Thread 24613704

>>24613704 (OP)
he has a great essay on cats. much better than the Lovecraft one

>>24613704 (OP)
I always liked the idea of persisting in a doomed world, especially one I had created. It certainly added depth to one's character.
It's also less retarded than making important NPCs invulnerable.

>>24613704 (OP)
>write for pulp magazines
>known for turning out genre slop for cash
>no one has ever successfully copied his style
He's based. American literature unironically died with him. Realism and the social novel, the highbrow literature of Howard's time, are European artifacts that displaced works of uniquely American identity. We're living in a creative wasteland today because critics then and now don't recognize Howard's genius and value.

>>24614367
Clifford Ball was close in style, though he never achieved the same heights of quality or fame as Howard. And I completely agree with you that the pulps are the best thing to come out of American literature. Something fresh was drowned out in favor copying what Europe already mastered, or worse, trying to subvert it like the modernists did. Only now is the spirit of the pulps returning in the form of fantasy and horror, though it burns languidly in the swamp of our irony obsessed, post truth society

>>24614465
>Clifford Ball
I hadn't heard of him. I'll need to read him sometime
>spirit of the pulps
It's an uphill battle these days. I think there's been a resurgence of interest in the pulps among certain readers but publishers have little desire to cater to it. Everyone complains about tropes, as if they haven't been subverted so long that playing them straight would seem revolutionary. And even heroic fantasies are expected to have realist character arcs. Even I have trouble writing about heroics without dwelling on how the hero feels about it given his past. There's a lot to work through, but I think a change may be coming. I hope it is.

>>24614367
I went to the Robert E. Howard Days in his hometown where the fans gathered. I actually hadn't read much of him but it was interesting and not that far of a trip for me. There was only one guy dressed up as a barbarian though. I have the Conan collections and have been reading those, and came back with a collection of his viking stories. My companion left with a volume of his boxing stories. There's a foundation that publishes a bunch of his stuff.

>>24614367
"To me, serious national literature only begins when a nation has its own good genre fiction." -- Slavoj Zizek

This guy who wrote a new biography of him was also at the festival. Published in March. I bought that too. He sold me on it when I asked him about how Howard's environment in this town shaped his writing. You'll have to read the book though.

There was one mildly amusing thing that happened. One of the top REH fanclub guys is an archaeologist (really). It's an educated group of people. So the fans learned about a mystery cellar that existed underneath his backyard, but had been buried for a century. They scanned the ground with radar, discovered it, and got a federal grant (or something) to turn it into an official archaeological dig, and it became this whole thing. You can look it up. This was the biggest thing that had ever happened to them.

What mysteries existed in the Robert E. Howard cellar? Well, like Al Capone's vault, not much. A few Mason jars. So we're standing next to this cellar, and while they were telling us about all of this, they passed around one of these jars filled with black gunk that had been underground for 100 years, and people were looking at the artifact very closely and taking pictures of it. I was thinking, okay, this is turning into a bit of a cult. They were nice though.

>could tear Conan limb from limb with his bear hands
>wouldn't do it and would end up comically knocking him out in a hilarious comedy of errors instead
Why don't people talk about Breckenridge Elkins?

>>24614616
Very fitting considering how often ruins and artifacts appear in the Conan stories

>>24613704 (OP)
Ayo but Al Capone didn't write any books

>>24614558
I'm not a Zizekfag but that's a good quote. Great literature or art more generally requires a generic base to build upon. Reminds me of that TS Eliot quote about originality only existing withing tradition

>>24614994
Everyone wore those hats back then

>>24614992
Behold: The Jars of Doom

https://ktxs.com/news/big-country/nps-archaeologists-return-to-cross-plains-to-finish-digging-behind-home-of-famed-author

>>24615005
it's always funny looking at old pictures and quite literally everyone is wearing a hat. Not just most people, but every single person. What happened?

>>24614616
This is how you wake up Xaltotun

>>24615088
Check out these hats

>>24615088
It used to be colder and people's heads would get cold.

>>24614465
>pulps are the best thing to come out of American literature
The absolute state of American education.