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.

***

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.

Wordcraft -- Robert E. Howard Days in the heart of Texas

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.

Adventure classics -- A doggone sense of humor

The Fightin’est Pair

by Robert E. Howard

#

When contemplating the tragedies of Howard’s life and writing it’s all too easy to forget his roguish sense of humor. Or, despite the later fascination with Conan, that during Howard’s life one of his most successful characters was the boxing sailor Steve Costigan. Editor Rusty Burke, writing in “The Best of Robert E. Howard, vol. 1,” reports that twenty-one Costigan stories were published during Howard’s lifetime (twenty-two if including one in which the main character’s name was changed to Dennis Dorgan). By comparison, only seventeen Conan stories were published.

Howard himself was an amateur boxer who turned to the sport after a stint of bodybuilding exercises. Fans of the movie, “The Whole Wide World,” based on Novalyne Price Ellis’s memoir, will remember the scene in which Howard acted out a story by shadow boxing his way through Cross Plains, to the astonishment of his neighbors. It’s hard to believe he didn’t find their bewilderment amusing.

Another sometimes overlooked element in Howard’s nature was his love of animals. Despite the bloodshed in his writing, in life he was acutely sensitive to the pain of others, both human and animal. Howard’s father, writing nearly a decade after his son’s death, reported on the mutual devotion between him and his dog Patch (or Patches), a collie-foxhound mix, in a letter quoted by Patrice Louinet, writing at www.robert-e-howard.org/DwellingDarkValley.html/

In 1929, Howard wrote his first Steve Costigan story. And in the third of the Costigan stories, “The Fightin’est Pair,” (first published under the title “Breed of Battle”) the fighting sailor acquires a companion, his beloved white bulldog Mike. (Since the story refers to pit fighting by dogs, I’m guessing that what Howard had in mind was something closer to the American pit bull terrier whose picture illustrates this post than to an English bulldog.)

Costigan sounds like a man who’s taken a few too many punches to the head. But although he’s happy to fight for money, he’s not willing to hire his dog out. “I’ll tell you straight,” he said, “I think dog fightin’ for money is a dirty low-down game. . . (it) is just too dirty for me to fool with and I ain’t goin’ to get Mike into no such mess.”

Obviously, neither of the pair can get out of that opening without a fight.

(Next Friday: Riding into the sunset with one of Howard’s Western stories.)

Totally Texas -- Barbarian pride in the heart of Texas

Robert E. Howard Days

Cross Plains

Next week, June 10-11, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Robert E. Howard Days, the annual festival in the small West Texas town of Cross Plains, where the creator of Conan and other adventure characters lived most of his adult life. Although the date is the anniversary of Howard’s suicide, the event gives visitors a chance to see how Howard lived, in the little white house on the western edge of town with his parents from 1919 until his death in 1936, as well as the collection of his writings and publications during extended hours at the Cross Plains Library, 149 N. Main.

The Howard house at 625 SW 15^th St. has been lovingly restored in ways recognizable to fans of the movie, The Whole Wide World, based on the memoir by Howard’s friend Novalyne Price Ellis. During a visit a few years ago, I found the room -- actually, an enclosed porch -- where Howard slept and wrote, fascinating. In that tiny space he launched characters whose adventures carried him in imagination to places far away from the Texas hills and prairies. A covered area near the house hosts an annual swap meet for fans.

Another favorite site for visitors is Brownwood, about forty miles south of Cross Plains, where Howard and his parents are buried in Greenleaf Cemetery, 2615 Highway 377 South.

Two long-time publishers of the works of Howard (or REH, as fans call him) will be guests of honor at this year's REH Days -- Damon Sasser and Dennis McHaney.  Sasser publishes the fanzine REH:  Two-Gun Raconteur.  McHaney has published REH's works for nearly forty years, including The Howard Review.

If you want to stay overnight, you'd better make your lodging reservations pronto.  One fan on the REH Forum's travel advice page said he'd called Cross Plains's only lodging place, the 36 West Motel, this past January, only to be told they were already out of rooms for the event.  A couple of hotel sites I checked couldn't even find Cross Plains, but if you're willing to look thirty to forty miles further away, rooms appeared available in neighboring towns as of this writing.  Cross Plains is located on Texas Highway 36, south of I-20, between Fort Worth and Abilene.

(Next Monday -- Longhorns and horses and cowboys, oh my!  Pioneer Plaza in Dallas.)