D&D General Reassesing Robert E Howards influence on D&D +

[Bedrockgames]

I still really enjoy the original REH stories. The man could really write. His prose is very evocative, and he makes his characters believable.

I've tried a few of the stories by other authors, and none of them come close at all.

I agree on his prose. Sometimes you go back to writers from this era, and the style can be a hurdle. No so with Howard. He is a very pleasant read. This is something that always stands out to me when I read Conan again

 

[pemerton]

Howard was a man of his time, place and ethnicity, but does not appear to have had Lovecraft's outright xenophobic pathologies.

I think it you look at a story like Vale of Lost Women, or even The Scarlet Citadel, the racism is quite horrible.

I read the REH stories and look past this: the Scarlet Citadel is, as a story, quite good; Vale of Lost Women is not.

But when it comes to my children, I tell them wish stories are safe for them to read, or not. They don't need to randomly encounter REH's <expletive deleted in accordance with site rules>.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think it you look at a story like Vale of Lost Women, or even The Scarlet Citadel, the racism is quite horrible.

I'm not seeing how that contradicts my statement.

 

[Irlo]

This conversation is making me want to re-read some of those old Conan stories. But they're treasured memories from my youth and I'm afraid that I'll be disappointed.

You will be. Or at least I was.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not seeing how that contradicts my statement.

Yeah, he was in Texas writing in the the thirties. That wasn't the most enlightened time when it comes to race in the US. His attitudes were well within the norm of that time and place. Worth pointing out this story wasn't published until after his death though

 

[pemerton]

I'm not seeing how that contradicts my statement.

I didn't say that it did. Nor that it didn't. I have no strong view on whether being a man of REH's time, place and ethnicity = writing fiction that gives voice to horrible racism. But I do have a strong view about REH's approach, in his writing, to Black people (as individuals, as societies, as characters).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I didn't say that it did. Nor that it didn't. I have no strong view on whether being a man of REH's time, place and ethnicity = writing fiction that gives voice to horrible racism. But I do have a strong view about REH's approach, in his writing, to Black people (as individuals, as societies, as characters).

He's at least not as consistently racist here as Lovecraft was, but his degree of racism simply doesn't seem surprising for a white Texan born in that period and raised where he is. My contrast is that Lovecraft's racism seems excessive even viewed through the lens of his time and place. That doesn't make the cases where REH's expresses itself (as in the ones you reference) any better, but I think it does put his and Lovecraft's in a different light.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm working my way through the Kurt Busiek comics again and strongly recommend them.

I've got 'em. They're fantastic.

 

[pemerton]

He's at least not as consistently racist here as Lovecraft was, but his degree of racism simply doesn't seem surprising for a white Texan born in that period and raised where he is. My contrast is that Lovecraft's racism seems excessive even viewed through the lens of his time and place. That doesn't make the cases where REH's expresses itself (as in the ones you reference) any better, but I think it does put his and Lovecraft's in a different light.

I'm not all that interested in parsing degrees of virulence, and don't have particular thoughts on how one would "rank" Call of Cthulhu vis-a-vis Vale of Lost Women; or how one would rank that stories presentation of a "vaguely nautical" person against the jailor in The Scarlet Citadel.

I think the essay Southern Discomfort is fairly well known: it can be found here; as a caution, it contains quotes of REH using virulently racist language. In Googling it up I also found this blog: https://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2010/09/20/robert-howard-racist I'm not in a position to express an independent view of the factual claims made, about REH and his time and place. I agree with some but not all of both pieces, about how we might and should go about engaging with REH's work.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I definitely have no interest in another Lovecraft-HOward Racism discussion (I feel like all those points have been addressed in multiple threads and there isn't much value in getting into them again. One thing I will say as the question of how exceptional either of them were for their time and place has been raised: This stuff was written at the height of Eugenics and racialist science, as the Nazi's were rising in Germany, when segregation and Jim Crow Laws were in full swing in the US, the KKK was reaching heights of popularity, and lynchings were very common. Racism was very widespread, even in the North East and New England (where it often focused more on the kinds of things you see in Lovecraft). I think it is an abuse of history when we try to paint either of them as particularly exceptional in order to make a point about the value of their work