Robert E. Howard, Escape Artist

REH (age 18) costumed as a pirate (August 1924)

Adventure

I am the spur

That rides men's souls,

The glittering lure

That leads around the world.

–Robert E. Howard, Letter to Clyde Tevis Smith (1926)

Today marks the 117th anniversary of the birth of Robert Ervin Howard, creator of such icons of pulp fiction as Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane, among many, many more. I don't think it's possible to overstate Howard's importance to the development of sword-and-sorcery literature. The character of Conan is, without a doubt, one of the most well-known fantasy characters of all time and the tales of his adventures established a template that has been widely imitated ever since his first appearance in 1932. These facts alone justify commemorating this day each year.

Of course, like many writers of the past, Howard has his fair share of contemporary detractors, those who criticize not just his writing but also his character. In general, I'm not much given to defending the personalities, choices, or opinions of men who died decades before I was born – not because I cannot recognize their very human flaws but because I know that I, too, might one day be judged by those with the luxury of hindsight. To believe that we, in this present age, have somehow transcended history and, unlike our forebears, hit upon all the Right Ideas that will henceforth be held by all who come after us is the height of hubris. Therefore, I try, not always with success, to limit my criticisms to the fruits of an individual's life.

A common criticism of Howard as man is that, for all the hotblooded machismo of his writings, he was himself a bookish weirdo who lived with his parents for the entirety of his thirty years of life. Howard never travelled outside the state of Texas [This is incorrect; see this comment – JM] nor was he a ladykiller, unlike the charismatic adventurers about whom he so often wrote. Instead, say these critics, REH played at being these things, as evidenced by the many photographs that depict the writer wielding a sword, wearing a sarape with a pistol at his hip, or sparring in boxing gloves. He was thus a fake and a fraud, a mama's boy given to bouts of performative masculinity of the sort who ought to be pitied rather than admired.

Like many criticisms, there are germs of truth in even these, but, also like many criticisms, they don't tell the whole story. Howard possessed many idiosyncrasies and his direct experience of the wider world was limited, in some ways more limited even than that of H.P. Lovecraft, which is indeed saying something. However, REH read widely and, through his many friends, both in Texas and across the United States, was able to imagine what it might have been like to sail the seas of Asia with Steve Costigan, to stand his ground against evil with Solomon Kane, and to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth with Conan. 

Reading – and, of course, writing – enabled Robert E. Howard to escape from the circumstances of his birth, to escape life in a rough-and-tumble boomtown where someone with his interests and proclivities would always been viewed as an outsider. How many of us reading this have not done the same? One of the lasting joys of the best pulp stories is their ability to transport the reader to exotic locales where he can witness remarkable events and rub shoulders with even more remarkable people. Howard was one of the best tellers of pulp stories who ever lived, perhaps because, before those stories transported his readers, they transported him – away from the Great Depression, his small-minded neighbors, his mother's lingering illness, and the likelihood that he might never amount to anything.

That last fear proved utterly untrue. Though he died never knowing it, Robert E. Howard had a lasting impact on the world, one that can still be felt to this day, especially in this corner of it. Through his stories and the characters they introduced, he not only laid the foundations for an entirely new and popular genre of literature, but he also enabled other bookish weirdos to escape, if only for a little while, from their own circumstances. To me, that's well worth celebrating.