By Any Other Name: Robert E. Howard and The Whole Wide World

SPOILERS AHEAD-

Few writers from the pulp era of the 1920s and 1930s have made as great a dent in the popular consciousness as Robert E. Howard. His work spanned every genre, from sword and sorcery, to boxing tales, to dark fantasy. His horror short stories are among the best of the mid 20th century, including the awesome "Pigeons from Hell." His two-fisted, red-in-tooth-in-claw characters have becomes icons of dark fantasy and geek culture. Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, and Red Sonja have or will be given blockbuster treatment from Hollywood. And who doesn't know at least one person who can sputter in bad Austrian the "What is Best in Life" speech from John Milius's flawed gem, CONAN THE BARBARIAN?

As awesome as his stories of mercenaries, puritans, and violent pigeons are, the story of Robert E. Howard is just as compelling. And the best treatment of this troubled and talented artist is the 1996 film THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, starring Vincent D'Onofrio as Howard, and Renee Zellweger as his love interest, the school teacher Novalyne Price. D'Onofrio's performance as the eccentric and passionate Howard is nothing short of spellbinding, and Zellweger more than holds her own as a feisty, modern woman who appreciates and tries to understand this pulp writing hero in the heart of Cross Plains, Texas. The film journeys with their romance and hang ups, their differing world views, and Howard's struggle to maintain his career against the odds and within the often sad world of his home life, one that includes a dying mother with a creepy attachment to her son (played with eerie grace by Ann Wedgworth, the spinster sexpot Lana from THREE'S COMPANY). It is a funny, sad, tender and wild tale of a writer who gets in his own way of happiness while trying to be true to himself.

The sad end of Robert E. Howard is common knowledge. On 11 June 1936, not long after his mother finally succumbed to her long term illness, he committed suicide after composing a short poem on his typewriter.

"All fled, all done/So lift me on the pyre/The feast is over/And the lamps expire."

He was only thirty years old.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD was based on the diaries of Novalyne Price and is largely considered to be a fairly accurate portrayal of her, Howard, and that time in their lives together. While many books on Howard have been written, the best account comes from Howard scholar and writer Mark Finn in his seminal biography, Blood and Thunder. Finn does an incredible job of explaining how Howard's environment in Texas during the oil boom and bust generated the world view that gave birth to his stories and characters. Howard often noted that civilization was not a natural state, that the barbarians of human vice and savagery where perennially at the gate, and often the two states were hard to distinguish. Watching how civilization came in the wake of the oil boom, and with it wealth, death, gambling, murder, prostitution and sexual deviance, gave Howard's fiction a spark of realism even in its fantastic contexts. Finn also does a tremendous amount of good on explaining Howard's psyche and moods and their impact on his writing: the good, the bad, and the awful. Any fan with an interest in understanding the history and roots of the genres would do well to read Finn's critical and well-researched work on one of the pillars of dark fantasy and sword and sorcery.

In under a decade, Robert E. Howard crafted and created some of the most memorable characters, stories, and sub genres in dark fiction. But behind the stories is the man, a difficult, engaging, highly intelligent and often tortured man, whose own life was as compelling as that of Conan, if not more so. And expired way too early.