Heck Of A Guy

Another Unsolicited Lesson In Writing Biography

Toward A More Efficacious Management Of Source Material

In mid-July 2007, as part of my ongoing investigation into the life and times of Allan Truax,¹ Richard Truax, one of Allan Truax’s grandsons, graciously spent most of the evening on the phone answering my questions about his grandfather although he and his wife were preparing to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. He also indulged me with a second telephone interview on 18 September 2007. As I had hoped, these conversations provided a unique, subjective view of Allan Truax as seen through the eyes of his grandson and a substantial amount of factual data previously unknown to me.

In addition, however, the unnecessarily and unforgivably long lapse between the first Richard Truax interview and any posts using this information altered my thinking, specifically on how to best offer Heck of a Guy blog entries dealing with Allan Truax, and in general on the situational presentation of biographical material.

While the proximate cause of this delay was my unanticipated adventures in healthcare,² another independent and major impediment was my internal debate over the optimal point at which to transform my source notes into intelligible posts, i.e., what criteria, formal or de facto, would result in the most effective publication of the sporadic and unpredictable findings from my sporadic and unpredictable research efforts.

Less Pondering; More Publication

After wrestling with this question, I have abandoned my original plan to publish this information in chronological order. Although such a timeline-based narrative might well abet the reader’s comprehension of the material, it also caused several problems, the most significant of which was that has been that it causes publication paralysis.

I have been holding, for example, some promising material from Allan’s adult years that is ready for final editing while scavenging odds and ends about Allan’s early life in order to adhere to a chronological order of publication. Such deferrals put written materials at risk of being lost and my own unrecorded insights at even greater risk of evaporation over time. And, in any case, one can never be sure that the interesting or useful factoid about the subject’s childhood won’t be discovered at an awkward time (e.g., two days after the publication of the manuscript covering the childhood).³

Not only have I abdicated pseudo-lordship of time but I have also switched loyalties from lumper to splitter, at least in terms of post content. Rather than defer publication until I have composed my usual exemplars of prolixity, I plan to post briefer pieces, a shift in strategy that should prove less onerous for both author and reader. I now anticipate publishing whenever I accumulate enough information to form a discrete node of knowledge that contributes to an understanding of the life and times of Allan Truax.⁴

Happily, blog and Internet technologies offer built-in tools, especially effective search mechanisms and the ability to link to online resources and other Heck of a Guy posts, that compensate for the randomness and disjointedness of this ad lib publishing strategy. In addition, I plan to include summary posts tying together posts dealing with the same themes, time period, activity, etc.

This tactical shift also leverages another benefit of the blog format - its ongoing nature. Blogs, in contradistinction to traditionally published biographies, lack the finality of a predetermined publication date. Consequently, posts may contain unconfirmed data (that is properly described as unconfirmed) rather than holding such information indefinitely while verification is obtained. And, if I happen across useful information, for example, about the birthplace of Allan Truax this time next year, I can simply annotate and publish it with links to earlier relevant posts rather than sputter profanity-enhanced lamentations about having just published what I called that man’s definitive biography.

And the occasional post can be devoted to lessons learned about writing.

Footnotes

1. Those readers now asking themselves Who the heck is Allan Truax? may wish to also read Who’s Allan Truax?↩
2. Readers unaware of and curious about my injury and subsequent treatment that consumed much of this summer can find an account in these posts: Sick Call II, Sick Call III, Awaiting Weight-bearing - Still, Walkernastics, and Evidence Of Bipedality Discovered In Northwestern Illinois↩
3. At the risk of appearing to applaud my own skill at the prophesy game, I must point out that I wrote this sentence some time before and without any clue that I would receive the email from Jennifer Smith that documents Allan Truax’s birthplace as Ontario Canada rather than Mayville, Michigan. See Canada Stakes Claim To Allan Truax) ↩
4. I do, incidentally, recognize the abashing irony involved in further delaying the publication of the material from the Richard Truax interviews in order to explain my plan to accelerate such postings but see little alternative until I master Superman’s tactic of spinning counterclockwise at a rate faster than the speed of light, thus going back in time to a date in late July or early August when the interview post should have appeared.↩

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