Talk:Robert E. Howard

POV?

This sounds rather POV:

"Another field in which he was quite successful was supernatural horror, where he borrowed heavily from his peer and correspondant Howard Phillips Lovecraft but without forgetting to add his trademarks... quickly paced action and colorful characters (while Lovecraft's writing can often seem stiff and his characters drab). "

Sign and timestamp your discussion entries, please. Why don't we just change the wording and make it more neutral? I think I'll give that a shot right now, actually. --InformationalAnarchist 21:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Organization

It seems to me that this page doesn't have much information about REH and the information it does have is poorly organized.

Updating this page with more biographical information and better descriptions of his various works will be a project I take on over the next few weeks.

68.98.134.182 12:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)Casey Campbell

Howard's Perceived Racism

I changed the comment about readers with "leftist political sentiments," or something similar. Anti-modernism, even a fantastic sort like Howard's, rejects not only modern socialism but democracy as well. He made several comments negative to civilization as a rule, so his views go beyond simple left-right descriptions.

And just so you know, I'd say I have leftist sympathies, and I think Howard is one of the great seminal writers of fantasy. I also like Nietzsche, as well. But I'm no Aryan nor a believer in Aryan mythology. Hashshashin 15:22, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct and I think that "leftist" statement also violated NPOV. Incidentally, those same sentences were injected into the Conan the Cimmerian article followed by paragraphs about Aryan supremacy and racist theosophy, etc. Caused a big uproar and an admin had to intervene. As such, I believe we may have a white supremacist on the prowl who is defacing these articles with his own agenda. -- Flask 12:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Lovecraft

How exactly was Lovecraft influenced by Robert E. Howard? He borrowed a couple Mythos props from him (e.g. Nameless Cults), but that's not really the same as influence. I'm not saying there isn't influence going both ways, but I'd be hard pressed to say what HPL got from REH. Nareek 06:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Nareek -- you could just as easily say, "How exactly was Howard influenced by Lovecraft? Sure, he borrowed a couple Mythos props, but that's not really the same as influence -- when writing his own horror he inevitably abandoned Lovecraft's style and instead went for battles and bloodshed."

Neither author had a crystal clear influence on the other, but both became better writers by absorbing some of the other's worldview. Howard admired Lovecraft's skill at evoking moods of helpless horror, while HPL envied Howard his ability to conjure things like potent ancient civilizations. Lovecraft once wrote Derleth in re: REH, "God, what a man! I never knew any human being to be so deeply & passionately saturated in the life & traditions of a region as that bird is in the life and traditions of his native & ancestral southwest. He oozes its heroic & sanguinary lore at every joint, & falls into long epic or descriptive recitals which come close to pure poetry…." Did HPL's stories perhaps begin to exhibit more "pure poetry" as the years of writing back and forth to REH went on? Could HPL have ever conceived of a cracking chase scene like the one in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" without thinking at least a little bit about how Howard would approach such a scene?

HPL fans all too often make it sound as if Lovecraft was this rigid stylistic writer who influenced many but who managed to resist the influences of others save for a few choice weird fiction purebreeds like Poe and Hodgson. Whereas I have no doubt in my mind that REH opened HPL's mind to a lot of things and inspired him to a broader approach to both his writing and his outlook on life. Those two wrote hundreds of pages of letters to each other and for years carefully read and admired each other's stories -- of course the influence went both ways. Leo Grin 13:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Lovecraft was influenced by a wide variety of writers whose impact on any number of stories has been noted on critics; I've been putting in references to such tracings in the various Lovecraft story articles on WP. The ones that come up again and again are Dunsany and Machen, to a lesser degree Poe; Hawthorne has been cited as a model for several stories. There are a lot of minor writers whose mark is seen on particular tales. But other than the Mythos hat-tips that Lovecraft often gave to his writer friends (Derleth, Bloch, Smith, etc.), I haven't seen any particular citation of Howard's work being an influence on Lovecraft's work. I think to avoid OR we should base these things on critical commentary and not on our own sense of what must have happened.

I have, on the other hand, seen numerous comments that Lovecraft's fiction was an obvious model for Howard stories like "The Black Stone" and "The Thing on the Rooftop"--which I think is hard to deny.

If Lovecraft, writing the chase scene in "Shadow Over Innsmouth", had asked himself how Howard would have handled it, I think he would have answered "very differently." It's hard to imagine a Howard hero being pursued by deep one hybrids without at some point turning around and giving them what for. Nareek 15:33, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Nareek -- Thanks for responding. The important thing to my mind is that, unlike others who slavishly imitated Lovecraft's style for years, REH rejected it. Take the stories you mention. Here's REH to August Derleth, July 1933: "You're right about The Black Stone and other kindred yarns of mine. They were written more as experiments than anything else, and I soon saw that they were not my natural style." There's a reason why we never got a tsunami of "Black Stone" type stories from REH, even though it sold: Howard cast off HPL's influence and went his own way. Wasn't for him.

Howard thought that his "Thing on the Rooftop" turned out a lot better, but according to him the influence behind the story was not Lovecraft but rather his own imagination, specifically the sights and sounds of his native Texas. REH to HPL, May 24 1932: "Like you I am moved by the golden glory that foreruns some sunsets; and then, in the long summer days, when the skies are cloudless, I am stirred by the dreamy magic of slumbering twilights, between the set of the sun, and the gathering of night. At such times familiar sights somehow take on an alien and glamorous aspect; gables of houses, wood-clad hills, even figures of people moving through the twilight. Somehow, when I see high-ridged houses blocked out darkly against the deepening blue of a western twilight sky, a vagrant thought enters my mind, a dim semi-expectancy, of fantastic winged monsters dropping from the sky and lighting on the dusk-etched roofs, folding their great wings and crouching there gargoyle-like, their chins resting in their cupped and taloned hands." HPL critics can say whatever they want (Joshi still maintains that "the bulk of Howard's fiction is subliterary hackwork that does not even begin to approach genuine literature") but as for me, I'll take Howard's own word concerning the real influence for "Rooftop".

Meanwhile, early this year I published an essay in The Cimmerian ("Lovecraft's Southern Vacation" by Brian Leno, V3n2) that proposes that "Pigeons from Hell" was REH's specific attempt to introduce Lovecraft to southern gothic horror, demonstrating the independence and viability of the Texan model from HPL's New England model. Interesting stuff, and it tells me that, while many Lovecraft fans assume that anything that kinda-sorta sounds like HPL must have been derived from him, the truth was that some folks (like REH) had their own ideas, thank you very much, and the actual influence of HPL on their writing was minimal. Much more powerful horror influences to REH were Poe (see the raven in The Hour of the Dragon), Hawthorne (see the Pearl and Chillingworth stand-ins in "The Black Stranger"), history (the Bran cult, Crom), and the Texas ghost stories he heard as a child ("Pigeons from Hell," "Black Canaan," "Kelly the Conjure Man").

Sure, REH enjoyed HPL's stuff, but that general feeling of admiration was mutual. But like HPL, after the praise Howard carefully went his own way and used his own nightmares. In One Who Walked Alone, he praises HPL's "Rats in the Walls" to Novalyne, says it was one of the best stories he ever read, and adds that when he's starting a new story he thinks about that one and why it worked so well. But then he adds, "As I think about it, I begin to have my own thoughts and ideas. Maybe there was something I believe about life that he didn't say."(emphasis added)

In regards to "Innsmouth," I feel you are trying to have it both ways. If you can reject REH's fairly obvious action-scene influence on "Innsmouth" because HPL would have done things "very differently," then know that REH's so-called "Mythos tales" often feature intensely personal and emotional blood feuds and battles ("Valley of the Lost," "People of the Black Coast") — all VERY different from anything HPL would have done — and so by your own criteria these stories cannot be judged as having been truly influenced by HPL.

On the other hand, we know factually that HPL liberally borrowed from Howard's mythic underpinnings (Kathulos, Bran, Crom, Von Junzt, Nameless Cults, serpent men) to give his own stories more verisimilitude. Without counting them up, I daresay HPL did this far more often than REH borrowed such names from Lovecraft. HPL fans like to dismiss all such uncomfortable facts as too minor to kick about, whereas I say it's a clear sign that HPL carefully read REH and admired much of what he found there, that indeed he was happy to establish associations between his own work and REH's that showed clear influence. And so I think it's rather absurd for HPL fans to claim that REH seldom if ever rubbed off on HPL. In Wikipedia terms, I think it should be either/or: either they both get name-checked as influences to each other, or neither does. Anything less smacks of Lovecraft scholars introducing their own personal prejudices about REH into the entry. "Your guy loved and imitated our guy, but our guy was a true original and hence above such slovenly displays." Yeah, right.

My sense is that HPL would be appalled at the way his fans routinely extirpate HPL's old friends from his legacy, subtly rewriting history in an attempt to minimize the influence of the bourgeois pulps on his reputation. The truth is that HPL liked REH a great deal, often praised his stories, kept all his letters (something he only did with a few other people). Six years and hundreds of pages of back and forth, talking about horror, history, pulps, philosophy, everything under the sun, with HPL frequently acknowledging that REH had broadened his horizons, matured his outlook, and thrilled him with prose poetry and tales of ancient ruins and swamp-infested evils. No influence? Give me a break.

By the way, thanks for the tweaks to the new Intro. I am putting the finishing touches on a massive new biography section for REH to replace the all-but-useless one there now. Only thing is I don't have all the cites written out and formatted yet. Do you think I should post the thing without cites first, then add them as time permits, or should I wait until the whole works is finished? Leo Grin 00:36, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

You make it sound like being influenced by another writer is a shameful thing, or puts the influencee in a subordinate position. But of course all writers are influenced; great writers are influenced by minor writers just as minor writers are influenced by the greats. And any writer of any significance takes his or her influences and does something original with them.

So the question of whether Lovecraft influenced Howard or vice versa shouldn't be taken as way of placing them on some kind of scale--it's irrelevant to who's a "better" writer (whatever that means). It's largely a question of timing--by the time Howard published his first story, in 1925 at the age of 18, Lovecraft was 35 and had already established himself as a writer, having written such characteristic pieces as "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Festival". When Lovecraft and Howard began corresponding in 1930, Lovecraft had finished the bulk of his lifetime output, and had just a few major works left in him. So the opportunity for Howard to influence Lovecraft was fairly limited.

Howard, on the other hand, was reading Lovecraft at the very beginning of his writing career; take a look at The Call of Cthulhu to see his response to that story. And his most important contributions to literature occurred after he began corresponding with Lovecraft. This largely has to do with being born in 1906 rather than in 1890; it's no slur on Howard. If Lovecraft had been a more prolific writer in the 1930s, maybe we would have seen more influence going the other way.

On the bio, I feel like if what you can put up now is better than what's there now, then go for it. Be bold! Nareek 02:13, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Nareek -- I agree with you in re: using influence to place them on a scale, but I'm also interested in getting at the truth. Lovecraft wrote less in his last years, yes, but he did write, and his style did measurably change during that time. Howard had been providing readers with a smorgasbord of stories featuring ancient civilizations and cyclopean ruins and degenerate peoples all through the early and mid-thirties, and Lovecraft was ga-ga over them. Meanwhile, there were those amazing letters, of which Lovecraft wrote: "I value that correspondence as one of the most broadening and sharpening influences (emphasis mine) in my later years. We were constantly debating sundry historical and philosophical points, and through these arguments (as well as through many passages of sheer description) I gained a much clearer perspective on various phases of history than I would ever have had otherwise." And elsewhere: "He was almost alone in his ability to create real emotions of fear and of dread suspense...Bloch and Derleth are clever enough technically — but for stark, living fear....the actual smell and feel of darkness and brooding horror and impending doom that inhere in that nighted, moss-hung jungle....what other writer is even in the running with REH?"

I see Lovecraft in his later years hitting previously unfathomed weird peaks in those very areas, and I attribute that in part — in part — to following Howard's lead in certain choice areas and being inspired by his example, from "Wolfshead" on. HPL's well-documented, frequently fawning admiration of Howard speaks of a not-insignificant degree of influence. A good critic recognizes such things whether or not Joe Blow Lovecraft Scholar recognized them when scribbling out his umpteenth Cthulhu-book intro. I have not been impressed, to say the least, with the average Lovecraft scholar's perceptions of HPL's relationship with Howard.

OK, I'll fix up the bio as best I can and post it. Leo Grin 06:08, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course I want to get at the truth as well--and I honestly think the truth is there's not much evidence of a significant impact by Howard on Lovecraft's fiction. From 1930 until his death in 1937, Lovecraft wrote eight major stories: The Whisperer in Darkness (1930), At the Mountains of Madness (1931), The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931), The Dreams in the Witch House (1932), Through the Gates of the Silver Key (with E. Hoffmann Price) (1932), The Thing on the Doorstep (1933), The Shadow Out of Time (1934) and The Haunter of the Dark (1935).

For most of these, I've added in all the references I could find to their literary models--and I've never seen Howard mentioned among them. None of them strike me as particularly Howardian--they are mostly pretty static, with the "action" mostly involving people remembering dreams, interpreting murals or looking out windows. A couple of them contain scenes of people running away, but that's about it.

And I don't buy the idea that there's some kind of anti-Howard prejudice that prevents Lovecraft scholars from noticing Howard's impact. For one thing, there's quite a wide variety of people writing about Lovecraft, and many of them clearly have a great love for the whole pulp tradition--take Will Murray (writer), for example. Robert M. Price, one of the biggies in Lovecraft studies, has written an article about Edgar Rice Burroughs' influence on The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath--what, is Burroughs high-brow enough for the Lovecraft snobs and Howard seen as chopped liver?

I gotta say, if someone made a convincing case for Lovecraft borrowing from Howard, they could easily get that published in Lovecraft Studies or Crypt of Cthulhu. And I don't think it would particularly shock anyone or overturn conceptions--it's something that certainly could have happened, but there doesn't seem to be any real evidence that it did.

The "influences" quote from Lovecraft that you present (which comes, let's keep in mind, from someone's tribute to a recently deceased friend) strikes me as being about Howard's personal influence on him--about his "perspective on various phases of history" rather than on his literary style or subject matter. There is significant historical perspective in The Shadow Out of Time and At the Mountains of Madness, but does it really resemble Howard's? I would think Lovecraft's move toward a more socialistic perspective that's been seen in those stories would be something Howard would have taken strong exception to, but maybe I misunderstand where he was coming from. Likewise, it would be surprising to me if the kind of philosophy laid out in Through the Gates of the Silver Key could be traced back to Howard--correct me if I'm wrong.

You say that either Lovecraft and Howard both influenced each other, or neither was an influence. I don't see how that follows. I think if you look at the stories, and more importantly look at what people have said about the stories, Lovecraft's influence on Howard is clear. (I can get into this further if you're doubtful.) That's not in any way to denigrate Howard or downplay his originality. Look: I think most everyone would agree that Christopher Marlowe was a much bigger influence on William Shakespeare than Shakespeare was on Marlowe. But who would conclude from that Marlowe is the more important writer?

In short, I think the consensus of critics is that both Lovecraft and Howard were both important, original writers, giants in their respective genres--and that Lovecraft was a significant influence on Howard and not the other way around. I don't think there's any need or reason to protect Howard from that judgment. Nareek 21:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no such consensus Nareek, not even close. I've already quoted you Joshi's bottom line on REH, which doesn't even remotely match your fantasy about what critics have supposedly agreed on. Meanwhile the other authority you drag out, Reverend Bob, penned what is still considered one of the all-time worst things ever written about Two-Gun, namely his introduction to REH's Selected Letters 1931-1936. (see the review that ran in Necrofile for the current "critical consensus" on that). I like Reverend Bob, I've published Reverend Bob, but the echo-chamber of Lovecraft Studies and Crypt of Cthulhu does not a critical consensus make. There's a whole wide world out there of published critics that routinely disagree with the latest cobwebbed pronouncements from those guys.

Yep, you're definitely a Typical Lovecraft Guy, trotting out Joshi's tired old theory that HPL was just overpraising due to grief — even though he had been saying the same kinds of things about REH for years. And then you add that even if he did mean exactly what he said — INFLUENCE — there was nevertheless some invisible wall between Lovecraft's personal mind and writing mind preventing influence in one area from seeping into the other. It's always fun to watch Typical Lovecraft Guys engage in excruciating contortions of reality in an attempt to wiggle out from under Lovecraft's clear, unambiguous statements, twisting his words into pretzels in a futile effort to support treasured preconceptions.

Meanwhile on the other end you keep assuming "significant" Lovecraftian influence on Howard's work. I realize that Typical Lovecraft Guy assumes that REH's Lovecraftian stories form a sizable subsection of his total output, but Howard wrote over three hundred stories in a variety of genres, almost all of them in the years after he had been exposed to HPL's work. Despite having Lovecraft there as a model for all that time, there are only perhaps a half-dozen stories which have sufficient amounts of Lovecraft's style and thematic verbiage beyond superficial name-dropping to justify claims of "significant" influence. That's only two percent of Howard's fictional output, the merest drop in the bucket. And while the actual extent of Lovecraft's influence on those few tales has been argued to death, what is agreed is that not a single one of them is considered central to his literary achievement. The "critical consensus" is that — far from being significant — they represent a mere hiccup in his career on a par with other minor digressions such as his aborted foray into the detective field. After experimenting with the Lovecraftian model and quickly deeming it a failure in style and tone, Howard went on to produce a separate Southern Gothic canon of horror tales that rank among his best work, stories influenced not by Lovecraft but by the ghost stories and feud-haunted legendry of his native Southwest. Tales that — your "polite eulogizer" theory notwithstanding — Lovecraft praised highly.

There's no need to protect Howard from anyone's judgment, his place in literature is secure. But the sloppy criticism and silly assumptions originating in Lovecraft fandom deserve to be challenged. The navel-gazing on display is priceless — my Lord, why on earth would someone ever want to waste an REH-HPL-themed article on a tired, limping forum such as Lovecraft Studies or Crypt of Cthulhu when they could instead get it pubbed in a dynamic World Fantasy Award-nominated venue such as The Cimmerian and get paid three cents a word? Leo Grin 04:59, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Lovecraft revisited

The question of influence regarding Lovecraft and Howard is discussed at great length just above here. To summarize, Lovecraft wrote the vast majority of his work before beginning his correspondence with Howard; he wrote relatively little in the 1930s, the period in which the two were in communication. What Lovecraft did write in this time frame shows relatively few signs of influence from Howard, with narratives based on protagonists who are quite passive and a socialistic philosophy of history (e.g., At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow out of Time) that would seem to be quite foreign to Howard's.

Howard, on the other hand, encountered Lovecraft's work at the beginning of his writing, and it made a great impression on him; in a letter to Weird Tales, he wrote:

Mr. Lovecraft's latest story, "The Call of Cthulhu", is indeed a masterpiece, which I am sure will live as one of the highest achievements of literature. Mr. Lovecraft holds a unique position in the literary world; he has grasped, to all intents, the worlds outside our paltry ken. His scope is unlimited, and his range is cosmic.

Howard and Lovecraft began corresponding at the beginning of the period of Howard's greatest productivity. Howard subsequently wrote stories that can be described as Lovecraft pastiches (e.g., The Black Stone). Lin Carter (a big Howard fan) writes in Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, "In writing these Lovecraftian tales, Howard and his colleagues generally followed Lovecraft's example."

More importantly, Lovecraft's work was one of several influences on the work for which Howard is best remembered. Charles Hoffman & Marc A. Cerasini write in Crypt of Cthulhu: "What [Howard] derived from his association with Lovecraft was a modern vision of monumentally threatening horrors from outside the realm of human experience. This type of horror was utilized by Howard...in his later heroic fantasies. Lovecraftian horror is an integral part of modern heroic fantasy, and Cthulhoid abominations comprise a significant percentage of the evil forces that heroes like Conan strive against."

I want to stress again, as I have above, that this is in no way about who is a better or more important author. No one is accusing Howard of "swiping" anything from anyone. Minor writers influence major writers all the time. What doesn't happen is that later works influence earlier works, which given the reality of Lovecraft's career is essentially what's being suggested in the most recent edit. Nareek 12:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The edit summary reads, "REH's letters are full of anecdotes he was told as a child that later became pieces of his horror stories." No one is suggesting that Howard was a plagiarist, or that he brought nothing original to his stories! This comment, offered in support of the idea that Howard was a significant influence on Lovecraft, seems to misunderstand what literary influence is. Nareek 14:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me spell this out again: I don't think that Howard was an unoriginal writer. I don't think that he slavishly imitated Lovecraft, even in his most clearly Cthulhu Mythos-oriented stories, or that Lovecraft was the only influence on his supernatural fiction. I'm sorry to keep repeating myself, but these seem to be the claims that I'm not making that you are arguing against.

What I am saying is that I haven't seen any evidence presented that Howard's writing was a substantial influence on Lovecraft's writing, little of which was written after Lovecraft and Howard came into contact. I don't say this because I'd be embarrassed for Lovecraft to be influenced by Howard; to the contrary, I think Lovecraft could have greatly benefited from an influx of Howard's narrative drive, vivid characterization and sense of humor. These are not, however, traits that you find a great deal of in Lovecraft's last major works, like At the Mountains of Madness or A Shadow out of Time, which are notable for their almost dialogue-free talkiness and their socialistic philosophy.

If critics have, despite surface appearances, detected Howard's impact on such tales, please let me know and I'll happily include the specific parallels among the inspirations for those stories. But without such evidence, I don't see how it can be claimed that Lovecraft and Howard influenced each other in equal measure. Nareek 02:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)