My Robert E. Howard pal Deuce Richardson noticed something he thought I should let fans of Jim Tully know about — no less than Robert Bloch doing a name check on Tully seven years before Tully’s death in 1947.
Bloch is now and always will be best known for writing Psycho, though some of us appreciate his early years as a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and getting involved in the birth of the Cthulhu Mythos (naturally, Bloch gets cited many times in John Haefele’s new book on the origins of the Mythos).
In the story “Be Yourself,” first published in Strange Stories, October 1940, and collected in the 1998 Arkham House title Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies, Bloch does an early version of an author vs. his penname-alter-ego-come-to-life — and yes, you saw the idea recycled in Stephen King’s The Dark Half.
When the author’s wife Maizie shows up, he introduces the doppleganger as his “kid brother.” Maizie asks if he has luggage.
“You see, I’m bumming my way around the country.”
Maizie then says: “Oh, like Jim Tully!”
Hey, famous as a hobo in his day, no doubt about it. . . .
