Happy Birthday to Conan the Barbarian, Or, I Mean Robert E. Howard

Happy Birthday to Conan the Barbarian, Or, I Mean Robert E. Howard January 22, 2017

Conan 2

On January 22, 1906, Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas. He died by suicide at the age of 30. In between he grew to become a prolific writer for the American pulp magazine industry. During which time, drawing upon the established “weird tales” genre developed by Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and others, but then mixing together as Wikipedia tells us “fantasy, horror and mythology with historical romance, action and swordplay,” he pretty much single handedly invented the “Sword and Sorcery” genre.

Howard’s most renowned contribution and through whom he is primarily remembered was Conan the Barbarian, who like other truly iconic literary creations has grown well beyond his origins in the pulps.

The Wikipedia article on Robert E Howard notes how he was a member of the “Lovecraft Circle,” a largely correspondence club centering on the weird author H. P. Lovecraft. The article mentions how within one area of their voluminous correspondence that Lovecraft and Howard argued about the relative merits of civilization and barbarism.

Lovecraft felt that civilization, not defined in the article, I do note, was the apex of human achievement. Howard, however, held otherwise, writing “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” Of course Barbarism is not defined, at least in the article, either. Still, considering recent events I find myself lingering on that argument.

The problems with Howard’s characters and cultural views are, well, pretty much endless. But, it is a rare eleven year old boy who can resist the heroics of the sword and sorcery universes. And it seems nearly all of us, men and women, have such a little boy lurking somewhere inside us. Seeing that, and, perhaps recalling the deeper problems with all of it, we can also notice, and even enjoy the impulse. It is, after all, part of the great mix. And, I suggest knowing our impulses is almost always better than not.

And so, today, with all the irony you may wish to add in, you might want to raise a cup of mead in honor of Conan and his creator.


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