slyc_willie
Captain Crash
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2006
- Posts
- 17,732
Like a lot of boys growing up, I was a big Conan fan. The movie was released just before my jump-start into puberty and quickly became one of my all-time favorites (it still is). I used to buy those cheap little pulp paperbacks written by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp and thought Conan was the epitome of man. He was strong, tough, stoic, could take on anything and survive, but he also showed passion and even a little simple wisdom.
Several years ago, I came across a collection of Howard stories that didn't have anything to do with Conan. "Wow," I thought. "He wrote about more than swords and sorcery?"
Indeed he did. The stories were some of Howard's post-Conan submissions to Weird Tales. A couple starred a West Texas country bumpkin named Breckenridge Elkins. Others included an immortal Atlantean sorcerer dredged up from the bottom of the ocean named Kathulos (Lovecraftian followers will notice a certain name similarity there). Through reading the editor's notes at the beginning of the collection, I discovered Howard and Lovecraft were contemporaries, and that Howard was part of the Lovecraftian Circle of correspondence. Obviously, the two writers had shared story ideas.
I've been looking into Howard's life lately after I happened upon a collection of Howard stories called Treasures of Tartary. Howard is not the man I ever thought he was.
Bob Howard was a writing machine. His body of work composes hundreds of short stories and poems, with only a fraction of them devoted to Conan. His other notable characters include the vengeful Puritan swordsman Solomon Kane, Cormac Mac Art, Bran Mak Morn, and Sailor Steve Costigan, who was his first hero, a navy man and boxer who got himself involved in various adventures in various ports.
Howard's characters were extensions of himself. He was a stocky man, muscular and fit, who did a little boxing himself in his twenties. His circle of friends was always an intellectual one, including other writers, poets, scholars and philosophers of the day (1920s-30s). But while Howard was usually remembered as being good-natured and jovial, he suffered from lifelong depression. His mother suffered from tuberculosis through almost the entirety of Howard's life, and by all accounts, she was his main driving force for going on. Like his characters, Howard was a gloomy, trudging giant surviving against the odds until he no longer had reason to do so.
On June 11th, 1936, after his mother's nurse told him his mother had slipped into a coma and would not awaken, Robert E. Howard walked calmly out to his car, took a pistol from the glove compartment, and shot himself in the head. He died eight hours later, and his mother soon followed. They were buried together.
The more I discover about Howard, the more I am impressed with his work. Even if some of his characters are depicted as being simple, or even stupid, the writing certainly wasn't. He had an incredible grasp of, and appreciation for history. Almost single-handedly, he created an entirely new genre of fiction -- Sword & Sorcery, which blends elements of high adventure, fantasy, horror, and mystery. Even J.R.R. Tolkein is said to have liked Howard's work.
His stories have a sweeping prose about them, bringing you in and giving you a tease of future events even with just the first paragraph:
"It was not mere impulsiveness that sent Kirby O'Donnell into the welter of writhing limbs and whickering blades that loomed so suddenly in the semidarkness ahead of him. In that dark alley of Forbidden Shahrazar it was no light act to plunge headlong into a nameless brawl; and O'Donnell, for all his Irish love of a fight, was not disposed thoughtlessly to jeopardize his secret mission."
--from Treasures of Tartary, originally published in October 1934
I always liked Robert E. Howard when i thought he was "just the guy that created Conan." But now I admire him.
Every year, in the second week of June, Cross Plains, Texas celebrates Robert E. Howard Days with readings, reenactments of his stories, and of course, a jamboree.
Next year, I'm gonna be there.
Several years ago, I came across a collection of Howard stories that didn't have anything to do with Conan. "Wow," I thought. "He wrote about more than swords and sorcery?"
Indeed he did. The stories were some of Howard's post-Conan submissions to Weird Tales. A couple starred a West Texas country bumpkin named Breckenridge Elkins. Others included an immortal Atlantean sorcerer dredged up from the bottom of the ocean named Kathulos (Lovecraftian followers will notice a certain name similarity there). Through reading the editor's notes at the beginning of the collection, I discovered Howard and Lovecraft were contemporaries, and that Howard was part of the Lovecraftian Circle of correspondence. Obviously, the two writers had shared story ideas.
I've been looking into Howard's life lately after I happened upon a collection of Howard stories called Treasures of Tartary. Howard is not the man I ever thought he was.
Bob Howard was a writing machine. His body of work composes hundreds of short stories and poems, with only a fraction of them devoted to Conan. His other notable characters include the vengeful Puritan swordsman Solomon Kane, Cormac Mac Art, Bran Mak Morn, and Sailor Steve Costigan, who was his first hero, a navy man and boxer who got himself involved in various adventures in various ports.
Howard's characters were extensions of himself. He was a stocky man, muscular and fit, who did a little boxing himself in his twenties. His circle of friends was always an intellectual one, including other writers, poets, scholars and philosophers of the day (1920s-30s). But while Howard was usually remembered as being good-natured and jovial, he suffered from lifelong depression. His mother suffered from tuberculosis through almost the entirety of Howard's life, and by all accounts, she was his main driving force for going on. Like his characters, Howard was a gloomy, trudging giant surviving against the odds until he no longer had reason to do so.
On June 11th, 1936, after his mother's nurse told him his mother had slipped into a coma and would not awaken, Robert E. Howard walked calmly out to his car, took a pistol from the glove compartment, and shot himself in the head. He died eight hours later, and his mother soon followed. They were buried together.
The more I discover about Howard, the more I am impressed with his work. Even if some of his characters are depicted as being simple, or even stupid, the writing certainly wasn't. He had an incredible grasp of, and appreciation for history. Almost single-handedly, he created an entirely new genre of fiction -- Sword & Sorcery, which blends elements of high adventure, fantasy, horror, and mystery. Even J.R.R. Tolkein is said to have liked Howard's work.
His stories have a sweeping prose about them, bringing you in and giving you a tease of future events even with just the first paragraph:
"It was not mere impulsiveness that sent Kirby O'Donnell into the welter of writhing limbs and whickering blades that loomed so suddenly in the semidarkness ahead of him. In that dark alley of Forbidden Shahrazar it was no light act to plunge headlong into a nameless brawl; and O'Donnell, for all his Irish love of a fight, was not disposed thoughtlessly to jeopardize his secret mission."
--from Treasures of Tartary, originally published in October 1934
I always liked Robert E. Howard when i thought he was "just the guy that created Conan." But now I admire him.
Every year, in the second week of June, Cross Plains, Texas celebrates Robert E. Howard Days with readings, reenactments of his stories, and of course, a jamboree.
Next year, I'm gonna be there.
