Robert E. Howard, 1906-1936

The Monk missed this one, but stumbled upon a nice literary eulogy by Michael Dirda in the WaPo review of new compilations of Howard's work:

On January 22, 1906, Robert E. Howard was born. Author of the unjustly derided Conan the Barbarian stories, and similar tales featuring Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn and Kull the Conqueror, plus hundreds of other stories, Howard took his own life in 1936 after the death of his mother.

The story of Howard the man is, at best, an oddity. He was mind-bogglingly prolific in various genres (including mysteries and poetry). He wrote hundreds of stories in various genres that sold in a myriad of pulp fiction collections. Throughout his life, he lived at home, inspired by and beholden to his mother, whom he cared for as her health declined. She eventually died in the mid-'30s, and her death led Howard, in grief and despair, to take his own life in 1936.

This comment, from an excellent review of One Who Walked Alone -- the memoir of Novalyne Price Ellis who knew Howard in what became his final years, and which became the 1996 movie "The Whole Wide World" starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Renee Zellweger -- seems a solid summary.

. . . [Ellis' memoir] is a tragic portrait of a young man-- vital and filled with life, intelligent, with so much to offer the world and with so much to live for-- who instead lived a tormented existence and suffered needlessly. He was a man who loved history and longed to travel and discover adventure in the real world. But he never had the chance. He was endowed with a sensitivity-- a gentle, poetic nature which his physical appearance [> 6 feet, > 200 pounds] belied-- that kept him out of step with his environment. He was a man born in the wrong century, and decidedly in the wrong part of the world. His sensibilities were more conducive to a larger, more vibrant local[e], like New York City or any of the larger cities of Europe; places in which he would have been accepted and appreciated for who and what he was, where he and his writing could have thrived. But it was not to be; and at the age of thirty, Robert E. Howard died, right there in Cross Plains, Texas.

Howard's great creation, Conan, is great reading -- raw, direct, brutal swords-and-sorcery stories in an uncompromisingly dangerous and diabolical world filled with action, damsels in distress and power-hungry sorcerors. Conan is the precursor and template for generations of warriors in fantasy fiction, from Michael Moorcock's various eternal champion incarnations to "civilized" warriors like Lan Mandragoran (Wheel of Time), Barak (Belgariad), Fafhrd (Fritz Leiber's series), Kalam and Karsa Orlong (Malazan); and his stories inform generations of fantasy fiction.

So, a belated toast to the birth of Robert E. Howard, 100 years and three days ago.