REH in HPL's Letters to J. Vernon Shea et al.
May 16, 2016 17:11:19 GMT -5
Post by bobbyderie on May 16, 2016 17:11:19 GMT -5
Letters to J. Vernon Shea, Carl F. Strauch, and Lee McBride White is the latest volume from Hippocampus Press, and as usually I decided to take a quick flip through it to see what references there are to Robert E. Howard...more than a few, perhaps surprisingly. In the absence of discovering a cache of REH's unpublished letters somewhere, these little tidbits from Lovecraft sometimes help expand our understanding of REH - or, at the very least, how others perceived him through Lovecraft's comments.
Letters to J. Vernon Shea - Some of these were published, highly abridged, in the Selected Letters.
page 17 - Giving Howard's address to J. Vernon Shea, in a list of his correspondents.
18 - Praise for REH ("Howard is very good, but hampered by adherence to a popular 'action' style") and places "Skull Face" among the best stories at Weird Tales.
35 - Explaining how HPL borrows the creations of others, and they in turn borrow his ("Howard's 'Bran', Smith's Tsathoggua' [...] Team-work, as it were.").
70 - a passage on REH:
Yes--"Solomon Kane" surely is a husky bozo! I think--recalling his early letters--that he has fought in the ring, though I don't know how professionally. I judge he has also participated in shooting & stabbing affrays in connexion with cattle & boundary warfare--still a live reality in western Texas. He is a living compendium of the sanguinary annals of the southwest--which he re-tells with all the fresh gusto of a primitive epic poet. In truth, his milieu quite exactly reproduces that early & untrammelled Aryan world which evolved such bardic productions as the Iliad, Beowulf, & the Norse Sagas.
72-73:
101: A retelling of how REH set up E. Hoffmann Price and HPL to meet in New Orleans.
118-119: On police & legal tyranny and outside oil interests in Texas, referring to REH's letters. ("Howard is so used to violence that he can hardly believe it when I tell him that there are no fights on the public streets of the East except in slums & gang-ridden areas.")
121: "Robert E. Howard certainly ought to use his Texas background in fiction, & both Derleth & I are trying to get him to do so."
131: "For prizefight stuff I'd apply to Bob Howard."
252: E. Hoffmann Price visiting REH in Texas, 1935
256: "Robert E. Howard has indeed knocked about a bit--but his 28 years may put him outside your generation."
276: A brief mention of Price visiting REH on his way back from Mexico
Letters to Lee McBride White - First published in the Lovecraft Annual.
363: E. Hoffmann Price headed to Mexico, to visit REH en-route.
374 - A brief memorial recap on the death of Robert E. Howard and its aftermath:
Letters to J. Vernon Shea - Some of these were published, highly abridged, in the Selected Letters.
page 17 - Giving Howard's address to J. Vernon Shea, in a list of his correspondents.
18 - Praise for REH ("Howard is very good, but hampered by adherence to a popular 'action' style") and places "Skull Face" among the best stories at Weird Tales.
35 - Explaining how HPL borrows the creations of others, and they in turn borrow his ("Howard's 'Bran', Smith's Tsathoggua' [...] Team-work, as it were.").
70 - a passage on REH:
Yes--"Solomon Kane" surely is a husky bozo! I think--recalling his early letters--that he has fought in the ring, though I don't know how professionally. I judge he has also participated in shooting & stabbing affrays in connexion with cattle & boundary warfare--still a live reality in western Texas. He is a living compendium of the sanguinary annals of the southwest--which he re-tells with all the fresh gusto of a primitive epic poet. In truth, his milieu quite exactly reproduces that early & untrammelled Aryan world which evolved such bardic productions as the Iliad, Beowulf, & the Norse Sagas.
72-73:
Robert E. Howard has many interesting observations on the dialects of the southwest--one of which he probably speaks himself.
101: A retelling of how REH set up E. Hoffmann Price and HPL to meet in New Orleans.
118-119: On police & legal tyranny and outside oil interests in Texas, referring to REH's letters. ("Howard is so used to violence that he can hardly believe it when I tell him that there are no fights on the public streets of the East except in slums & gang-ridden areas.")
121: "Robert E. Howard certainly ought to use his Texas background in fiction, & both Derleth & I are trying to get him to do so."
131: "For prizefight stuff I'd apply to Bob Howard."
252: E. Hoffmann Price visiting REH in Texas, 1935
256: "Robert E. Howard has indeed knocked about a bit--but his 28 years may put him outside your generation."
276: A brief mention of Price visiting REH on his way back from Mexico
Letters to Lee McBride White - First published in the Lovecraft Annual.
363: E. Hoffmann Price headed to Mexico, to visit REH en-route.
374 - A brief memorial recap on the death of Robert E. Howard and its aftermath:
This has been a bad year for fantasy in general as well as for certain of its devotees [...] Most tragic of all from the standpoint of our little circle is the suicide of Robert E. Howard--who shot himself on June 11 when told that his mother would not recover from her illness. She died the next day without knowing of his act. The blow to his father--a physician--is terrific. His books will be given to his alma mater (Howard Payne College, Brownwood, Texas) as the nucleus of a Robert E. Howard Memorial Collection. Weird fiction's loss is irreparable--for no other popular magazine fantaisiste's work had half the zest & power & spontaneity of his. Poor old Two-Gun Bob!
