by Unknown
Whatever the future holds, Robert Howard's work in the genre of popular adventure fiction has shown a staying power and a capacity for arousing lasting enthusiasm far beyond any of his contemporaries, save only Edgar Rice Burroughs, father of the timeless hero Tarzan. Why, we may wonder, has Howard's work enjoyed such a stunning revival a generation after his death, while the tales of most of his contemporaries —some more skillful and experienced writers than he—molder in the crumbling files of ancient magazines?
Although all of Howard's stories are being rushed into print, his current popularity stems from just one set of stories: the Conan tales. We may be sure that, with the possible exception of his humorous Westerns,
Howard's non-Conan fiction would not have been reprinted had not the Conan saga brought Howard to the attention of the public and started the Howard vogue. So it is to Conan and to Howard himself that we must turn to evaluate his work.
People today live in an increasingly mechanized, computer-driven civilization. Because so many jobs are repetitive and confining, people feel that the world has boxed them in. They yearn to be free, to be in command of their fates, to escape from the restraints of their everyday lives. Travel used to be an escape for those who could afford it. But today scarcely any corner of the globe remains unexplored, and even in distant lands exotic costumes and customs are vanishing.
For armchair travelers, heroic fantasy furnishes the purest escape of all—escape from the real world into a world of make-believe. And this make-believe world Howard provided in the Hyborian Age. Troubled by the growing complexity of our industrial civilization, with its ever-multiplying regulations and paperwork, young people—young men in particular—are tempted to dream of a simpler world and a freer, more virile life, which they mistakenly imagine existed long ago and far away. They hug to their bosoms the romantic myth of the strong, fearless barbarian who tramples on convention and scorns civilized men as degenerate and cowardly. Ignoring the fact that the life of the average primitive is "poore, nasty, brutish, and shorte," they yearn to live the life of a barbarian hero.14
Of course, during the time that he is conquering the folk of another culture, the barbarian hero can get away with almost anything. He acts like an adolescent freed from his parents' control and not yet fitted into the mold of adult existence. Modern readers, remembering the feeling when, as adolescents, they tried out deeds of daring to see what they could get away with, still hanker for the days when they enjoyed a sense of liberation from all rules and regulations. This sense of freedom is, however, largely illusion. We soon learn that the world—the laws of nature, our fellow men, and our own limitations—imposes as strict a set of rules on us as ever our parents did.
Robert Howard never outgrew his struggle for adolescent emancipation. He carried to his grave his fierce resentment of the slightest discipline and his insistence on behaving unconventionally in a most conventional small town. Reflecting this untamed spirit, Howard's tales have enabled millions of readers, deprived by adult life of that first wild joy of adolescent emancipation, to recapture their lost sense of power as they follow the fictitious adventures of a barbarian conqueror in his imaginary world.
Howard's posthumous success stems not only from his romantic primiti-vism but also from his self-taught literary skills. We have already discussed his splendid use of alliteration, color adjectives, active verbs, and personification. His detailed Hyborian Age is a major imaginative creation, ranking with Burroughs's Barsoom, Tolkien's Middle Earth, and Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. But it was Howard's total immersion in his world of make-believe that made the ultimate contribution to the vividness of his fiction and ensured its eventual success. Lovecraft understood this. After Howard's death Lovecraft wrote:
Mr. Howard struck what proved to be one of his most effective accomplishments—the description of vast megalithic cities of the ancient world, around whose dark towers and labyrinthine nether vaults lingers an aura of pre-human fear and necromancy which no other author could duplicate.
It is hard to describe precisely what made his stories stand out so—but the real secret is that he was in every one of them, whether they were ostensibly commercial or not. . . . even when he outwardly made concessions to mammon-guided editors he had an internal force & sincerity which broke through to the surface & put the imprint of his personality on everything he wrote----He was almost alone in his ability to create real emotions of fear & of dread suspense. ... No author can excel unless he takes his work very seriously & puts himself whole-heartedly into it—and Two-Gun did just that, even when he claimed and consciously believed he didn't.15
The "self' that Robert Howard put into his stories with such burning intensity was, despite his great talents and virtues, a fatally flawed personality. He suffered from pathological dependence on his mother, from delusions of persecution, from a fascination with suicide.
He was filled with rage at "enemies" and "tyranny." These enemies were nothing but personifications of the laws of causality: identical causes produce identical effects; everything has its price; lost time is never found again; and there are no good wizards to rescue a person from the consequences of his follies and blunders. Howard knew these things; but the knowledge did not abate his anger at being cabin'd, cribb'd, confined by the implacable laws of an uncaring universe.
This somber self, with its nightmarish view of a hostile, menacing universe, its irrational fears, hatreds, and grudges, gives a unique vitality to Howard's fiction. It grips Howard's readers whether they will or no tnd, aided by his splendid literary techniques and his gift for storytelling, carries them off into a world of rainbow hues, furious action, and outsized passions.
Thus the very traits that in the end destroyed him bestowed on Robert Howard's fiction its qualities of greatness. Perhaps these qualities are best conveyed to the reader unfamiliar with the Conan saga by John D. Clark in his enthusiastic introduction to Conan the Conqueror:16
Howard was a first rate teller of tales, with a remarkable technical command of his tools and with a complete lack of inhibitions. With a fine free hand he took what he liked from the more spectacular of all ages and climes: proper names of every conceivable linguistic derivation, weapons from everywhere and every when under the sun, customs and classes from the whole ancient and medieval world, and fitted the whole together into a coherent and self-consistent cosmos without a visible joint. Then he added a king-sized portion of the supernatural to add zest to the whole, and the result was a purple and golden and crimson universe where anything can happen—except the tedious. . . .
Conan, the hero of all of Howard's heroes, is the armored swashbuckler, indestructible and irresistible, that we've all wanted to be at one time or another; the women, in appearance, manner, and costume (or lack of it) are the inmates of the sort of harem that harems ought to be but aren't ...; the villains are villainous as only perfect villains can be; the sorcerers are sorcerers in spades; and the apparitions that they conjure up, or who appear under their own power, are (Thank God!) out of this world.
And above all, Howard was a story-teller. The story came first, last, and in between. Something is always happening, and the flow of action never hesitates from beginning to end, as one incident flows smoothly and inevitably into the next with never a pause for the reader to take breath. ... If the history propounded doesn't agree with what you know of history —if the ethnology is remarkable and the geology more so—don't let it worry you. Howard was writing of another Earth than this one—one painted in brighter colors and on a grander scale.
Notes
Chapter I, DREAMER AND DREAM.
1. Robert E. Howard (hereinafter called "REH"): Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die, in Always Comes Evening (1977), p. 49.
2. Spelled "Ervine" in Robert Howard's birth and death certificates and his mother's death certificate, but "Ervin" everywhere else, e.g. on their tombstone, in the records and on the tombstones of Mrs. Howard's relatives, and in Robert Howard's writings.
Apparently "Ervine" was a quirk of Dr. Howard. Other sources give REH's birthdate as January 22; the 24th is the date on the birth certificate.
3. Interview with L. W. Tyson, 1 Apr. 1965.
4. I. M. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, 29 Jun. 1936; in The Howard Collector, No. 13, Aut. 1970, p. 9.
5. The Cross Plains Review, 3 Jul 1936. The second line of this couplet is paraphrased from a poem by Ernest Christopher Dowson (1867-1900), a minor Victorian poet who died of alcoholism and tuberculosis: Non Sum Qualis Erarn Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae, which ends each stanza with the line: "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara: in my fashion."
6. The Cross Plains Review, 19 Jun. 1936, p. 1; in Lord (1976), p. 415.
7. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, c. 26 Sep. 1932.
8. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, c. 25 Jul. 1935.
9. I. M. Howard to F. Torbett, 22 Jun. 1936; in The Howard Collector, No. 1, Sum. 1961, pp. 9-13.
10. T. C. Smith (1963), pp. 9f.
11. Interview with T. Vinson, 28 Jun. 1977.
12. E. H. Price to H. P. Lovecraft, 25 Jun. 1936; in The Howard Collector, No. 3, Aut. 1962, p. 10.
13. E. H. Price to F. T. Laney, 22 Jul. 1944; in The Howard Collector, No. 9, Spr. 1967, p. 6.
14. H. Preece: "The Last Celt," in Lord (1976), pp. 95-99; H. Preece to L. Preece, 16 Jan. 1965, in The Howard Collector, No. 11, Spr. 1969, p. 15.
15. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Jun. 1933; in Lord (1976), p. 50.
16. Ibid.
17. REH: Conan the Conqueror (1950), p. 2.
18. Perry, p. 5.
19. REH to C. A. Smith, 23 Jul. 1935.
20. REH: The Sword of Conan, p. 134.
21. REH to P. S. Miller, 10 Mar. 1936; in The Coming of Conan, pp. 9-12.
22. REH: The Coming of Conan, pp. 179ff.
23. Ibid., pp. 150f.
NOTES
notes
1. REH: The Singer in the Mist, in Always Comes Evening (1976), p. 61.
2. Parker County birth register, in Robert E. Howard United Press Assn. mailing No. 18.
3. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Jul. 1931.
4. Ervin family Bible, from Mrs. Virginia Sargent.
5. Ibid.
6. REH: "The Wandering Years," in Lord (1976), p. 24; interviews with F. McC. Adamson, 20 Apr. 1978; 16 Oct. 1978.
7. REH, op. cit., p. 25.
8. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Jul. 1931; Ervin family Bible.
9. Interview with K. Merryman, 18 Oct. 1978.
10. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Jul. 1931.
1. REH: The Dweller in Dark Valley, in Echoes from an Iron Harp, p. 31.
2. Interviews with J. D. McClure, 16 Jul. 1977, and W. C. Howard, 17 Jul. 1977.
3. Interview with W. C. Howard, 22 Jul. 1977.
4. Harold Preece: The Last Celt, in Lord (1976), p. 97.
5. REH: "The Wandering Years," in Lord, op. cit., pp. 27f.
6. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, late Feb. 1931; Jun. 1933; 28 Feb. 1935; Howard family Bible, from F. McC. Adamson.
7. Interview with W. C. Howard, 22 Jul,
1977.
8. Interview with D. A. Murray, 16 Oct.
1978.
9. Karolevitz, passim.
10. Interview with 0. L. Davis, 9 Sep. 1978.
11. Interview with J. H. Childs, 18 Oct. 1978; letter from J. Scott, 2 Nov. 1978.
11. Ervin family Bible.
12. The Cross Plains Review, 19 Jun. 1936; in Lord (1976), p. 415.
13. REH: "The Wandering Years," p. 26.
14. Ibid., p. 27.
15. Interview with A. N. Davis, 9 Sep. 1978.
16. Visit to "the old Kyle house," 16 Jul. 1977, with J. C. McClure.
17. Interview with W. C. Howard, 17 Jul. 1977.
18. Dunbar, pp. 216ff.
19. Interviews with J. C. McClure & Mrs. W. H. Green, 16 Jul. 1977.
20. Interview with K. Merryman, 18 Jul. 1977.
21. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, late Feb. 1931.
Chapter III, DARK VALLEY LORD.
12. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, 26 Sep. 1932.
13. REH: "The Wandering Years," in Lord, op. cit., p. 32.
14. American Medical Directory, 1936.
15. Interview with J. Scott, 19 Jul. 1977.
16. Interviews with D. Tanner, 11 Jun. 1977, and L. and F. Butler, 20 Jul. 1977.
17. Interview with J. Scott, 19 Jul.
1977.
18. Interview with A. N. Davis, 19 Oct.
1978.
19. Interview with N. R. Chambers, 22 Jul. 1977.
20. E. H. Price: "A Memory of R. E. Howard," in REH: Skull-Face and Others, p. xviii.
21. Letter from L. W. Tyson, 20 Jan. 1977; interviews with P. Bond, 13 Aug. 1977, and L. and F. Butler, 20 Jul. 1977.
22. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Sep. 1930
370
Chapter II, DESTINY'S CHILD.
fe early Jun. 1931; c. 10 Jan 1932; c. 25 t. 1933.
23. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, 1 May | REH: Cimmeria, in Echoes from an
371
Chapter IV, BOY NOMAD.
1. REH: The Dust Dance (Version II), in A.Echoes form an Iron Harp, p. 28. Sf 2. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, late Feb. ^1931. 3. Ibid.
5. Ericksen; Spitz.
6. Letter from N. R. Chambers, 7 Jan.
11978.
|| 7. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, op. cit.
|i 8. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, c. 1 May ffe.
9. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Spr. 1932. rtj1 10. The Cap Rock is the northwestern-' inost of the escarpments that divide Texas into giant steps. See Texas Almanac, 1978-79, pp. 116ff.
, 11. Letter from Urla Wilson, 9 May 1978.
'„ 12. Interview with E. J. Baker, 2 Apr. 1978.
13. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, c. Oct. 1930; Jun. 1934.
14. Named for the literery Bronte sisters, but locally pronounced with one syllable, rhyming with "font."
15. Pron. we-SAH-chay; Vachellia far-nesiana.
16. Interview with F. M. Adamson, 16 Oct. 1978. "Cue" is an abbreviation of Isaac Mordecai Howard's middle name, misread by some of his relatives as "Mordecue."
Iron Harp, p. 18; also in The Howard Collector, no. 7, Win. 1965, pp. 17f. The former version omits the last stanza.
17. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Aut. 1931; c. Oct. 1934.
18. REH to W. B. Talman, c. Jan. 1931.
19. Unsigned postcard to "Mrs. I. M. Howard," 20 Aug. 1911; from W. C. Howard.
20. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Dec. 1932.
21. Interview with A. B. King, 26 Aug. 1978.
22. Interview with A. N. Davis, 18 Oct. 1978.
23. Interview with L. L. and D. C. Morgan, 6 Mar. 1978.
24. Interview with L. and F. Butler, 20 Jul. 1977.
25. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, late Feb. 1931.
26. McMurtry, p. 63.
27. REH: "Rogues in the House," in The Coming of Conan, p. 151.
28. Interview with S. Buzbee, 16 Apr. 1978.
29. REH: "A Touch of Trivia," in Lord (1976), p. 32.
30. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, op. cit.
31. E. H. Price to H. P. Lovecraft, 25 Jun. 1936; in The Howard Collector, no. 3, Aut. 1962, p. 7.
32. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, late Sep. 1930.
33. REH: "An Autobiography," in Lord, op. cit., p. 29.
Chapter V, THE REALM OF THE X-TRIPLE-BAR.
1. REH: A Moment, in Echoes from an 3. The meaning of the term "Cross Tim-Iron Harp, p. 54. *>ers" * disPute^ but some thmk it refers
2 Burns to the mixture of trees of dlfferent sPecies-
4. Quercus stellata.
5. Quercus virginiana.
6. Interviews with E. J. Baker, 2 Apr. 1978; with L. L. and D. C. Morgan, 6 Mar. 1978.
7. Lupinus texensis.
8. REH: Conan the Conqueror, p. 149.
9. I. M. Howard to E. H. Price, 21 Jun. 1944; in The Howard Collector, no. 14, Spr. 1971, p. 19; T. C. Smith (1956), p. 47; letter from L. Garrett, 13 Nov. 1978.
10. Letter from A. Newton, Apr. 1978.
11.
REH to H. P. Lovecraft, late May 1932.
12. Letter from A. Newton, Mar. 1978.
13. Interview with A. B. King, 26 Aug. 1978.
14. REH: "Some People Who Have Had Influence Over Me."
15. REH to A. W. Derleth, c. May 1932.
16. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, Jun. 1933.
17. Letter from A. Newton, Apr. 1978; REH to H. P. Lovecraft, c. Oct. 1930.
18. Interview with V. B. Nichols, 8 Mar. 1978.
19. REH to F. Wright, Sum. 1931.
20. REH to H. P. Lovecraft, c. early Jun. 1931; in Lord (1976), p. 49. In the printed version, the paragraphs following this one are excerpted from another letter to Lovecraft, of Jun. 1933.
21. REH to H. Preece, 5 Sep. 1928; in The Howard Collector, no. 9, Spr. 1967, p. 28.
22. Interviews with A. N. Davis, 18 Oct. 1978; with A. B. King, 26 Aug. 1978; with A. Newton, 2 Apr. 1978; letter from D. C. Morgan, May 1978.
23. Interviews with E. J. Baker, 2 Apr. 1978; with A. B. King, 26 Aug. 1978; with A. Newton, 2 Apr. 1978.
24.1. M. Howard to E. H. Price, op. cit., p. 17.
25. Burns.
26. Name doubtfully reported as "Ezell."
27. Interview with A. N. Davis, 18 Oct. 1978.
28. Interview with E. J. Baker, 2 Apr. 1978.
29. Ibid.
30.1. M. Howard to E. H. Price, op. cit., p. 19.
31. Interview with K. Merryman, 1H Jul. 1977.
32. Ibid.
33. Interview with E. J. Baker, 2 Apr. 1978.
34. REH to W. B. Talman, c. Jan. 1931; also to H. P. Lovecraft, Jun. 1933.
35. Interview with L. L. Morgan, 6 Mar. 1978.
36. Interview with A. N. Davis, 18 Oct. 1978.
37. Letter from N. R. Chambers, 7 Jan. 1978.
38. Interview with D. C. Morgan, 6 March 1978. Mrs. Morgan was Dr. Solomon Chambers's daughter.
39. Letter from A. B. King, 24 Sep. 1978.
40. Ramacharaka, pp. 99, 102.
41. Interview with D. C. Morgan, 6 Mar. 1978.
42. REH to H. Preece, 20 Oct. 1928; to H. P. Lovecraft, 9 Dec. 1931; early Aug. 1932; Jan. 1933; interviews with N. R. Chambers, 22 Jul. 1977; with N. P. Ellis, 24 Nov. 1977; 16 Oct. 1978; with L. Tyson, 13 Aug. 1977.