Robert E. Howard died on this date in 1936. He was only thirty when he took his own life. His mother, dying of tuberculosis, had just lapsed into a coma when he went out to his car, sat in the driveway and shot himself with a .38.

There’s something of a Howard revival going on during the last few years — or at least a broader appreciation of his work. There’s been an ongoing, comprehensive collection of his best work, Kurt Busiek’s incredibly faithful comic series, a forthcoming animated film based on the freaky Aztec-inspired “Red Nails” short story and a Hyborian Age MMORPG.

Most pulp writers have a (frequently deserved) reputation for hackiness. Howard was something else. He had a way with action that was both economical and poetic. It’s easy to parody sword and sorcery of the kind Howard wrote, but much harder to duplicate it.

It’s hard to describe, but violence in Howard’s stories were more to do with the character than the action. His heroes — whether they faught with swords, fists or six-guns — all fit a common role: honorable, brutal men in brutal times. His heroes were generally outsiders, scoundrals and barbarians who crept at the fringes of civilization like Breckinridge Elkins and Conan. There was also Bran Mak Morn, last great king of the Picts, leading a degenerate tribe of a once-great society against the encroaching Roman legions. Or, my personal favorite, Solomon Kane, a zealotous Puritan who roamed the Earth with a violent righteousness (voted most likely to burn witches, Class of 1603).

Despite their brutality, his characters always managed to do the honorable thing, even if it was their own brand of barbarian honor. Howard tried to cast himself in that role. He grew up in a corrupt Texas oil boom town in the 1920s, chock full of villains and barbarians. I’ve read accounts of his attempts at amateur boxing, which was more like barroom rabble-rousing than sport. He wrote like he knew how to throw a punch. While his mother’s pending death was the more immediate cause, I’m sure, it is all too easy to read too much of Howard’s characters in his own death. Conan, he described, was a man of great feats and brutal desires, but also of dark melancholies.

All fled, all done,
so lift me on the pyre:
The feast is over,
The lamps expire.

I can see Howard sketching out Conan’s death scene with those words. (Yes, I know, it was inspired by a long-forgotten poem, but it isn’t as if he were some MySpace kid quoting Tears for Fears before taking the whole bottle of Advil.)

So yeah, I may never be as accomplished or as influential as Robert E. Howard, but I’m not dead. And that counts for something. At least for me.

Remind me to have a drink to him in a bit (and add some links), off to jog.

UPDATE: Added links. Also note, the Kull collection is coming in October 2006. I cannot stress enough how good these collections are. Del Ray publishes them in the US. I never read any Howard works until I picked up the first collection, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, a few years back.

Also, in the “Hey Who Knew?” Category, Howard has his own website. And I missed the Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas. While I was so busy commemorating the 70th anniversary of his death, I had completely forgotten the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Shame on me.

UPDATE 2: Can’t forget Blackmask Online (their site doesnt’ work today, it seems), a good source for free Howard tales (and Doc Savage reprints).