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The Abominable Mr. Seabrook
In the early twentieth century, travel writing represented the desire for the expanding bourgeoisie to experience the exotic cultures of the world past their immediate surroundings. Journalist William Buehler Seabrook was emblematic of this trend―participating in voodoo ceremonies, riding camels cross the Sahara desert, communing with cannibals and most notably, popularizing the term “zombie” in the West. A string of his bestselling books show an engaged, sympathetic gentleman hoping to share these strange, hidden delights with the rest of the world. He was willing to go deeper than any outsider had before. But, of course, there was a dark side. Seabrook was a barely functioning alcoholic who was deeply obsessed with bondage and the so-called mystical properties of pain and degradation. His life was a series of traveling highs and drunken lows; climbing on and falling off the wagon again and again. What led the popular and vivid writer to such a sad state?
Cartoonist Joe Ollmann spent seven years researching Seabrook’s life, interviewing surviving family and accessing long neglected archives, in order to piece together the peripatetic life of a forgotten American writer. Often weaving in Seabrook’s own words and those of his biographers, Ollmann’s The Abominable Mr. Seabrook posits Seabrook the believer versus Seabrook the exploiter, and leaves the reader to consider where one ends and the other begins.
Cartoonist Joe Ollmann spent seven years researching Seabrook’s life, interviewing surviving family and accessing long neglected archives, in order to piece together the peripatetic life of a forgotten American writer. Often weaving in Seabrook’s own words and those of his biographers, Ollmann’s The Abominable Mr. Seabrook posits Seabrook the believer versus Seabrook the exploiter, and leaves the reader to consider where one ends and the other begins.
316 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 2017
11 people are currently reading
317 people want to read
About the author
Joe Ollmann
21 books56 followersJoe Ollmann lives in Hamilton, the Riviera of Southern Ontario. He is the winner of the Doug Wright Award for Best Book in 2007 and loser of the same award another time.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
March 28, 2017
You’ve been warned: the key to the graphic biography of once popular pulpy journalist William Seabrook is “abominable.” And what would you expect from the author of a comics collections of short stories entitled Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People, each story a sympathetic yet comic portrait of some miserable loser. And Ollman’s Midlife is not a happy portrait of midlife, either, trust me.
Ollman is a great artist of the downtrodden, the outsider, the freak. He’s not the kind of guy who would do a comics biography of FDR, let’s say. I mean, what would be the point of writing about someone famous in a mainstream, conventional sense. Ollman is in the company of Seth or Chet Brown or Jeffery Brown, making portraits of everyday schlemiels, and making you like ot admire something about them in spite of themselves. Seabrook was the author of popular books in the first half of the twentieth century on the topics of voodoo, zombies, cannibalism, obscure sexual practices. He was an explorer and lover of women and friend of the likes of Gertrude Stein and Thomas Mann, and he was a “practitioner” of s/m (consenting bondage), but above (or maybe beneath) it all, he was a drunk, an alcoholic, who basically drank himself to death.
Not interested? Okay, I get that. I’ll admit the center of this biography is booze, and that makes it a bit hard to read, page after page, the almost inevitable decline and crash, but I also have to say I found it hard to put down. Why? I think it is Ollman almost more than Seabrook, though Seabrook is kind of morbidly fascinating. It’s that Ollman honors (though is honest about all Seabrook’s faults) a deeply complicated, sometimes “abominable” regular guy like this! Just as three different wives and other women in his life manage to find something redeeming in him. And that he manages to get all this writing done. He gets committed to an asylum and even manages to write a book about that.
For a quirky, alt comix kind of guy who is scathingly honest about his own warts, Ollman creates a surprisingly conventional biography of this writer, a project he spent ten years making! Ten years for a minor drunk writer, written by a guy who himself had to stop drinking to get his own life together. Thoroughly researched, and fundamentally empathetic.
What are the great alcoholic stories/writers? Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Any number of books by Jack Kerouac. Flann O’Brien? Cheever? Well, this is a biography of a middle of the road writer who is also happens to be a drunk. Sad, but I somehow couldn’t look away, thanks to Ollman’s considerable talent. For the sheer talent of creating it, this is a five star book, but I still can’t find my way to give it more than 4 stars. Not yet. It’s still pretty hard to read at times.
Ollman is a great artist of the downtrodden, the outsider, the freak. He’s not the kind of guy who would do a comics biography of FDR, let’s say. I mean, what would be the point of writing about someone famous in a mainstream, conventional sense. Ollman is in the company of Seth or Chet Brown or Jeffery Brown, making portraits of everyday schlemiels, and making you like ot admire something about them in spite of themselves. Seabrook was the author of popular books in the first half of the twentieth century on the topics of voodoo, zombies, cannibalism, obscure sexual practices. He was an explorer and lover of women and friend of the likes of Gertrude Stein and Thomas Mann, and he was a “practitioner” of s/m (consenting bondage), but above (or maybe beneath) it all, he was a drunk, an alcoholic, who basically drank himself to death.
Not interested? Okay, I get that. I’ll admit the center of this biography is booze, and that makes it a bit hard to read, page after page, the almost inevitable decline and crash, but I also have to say I found it hard to put down. Why? I think it is Ollman almost more than Seabrook, though Seabrook is kind of morbidly fascinating. It’s that Ollman honors (though is honest about all Seabrook’s faults) a deeply complicated, sometimes “abominable” regular guy like this! Just as three different wives and other women in his life manage to find something redeeming in him. And that he manages to get all this writing done. He gets committed to an asylum and even manages to write a book about that.
For a quirky, alt comix kind of guy who is scathingly honest about his own warts, Ollman creates a surprisingly conventional biography of this writer, a project he spent ten years making! Ten years for a minor drunk writer, written by a guy who himself had to stop drinking to get his own life together. Thoroughly researched, and fundamentally empathetic.
What are the great alcoholic stories/writers? Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Any number of books by Jack Kerouac. Flann O’Brien? Cheever? Well, this is a biography of a middle of the road writer who is also happens to be a drunk. Sad, but I somehow couldn’t look away, thanks to Ollman’s considerable talent. For the sheer talent of creating it, this is a five star book, but I still can’t find my way to give it more than 4 stars. Not yet. It’s still pretty hard to read at times.
March 13, 2023
I wasn't a huge fan of Joe Ollmann's Mid-Life, the first book I read by him. It's unfortunate that that kept me away from reading this for so many years. I picked it up ages ago (probably discounted at the local shop) and finally got around to reading it. Damn, it's amazing.
It's essentially a biopic... what is that called in comics? A bio-mic? What I mean by that is this isn't quite a biography and its not intended to be fictional. It's just has fictional dialogue to tell the story but I believe Ollmann is super faithful to the real biography. He has a ton of notes in the back... movies should have that too.
I had never heard of Journalist William Seabrook before. His lasting claim to fame is that he introduced the word "zombie" to an English audience. But during his life he was quite famous. The story is exciting and worth telling. Seabrook is fairly insufferable. He dealt with alcoholism in an age where it wasn't a recognized illness. I know from Ollmann's other book "Fiction Father" that he's dealt with and is interested in themes related to alcoholism. Perhaps this is what drew him to writing about Seabrook. We get to see Seabrook's multiple rises and falls from fame and success.
Ollmann's dedication to this story is truly outstanding. Honestly, I think this would be a 5-star book regardless of the subject matter he chose.
It's essentially a biopic... what is that called in comics? A bio-mic? What I mean by that is this isn't quite a biography and its not intended to be fictional. It's just has fictional dialogue to tell the story but I believe Ollmann is super faithful to the real biography. He has a ton of notes in the back... movies should have that too.
I had never heard of Journalist William Seabrook before. His lasting claim to fame is that he introduced the word "zombie" to an English audience. But during his life he was quite famous. The story is exciting and worth telling. Seabrook is fairly insufferable. He dealt with alcoholism in an age where it wasn't a recognized illness. I know from Ollmann's other book "Fiction Father" that he's dealt with and is interested in themes related to alcoholism. Perhaps this is what drew him to writing about Seabrook. We get to see Seabrook's multiple rises and falls from fame and success.
Ollmann's dedication to this story is truly outstanding. Honestly, I think this would be a 5-star book regardless of the subject matter he chose.
February 13, 2019
I am all for biographies of oddballs. Who wants to read about an evenball? Got born grew up got a job liked it got married never cheated had several darling ittle kidsies whizzbang career everyone thought he was the cat’s pyjamas never got high died in his sleep angels bore his soul to paradise everyone boohooed. For 400 pages? I think not.
William Seabrook though somewhat odd only rates a 6 on the Salvador Dali scale and truth to tell only a 0.5 on the Jeffrey Dahmer scale.
He was an explorer & went to Haiti & saw zombies & sussed out that they were zombified from strong drugs not from having been dead. He introduced the word zombie to the West, allegedly. He went to the Ivory Coast and ate human flesh, as he stated in his book Jungle Ways (1930) except it came out that he didn’t, those pesky Africans had slipped him some monkey meat as they had long given up cannibalism.
Like many pop acts, Seabrook had a hot streak of around five years (books on Arabia, Haiti and Africa) and then a long undramatic decline into alcoholism. This did not make for a very compelling tale in the long run, but you could see on every page that this graphic biography was very clearly a labour of love, a pet project finally come to completion, and it’s nice. I could have done with a few less panels showing Mr Seabrook three sheets to the wind, it got repetitive. But Joe Ollmann would say it was honest. Nothing so boring as a guy who only wants to drink himself senseless.
Aside from the booze, Mr Seabrook’s other lifelong obsession was with bondage. He liked to tie up naked women & do stuff. So he did, all the time, and his wives had to put up with it, and they mostly did! He would have a barn near his house and he would have a succession of women arriving for these bondage sessions and his wife would just mutter darkly! The tied up women were paid for their services, everything was copasetic. I understand lots of people indulge in this kind of recreation. Got to admit I find it 100% creepy, but there are worse things that happen at sea.
William Seabrook though somewhat odd only rates a 6 on the Salvador Dali scale and truth to tell only a 0.5 on the Jeffrey Dahmer scale.
He was an explorer & went to Haiti & saw zombies & sussed out that they were zombified from strong drugs not from having been dead. He introduced the word zombie to the West, allegedly. He went to the Ivory Coast and ate human flesh, as he stated in his book Jungle Ways (1930) except it came out that he didn’t, those pesky Africans had slipped him some monkey meat as they had long given up cannibalism.
Like many pop acts, Seabrook had a hot streak of around five years (books on Arabia, Haiti and Africa) and then a long undramatic decline into alcoholism. This did not make for a very compelling tale in the long run, but you could see on every page that this graphic biography was very clearly a labour of love, a pet project finally come to completion, and it’s nice. I could have done with a few less panels showing Mr Seabrook three sheets to the wind, it got repetitive. But Joe Ollmann would say it was honest. Nothing so boring as a guy who only wants to drink himself senseless.
Aside from the booze, Mr Seabrook’s other lifelong obsession was with bondage. He liked to tie up naked women & do stuff. So he did, all the time, and his wives had to put up with it, and they mostly did! He would have a barn near his house and he would have a succession of women arriving for these bondage sessions and his wife would just mutter darkly! The tied up women were paid for their services, everything was copasetic. I understand lots of people indulge in this kind of recreation. Got to admit I find it 100% creepy, but there are worse things that happen at sea.
September 8, 2017
I was noddingly familiar with Seabrook going into this, having read enough material by and about people he associated with over the years to have run across his name here and there. He was a wildly popular writer in his day, travelling across the Sahara, studying voodoo in Haiti, consorting with cannibals in the jungles of Africa ... In some ways, his work laid the foundations for the work of journalists like Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. He had a darker side as well, a fetish for bondage and sadism in an era where such things were rarely acknowledged, and a drinking problem of almost legendary proportions. Joe Ollmann has done a magnificent job of capturing Seabrook's story in graphic novel form. I suppose, since I've not previously read any accounts of his life, I have no idea how accurate a portrait this is. It feels right, though. Ollmann has clearly researched the book thoroughly. There's a bibliography, as well as a section of notes pertaining to various panels that he thought warranted additional explanation. As Ollmann portrays him, Seabrook is a somewhat tragic figure, brought down in the end by his own demons, but possessed of many sterling qualities as well, a complex, fascinating, and deeply human individual. Recommended!
February 6, 2017
This is a book that doesn't leave you so quickly. It's not so much the life of Seabrook himself, as fascinating as that is -- and "fascinating" in the way of watching a slow moving accident -- as it is the way that Joe Ollmann narrates the life. I've been a big fan of Ollmann's work for quite some time, although this is something I'm not used to from him: writing in a more realistic, historical mode. And he does it outstandingly well! I come to Ollmann through his works of comics fiction, especially those works in the short-story style. I feel that is where he truly excels. But this departure from his usually form of writing is fascinating on so many levels. There is an understanding, or at least sincere attempts at understanding, the man whose life he chronicles. Empathy is clear throughout. Yet at the same time, Ollmann isn't afraid to take a critical tone...but doing so through showing and not telling. This is a work that was at least five years in the making, and Joe even mentioned this work-in-progress (at the time) when I interviewed him a couple of years ago. An impressive way to start the new year!
December 25, 2017
Erg interessante biografische graphic novel over de vergeten succesauteur, wereldreiziger, occultist, reporter en zelfverklaarde kannibaal William Buehler Seabrook. Seabrook introduceerde het woord 'zombie' in de Engelse taal, schreef een uitgebreide studie over voodoo op Haiti, leefde tussen de bedoeïenen en raakte bevriend met enkele kannibaalkoningen in Afrika. Hij was bovendien zijn leven lang een zware alcoholist, huwde drie keer, belandde meermaals in psychiatrische instellingen en was bevriend met onder anderen Man Ray, Thomas & Heinrich Mann en Gertrude Stein. Ollmann hangt een objectief en aangrijpend beeld op van een getormenteerde artiest die zichzelf dood zoop en eeuwig twijfelde aan zijn kunnen.
August 21, 2017
William Seabrook was on the edges of a lot of things. Mostly edgy things. His claim to fame is originating the term "zombie," but he did other stuff too. "X-rated" and otherwise.
I picked this up because I was very impressed by Happy Stories about Well-Adjusted People, Ollmann's short story collection, AND I read a summary that intrigued me much, thank you very much.
Seabrook was a journalist by trade, and wrote a series of articles and books (which were generally serialized into articles), about his adventures exploring the world. He specialized in going to places deemed "exotic" by white america at the time.
Ollman addresses the progressive and problematic nature of Seabrook and his work, as well as his family history, romantic relationships, sexual kinks, and alcoholism.
It's an overwhelmingly ambitious work, birth to death.
I really like reading detailed accounts of the lives of people I don't know much about - it's probably why I enjoy GN-memoirs so much. William Seabrook was apparently infamous during his time, but has largely been forgotten - Ollmann says that's why he felt it necessary to publish such an exhaustive account.
Human lives are contradictory, and there are some moments that felt like less-than-polished storytelling, but Ollmann is out of his genre, so I found this pretty forgivable.
I loved one of the Epictetus quotes on the dedication page:
Suffice it to say, I appreciate that this exists in the world. I make an effort to read primarily books about people who've been ignored by dominant culture, so part of me felt a little guilty about reading a book by a white man about a white man, but I'm still glad it exists.
I consumed it in bite-sized chunks while on breaks at work, and I recommend that - it's kinda like reading a tabloid about a celebrity you don't already know. In comic form.
I picked this up because I was very impressed by Happy Stories about Well-Adjusted People, Ollmann's short story collection, AND I read a summary that intrigued me much, thank you very much.
Seabrook was a journalist by trade, and wrote a series of articles and books (which were generally serialized into articles), about his adventures exploring the world. He specialized in going to places deemed "exotic" by white america at the time.
Ollman addresses the progressive and problematic nature of Seabrook and his work, as well as his family history, romantic relationships, sexual kinks, and alcoholism.
It's an overwhelmingly ambitious work, birth to death.
I really like reading detailed accounts of the lives of people I don't know much about - it's probably why I enjoy GN-memoirs so much. William Seabrook was apparently infamous during his time, but has largely been forgotten - Ollmann says that's why he felt it necessary to publish such an exhaustive account.
Human lives are contradictory, and there are some moments that felt like less-than-polished storytelling, but Ollmann is out of his genre, so I found this pretty forgivable.
I loved one of the Epictetus quotes on the dedication page:
"People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them."It's SO TRUE! Taboos are so implicitly cultural. Obviously. I mean, there is ambiguity in the world, nothings black and white, etc. etc. etc.....
Suffice it to say, I appreciate that this exists in the world. I make an effort to read primarily books about people who've been ignored by dominant culture, so part of me felt a little guilty about reading a book by a white man about a white man, but I'm still glad it exists.
I consumed it in bite-sized chunks while on breaks at work, and I recommend that - it's kinda like reading a tabloid about a celebrity you don't already know. In comic form.
June 24, 2017
Well, reading nearly three hundred pages of a drunken, misogynistic jackass proved to be a real slog. At one point I was holding out hope that this was a hoax biography, that this was all just made up, but no the jerk really existed. This book seems like one part of a concerted effort to revive interest in Seabrook and his writing, but it utterly fails for me and leaves me kind of hoping it fails for everyone else too. Some people are better left forgotten.
July 16, 2017
Read. This. Book.
It doesn't matter if you know who William Seabrook was. I didn't. I doesn't matter if you like comics or not. I do, though. It doesn't matter if you've read any of Joe Ollmann's work before. You should, however, because he's possibly the most underrated artist and writer in comics today. Read "The Abominable Mr. Seabrook" because it's a thoroughly engrossing biography of one of the strangest, most acclaimed, and most tragic writers of the 20th century.
A quick primer on William Seabrook: he was a restless journalist who ended up writing travelogues of his adventures with nomads in the Middle East, voodoo witch doctors in Haiti, and other exotic cultures and nations. He was also married three times, a unrepentant drunk who was committed to several mental hospitals, openly sadomasochistic, credited with popularizing the word "zombie," and a contemporary of some of the most acclaimed writers and artists of his time; in fact, for a time, he was more famous and higher-paid than most of them. What's more, Seabrook wrote about everything in his life with an unflinching honesty that was abnormal in those puritan days (and possibly abnormal still today). In Ollmann's appropriately raw biography, Seabrook is a tortured and driven soul, sort of Forrest Gump-ing his way through the biggest stories of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. In his typically dense 9-panel structure, Ollmann packs a lot of Seabrook's unbelievable life into his pages, each crazy anecdote leading to another crazier one; I couldn't put the book down. Heartfelt and sympathetic yet brutally truthful, Ollman has done the best work of his career with "The Abominable Mr. Seabrook."
As I write this, it's currently July of 2017. I know there's still six months left in the year but I feel confident in saying that Ollmann's nuanced, exhaustive (and, in reference to Seabrook himself, exhausting) biography is gonna be my favorite book of 2017. I'm telling you:
Read. This. Book.
It doesn't matter if you know who William Seabrook was. I didn't. I doesn't matter if you like comics or not. I do, though. It doesn't matter if you've read any of Joe Ollmann's work before. You should, however, because he's possibly the most underrated artist and writer in comics today. Read "The Abominable Mr. Seabrook" because it's a thoroughly engrossing biography of one of the strangest, most acclaimed, and most tragic writers of the 20th century.
A quick primer on William Seabrook: he was a restless journalist who ended up writing travelogues of his adventures with nomads in the Middle East, voodoo witch doctors in Haiti, and other exotic cultures and nations. He was also married three times, a unrepentant drunk who was committed to several mental hospitals, openly sadomasochistic, credited with popularizing the word "zombie," and a contemporary of some of the most acclaimed writers and artists of his time; in fact, for a time, he was more famous and higher-paid than most of them. What's more, Seabrook wrote about everything in his life with an unflinching honesty that was abnormal in those puritan days (and possibly abnormal still today). In Ollmann's appropriately raw biography, Seabrook is a tortured and driven soul, sort of Forrest Gump-ing his way through the biggest stories of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. In his typically dense 9-panel structure, Ollmann packs a lot of Seabrook's unbelievable life into his pages, each crazy anecdote leading to another crazier one; I couldn't put the book down. Heartfelt and sympathetic yet brutally truthful, Ollman has done the best work of his career with "The Abominable Mr. Seabrook."
As I write this, it's currently July of 2017. I know there's still six months left in the year but I feel confident in saying that Ollmann's nuanced, exhaustive (and, in reference to Seabrook himself, exhausting) biography is gonna be my favorite book of 2017. I'm telling you:
Read. This. Book.
January 14, 2017
On track to be one of the best graphic novels of 2017. This is a stunning work of biographical comics, thoroughly researched and completely engaging. William Seabrook led an incredible life, but is little known today. He was a talented, best-selling writer who was ultimately overcome by his addictions. Despite Seabrook's significant flaws and penchant for self-destruction, Ollmann treats him with enormous empathy and sensitivity.
November 19, 2024
Shit, I read this. It was fantastic! I don't remember much about the book something about a drunk adventurer dude into some kinky shit? Seabrook was wild, getting trim and partying with Alistar Crowley. He coined the term "zombie" and was into all that voodoo stuff. The book shows when occultism was cool and not embraced strictly by obese people that live in their parents basement as it is today. Clearly, times have changed (does anyone take Marilyn Manson seriously?). I remember liking this book so much, I bought the book. People don't understand the cultural context of how wild this guy actually was in his day.
Context is everything.
Shit it turns out I have the book "Asylum" next to my bed, I totally forgot that was there. Man, I can't believe I didn't review this book. I will try and read Asylum soon as I am assured it will be great.
Context is everything.
Shit it turns out I have the book "Asylum" next to my bed, I totally forgot that was there. Man, I can't believe I didn't review this book. I will try and read Asylum soon as I am assured it will be great.
December 3, 2019
When considering the Lost Generation-era journalist, travel writer, occultist, cannibal, and sadist William Seabrook, two thoughts come to mind: first, if he didn't exist, surely we'd have to invent him; and second, how is it this man’s life and work has remained so obscure and for so long? The same thoughts apparently occurred to cartoonist Joe Ollmann – himself no stranger to fortean subjects, having previously authored the UFO-themed fictional graphic novel Science Fiction (2013) – who over a decade ago first encountered Seabrook's highly eccentric and decidedly diverse oeuvre, along with a handful of divergent biographical approaches to the writer. Ollmann's discovery took some doing, as Seabrook's work remains frustratingly out of print, aside from a few recent reprints, including The Magic Island (1929), his groundbreaking study of voodoo ritual that introduced the concept of the zombie into popular culture, and Asylum (1935), a memoir of Seabrook’s (eventually failed) attempt to overcome alcoholism. Spellbound by this unearthed material, Ollmann felt compelled ("sort of obligated" as he puts it in his foreword) to tell Seabrook's life story in an attempt to rekindle interest in and resuscitate the career of this alternately fascinating and troubling author. With the graphic biography The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, Ollmann has largely succeeded at that task, producing an intimate portrait that is simultaneously entertaining, nuanced, funny, and tragic; an altogether worthwhile testament to his subject.
Seabrook, a well-educated student of philosophy, was a veteran of the Great War. He was gassed at the Battle of Verdun in 1916 while in the American Ambulance Field Service of the French Army, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. His first published work, Diary of Section VII, privately printed in 1917, is a memoir of those war experiences. That same year, Seabrook joined the staff as a reporter at the New York Times but soon after transitioned to travel writing, publishing articles in a various popular magazines, including Reader’s Digest and Vanity Fair. In 1924, his travels took him to Arabia where Seabrook, with whose own parents and brother he was long estranged, was welcomed as family by a Bedouin tribe and the Kurdish Yazidi. Seabrook published his account in his first professionally released book, Adventures in Arabia (1927).
On the strength of this initial effort, Seabrook traveled to Haiti, where he became immersed in the Cult of Death and "voodoo" culture, shockingly described in his equally successful The Magic Island. Encouraged by the positive reception to that book, and seeking to capitalize on its sensationalism, Seabrook undertook a well-funded journey to West Africa where he claims he met a cannibal tribe with whom he ritualistically ate human flesh, a trip described in Jungle Ways (1930). Seabrook later admitted that, while the tribe was cannibalistic, he was not allowed to join in the ritual; in the interest of verisimilitude, he instead later purchased human flesh (a neck) from a hospital which he then cooked and ate. Seabrook’s final, somewhat perfunctory exposé on ritualistic occultism, Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today (1940), in which Seabrook dismissively proclaimed that none of his experiences were without rational scientific explanation, was not published until a decade later. In it, he includes an account of the week-long visit paid to his upstate New York farm by none other than Aleister Crowley, with whom Seabrook conducted a week-long experiment wherein their communication was limited to a single word: "Wow." Seabrook would later adopt similar verbal restrictions during his later ritualistic, sadomasochistic, parapsychological “research.”
According to Ollmann, Seabrook’s output during the 1930s, consisting of books on then-novel air travel (Air Adventure [1933]), and a study of a defrocked monk in the French Sudan (The White Monk of Timbuctoo [1934]), was relatively less impressive. Perhaps as a result of the tepid response to these efforts, Seabrook’s alcoholism worsened and, in late 1933, he committed himself to a mental institution just outside New York City, where he remained for six months. Asylum, his painfully honest memoir of this experience, was published a year later to great critical and commercial success. It should have marked a career revival, yet, aside from his last work, the cathartic exorcism of an autobiography, No Hiding Place (1942), Asylum remains a noteworthy outlier.
While Ollmann, unusually for a graphic biographer, provides insightful literary criticism and much biographical context for the creation of Seabrook’s work, obviously it is Seabrook’s life and not his writing that receives primary attention here, in particular Seabrook’s storied career as a sexual sadist. "The key to a locked man is his supreme want," Ollmann quotes Seabrook as saying and, indeed, Seabrook's supreme want involved women in chains, an obsession he traced back to an almost hallucinatory childhood memory of being led by his laudanum-addicted grandmother to an imaginary ruined castle in which he discovered a young woman chained to a throne.
Seabrook married three times, and because of his fetishism, his first two marriages were strained to the breaking point. Possibly sexually impotent, Seabrook’s appetite for bondage and sadism were pronounced and, if Ollmann’s depiction, based largely on the particularly intense memoir The Strange World of Willie Seabrook (1966), by second wife Marjorie Muir Worthington, is to be believed, quite epic. Seabrook hired young women, whom he bound and gagged, and he took to designing his own bondage gear; the artist Man Ray photographed him with one of his restraints around the neck of photographer Lee Miller. Seabrook married a final time, in 1942; they were divorced the same year. He committed suicide by drug overdose in 1945.
Ollmann in his foreword observes that it was his intention from the outset to allow as little editorial interference as possible, and yet, in his graphic rendering, avoiding such editorializing is perhaps unavoidable. Ollmann depicts Seabrook’s escapades – be it travel to foreign lands or engaging in S&M – in the same unattractive, scratchy, cartoony style, best described as a marriage between Edward Gorey and Eddie Campbell, which wonderfully underlines Seabrook’s tawdriness and desperation. Moreover, Ollmann’s rigid nine-panel per page visual structure (a layout from which he rarely deviates), seems a neat and necessary counterpoint to the messiness of Seabrook's life. After all, Seabrook is, on the surface, a detestable character, a difficult subject for any biography, and yet it is this very depravity and weakness of character that arguably prove to be Seabrook's most fascinating traits, in part because they form the underpinning for the overall tragedy of his life. Ollmann's unflinching, multi-faceted portrait is surprisingly sympathetic, convincingly arguing that, despite Seabrook's many (quite human) failings, he was not altogether unlikable or unredeemable. He was a sexual deviant and self-destructive, true, yet he was also an immensely talented writer and personally quite charming. He could churn out hack work yet also produce, whatever its veracity, disarmingly honest, insightful, and ultimately heartbreaking autobiography. As a result of his late stage alcoholism, Seabrook was unable to repeat earlier successes obscurity and obsolescence after failing to keep up with the changing literary tastes. His final downfall, Ollmann argues, was his basic failure, throughout his life, to recognize the possibility for renewal or redemption. In Ollmann, Seabrook has found that most enviable of posthumous advocates: the sincerely engaged, yet humane biographer.
The medium of graphic biographies has exploded in recent years; given their current ubiquity, it seems startling that just three decades ago there were only a handful of practitioners (Jack Jackson and Art Spiegelman to name two) utilizing this promising format. Ollmann, who primarily writes fictional comics that read like autobiography, is a bit of a Johnny-come lately to graphic biography, yet with The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, he has produced one of the form’s more memorable recent entries, one that easily takes its place among the best the medium has to offer.
- Eric Hoffman, Fortean Times
Seabrook, a well-educated student of philosophy, was a veteran of the Great War. He was gassed at the Battle of Verdun in 1916 while in the American Ambulance Field Service of the French Army, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. His first published work, Diary of Section VII, privately printed in 1917, is a memoir of those war experiences. That same year, Seabrook joined the staff as a reporter at the New York Times but soon after transitioned to travel writing, publishing articles in a various popular magazines, including Reader’s Digest and Vanity Fair. In 1924, his travels took him to Arabia where Seabrook, with whose own parents and brother he was long estranged, was welcomed as family by a Bedouin tribe and the Kurdish Yazidi. Seabrook published his account in his first professionally released book, Adventures in Arabia (1927).
On the strength of this initial effort, Seabrook traveled to Haiti, where he became immersed in the Cult of Death and "voodoo" culture, shockingly described in his equally successful The Magic Island. Encouraged by the positive reception to that book, and seeking to capitalize on its sensationalism, Seabrook undertook a well-funded journey to West Africa where he claims he met a cannibal tribe with whom he ritualistically ate human flesh, a trip described in Jungle Ways (1930). Seabrook later admitted that, while the tribe was cannibalistic, he was not allowed to join in the ritual; in the interest of verisimilitude, he instead later purchased human flesh (a neck) from a hospital which he then cooked and ate. Seabrook’s final, somewhat perfunctory exposé on ritualistic occultism, Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today (1940), in which Seabrook dismissively proclaimed that none of his experiences were without rational scientific explanation, was not published until a decade later. In it, he includes an account of the week-long visit paid to his upstate New York farm by none other than Aleister Crowley, with whom Seabrook conducted a week-long experiment wherein their communication was limited to a single word: "Wow." Seabrook would later adopt similar verbal restrictions during his later ritualistic, sadomasochistic, parapsychological “research.”
According to Ollmann, Seabrook’s output during the 1930s, consisting of books on then-novel air travel (Air Adventure [1933]), and a study of a defrocked monk in the French Sudan (The White Monk of Timbuctoo [1934]), was relatively less impressive. Perhaps as a result of the tepid response to these efforts, Seabrook’s alcoholism worsened and, in late 1933, he committed himself to a mental institution just outside New York City, where he remained for six months. Asylum, his painfully honest memoir of this experience, was published a year later to great critical and commercial success. It should have marked a career revival, yet, aside from his last work, the cathartic exorcism of an autobiography, No Hiding Place (1942), Asylum remains a noteworthy outlier.
While Ollmann, unusually for a graphic biographer, provides insightful literary criticism and much biographical context for the creation of Seabrook’s work, obviously it is Seabrook’s life and not his writing that receives primary attention here, in particular Seabrook’s storied career as a sexual sadist. "The key to a locked man is his supreme want," Ollmann quotes Seabrook as saying and, indeed, Seabrook's supreme want involved women in chains, an obsession he traced back to an almost hallucinatory childhood memory of being led by his laudanum-addicted grandmother to an imaginary ruined castle in which he discovered a young woman chained to a throne.
Seabrook married three times, and because of his fetishism, his first two marriages were strained to the breaking point. Possibly sexually impotent, Seabrook’s appetite for bondage and sadism were pronounced and, if Ollmann’s depiction, based largely on the particularly intense memoir The Strange World of Willie Seabrook (1966), by second wife Marjorie Muir Worthington, is to be believed, quite epic. Seabrook hired young women, whom he bound and gagged, and he took to designing his own bondage gear; the artist Man Ray photographed him with one of his restraints around the neck of photographer Lee Miller. Seabrook married a final time, in 1942; they were divorced the same year. He committed suicide by drug overdose in 1945.
Ollmann in his foreword observes that it was his intention from the outset to allow as little editorial interference as possible, and yet, in his graphic rendering, avoiding such editorializing is perhaps unavoidable. Ollmann depicts Seabrook’s escapades – be it travel to foreign lands or engaging in S&M – in the same unattractive, scratchy, cartoony style, best described as a marriage between Edward Gorey and Eddie Campbell, which wonderfully underlines Seabrook’s tawdriness and desperation. Moreover, Ollmann’s rigid nine-panel per page visual structure (a layout from which he rarely deviates), seems a neat and necessary counterpoint to the messiness of Seabrook's life. After all, Seabrook is, on the surface, a detestable character, a difficult subject for any biography, and yet it is this very depravity and weakness of character that arguably prove to be Seabrook's most fascinating traits, in part because they form the underpinning for the overall tragedy of his life. Ollmann's unflinching, multi-faceted portrait is surprisingly sympathetic, convincingly arguing that, despite Seabrook's many (quite human) failings, he was not altogether unlikable or unredeemable. He was a sexual deviant and self-destructive, true, yet he was also an immensely talented writer and personally quite charming. He could churn out hack work yet also produce, whatever its veracity, disarmingly honest, insightful, and ultimately heartbreaking autobiography. As a result of his late stage alcoholism, Seabrook was unable to repeat earlier successes obscurity and obsolescence after failing to keep up with the changing literary tastes. His final downfall, Ollmann argues, was his basic failure, throughout his life, to recognize the possibility for renewal or redemption. In Ollmann, Seabrook has found that most enviable of posthumous advocates: the sincerely engaged, yet humane biographer.
The medium of graphic biographies has exploded in recent years; given their current ubiquity, it seems startling that just three decades ago there were only a handful of practitioners (Jack Jackson and Art Spiegelman to name two) utilizing this promising format. Ollmann, who primarily writes fictional comics that read like autobiography, is a bit of a Johnny-come lately to graphic biography, yet with The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, he has produced one of the form’s more memorable recent entries, one that easily takes its place among the best the medium has to offer.
- Eric Hoffman, Fortean Times
September 8, 2017
I can't believe I've never heard of this fascinating, but truly abominable historical figure. He was a writer who experienced some fame in the early twentieth century and an American expat in Paris in the twenties. I've read a lot about both types of people, but his name never stuck with me. This "cradle to grave" biography of the enigmatic author was by all accounts a labour of love for this artist. He kept coming back to it over ten years and finally got it done. The art is perfect for the subject: stark and dark. Here is the four word biography that Ollmann offers near the end of the book: alcoholic, masochist, cannibal, suicide. He was also the first to popularize the word "zombie." If that doesn't pique your interest, I'm not sure you've read this far. :)
April 14, 2023
Slightly interesting. Not enough to make me seek out Seabrooks work though.
July 27, 2018
A detailed biography of a hard to understand figure
I can't say I enjoyed it, but that was due to the subject matter.
Joe Ollman provides great insight and great art to show William Seabrook, who brought the word zombie into our language, and may have dined with a cannibal or two.
Not a fun tale, but Ollmann does it justice. O recommend it!
I can't say I enjoyed it, but that was due to the subject matter.
Joe Ollman provides great insight and great art to show William Seabrook, who brought the word zombie into our language, and may have dined with a cannibal or two.
Not a fun tale, but Ollmann does it justice. O recommend it!
October 3, 2021
As a graphic novel, the book's images are rather boring: conventional, fairly monotonous 9-panel pages with a lot of narrative text over top of the panels. I did like his use of ink and the monochromatic coloring. Favorite panel: a shot of drunk Seabrook holding a dog, both of their heads tipped back with laughter. That would have been a fun cover image.
As a biography, it's a well-researched depiction of a guy I'd never heard of and, after reading the book, in whom I am still not interested.
Ollman's devotion to separating his interpretations from his source materials is admirable, but to read it is a bit distracting. He uses quotation marks any time that his narration or dialogue is taken directly from one of his sources. In a straight prose biography, this would not be all that unusual. In a graphic novel, it's too eye-catching and disruptive.
I look at this as Ollman's project to get him through his alcoholism. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it for mass consumption.
As a biography, it's a well-researched depiction of a guy I'd never heard of and, after reading the book, in whom I am still not interested.
Ollman's devotion to separating his interpretations from his source materials is admirable, but to read it is a bit distracting. He uses quotation marks any time that his narration or dialogue is taken directly from one of his sources. In a straight prose biography, this would not be all that unusual. In a graphic novel, it's too eye-catching and disruptive.
I look at this as Ollman's project to get him through his alcoholism. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it for mass consumption.
February 6, 2017
***Spoiler Alert***Finished Seabrook last night around 2am. Couldn't put it down. What a nutrient dense, chilling, sometimes funny/sometimes tragic, historically fascinating portrayal of this adventure writer's life. I found the thread of Seabrook's alcoholism's progress through the book as intriguing and heart-wrenching as if the alcoholism itself were a second antihero. William's death at the end was so well-written it made me have a dreaded "feeling"! Also, Ollmann's drawings of the zombies in the Haiti field and the "neck meat" sent chills down the hackles of my own neck. I appreciate the considerable research and time Ollmann obviously put into creating this opus; it shows. There's also a deft subtlety in the handling of Seabrook as an anti-hero which is commendable. Really enjoyed this, and it left me with lots to think about. Thanks for all of your hard work, Joe. If you're looking for "Something Completly Different", this graphic novel is for you.
August 28, 2017
Challenging read that spends a lot of time exploring Seabrook's nearly lifelong battle with alcoholism. Part of me would have enjoyed more time spent on the more successful and healthy portions of Seabrook's life but Ollmann did a great job exploring a troubled life, not straying too far from various primary sources. Well written and illustrated, Ollmann gives Seabrook, nearly forgotten, a fitting biography.
March 22, 2022
I had never heard of Seabrook before reading this--he is one of the innumerable people to go quickly from success and fame--notoriety--to obscurity within his own lifetime, to be subsequently mostly forgotten. Seabrook was hugely popular for a while, probably because of how deliberately provocative he was--he wrote about voodoo, about the behaviours of African natives, including cannibalism and child-juggling involving the apparent impaling of children on swords (the cannibalism was not real; the child-juggling seems to have involved illusion, but that is not clear), witchcraft, etc. He was also an alcoholic and a sado-masochist, who was quite open about both (one of his better books, according to Ollmann, recounts his time in a mental institution being treated for his alcoholism: Asylum). He apparently realized he could end up drinking himself to death, and possibly even tried to do so, though it was an overdose of sleeping pills (ruled suicide) that killed him. There's an odd disjunction between Seabrook as a sensationalist and Ollmann's approach to his transgressive experiences and behaviour. To be fair, Ollmann is up front about this, warning readers that he's not going to be providing titillation--and when he gets to the section detailing Seabrook's extensive displays of and "experiments" (he claimed to be exploring extreme states to try tin investigate paranormal phenomena) with dsado-masochism, Ollmann includes a note stating explicitly that he has chosen to depict what Seabrook did without making it at all sexy. It's an artistic choice I can understand, and certainly when writing about someone who seemed to exploit cultural practices of other peoples to thrill and shock an American audience, one might want to avoid the potential for exploitation and misrepresentation, especially nearly 100 years after Seabrook did it himself. The result, often, is to lend Seabrook's behaviour an air of ... perhaps banality, or perhaps sordidness, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes Seabrook rather an ambivalent figure; he's not romanticized, to be sure, but neither is he depicted as despicable. This is a choice that perhaps hews close to the truth of life, but it's risky. Ollmann aims to report, not judge. More judgement might have made for a more engaging narrative. Ollmann's measured style--typically a nine-panel grid, with occasional variations--also works perhaps counterintuitively to contain this self-consciously transgressive figure in a highly fixed and predictable pattern--ironically, perhaps a more true representation of Seabrook's own inability to escape from his own patterns than something more stylistically flashy might have produced. Anyway, this is a meticulous, thoughtful biography of a very odd and arguably loathsome man, so it's not for all tastes, but for those who are receptive to it, this is well worth the read.
March 12, 2019
I'd give this 5 stars for piecing together a valuable bit of history, but 2 or 3 stars for subdued human drama.
William Seabrook was a popular writer of the "Lost Generation", notably weirder than most, and pressed by psychological dysfunction to run in oddball directions and write about what he found. His reports were personal and often had a lurid and/or supernatural edge. Among other adventures, he spent a year in Haiti, mingling among the locals, finally producing a book about voodoo ("The Magic Island", which introduced the term "zombie" to the American culture). His odyssey was a strange one, carrying him through alcoholism and eventually mental hospitals and ultimately suicide. For his small but unusual place in history, some people will be drawn to hear his story.
Today Seabrook's books are obscure, and some are out of print. Seabrook's own story is hard to piece together. He wrote a fascinating autobiography ("No Hiding Place") shortly before he died, but he seems to have sanitized some elements to make it more palatable. Joe Ollmann has here collected the various conflicting stories and built a coherent, and presumably true-to-life, narrative in graphic novel format. It's a story worth telling, and nobody else has done it; at least not in an accessible form.
My gripe is that I find Ollmann's book on the flat side. I've read Seabrook's autobiography and found it personal and passionate, even if he did fudge some details; Ollmann's rendition strikes me as factual but without passion. I'm guessing that, as Ollmann proceeded with this project (which he says went on over ten years!), he found himself liking Seabrook less. This wouldn't be surprising; Seabrook was fascinating from a distance but did some nasty stuff up close. And he crossed taboo lines both of his era and ours, most obviously being sexual sadism. Ollmann makes a point of illustrating Seabrook's sexual misadventures straightforwardly (they were too big a part of Seabrook's life to omit) but intentionally devoid of any eroticism, and I think this was a stylistic mistake. I understand that Ollmann didn't want to produce a smutty sex book that glorified degrading stuff, but to render Seabrook's efforts mundane makes the book itself mundane. In life, Seabrook was compulsively drawn to chase his passions wherever they led, and the heartfelt appeal of his quests just doesn't come through here. Maybe I'm not being fair to Ollmann; maybe the telling just wasn't on my wavelength, and others will be touched as I was not. I hope that's the case because I'm glad the book was written, and I hope it reaches a lot of people.
William Seabrook was a popular writer of the "Lost Generation", notably weirder than most, and pressed by psychological dysfunction to run in oddball directions and write about what he found. His reports were personal and often had a lurid and/or supernatural edge. Among other adventures, he spent a year in Haiti, mingling among the locals, finally producing a book about voodoo ("The Magic Island", which introduced the term "zombie" to the American culture). His odyssey was a strange one, carrying him through alcoholism and eventually mental hospitals and ultimately suicide. For his small but unusual place in history, some people will be drawn to hear his story.
Today Seabrook's books are obscure, and some are out of print. Seabrook's own story is hard to piece together. He wrote a fascinating autobiography ("No Hiding Place") shortly before he died, but he seems to have sanitized some elements to make it more palatable. Joe Ollmann has here collected the various conflicting stories and built a coherent, and presumably true-to-life, narrative in graphic novel format. It's a story worth telling, and nobody else has done it; at least not in an accessible form.
My gripe is that I find Ollmann's book on the flat side. I've read Seabrook's autobiography and found it personal and passionate, even if he did fudge some details; Ollmann's rendition strikes me as factual but without passion. I'm guessing that, as Ollmann proceeded with this project (which he says went on over ten years!), he found himself liking Seabrook less. This wouldn't be surprising; Seabrook was fascinating from a distance but did some nasty stuff up close. And he crossed taboo lines both of his era and ours, most obviously being sexual sadism. Ollmann makes a point of illustrating Seabrook's sexual misadventures straightforwardly (they were too big a part of Seabrook's life to omit) but intentionally devoid of any eroticism, and I think this was a stylistic mistake. I understand that Ollmann didn't want to produce a smutty sex book that glorified degrading stuff, but to render Seabrook's efforts mundane makes the book itself mundane. In life, Seabrook was compulsively drawn to chase his passions wherever they led, and the heartfelt appeal of his quests just doesn't come through here. Maybe I'm not being fair to Ollmann; maybe the telling just wasn't on my wavelength, and others will be touched as I was not. I hope that's the case because I'm glad the book was written, and I hope it reaches a lot of people.
February 18, 2021
Often-times it is difficult to feel pity for the addicts within your own life compared to those you have the luxury to observe from afar. As they burn, destroy, and rip you apart seam by seam, you truly never hold a moment of peace. You forget the ailments of which they suffer, and only see what they have stolen from your own heart and home.
This destruction of man was captured perfectly in Joe Ollmann’s weaving of Mr. William Seabrook. I am not intimately familiar with Seabrook’s works, outside of knowing passively that he is often credited as the originator of the term, “zombie” in mainstream Western media. Yet, through each and every panel I saw the fire that he wrought, I saw the man that he was, and the life that he grew, destroyed, and grew yet again.
Historically speaking, Mr. Seabrook was a genius, an esteemed author that penned many classic novels, likely to be discussed in the context of the literary canon for generations to come. Despite that, Mr. Seabrook was still a man, a deranged man with deranged fantasies, and demons unconquerable by the life of any mere mortal.
This book caused me to soberly reflect on my own mental illness, and the ways in which I hurt those around me. This relation spurred a simultaneous disgust and sadness for the esteemed Mr. Seabrook. His misdeeds made me want to apologize to each and every partner I left crying on the other end of a telephone as I abruptly ran from their love’s intimate embrace. It made me crave a scream to the heavens above for every midnight message forcing my mother to rush up to a hospital and find out that I had been committed yet again.
Men are reckless, dangerous beings, and Mr. Seabrook is that venomous masculinity distilled.
I have little else to say, but I truly hope that William Seabrook is resting peacefully, his demons conquered, and his thirst quenched. I offer this story my highest recommendations.
This destruction of man was captured perfectly in Joe Ollmann’s weaving of Mr. William Seabrook. I am not intimately familiar with Seabrook’s works, outside of knowing passively that he is often credited as the originator of the term, “zombie” in mainstream Western media. Yet, through each and every panel I saw the fire that he wrought, I saw the man that he was, and the life that he grew, destroyed, and grew yet again.
Historically speaking, Mr. Seabrook was a genius, an esteemed author that penned many classic novels, likely to be discussed in the context of the literary canon for generations to come. Despite that, Mr. Seabrook was still a man, a deranged man with deranged fantasies, and demons unconquerable by the life of any mere mortal.
This book caused me to soberly reflect on my own mental illness, and the ways in which I hurt those around me. This relation spurred a simultaneous disgust and sadness for the esteemed Mr. Seabrook. His misdeeds made me want to apologize to each and every partner I left crying on the other end of a telephone as I abruptly ran from their love’s intimate embrace. It made me crave a scream to the heavens above for every midnight message forcing my mother to rush up to a hospital and find out that I had been committed yet again.
Men are reckless, dangerous beings, and Mr. Seabrook is that venomous masculinity distilled.
I have little else to say, but I truly hope that William Seabrook is resting peacefully, his demons conquered, and his thirst quenched. I offer this story my highest recommendations.
January 17, 2026
I had never heard of William Buehler Seabrook when I came across this book, but apparently he was one of the highest paid writers in his time, at least for a while. He was a journalist and nonfiction (travel books and biographies) writer of who seems more or less forgotten today. Some of his books were bestsellers in his time. His main claim to fame these days is probably the fact he introduced the word zombie to the English language and was writing gonzo style nonfiction decades before the term was invented.
Even though I had never heard of the man and haven’t read any of his works, I did find it interesting. He led a dramatic life. He was not only a bestselling writer, and from the sounds of it a good writer, but a life long alcoholic, and a cannibal (yes, he tried that kind of meat once). He was into S&M, at times in his live he took this interest quite far and his relationship with women seems to have been complicated at best. Three times married, twice divorced. Eventually he would commit suicide, leaving behind a wife and a young son. A talented but troubled man.
I didn’t know anything about this man before reading this book so I can’t say if the author takes little or big liberties with his subject matter, but it feels like he is trying to tell the story honestly. He shows some events from different angles, how Seabrook saw something and then his wife, and also how he told one story as a young man and then again at the end of his life. That, and the list of references at the back give me the sense it is done without taking too much artistic liberties. It’s a well done book in my view, both the art which seem to fit the story quite well, and the writing. Not sure if I’m going to hunt down any of Seabrook’s works though, but I might read the next Joe Ollmann’s book that I come across. He seems to be a good comic book writer.
Even though I had never heard of the man and haven’t read any of his works, I did find it interesting. He led a dramatic life. He was not only a bestselling writer, and from the sounds of it a good writer, but a life long alcoholic, and a cannibal (yes, he tried that kind of meat once). He was into S&M, at times in his live he took this interest quite far and his relationship with women seems to have been complicated at best. Three times married, twice divorced. Eventually he would commit suicide, leaving behind a wife and a young son. A talented but troubled man.
I didn’t know anything about this man before reading this book so I can’t say if the author takes little or big liberties with his subject matter, but it feels like he is trying to tell the story honestly. He shows some events from different angles, how Seabrook saw something and then his wife, and also how he told one story as a young man and then again at the end of his life. That, and the list of references at the back give me the sense it is done without taking too much artistic liberties. It’s a well done book in my view, both the art which seem to fit the story quite well, and the writing. Not sure if I’m going to hunt down any of Seabrook’s works though, but I might read the next Joe Ollmann’s book that I come across. He seems to be a good comic book writer.
January 11, 2018
A fantastic, captivating biography of a talented, troubled, in-denial journalist/traveler/writer. I did not know much about Seabrook before reading The Abominable Mr. Seabrook (other than the fact that he popularized the word zombie in English). Joe Ollmann has meticulously researched and obsessed over Seabrook, his life, his alcoholism, his relationship with his three wives, his times in the great literary/art circles, his BDSM practice, his many stays in different mental institutions, and his journeys around the world. As a result, Ollmann presents a complex character with faults and redeeming qualities, a man with an addictive personality, a man who practiced BDSM openly, all of which has the desired effect of making the reader care about Seabrook.
Ollmann's art is fantastic. The story he tells, the story of Seabrook's life, is also compelling, as he carefully and meticulously draws out the important turning points and the mood shifts from the open-minded, eager traveler who spent two years among the Bedouins to the alcoholic who killed himself. My one gripe with the book is that Ollmann's lettering (or the custom type based on his lettering) is too tight, making some panels hard to read for me.
Recommended for those who like biographies, Man Ray and Lee Miller, cotton, gardening, magic tricks, and camels.
Ollmann's art is fantastic. The story he tells, the story of Seabrook's life, is also compelling, as he carefully and meticulously draws out the important turning points and the mood shifts from the open-minded, eager traveler who spent two years among the Bedouins to the alcoholic who killed himself. My one gripe with the book is that Ollmann's lettering (or the custom type based on his lettering) is too tight, making some panels hard to read for me.
Recommended for those who like biographies, Man Ray and Lee Miller, cotton, gardening, magic tricks, and camels.
July 6, 2017
This book did such a nice job bringing the Seabrook to life and loving Seabrook and mistrusting Seabrook. However there were just a few times when the author seemed to second guess himself and the ability of the audience to understand what he was trying to do. A good example of this is the small explanation at the top of the last few pages about how the last pages weren't heaven. It is a small thing in the grand scheme of the book, but was jarring to see right at the end when the book was about to finish. The same thing happened when Seabrook spoke broken French. There were at least 3 explanations in the book about how that was supposed to flip the normal narrative on its head. Just do it and let us figure it out or just tell us once instead of 3 times.
January 6, 2021
It surprised me how much I enjoy the graphic novel biography of a completely unknown to me travel writer William B. Seabrook.
The graphic style painted with brave, contrastic colours seems to match perfectly with the life of a S&M fan, drunkard and troubled man. I am not sure if I would like to read any of Seabrook's books but the author made me really interested in him.
This biography also shows how much time and work the author devoted to the research and how much Seabrook means to him. You can feel it and it makes the book really intriguing. I had to know how it ends (I mean, you can hardly expect anything good but still) and read the graphic novel in one sitting (quite a lot of text and information).
It was a very interesting experience and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The graphic style painted with brave, contrastic colours seems to match perfectly with the life of a S&M fan, drunkard and troubled man. I am not sure if I would like to read any of Seabrook's books but the author made me really interested in him.
This biography also shows how much time and work the author devoted to the research and how much Seabrook means to him. You can feel it and it makes the book really intriguing. I had to know how it ends (I mean, you can hardly expect anything good but still) and read the graphic novel in one sitting (quite a lot of text and information).
It was a very interesting experience and I enjoyed every minute of it.
December 3, 2017
A biography/somewhat-fictionalized biography of the writer and adventurer William Seabrook. Ollman’s text carries the narrative more than his detailed monochrome artwork, which primarily serves as illustrations for the text. Seabrook is an interesting subject, but the book lacks a narrative arc. Probably the best chapters are the first two, covering Seabrook’s beginning and establishment in his career—after that, it feels repetitive. Seabrook’s life itself may have been repetitive as he, like most people, continued in the same career and repeated the same mistakes, but the book doesn’t manage to build much tension around his increasing self-destructive behavior.
April 5, 2020
I sort of struggled with the rating I wanted to give this book and maybe I’m being unfair. I picked this up not realizing it was a graphic novel so perhaps I’m rating it based on unfair expectations. I think this was more of a passion project of the author which is great, but I’m confused about the tone he was trying to strike. Some of the text in the panels is in quotes, almost putting me in mind of a research paper quoting other articles. It wasn’t clear to me whether i should approach the book as a narrative, a biography, or an uneven mix of the two.
February 8, 2018
via NYPL - A very compelling biography of a peculiar and tragic writer. Ollman spends 300 pages chronicling the ups and down of Seabrook's career, marriages and health, and the end result is a very impressive and immersive life story. Although his artwork is stiff, Ollman imbues the characters with plenty of life and emotion. Seabrook isn't the sort of man I'd want to lunch with, but he's a dynamic and very interesting protagonist for this strongly crafted book.
October 15, 2019
An interesting, balanced presentation of a complicated man's life. It attemps to get at Seabrook's heart, and does an admirable job.
The black and white, set-panel art comic structure feels very familiar now, but its orderliness pairs well with non-fiction, and allows the dour, unflattering images take the place of normal prose details.
An admirable accomplishment of resuscitating a lost figure in all his grossness and limited charm.
The black and white, set-panel art comic structure feels very familiar now, but its orderliness pairs well with non-fiction, and allows the dour, unflattering images take the place of normal prose details.
An admirable accomplishment of resuscitating a lost figure in all his grossness and limited charm.
July 4, 2017
I had never heard of William Seabrook and only read this because I stumbled across it in the library. I will certainly now seek out at least one or two of Seabrook's books and will definitely look for other graphic novels by Joe Ollmann. How he made me care so much for a self-destructive alcoholic is a testament to his work as a novelist--such compassionate writing!
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