What lies beyond death in REH's eerie tale?

 "What a wonderful story this was about Bob Howard and his dog Patch," Novalyne Price Ellis wrote in her memoir of Robert E. Howard, One Who Walked Alone. "I should make a story out of it."

As Howard's father, Dr. Isaac Howard, told her, "Wherever Bob went, Patch went. Patch even shared Bob's food at the table and was a real companion. . . But there was something about Dr. Howard's story that bothered me. As soon as the dog got sick and they knew it was going to die, Bob went to (the nearby town of ) Brownwood, so that he wouldn't see his dog in his last few days on earth. . . "

And Novalyne wondered how Bob Howard "could write about horrible deaths and dying, yet be so afraid of a dog's death he could not even stay near? It didn't make sense somehow. But if Bob made sense, I probably wouldn't like the big ox."

Perhaps it was through wrestling with such contradictions within himself that Howard wrote the subject of today's post.

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The Man on the Ground

by Robert E. Howard

Set in 19th century West Texas, this is the tale of a feud between Cal Reynolds and his deadly enemy, Esau Brill.

Reynolds is fast with fists and guns, with "instincts (that) rose sheer from the naked primitive," Howard wrote. "And from them crystallized an almost tangible abstraction -- a hate too strong for even death to destroy; a hate powerful enough to embody itself in itself, without the aid or the necessity of material substance."

Driven by this hatred, Reynolds and Brill fire at each other almost simultaneously. Brill's bullet apparently misses Reynolds, who suffers a scalp would. After a momentary unconsciously passes, Reynolds realizes Brill's bullet must have ricocheted off a stone, striking him only a passing blow.

However, it was a strong enough blow to knock Reynolds from behind the rocks where he had taken cover, striking his rifle from his hands and leaving  him in full view of Brill. As Reynolds leaps for his dropped gun, he is amazed that, instead of firing, Brill is walking directly toward him.

Reynolds doesn't stop to question either Brill's strange behavior or his own feelings. 

"Men who live by their hands have little time for self-analysis," unlike Howard himself, whose story is reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce's earlier tale of a near-death experience, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. 

I've never seen any mention of Bierce's influence on Howard, although the older Bierce's eerie stories would have resonated with Howard's own sensibility. Was that because Bierce had been a Union officer during the Civil War? Howard, whose parents, born in a former Confederate state in the aftermath of that war, would probably have been among those who considered "damn Yankee" a single word, as Novalyne wryly quoted one of her sources.

Consider reading both Howard's and Bierce's stories, and decide for yourself. And while you're reading at the Howard site, notice another features writer of the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales magazine in which The Man on the Ground appeared -- Jack Williamson. A contemporary of Howard, Williamson lived to the age of 98, writing almost to the end and dying in 2006. By then, Howard had been dead for 70 years.

And what about Novalyne? Her memoir was the basis for a later movie, The Whole Wide World, (https://en.wikipedia.org), starring then screen newcomer Renee Zellweger.

Adventure classics -- A hanging and an old gringo

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

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Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Bierce is more famous for his often-filmed Civil War story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” or for his mysterious disappearance during Mexico’s revolution.

In a number of ways, Bierce’s life parallels Edgar Allan Poe's, including service in the army, a series of jobs with periodicals, and reputations for bitter literary criticism. But it was his writings about paranormal events that ultimately earned him comparison with Poe, a comparison Bierce detested.

Like Poe, he wrote horror because people bought it, but the two writers’ styles could hardly have been more different. As Carey McWilliams notes one of the earliest works about Bierce’s life, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography, “The method, in so far as it attempted to produce a ‘dominant impression,’ might be the same (as Poe’s), but the styles were of two worlds. Bierce’s style has nothing of the sonorous, rhythmic sweep of Poe’s best prose. On the contrary, Bierce aimed at clarity, precision, and simplicity.”

But precision and simplicity can be deceiving, as Bierce’s best-known story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” demonstrates.

It relates the story of Southern plantation owner Peyton Farquhar, condemned to be hanged near the end of the Civil War for sabotage. But was Farquhar entrapped by a spy, or merely warned of the consequences? As the scholars who edited The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce caution, “Readers -- in effect, all of us -- who initially misread Farquhar as the hero of the story put their feet on a path that leads to the shocking conclusion. . . .”

The atmosphere of journalistic realism was enhanced by Bierce’s personal knowledge of the setting, where he served as a Union Army officer in the Civil War. (Poe’s similarly-detailed knowledge of the setting for “The Gold-Bug,” discussed last Friday, stems from his own service on Sullivan Island in South Carolina during his army enlistment as a young man.)

The combination of realism and the ending’s psychological twist won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards for the 1962 French film based on “Owl Creek” and later shown on television as an episode of Twilight Zone.

It’s been reprised in a variety of settings, from a 1929 silent film to a 2006 DVD version, and seems as destined for immortality as the mystery of Bierce’s own death.

In 1913, at age 71, Bierce traveled to Mexico. He corresponded with his secretary, Carrie Christiansen, who later destroyed his letters after making notes of a few excerpts, as well as dates and postmarks. The last letter was mailed from Juarez, Mexico, in December 1913. Bierce was never heard from again.

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes’s novel The Old Gringo (Gringo Viejo) fictionalizes Bierce’s disappearance and was adapted into a 1989 film. And Bierce lives on in additional films and stories, sometimes combined with elements from “Owl Creek.”

For additional interesting speculation, with photos, about Bierce’s fate and final resting place, see The Ambrose Bierce Site, http://donswaim.com/bierce-lienert.html/
(Next Friday -- Adventure classics revisits the progenitor of all horror stories, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.)