A Guy Just Passing Through by Matthew Hughes

Reviewed by Robert Runté

As a critic, I’m often interested in the lives of writers. Understanding how writers' backgrounds shaped their worldview and inspired their characters can deepen one’s enjoyment of their work. Matthew Hughes is a prolific Canadian SF&F, crime, and historical author whose work I greatly enjoy. I was therefore inordinately happy when he made his personal memoir, A Guy Just Passing Through, available to the public.

Much of the book focuses on his early upbringing in England, Ontario, and BC within a family that was vaguely criminal, frequently poor, and notably dysfunctional.

Hughes remarks in these early chapters that “although criminality does not gallop though my father’s gene pool, it at least ambles along.” This criminal-adjacent upbringing provides a glimpse into, and perhaps some understanding of, a world we seldom see. It also goes some way to explaining the sense of authenticity one gets reading Hughes’ crime novels, and his frequent selection of henchman as the point of view character, even in his fantasy and science fiction.

Growing up poor was even more fundamental. In Hughes’ words:

The non-poor live in a firmer, more dependable world. . . . They don’t have to take gravity into account every time they take a step because gravity has been a constant throughout their lives. But the poor don’t get reliable gravity. Sometimes you go to take an ordinary step and find yourself spinning off into space.

. . .

It makes you different … You live in a less friendly, less amenable universe.

It is not difficult to see how this has influenced Hughes’ writing. For example, one of my favourite Hughes’ concepts is the universe changing every few thousand years between the principles of cause and effect, those of sympathetic magic. At the change-over to magic, Hughes inserts Henghis Hapthorn, a Sherlock Holmes figure frustrated to discover that deductive reasoning has suddenly been rendered uselessly obsolete. A fair number of Hughes’ protagonists find themselves similarly confronted with a sudden turn in circumstances that leaves their footing precarious indeed.

Unexpectedly yanked carpets is certainly a theme of Hughes own life. Growing up, Matt frequently had little or no warning when his family would abruptly pick up stakes and move to escape loan sharks or other creditors. Consequently, Matt found himself in a new school every few semesters, seldom staying long enough to make meaningful friends or put down roots. Thus, he became something of a loner, A Guy Just Passing Through. Unsurprisingly, several of his protagonist are similarly rootless. (The novel Template comes to mind, where searching for his origin story, our protagonist discovers he doesn’t actually have one.)

Even as an adult, Hughes could never quite catch a break. The working title for the book was One Damned Thing After Another, which fits well, but I would like to suggest that But Then, Unfortunately. . . might also have been appropriate. For instance, he and some friends designed a wildly successful board game (300,000 pre-orders), but unfortunately, it was the year Nintendo came out, essentially ending the era of board games. His first novel was picked up by a big-time agent, who loved it, but unfortunately, the agent retired before he placed Hughes’ book. Hughes managed to place it himself with a big-name publisher, but unfortunately, the company was bought out and dissolved before his book could be distributed. (I discovered Fools Errant in a department store’s bin of remaindered books, and became a life-long Huges’ fan, but I was essentially the only one who ever saw it.) Another editor bought his second novel, but unfortunately, that editor quit the publisher, orphaning Hughes’ book. And so on. Hughes should be a household name like George R.R. Martin (who is also a Hughes fan) but you need to be in the right place at the right time for a writing career to really take off.

Which is not to suggest that he has had no successes. Hughes’ is justly proud of having provided a much more stable home for his sons than he had. He was for years a prominent speechwriter to government Ministers and corporate heads, wrote for Alfred Hitchock’s, and Asimov’s magazines, was a fixture in the pages of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, wrote comedy for CBC radio, and has published over 40 books. His magnum opus, What the Wind Brings (originally published by Pulp Literature, a wonderful Canadian literary press) is currently being shopped around to the majors. The novel is outstanding, and I fully expect Hughes to become an “overnight success” —after a mere 40 years of labouring in the fields.

His self-image as a homeless drifter, however, is again central in retirement, as he works as an itinerate house-sitter, moving from sheep farm to Italian villa to wherever next his career as sitter takes him. Abandoning all one’s earthly goods for a life of travel and adventure, taking only a laptop and a single suitcase, sounds romantic, but Hughes’ memoir quickly disabuses the reader: house-sitting is the only way of attaining room and board while pursing the writing life.

Which brings us back to why Hughes memoir is so compelling. Like Stephen King’s On Writing, Hughes memoir is the story of the writing life; unlike King’s, Hughes doesn’t end up a multi-millionaire. With an IQ of 145, Hughes is a smart guy; he is one of speculative fiction’s best writers; and he always went for any opportunity that presented itself. But none of that is enough these days to become the next Stephen King or James Patterson. Cobbling together enough different writing opportunities to make a living is what the modern writing life actually looks like. This is, therefore, a must-read for any aspiring writer.

It’s also an engaging read for anyone else. A Guy Just Passing Through isn’t a celebrity tell-all or another great-man history, but the story of a Canadian everyman. Hughes sees himself as just another guy in a long line of nobodies, but that’s what makes this book so relatable. Reading this memoir feels like when an uncle visits to regale one with stories of distant relatives: some of that history is already familiar, even repetitive; some of it is about people one doesn’t really know; but all of it is somehow fascinating, compelling, and intimate.

A Guy Just Passing Through is independently published by the author.