Oh, the rabbit holes we disappear into...
So this morning I had the keen idea to come to work, and you know, work.
Four hours later, I am sitting on a 689 page document of all of Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories currently available on Australia's Project Gutenberg site, complete with headings and sub-headings (each chapter). Mind you, this morning there was no document. I created it out of exasperation of browsing Amazon's selections and finding that most of his short stories or novels cost anywhere between $8 to $1200.
What's fascinating about Howard is that he was able to publish a decent sized story or novella every month during the last 4 or so years of his life (that's as far as I've gotten). He also appears to have been highly influenced by HP Lovecraft (as it was during his Conan tenure when he and Lovecraft were basically writing to each other all the time).
But he broke down his writing task into chunks of around 2000-4000 words per chapter, and stayed consistent for most of his writing life. His short stories were around 3-5 chapters, his novellas were around 10 chapters, and his novels were around 20+ chapters. But each chapter stays somewhat consistent in the 2000-4000 word range.
He also plays with a lot of the same concepts that are present in both HP Lovecraft's writing as well as the content of his letters to Lovecraft. Many times, the words he actually penned in the letter actually appear in his short stories or novellas, which is fascinating (although not surprising).
I'm still adding to the document. I'm now at the adventures of King Kull of Atlantis, although we seem to have zoomed forward several thousand years to Roman times, when apparently according to Howard, Atlantis is still around and kicking (unless I read that wrong). Which actually makes a decent amount of sense, in a very pseudo-history kind of sense (if you consider Atlantis to be located somewhere in the zone of western Africa, as has been postulated by a lot of pseudo-historians like Graham Norton and others).
What is clear is:
1. Howard was a genius (more so than his contemporaries - apologies to Lovecraftians)
2. Howard was troubled (he told almost everyone close to him that he desperately wanted to kill himself, and often)
3. Howard was clearly influenced by not only his fellow writers in Weird Stories, but also by contemporary news although he clearly wasn't as misogynistic and racist as people claim nor as much as his fellow writers (such as Lovecraft, whose writings will make you swoon with the racism) - in fact, you could almost call Howard a bit on the progressive side
I won't have time this afternoon to do anymore with this. I have a lab to visit, then training, and I still need to prepare for my classes tomorrow. Not sure when that is going to happen today!
Guess it's going to be a short lunch.