Oui? Non! Stephen King on Robert E. Howard

by Gary Romeo

Stephen King’s Danse Macabre was a bestseller. Lots of people read it. Robert E. Howard is discussed at length. When “The Fully Illustrated Robert E. Howard Library” from Del Rey Books was published in the early 2000s, a quote from this book was featured on most of the covers.

The full quote is not quite as admiring as the blurb would have you believe. “In his best work, Howard’s writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks. Stories such as “The People of the Black Circle” glow with the fierce and eldritch light of his frenzied intensity. At his best, Howard was the Thomas Wolfe of fantasy, and most of his Conan tales seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out. Yet his other work was either unremarkable or just abysmal….The word will hurt and anger his legion of fans, but I don’t believe any other word fits.”

I’m not particularly hurt and angered. Everyone has a right to their opinion and while I disagree with Mr. King on that particular comment I agreed with him earlier in the book when he said, “[…] Robert E. Howard’s “Pigeons From Hell” [is] one of the finest horror stories of our century.” The parlor game of hating an author (particular the one who popularized Conan) for statements of opinion is played by too many Robert E. Howard fans.

This essay isn’t about Danse Macabre though. (As a whole I liked the book.) Before Danse Macabre was published Stephen King wrote various articles on horror for Whispers, Twilight Zone Magazine, Playboy, and Oui. The front matter for Danse Macabre states “Portions of this book have appeared in Playboy magazine.” King’s article in the January 1978 issue of Oui magazine is not mentioned.

The middle column is what is important in the above page. King chose to manufacture a sensationalized version of events to present H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard as “mutilated personalities.” (Admittedly he hints that he might be mutilated as well in the third column; so I was suppose he was trying for humor in a way.)

It is also possible that King confused some of REH’s poetry as supposed real life adventures. I’m sure some REH fans wish that King was 100% correct in his “overcompensating” speculation. A REH poem like “Love’s Young Dream” tells of a visit to a brothel (and could be based on fact) and “When I Was in Africa” (obviously fiction) boasts of swinging a native “by the heels.”

But clearly King is wrong in the main. One prominent REH fan wrote to L. Sprague de Camp about the article:

I contacted Charles Hoffman and received this response: “We wrote LSdC concerning this. We received a post card from him stating his intention to contact Oui and set the record straight. We wrote Oui ourselves, and our letter was printed. Don’t know about dC’s. All this was nearly fifty years ago now.”

I’m not going to buy every back issue looking for a de Camp letter which may or may not appear. But here is the letter that did see print:

Hoffman and Cerasini provided a good solid rebuttal (under Horror Hype) and although I was too young at the time to be aware of any of this I appreciate their response of nearly fifty years ago now.

Charles Hoffman (along with now best-selling author Marc Cerasini) wrote one of the first and best overviews of Robert E. Howard’s work in 1987, Robert E. Howard, Starmont Reader’s Guide 35. It was updated in 2020 with a new title, Robert E. Howard, A Closer Look. That book, along with a new book by Charles Hoffman, Beyond the Black Stranger and Others is available from Amazon. Both books are highly recommended.

Postscript: I will be going on vacation soon. Blog posts might be infrequent in October. I’m not going away. I’ll just be unavailable to write for a while. I welcome guest bloggers (especially for October) at any time. Please contact me with any submissions. I will be checking my email and probably even writing a post or two. But expect less in October. Thanks for all the support I’ve been receiving!

Au revoir.