Mysterious Glow

This weekend we went to Cross Plains, Texas, to visit the home of one of Texas’ most famous authors, Robert E. Howard. Howard is most famous for his character, Conan the Barbarian. Bow-hunting season had just opened up, and most of the locals were dressed head-to-toe in camouflage.

He was a young writer. At the time of his suicide, he was only a mere thirty years old. One of the reasons I wanted to make this trip is to explore a bit of Cross Plains and to see what influence that had on him. Just as in Howard’s time, there really isn’t much out there. In the Depression-era, I imagine it would be even duller. There is nothing about the landscape, which is really beautiful, that would give rise to the blood and thunder of Conan, Kull, Red Sonja and Solomon Kane. I could see someone trying to do another Leaves of Grass here, but not Conan.

Talking to the Robert E. Hoard Museum curator, who was a charming elderly woman who was just a little girl during R.E. Howard’s life, I still get the sense that the people of Cross Plains are embarrassed of their most famous son. Some of the older residents demanded that more recognition be paid to Robert’s father, who was a doctor, and a pillar of the community. When the museum was being formed, one old lady said she, “couldn’t understand all the fuss being paid to that weird kid – his daddy was the doctor.”

The truth is, the people of Cross Plains thought he was soft and effete. It’s always easy – and a bad idea – to psychoanalyze authors, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that his interest in weight lifting and boxing was a reaction to his peers in Cross Plains. It could also be argued that the hyper-masculine character of Conan in particular, is also an exercise in wish fulfillment.

But apparently he was every bit the Mama’s Boy they said he was. After his mother died, he went to his driveway, and shot himself in the nice car he bought with the money he got from selling stories to Weird Tales. Thirty is a young age for any good author, most people don’t have anything to say worth reading in their twenties. It would be nice to read a mature Robert E. Howard, and tragically we will never know.