Category Archives: REH

More Howard Days 2019 videos

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Podcasts etc., REH, Scholarly works

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More new videos from Howard Days 2019, kindly made and posted by Ben Friberg.

1. “What’s new with REH”…

“Carney and Emmelhainz talking about their new role as editors of The Dark Man, the journal of Robert E. Howard studies” and new developments. The journal is being put on a regular schedule, and will be expanded in range to include papers on other Howard-era pulp topics. After this presentation there’s some news about the circa 2020 (affordable paperback) publication of Howard letters and poems, with all the known poems in perhaps three volumes. Then the session ends with an update on the ongoing Conan commercialisations, such as comics and games, in which the audience learns that Conan has now joined Marvel’s Avengers team of superheroes.

2. “The History of Project Pride”, on the locally-led and increasingly successful 30-year project to preserve Howard’s legacy in Cross Plains. A great listen, and you’ll learn a whole lot about the town and its spirit.

The Glenn Lord Symposium videos are also being posted, short presentations from scholars from the symposium element of the Days, but I’ll do a linking post on those once they’re all up.

The trailer, keynote speech and a major panel were all posted a few days ago.

Howard Day 2019 – the first videos

16 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by in Podcasts etc., REH

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The first of the video recordings are up for the Howard Days 2019, the major annual event which celebrates the life, work and home-town of Robert E. Howard…

1. Scene-setter, event trailer:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIXQ1XhF458&w=560&h=315]

2. Keynote Speech by Guest of Honor, author David C. Smith:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O0sGBUKlgU?start=234&w=560&h=315]

3. One-hour panel: “Kull, Conan, Kane or Bran: The Original Sword and Sorcery Characters”.

Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery

04 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Doyle, Historical context, REH

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DMR has a developing series of short blog posts which introduce a set of “Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery”. The latest up for consideration, Arthur Conan Doyle. I must say I’d never even considered him as an influence on R.E. Howard, except in the vaguest way.

In addition to enjoying his Holmes stories, Doyle is also interesting to me for being another of the great names who have Birmingham and Staffordshire connections, alongside Wells, Tolkien, Borges and the Gawain-poet. For instance, I’ve reviewed Sherlock Holmes in the Midlands, which is the book you want if you’re interested in that topic or decide the take a literary touring holiday in Birmingham, Staffordshire and out into the neighbouring Welsh Marches.

Until reading DRM’s post I’d always thought of Doyle in terms of the always-re-readable Sherlock Holmes + some Edwardian horror stories. Even the fairy-world spiritualism of his dotage is of interest, because it tells one something about the pits of fraudulent charlatanry that opened up as religion faded, and how these could swallow up even highly intelligent people. This then reflects on the paths available to the early Wells, the young Tolkien, Kipling, Lovecraft and others, re: the cultural terrain they were navigating.

I must admit that I’ve never once encountered Doyle’s Professor Challenger adventure books, which DMR mentions, nor the various adventure and historical novels which the Doyle bibliography reveals. Professor Challenger is three novels, and two stories, apparently. Ho hum, yet another set of books to get around to… eventually! Ideally when a full-cast unabridged audiobook of such appears, and perhaps with Phil Dragash-like levels of avoidance of modern cynicism and hipster overtones in its vocal delivery.

New book: Post Oaks and Sand Roughs

14 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by in Historical context, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation has a new book due to ship. Post Oaks and Sand Roughs collects the most autobiographical material from Howard’s work. Shipping in June 2019. It has a selection of Costigan tales, where relevant, and…

“also contains other items that reveal details about the people and places in Howard’s life, including the “Lost Plains” stories, items from The Junto, personal essays, and more, all restored to the original text, where available.”

There’s a full contents-list and it looks fascinating. Sadly it’s only 200 numbered copies, in print, and would thus cost me a whopping $100 to get to the UK. Hopefully there will be a $10 Kindle ebook, in due course, but that’s just my guess.

It could be interesting to do something similar for H.P. Lovecraft. A life-story collection of the most pertinent fiction and poetry that is also firmly autobiographical, with explications of exactly what aspect or event in his life each extract draws on or depicts.

Solomon Kane and vampires

03 Friday May 2019

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I take no notice of ‘Awards’ these days, literary or otherwise, for the obvious reasons. But I’ll make an exception for the annual Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards.

Perusing the nominations led me to the short appreciation of an R. E. Howard vampire story, “Nosferatu Necronomica – Solomon Kane in the Hills of the Dead”.

This in turn led me to discover that Tantor has kindly given away a free and complete and unabridged reading of the same story, from their paid audiobook The Savage Tales Of Solomon Kane, in .MP3 download.

Archive.org also has the free Weird Tales, August 1930, with “Hills of the Dead” in full.

New: The Dark Man, Vol 9

20 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by in Historical context, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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A new edition of The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Fiction Studies Vol. 9 (Feb 2019), now in Kindle on Amazon.

Of interest to Lovecraftian scholars is…

* “The Outside Scholar: Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Scholarly Identity. Part Two: A Complex and Baffling Question”, by Karen Joan Kohoutek.

This follows Part One in The Dark Man Vol. 8, No. 1 (2015), also in Kindle ebook format.

I also note an article in The Dark Man that I had overlooked, an article to be found in the Vol 7. No. 1 (December 2012) issue. This volume is not on Amazon in ebook, so far as I can tell, but is in ebook as an ePub from Lulu.com. The article is…

* “I ‘n’ I a-Liberate Zimbabwe: Motifs of Africa and Freedom in Howard’s The Grisly Horror”, by Patrick R. Burger.

This seems likely to be of interest to those writing about Lovecraft’s interest in and use of Zimbabwe (the remarkable hilltop fortification, not the nation).

New: Zothique #2

18 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in New books, REH, Scholarly works

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Zothique #2 from Italy. 192 pages in Italian. Here’s the translated gist re: the non-fiction and new translations…

This second issue of Zothique begins with a theoretical essay on the horror fiction, but the highlight is a large and exclusive Dossier that takes stock of the writer Ambrose Bierce, of which five unpublished weird stories are also presented in Italian, as well as bibliographic guides and essays on this author and his stories.

We then move on to the Belgian Thomas Owen, one of ‘the fathers of the fantastic’, and after an introductory essay we present four of his stories which step between the surreal and the fantastic, also in first Italian translation.

Also the first part of a long essay dedicated to the poetry of Robert E. Howard.

New book: Cowboy Courage

03 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in New books, REH, Scholarly works

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Here’s a new book that may be of interest to R.E. Howard scholars, who might want to see how well this author’s framework fits with Howard’s stories and the wider western pulp tradition. Cowboy Courage: Westerns and the Portrayal of Bravery examines the three types of bravery and courage to be found in the U.S. screen westerns made from 1946 to about 1964.

Judging by the free-sample introduction, the book is written by someone old enough to remember the original reception of the big screen westerns. He’s a psychologist but he doesn’t seem in thrall to the frameworks of the Jung/Freud psychoanalysis era, or mired in the tar-pits of modern leftist politics.

Preface
Introduction
1. The Quality of Courage
2. Redemption
3. Love, Friendship and Bonds to the Community
4. Justice
5. Temperance
6. Growing Up and Growing Old
7. Being Authentic
8. The Revisionist Western
9. Lonesome Dove
Conclusion
Filmography
Bibliography
Index