Mysterious Glow

My wife and I like to drive to small towns in Texas. A place I’ve never been to, but will probably go by the end of the year, is Cross Plains, TX. What’s there? Not one thing, except intense hay fever. However, it was the home of Texas writer, Robert E. Howard, the young creator of Conan the Barbarian, who lived there until his profound sadness caused him to commit suicide.

A biographical film about Robert E. Howard which I really like, that is unknown to most, and I really don’t know why, is The Whole Wide World. It is one of Renee Zelwegger’s earlier movies. It is about a small-town girl who falls for the town oddball, Bob Howard. She sees in him something fascinating and he is a bit of bright color in an otherwise bland Depression-era Texas town. In the film, he is depicted as a cry-baby mama’s boy, who despite his outward hyper-masculine posing, was actually a fragile soul. This is probably not dramatic license. He was too sensitive for his own good. He did try to kill himself after a favorite dog died, and finally managed to take his final exit after his mother died.

To do this road trip, I think I’m going to have to re-read the Conan novels. When I was a kid, obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, I really liked those, but I never thought they were as good as the covers by Frank Frazetta. I’m also a fan of the first movie, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which has a great script by Oliver Stone and an even better orchestral soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.

My favorite Robert E. Howard writing is also his least read. He wrote fan letters to H.P. Lovecraft, and Lovecraft was kind enough to write back and give the youthful writer some criticism and praise. Lovecraft also had a kind of ‘open source’ approach to the so-called ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, a term Lovecraft never used. Lovecraft encouraged other pulp writers to use his characters and dead alien gods. Lovecraft also encouraged a young Fritz Leiber who is hand’s down my favorite pulp writer. I think Robert E. Howard does a better job of writing Cthulhu stories than his Conan and sword and sorcery stuff.