrop, Implausibly, Is No More

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l-r: Howard Waldrop, Andy Duncan

 Howard Waldrop is dead. This seems impossible--almost as impossible as that he could have existed in the first place. He was unlike anybody else. I once labeled him in print as "the weird mind of his generation," and it was true. He simply didn't think the way other people did.

You could see it in the best of his stories. People would come back from conventions where he'd read a new story (he incubated them in his mind for a long time and didn't write anything down until the story was letter-perfect; fans learned that you could squeeze a new one out of him by making him the guest of honor at a con and requesting that he read something new at it; the night before the reading, he'd sit down and write out... something amazing) and say something like, "Howard wrote a story about dodo birds surviving in the American South," or "Howard wrote a story about Dwight D. Eisenhower becoming a jazz musician," and I'd think: Damn. I wish I'd had that idea! One day somebody said, "Howard wrote a story about Izaak Walton and John Bunyan going fishing in the Slough of Despond."

Damn, I thought. I wish I'd had that idea--and I wish I knew what the hell it was!  

(The story is "God's Hooks!" and it's one of my favorites, almost as good as "Ugly Chickens," his dodo story.)

Howard was a true original, and he paid for that with a lifetime of poverty. He moved often from one cheap rental to another, occasionally living in a tent or on somebody's porch or once, memorably, in the basement (or, some said, septic tank) that was all that existed of a house under construction. He loved fishing and made and sold low-end fly rods. He was famously prickly about accepting "charity" from anybody. An editor once bought him a meal and Howard insisted that the next one was on him. The fact that the editor paid out of an expense account carried no weight with him. I bought him a drink once and his friends were amazed that he'd let me get away with it.

But now I see that I've wandered away from a dry recital of facts and am printing the legend. Well, so be it. There was nobody remotely like Howard anywhere outside of American folk tales. Johnny Appleseed comes close, or maybe Jack of Appalachia. So it's no surprise that he returned occasionally to that particular well for inspiration. He was simply paying a visit home.

And if you're wondering about that remarkable photo . . .

I was in a bar with Howard and Andy Duncan, swapping gossip and tall tales when it occurred to me that I should take a picture of the two. So I did. And that's how it came out. For weeks after, I'd show the snap to somebody and say, "Don't H'ard and Andy look like two Dust Bowl-era grifters? I mean, just look at them. These two are going to stroll off with your wallet, whistling." 

The sixth or seventh time I said that, I realized that my subconscious was trying to tell me that there was an opportunity to be had there. So, long story short, I recruited Gregory Frost and the two of us wrote a story titled "Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters--H'ard and Andy are Come to Town." It was a good story, too. So good that it deserved that title. 

Now that team of magical-America confidence tricksters exists only in memory. Andy Duncan, who probably has no idea that he's just inherited the title of "strange mind of his generation," will simply have to carry on alone.

 

Above: Photo by Michael Swanwick.

 

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