How many wonderful
writers have come from Texas? More pertinent, how many have stayed in Texas?
Among the few who toughed out Texas during some of the state’s bleakest days
was Robert E. Howard, most famous now as the creator of Conan the
Cimmerian (aka the Barbarian). But on June 11, 1936, Howard, then barely thirty
years old and facing the imminent death of his beloved mother, ended his own
life. Weirdly but reverently, fans still gather on the weekend closest to the
anniversary of his death to remember him. This year that remembrance, titled Robert E. Howard Days is this Friday and Saturday, June 10-11.
Actually, there’s
a preview Thursday, as Howard’s family home and museum at 625 W. Highway 36 in
Cross Plains opens from 2-4 p.m. (Unlike the house’s regular open hours, 9 a.m.
– 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday of the festival, there will not be a docent
available during the Thursday hours.)
Fittingly for the
remembrance of a man who hated “clock-like regularity,” REH Days activities are
low key and mostly fee-free. Visitors swap stories and swag at a small
pavilion adjacent to the Howard house, drop in to the Cross Plains library with
its exhibits of Howard’s magazine publications, and attend whichever of the
panels of Howard fans and scholars appeal to them. Among this year’s speakers
is Michael Scott Myers, screenwriter for the film The Whole Wide World, based the memoir One Who Walked Alone, by Novalyne Price Ellis, one of Howard’s rare
sympathetic listeners.
Other speakers
include writer Mark Finn, author of the World Fantasy-nominated biography Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of
Robert E. Howard, and Chris Gruber, editor of Boxing Stories, a compilation of the often humorous tales
Howard was actually better known for in his own time.
For a complete
schedule of events, see the Robert E. Howard Days 2016 site. (link) Visitors
may also drop in at the gravesite of Howard and his parents (he and his mother
died within a day of each other) at Greenleaf Cemetery in nearby Brownwood,
Texas.
In some ways, it’s
easy to blame the tiny West Texas town of Cross Plains where Howard lived for
his entire adult life, for his death. He, like his characters, was a “fish out
of water,” as described by biographer Mark Finn.
Howard’s
chronically ailing mother smothered him, his country doctor father stood aloof, oblivious
to Howard’s deepening depression. Neighbors thought him at best odd, at worst
annoying, as he read his stories aloud while typing them near an open window in
the small Howard home. (Fortunately for modern visitors, the Howard House
Museum is now air-conditioned.)
Howard himself
confessed to hating his days in both school and town. He became a writer, he
said, not because of the stultifying environments of school and his small town
(remarking “an oil boom. . . will teach a kid that Life’s a pretty rotten
thing about as quick as anything I can think of”) but in spite of them.
“I am not
criticizing those environments. . . ” Novalyne Price Ellis reported him as saying. “The fact that they were not conducive to literature
and art is nothing in their disfavor. Never the less, it is no light thing to
enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among whom
one’s lot is cast.”
Ironically, it was
the bust of Cross Plains' short-lived oil boom that helped preserve Howard’s
physical legacy. While more prosperous cities tore down or built over landmarks
associated with more famous in their day Texas writers such as Patricia
Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley)
or Katherine Anne Porter (Pale Horse,
Pale Rider), the Howard family home in Cross Plains was left standing until
rescued and refurbished when the movie incarnations of Howard characters
revived interest in his stories.
Drop in and marvel
at the power of Howard’s imagination to transform the world, if not his little
town.
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