Although The Cimmerian’s days are numbered, the legacy and works of Robert E. Howard will live on and on. The TC print journal and its accompanying blog did their part to preserve his legacy, and I was proud to be a part of it, but we were literally laboring in the shadow of a giant who will continue be read for as long as the world exists.

With my days as a TC blogger winding down I thought I’d get back to the reasons why I (and perhaps if I may be so bold, extend that to the plural we) love the life and works of REH—and why he continues to enthrall us.

1. He died young. People are fascinated with talents who flash like shooting stars across the heavens and are gone just as quickly. The debate over why Howard committed suicide will probably never be settled, nor will the speculation over what he may have accomplished with another 30-40 years of writing ahead of him.
2. He was feted after his death by H.P. Lovecraft. We all dream of accomplishing enough to be remembered after we pass on; Howard’s unique talents were extolled by arguably the 20^th century’s greatest practitioner of the horror tale. In a September 1936 letter to Fantasy Magazine, “In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard,” Lovecraft wrote, “It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr. Howard’s stories stand out so sharply; but the real secret is that he himself was in every one of them, whether they were ostensibly commercial or not.” You could do worse than having your obituary written by the man who was Providence.
3. He was possessed of a multifaceted, complex personality that resists easy analysis. According to which biographies you read, Howard was a man of eclectic interests and contradictions—a recluse and a boisterous storyteller, possessed of a sharp, probing brain and a thirst for history, but also a love of the physical. He boxed and worked out assiduously to build up his body while stories flowed from the boundless imagination of his mind. Who was the real REH? Who knows? Howard seems to bring out the armchair psychologist in everyone, myself included.
4. His underlying themes are more relevant today than ever. As our society has become more and more secular, Howard, who adhered to an existentialist philosophy, resonates with the modern reader. Hyborian Age gods like Crom gave men the strength and will to forge their own destinies and then stepped aside to watch them succeed or fail, live or die. With no higher power controlling the strings or a safety net to catch us when we fall, life is simultaneously more frightening but also more liberating. It’s what you make of it, or in the case of Conan the Cimmerian what you can carve out with a strong sword arm. As noted REH scholar Rusty Burke wrote in the introduction to The Bloody Crown of Conan, “Our destiny, he says, does not lie in the stars, or in our noble blood, but in our willingness to create ourselves.”
5. He was so damned prolific. It’s both startling and humbling to think of how much Howard accomplished during his brief life, of which only a dozen years or so were spent as a professional writer. His most well-known characters—Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn—are only a part of his corpus. Howard also wrote boxing stories, historic fiction, hard-boiled detective tales, horror, and more. Only lately have I discovered that a rich part of his legacy is his letters, of which we now have full access thanks to the work of editor Rob Roehm. His Collected Poetry is another mine yielding vast treasures to the patient reader.
6. He was immensely talented. If none of the above were true, I believe that Howard’s legacy as a pillar of fantastic literature would still be secure because of his incomparable writing style and his ability to tell compelling stories. When you read Howard it’s impossible not to get swept up in his storytelling, including his sweeping scenes of dynamic action and color, his memorable personalities and characters, and his love of language. His tales are studded with vine-choked jungles concealing lost civilizations and lost treasures; monstrous snakes, ape-men, and crawlers of the dark; sinister wizards, scheming politicians, and blood-soaked battlefields. His Hyborian Age is simultaneously alien and recognizable, historic and fantastic. It reminds us of the sands of Egypt and the jungles of Africa and the decadence of the Roman Empire, but also transports us to places that never were and never could be.
7. He’s largely misunderstood by critics, even today. Google Robert E. Howard and you’ll find claims that he was racist (completely overblown, given the era in which he lived), sexist (untrue, he penned several strong female characters) and a simple, shallow writer of pulp. This latter is demonstrably false, as proven by the large and growing body of critical works in journals like TC, REH: Two Gun Raconteur, and The Dark Man, as well as the good work being done by the REH Electronic Amateur Press Association. Howard’s stories contain a remarkable degree of complexity beneath their brightly-painted surfaces and both stand up to and demand further analysis. Howard famously wrote about barbarism vs. civilization and the entropic nature of the universe. Reams of critical essays here and elsewhere have been written about Howard and his works, but I believe there’s much more to be explored and analyzed. The work of a Howard defender is never done.
8. Because he remains The Dark Man. Howard’s motivations and ultimate aspirations remain wreathed in mystery and the impenetrable, labyrinthine house of the human mind. He’s polarizing, complex, and resistant to psychoanalysis, a shadow from the past that we’ll never truly understand. All we can say for sure is that he was a damned good writer—and that’s enough for me.