Sunday, January 22, 2023

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, writingenabled 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.

16 comments:

  1. Fair comment I think. We don't (and in my view, shouldn't) "judge" Alexander for having the sex life of an ancient Greek or people for holding the common positions and practices of their time. Do we throw Conrad on the scrapheap because of the titling of his books, intention be damned?

    I don't need my fantasy authors to be "authentic"- it almost defeats the purpose. I need them to imagine. RR Martin doesn't look like he can swing a sword either but he writes about it just fine. If an author wants to write about authentic experiences and presents things as such, we are in a different category. But can we really criticise the author of Conan for not being a musclebound king from a a barbarian upbringing himself? Surely that's not even a thing.

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  2. I hadn't realised that he was only 30 when he took his own life. What a huge pity.

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  3. Another thing that bugs me about criticism of REH's "performative masculinity" is that it ignores his youth. For most of his life, he was a boy; why blame him for acting like one? Plenty of people do silly stuff in their twenties.

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  4. Happy Birthday to REH!

    Keith West wrote on his Adventures Fantastic blog: Robert E. Howard traveled with friend Truett Vinson to Santa Fe, New Mexico in June, 1935. Howard hoped to travel on to Colorado and Arizona, but Vinson wanted to return home to Texas after they had reached Santa Fe. West suggests that the trip inspired Howard to write his story “Red Nails”.

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    1. You are, of course, correct. I believe I even knew this fact, but my memory is obviously not what it used to be. Thanks for correcting my error.

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  5. One of the "might have beens" that haunt me most is the question of what REH might have become if he'd lived through WW2. He was less than six years from direct US involvement, and (assuming his mother had passed on by then) he almost certainly would have volunteered to serve. The work he produced was, as you said, almost purely the imagination of a young and inexperienced man. What would exposure to the greatest war in human history have done to him? What would travel, whether to Africa or Europe or the Pacific have done? Would he have come home in '45, or stayed abroad to experience more of the real world firsthand? If he continued writing, would we have had stories of military life and service?
    American adventurers abroad in hothouse chaos of the post-War world? His own take on noir detectives and criminals in the US throughout the later 40s and 50s? Science fiction inspired by the Space Race and beyond?

    Even as youth he was a phenomenally versatile author whose characters clearly "spoke" directly to him. What voices would we have heard if he had lived just that little while longer and had the military experience so many males of his generation shared? We'll never know, but the question fascinates me.

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    1. It fascinates me, too. Lovecraft believed that, had he lived, Howard would have eventually penned a great epic of the Southwest to rival the works of great American regional authors like Faulkner. True or not, I can't help but think he would have matured into a truly outstanding writer.

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    2. I've read that Howard had a weak heart (in the literal sense) and took medication for it. I suspect that a man in his mid-thirties with a bad heart might have been coded 4-F to his immense frustration. Though I think he would have done the George Bailey thing and contributed as much to the war effort as possible for a civilian.

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  6. Calling REH a fake seems a peculiar criticism. It's very common for writers of tales of adventure to be men who wanted to be heroic but reality didn't cooperate. Kipling was too near sighted to be a soldier. Heinlein hit multiple career dead ends before settling for writing science fiction. Tom Clancy was also too near sighted to be a Navy officer and had to settle for writing about them. So saying he was a little weird & wasn't a man of action doesn't seem like saying much.

    What I have read about him suggests he was a sensitive & decent if troubled man. I suspect part of the problem is cultural - he feels like a product of the Victorian age (probably the small town in Texas thing) compared to contemporaries like de Camp or Heinlein. In a way the same problem some people have regarding Tolkien or CS Lewis.

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    1. I agree it seems an odd thing to criticise a writer for being bookish.
      I like William Hope Hodgson's writing, a genuine man of action, killed by German artillery in WW1, but I'm not sure his vast practical knowledge of the details of running a ship adds all that much to his tales of nautical horror.

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    2. As bookish as he was, it's not like he wasn't attempting things within his means. He did amateur boxing - I can respect anyone that gets in a ring even if it's just to get knocked out and he was allegedly not bad. He exercised. He travelled as far as he reasonably could, especially considering his part of the country (you've got to go a lot farther to see stuff compared Lovecraft's New England wanderings, for instance). He did fine for himself, IMO.

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  7. Just yesterday I was offered a collection of Teukemel material by a gamer who loved it but recently discovered the author’s other interests and could no longer bear to have the stuff. Go figure.

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    1. I didn't know about this until just now and I'm stunned. And appalled...

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  8. As a bookish dude from a rural area I can sympathize with some of his self-doubts. I still go home and feel like a college boy. It's kind of too bad he never moved to a larger city for a while so he could compare himself against someone beside the local yokels - possibly could have balanced his self opinion a bit.

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