Meanwhile...: A Biography of Milton Caniff

First, some truth in reviewing. I have known Bob Harvey since we worked together on our college newspaper, and I have long admired his writing skills. We correspond occasionally, and see each other about every two years. And yes, I paid for my copy of Meanwhile... That said, Harvey has written a fine, highly readable book, and a great one for anyone interested in comic strips and particularly Caniff's great creations, Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Indeed, you can think of Meanwhile... as two books in one: A long biography of Caniff and a short history of American comics in the 20th Century. Caniff's career spanned the high and ebb tides of newspaper comic strips, particularly the era of high-adventure strips. And that is no coincidence. Caniff helped pioneer that variety strip and he raised it to an art form. Indeed, I think Harvey demonstrates that Caniff, in his own right, ranked with such icons of American popular culture as George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, and Humphrey Bogart. Meanwhile... is not a perfect book. It is long, occasionally repetitious, and in need of judicious editing. Detail is important in nonfiction writing, especially biography. But Harvey, at times, overdoes it. I, for one, could do without a full-page listing of the books on Caniff's shelves or seemingly endless reprinted letters praising him. And as a nonfiction writer, I disagree with the author's decision not to footnote the book extensively. When I raised these thoughts with Harvey, his return e-mail delved into what he sought to accomplish with the book. Just as every novelist wants to write the Great American Novel, I wanted to write the Great Biography of an American Cartoonist. Having a suitable subject, Caniff, I next pondered how to achieve my next goal, which was to make the reader "live" Caniff's life as Caniff led it, or some such. I wanted to enable a reader to experience what it was like to be Caniff, to be "a cartoonist." One of the ways I thought a reader's experience of reading, of getting into another world--of being "a cartoonist"--could be intensified was to give the reader verbal information that would engage his or her imagination. As you read, you imagine the things the words are naming; the more concrete those things are, the more imagining you do, the more intensely you experience the "world" of the book you're reading. So when Caniff moves out into "the country" on South Mountain Road [in Rockland County, N.Y] in the 1930s, I scoured around to find out what the vegetation would be along South Mountain Road--what sorts of trees and bushes abounded there and so forth. And when I found out, I put those trees and their undergrowth into the book. In the chapter covering World War II, I quote lots of the letters that Caniff received--because he said somewhere that getting letters was the way he connected to the outside world, the world beyond his studio.... Now you know why I put them all in there. Harvey, more than most authors, largel

As cartoonist biographies go I daresay that there has never been, and will likely never be, another of the length and depth of R.C. Harvey's "Meanwhile...". Coming in just shy of a four digit page count it could scarcely be otherwise. Even more so when you consider that the impressive heft of the tome is not substantially padded with photos and art. To be sure the book is indeed well illustrated, but only with visual aids directly related to the narrative -- there are no long reprints of Caniff's strips here or lengthy portfolios of miscellaneous art. It is the nature of any successful cartoonist that they spend the bulk of their life hunched over a drawing board, endlessly skrith-skratching away. This is not the sort of lifestyle that would seem to lend itself to a lengthy biography. When we consider that there are plenty of well-rounded biographies of political figures, film stars, activists, people whose lives are filled day by day with the fodder of the biographer, that manage to tell their stories in a shorter page count, we have to wonder just what in the world Harvey is on about in a page count that rivals the King James Bible. I for one certainly approached the book with trepidation. I've been a fan of Harvey's work for years, but my enjoyment of his work is tempered with the caveat that he is on occasion guilty of going over the top. When he goes into critical analysis mode he is always perceptive and thoughtful, but he can also beat a horse within an inch of its life. I was concerned that here Harvey would be shooting the works, analyzing Terry, Steve and their creator ad nauseam. That fear, I'm happy to say, was completely groundless. Despite the enormous page count this book is, wonder of wonders, a tightly written narrative. In the tradition of classic biography, what critical analysis there is is grounded in the opinions that Caniff himself discussed with Harvey and others in interviews. Given that Harvey says the book in its original form was some 700 pages longer (!) than the final revision, I'm guessing that any extended author's analysis fell victim to the editor's red pen. If so, the book is better for it. So what exactly does lurk between the distantly separated covers of this volume? Well, Harvey was lucky enough to be tapped by Caniff himself as his offical biographer in the early 80s. This afforded the author with ample opportunity to question his subject at great length. While Caniff was, as Harvey relates, not a particularly forthcoming interview subject, by dint of persistence the author eventually ended up with a treasure trove of Caniffiana. The book is, as we might expect given the size, an impressively complete chronicle of Caniff's life and the times in which he lived. However, completeness doesn't necessarilty translate to interest-sustaining or entertaining, and that's where Harvey's book truly amazes. I've read plenty of long form biographies where it got to the point that I was rooting for the subject t

I've been waiting for R.C. Harvey to publish his biography of Milt Caniff ever since he casually mentioned it in the pages of his fine book, "The Art of the Funnies", over ten years ago. The resulting book is not only one of the finest comics oriented biographies but it's a great book in and of itself. I have to admit that after it arrived I was a little intimidated by it. It is after all a massive door stopper of a book and I left it sitting on my desk for a week before I finally cracked it open and began reading it in earnest. Despite its considerable length the pages flew by and I was soon at the end with the distinct feeling of disapointment at the prospect that it was over. Harvey literally transports his readers to an earlier age when there was no TV, no cable, no satelite, no computers and no internet. The general public got their entertainment by means of reading books and magazines, going to the movies, listening to the radio and reading the comics page in the local paper. The Great Depression was battering the country and war clouds were starting to appear over the skies of Eurpope and Asia. Out of those troubled times Milton Caniff became one of the greatest and most widely read storytellers of the age. This is his story and Harvey succeeds in telling it well.

--"Meanwhile" is an examination of an entire art form that sadly has fallen, not just out of favor, but by the wayside entirely. R.C. Harvey, one of the most well-respected authorities on the history of the newspaper comic strip has written the definitive, even monumental, study of Milton Caniff and his work. Actor Robert Culp referred to Milton Caniff as "immortal" and after reading this fascinating volume, you can understand why. Mr. Caniff, if he didn't invent the adventure newspaper strip, certainly refined and defined the parameters for generations afterwards. Not just an accomplished artist, Mr. Caniff was also a consummate story-teller. His influence can still be seen in many forms of media, nearly twenty years after his death. Through Mr. Harvey's biography (he began writing it before Mr. Caniff passed away), the reader gets to know Milton Caniff as an unassuming workaholic who fit the classic mold of American patriot. The sections devoted to Terry and the Pirates (and his most iconic creation, Lai Choi San, The Dragon Lady) and Steve Canyon are very illuminating, particularly to students of comic-strip art. It's hard to realize now the impact the newspaper comic-strip had on the American culture from the 1930s through the 1950s, and Mr. Caniff's work was always held as the standard by which all others strived to attain. "Meanwhile" is a great book. It's one of the few that I have read in the last few years that I have referred back to within days of finishing it. This is a classic book about a classic artist whose contributions to American culture need to be rediscovered and celebrated. Thank you, Mr. Harvey.