In
his tragically short life of just thirty years, Robert E. Howard was a very
productive author. He began writing as a
child, publishing his first story in 1925, when he was eighteen years old. Forty-eight of his stories would appear in Weird Tales, along with twenty-one
poems. He also published in Argosy, Strange Tales, Fight Stories,
Action Stories, Oriental Stories, (a.k.a. Magic
Carpet), Ghost Stories, Strange Detective Stories, Thrilling Adventures, Spicy Adventure
Stories and Sport Story Magazine—which
gives a sense of his range of interest.
James
Gunn, in his fascinating 1975 history of science fiction Alternate Worlds, describes the economic challenge of being a pulp fiction
writer, especially during the Depression era when Howard established his
career. Gunn writes that “—every pulp
writer trying to make a living from selling words for one-half cent to a penny
had to be prolific or starve…” Gene
Wolf, in his introduction to a collection of Clark Ashton Smith’s stories, remarks
that Howard nevertheless was able to use his writing to generate the highest
income in Cross Plains, Texas, where he lived.
In
the early 20th Century, an aspiring horror, science fiction or
fantasy writer was often financially driven to produce a great number of
stories in a relatively short period of time.
He or she had to constantly expand into new subject matter and markets, and
adapt to fluctuations in the public’s interest or taste. H.P. Lovecraft tended to sneer at pulp
fiction and the more mundane aspects of the writing business; productivity and marketing were not his strong suit. In contrast, Robert E. Howard rose to this
challenge, and aggressively explored new territories for his adventurous
fiction. He published poetry and
hundreds stories in a variety of fiction genres.
In
some respects the struggles of pulp fiction writers circa the 1920s and 1930s
resemble the difficulties of current day bloggers and e-book publishers. The low rate of remuneration creates an emphasis
on voluminous output and continuous self-promotion.
Much
of Howard’s work was published or adapted by others long after his death in
1936. Though of uneven quality, many of
these items are interesting to Howard enthusiasts because they contain the
germs of ideas developed elsewhere in his fiction, or show the development of
various themes and motifs that preoccupied him.
Following are a few stories that were published posthumously that readers
may have come across.
In
Robert E. Howard’s Restless Waters
(1974), several ship captains gather in a sea side tavern to drink and keep
warm during a terrible storm. It is
1845, and Captain Starkey has contrived to marry off his hapless niece to a
business associate in order to avoid bankruptcy—his plan may have involved the
murder of a potential informant and the banishment of the girl’s fiancé to
distant port. The evil captain’s plot is
revealed in a claustrophobic discussion around a table in the bar. As the storm intensifies, something appears at the window to
interfere with Starkey’s plot. This one
is very moody and melodramatic.
Colleagues
are also drinking around a table in Delenda
Est, (1968), albeit some 1500 years earlier than the setting of the story
above. “Delenda Est” may be an
abbreviation of a well-known Latin quote from Cato the Elder: “et praeterea censeo carthago delenda est”—“and
furthermore, I declare that Carthage must be destroyed.” (Except that the city intended for
destruction in the story is Rome.)
Readers
will want to bone up on the history of the Punic Wars as well as the later
attacks by barbarians against the declining Roman Empire. This is the setting for Howard’s vignette. A mysterious figure gives timely advice to a
barbarian ship captain on the eve of an attack on the Eternal City.
Delenda Est is interesting to compare to
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Very Old Folk, (1940),
published a few years after Lovecraft’s death.
(See also An
Antiquarian’s Dream.)
Lovecraft’s setting is somewhat earlier in history, and involves a Roman
military expedition that encounters a supernatural force as it struggles to
maintain control over a conquered people. Delenda Est
is an interesting variation on ghost stories involving “vengeance from the
grave”, and seems as if it would have been an excellent opening to a much
longer work.
The setting
of Kelly the Conjure-Man (1964) is
roughly cotemporaneous with Restless
Waters, though it takes place in Arkansas instead of along the New England
coast. Howard imagines a survival of West
African Vodun, (commonly called “voodoo”) among the slaves of one backwoods
community in pre-Civil War America. Vodun
beliefs and practices are personified in “Kelly the ‘conjer man’, a terrifying
and powerful folk wizard. The story is more
of a character sketch or back story to what might have been a much more
extensive work. Kelly disappears suddenly—it
would be interesting to know why this happened.
The
racism in Kelly the Conjure-Man is
casual and likely offensive to many readers.
There is this remarkable passage near the end:
“In
every community of whites and blacks, at least in the south, a deep, dark
current flows forever, out of sight of the whites who but dimly suspect its
existence. A dark current of colored
folks’ thoughts, deeds, ambitions and aspirations, like a river flowing unseen
through the jungle.”
Howard’s
acknowledgement that people with a different history and culture may have “ambitions
and aspirations” of their own,
suggests at least a proto-diversity awareness.
White America was hardly out of the woods with respect to sensitivity,
acceptance and respect for other cultures early in the last century—not figuratively
or literally. (For a more visceral
experience of Howard’s treatment of racial prejudice and anxiety see A Racist Nightmare). Nevertheless, Howard’s
views on race are much more nuanced than many of his colleagues at the time.
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