| REH and Cultural Trends in Literature by Thomas Reid |
Changes in the basic purpose and character of cultural phenomena are very difficult to isolate
chronologically. Fundamental alterations in the function of any given facet of a civilization arise from a
class of individuals whose sensitivity demands change in institutions far in advance of those considered
the system’s mentors. While these individuals belong to no particular economic class, those from the lower
middle group generally gain the earliest recognition. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is
that their formulations of problems will be universally comprehensible. The second, that they will, in hope
of gaining a wider acceptance socially, most effectively cloak new ideas in the very strict framework of
earlier outworn conventional terms.
Thus it is almost impossible to recognize the emergent trends until they have become popular. Their early
insinuation into the culture will have been so veiled in conservative terms that recognition is unlikely. It
has now become apparent that the literature of our Western civilization underwent the beginnings of its
transformation in the late twenties and early thirties. Of the vast corpus of material retaining some
relevancy at this later date, two authors stand out with the greatest clarity. While they are remembered in
academic circles, it is only because they are thought to typify a phase of fiction of the most vulgar and
popular sort.
Those authors, both of whom seemingly died at the heights of their literary prowess, are Robert E. Howard
and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Their attacks on the problem are altogether different. Howard’s is a
position of optimism, and Lovecraft’s a statement of utter cynicism and pessimism. Their themes are,
however, identical. They write, in archetypical and epic terms, of man’s struggle against that which is
utterly destructive and evil. Howard’s primordial heroes most often win, Lovecraft’s are invariably
crushed. In either case the statement of man’s position and condition are the same. From a position of
utter inferiority, man must deal with the degrading and degenerate manifestations of the world in which he
lives.
The reason for the polarity of these two author’s works is physical. Howard was, as an adult, physically
superior in this regard to most people he encountered. Lovecraft considered himself, potential
notwithstanding, a weakling. Howard’s basic assumption is that physical, and secondary mental, superiority,
given the proper barbaric environment would create men equal to the challenge of a hostile world. The
physical destruction of any threat is his solution. Any challenge beyond the abilities of his hero is either
deified on daimonified. This elevation of phenomena, however, is far form and admission of defeat. Simply
started, it means that both he and his antagonists have counterparts of a higher order who are engaged in
similar conflict. In this, Howard’s writings are similar to the Homeric epic in which man’s situation is an
extension of the gods’ conflicts and conditions.
On does not have to search long among the extant epic works to find those which parallel the works of
Lovecraft. In Norse mythology one is confronted with a universe in which defeat is inevitable. Man’s
transitory victories are tempered by foreknowledge of utterly total defeat. Lovecraft’s protagonists are
confronted by a pantheon of utterly evil creatures who, unlike man, transcend the barriers of time and
space. They are the antithesis of everything human. They are immortal. They have no counterparts for
good. Like the victors at Gotterdammerung, their only impetus is toward the destruction of all that is human.
Lovecraft’s heroes are uniformly pale, effete creatures steeped in Victorian and Puritan tradition. True
“gentlemen” in the nineteenth century sense, they sworn at the slightest provocation. In their narratives
they hedge for pages before reveling the facts concerning their formulation that the world is utterly hostile
to mankind. Thus Lovecraft couches his conception of an immediate and even futuristic concept in the
terms of conventional Victorian literature. While this may have helped in transmitting his beliefs to the
audience which he hoped to influence, if indeed he consciously hoped to influence any audience, his
choice of the ultraconservative nineteenth-century framework was unfortunate in that it did, and still does,
drastically limit his appeal. It might be said in his defense, however, that he reached many to whom a less
academic style would have been unattractive.
While both Howard and Lovecraft had many imitators and authors whose themes are derivative to a greater
or lesser degree, none have expressed the basic concept with such clarity, or indeed, in a style as concise
as Howard’s. REH’s precise prose is best suited to express the ancient and yet increasingly popular belief
that man exists in an absolutely hostile world in which progress is a delusion. It is a world in which the
continuing struggle against one’s destruction by hostile forces is the single reason for existence. Its
essence is the fight for survival.
It is a misconception, still enjoying considerable popularity, that men band together to protect the weak; or,
at least, that good men band together to protect the weak. Both are utterly false. While it is true that
individuals frequently protect others they know to be inferior in strength, such as women, children and the
old or infirm, larger cultural units are based on the principal of greed. Greed for power, for territorial and
material gain, these are true motivational forces behind civilization outlined by Howard. And in light of his
prime tenet, justifiable motivations. Men are defensive only when they find themselves in an inferior
position. While Howard admits the existence of both good and evil men, their psychological motivations
are identical. All that is to be gained from life can only be had through the destruction of the opposition.
While Lovecraft correctly conceived man’s condition, he was unable to draw a positive inference from the
concept. He was satisfied to state that man was doomed, that there was no progress. He was not physically
capable of developing the thesis to anything but a negative impasse. In this aspect he certainly was
Howard’s inferior.
Howard brought much more into literary focus than this one essential theory. His works also illustrate,
correctly I believe, that development of personality or individuality in man is only possible through, and the
result of, struggle. His recurrent references to reincarnation, and to the agglutinative effect of
reincarnation as developmental, reinforce this belief. His implication was simply that through this process
one became not less, but more human. That is to say, man is not rendered more spiritual by this series of
existences, but more physical. To him the process heightened individual sensitivity through the
accumulation of experience.
How then does Howard typify an emergent school of thought or literature? He has, as accurately as
possible, reintroduced the single most effective educational device of antiquity, the epic story, as a
framework for the illustration of the basic tenets most conducive to human development. He has employed
a prose style comprehensible and attractive to the broadest possible spectrum of individuals as a vehicle
for correct and constructive beliefs which, if stated in clearer terms, would have met with absolute
rejection by the majority of the readers. He has insinuated a philosophy into a medium which avails itself to
those with little or no interest in philosophy as such, and by doing so, has re-affirmed their instinctive
beliefs at the expense of popular liberal thought.
Howard’s epics make it painfully clear that men are not equal, in any sense of the word. They point out the
inanities of the so-called “selfless” philosophies and religions which clutter the cultural landscape of the
twentieth century. Both democracy and communism suffer at Howard’s pen. Howard despised government
by faceless bureaucrats and puppet rulers. It is not difficult to imagine why he considered the present
epoch an unparalleled disaster.
The only form of government worthy of mention was the rule of one man. Only by this system did he believe
unity and strength possible, and only under the aegis of a good man could government exist. Any other
political condition was worthy only of destruction. It is difficult to believe that the repressive, backward
world that was Cross Plans, Texas at the turn of the century could produce a man like Howard. It speaks
much for his beliefs that it did.
Although several states in the twentieth century have existed roughly along the lines of Howard’s barbaric
humanism, National Socialist Germany probably most nearly fulfilled the ideal. To judge Nazi philosophy and
popular belief, one might be led to believe that it was fulfilled. What turned National Socialism into the
abortive system it became were two factors. The first was the technological aspect of the twentieth century
warfare and its resultant dehumanization. the second, rampant bureaucracy. Only an insensitive, sub-
human bureaucratic mentality could have accomplished the systematic extermination of so many.
Admittedly, Nazism was basically anti-Semitic, and taught that one was only morally obligated to the Nordic
or Aryan race. Individuals considering themselves a superior group do only concern themselves with the
extermination of inferiors, but rather, use them to further their own ends. Intermarriage, etc. could and did
cause local pogroms and violence against subject peoples, but only the vacuous minds of the bureaucrats
could have carried out the Final Solution.
The motivation toward world unity to defeat Nazism to free the oppressed and to attain other high-sounding
goals is a myth. The world united to conquer and kill because Nazism was a threat to their own power. A
generation reveled in the legalized chaos of World War II. Men have wailed and cried crocodile tears for
thirty years hence. How could man have spent six long years at destruction and death and decided it was
“inhuman?” I can only conclude that it is an essential part of human behavior. The industrialization,
destruction of ecological balance, and depersonalization before and after that war may well render it the
least regrettable event of the epoch.
Barbarism, according to Howard, is the natural state of mankind; civilization beyond that of the tribal unit
perversion. Homeric Greece was based on tribal culture as was the later Greece of the city-state to a great
degree. Republican Rome was similarly uni-tribal. The world’s great cultures have become degenerate and
died with the advent of cosmopolitanism and internationalism.
Violence for invidual advantage of the sort in Howard’s epics is the single greatest enemy of a decadent
culture. Too great a measure of self-confidence and esteem are the only human factors capable of
combating depersonalization and the disgusting process of homogenization that Western civilization has
undergone. In Howard’s archetypical world the individual is transcendent in importance to any other unit-
race, tribe or social class. Responsibility toward any other human being can only be based truly on
personal preference – any other motivation is a useless lie.
The fantasy epic of which Howard was master is rapidly becoming one of the most popular literary form of
the day. Scores of imitators have placed their protagonists in every imaginable time and place, but the
message is unchanged. Heroes range from the extraterrestrial to the gothic to the ultraconservative. They
stalk the pages of an undeniably vast quantity of the poplar works published today. However heavily they
are draped in the stuff of civilization, they preach the gospel of barbarism and chaos. Nothing transcends
their purposes in importance, and the battle is sufficient justification for continued life. It is not a message
overly appealing to the weak.
Copyright 1978 Thomas Reid
chronologically. Fundamental alterations in the function of any given facet of a civilization arise from a
class of individuals whose sensitivity demands change in institutions far in advance of those considered
the system’s mentors. While these individuals belong to no particular economic class, those from the lower
middle group generally gain the earliest recognition. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is
that their formulations of problems will be universally comprehensible. The second, that they will, in hope
of gaining a wider acceptance socially, most effectively cloak new ideas in the very strict framework of
earlier outworn conventional terms.
Thus it is almost impossible to recognize the emergent trends until they have become popular. Their early
insinuation into the culture will have been so veiled in conservative terms that recognition is unlikely. It
has now become apparent that the literature of our Western civilization underwent the beginnings of its
transformation in the late twenties and early thirties. Of the vast corpus of material retaining some
relevancy at this later date, two authors stand out with the greatest clarity. While they are remembered in
academic circles, it is only because they are thought to typify a phase of fiction of the most vulgar and
popular sort.
Those authors, both of whom seemingly died at the heights of their literary prowess, are Robert E. Howard
and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Their attacks on the problem are altogether different. Howard’s is a
position of optimism, and Lovecraft’s a statement of utter cynicism and pessimism. Their themes are,
however, identical. They write, in archetypical and epic terms, of man’s struggle against that which is
utterly destructive and evil. Howard’s primordial heroes most often win, Lovecraft’s are invariably
crushed. In either case the statement of man’s position and condition are the same. From a position of
utter inferiority, man must deal with the degrading and degenerate manifestations of the world in which he
lives.
The reason for the polarity of these two author’s works is physical. Howard was, as an adult, physically
superior in this regard to most people he encountered. Lovecraft considered himself, potential
notwithstanding, a weakling. Howard’s basic assumption is that physical, and secondary mental, superiority,
given the proper barbaric environment would create men equal to the challenge of a hostile world. The
physical destruction of any threat is his solution. Any challenge beyond the abilities of his hero is either
deified on daimonified. This elevation of phenomena, however, is far form and admission of defeat. Simply
started, it means that both he and his antagonists have counterparts of a higher order who are engaged in
similar conflict. In this, Howard’s writings are similar to the Homeric epic in which man’s situation is an
extension of the gods’ conflicts and conditions.
On does not have to search long among the extant epic works to find those which parallel the works of
Lovecraft. In Norse mythology one is confronted with a universe in which defeat is inevitable. Man’s
transitory victories are tempered by foreknowledge of utterly total defeat. Lovecraft’s protagonists are
confronted by a pantheon of utterly evil creatures who, unlike man, transcend the barriers of time and
space. They are the antithesis of everything human. They are immortal. They have no counterparts for
good. Like the victors at Gotterdammerung, their only impetus is toward the destruction of all that is human.
Lovecraft’s heroes are uniformly pale, effete creatures steeped in Victorian and Puritan tradition. True
“gentlemen” in the nineteenth century sense, they sworn at the slightest provocation. In their narratives
they hedge for pages before reveling the facts concerning their formulation that the world is utterly hostile
to mankind. Thus Lovecraft couches his conception of an immediate and even futuristic concept in the
terms of conventional Victorian literature. While this may have helped in transmitting his beliefs to the
audience which he hoped to influence, if indeed he consciously hoped to influence any audience, his
choice of the ultraconservative nineteenth-century framework was unfortunate in that it did, and still does,
drastically limit his appeal. It might be said in his defense, however, that he reached many to whom a less
academic style would have been unattractive.
While both Howard and Lovecraft had many imitators and authors whose themes are derivative to a greater
or lesser degree, none have expressed the basic concept with such clarity, or indeed, in a style as concise
as Howard’s. REH’s precise prose is best suited to express the ancient and yet increasingly popular belief
that man exists in an absolutely hostile world in which progress is a delusion. It is a world in which the
continuing struggle against one’s destruction by hostile forces is the single reason for existence. Its
essence is the fight for survival.
It is a misconception, still enjoying considerable popularity, that men band together to protect the weak; or,
at least, that good men band together to protect the weak. Both are utterly false. While it is true that
individuals frequently protect others they know to be inferior in strength, such as women, children and the
old or infirm, larger cultural units are based on the principal of greed. Greed for power, for territorial and
material gain, these are true motivational forces behind civilization outlined by Howard. And in light of his
prime tenet, justifiable motivations. Men are defensive only when they find themselves in an inferior
position. While Howard admits the existence of both good and evil men, their psychological motivations
are identical. All that is to be gained from life can only be had through the destruction of the opposition.
While Lovecraft correctly conceived man’s condition, he was unable to draw a positive inference from the
concept. He was satisfied to state that man was doomed, that there was no progress. He was not physically
capable of developing the thesis to anything but a negative impasse. In this aspect he certainly was
Howard’s inferior.
Howard brought much more into literary focus than this one essential theory. His works also illustrate,
correctly I believe, that development of personality or individuality in man is only possible through, and the
result of, struggle. His recurrent references to reincarnation, and to the agglutinative effect of
reincarnation as developmental, reinforce this belief. His implication was simply that through this process
one became not less, but more human. That is to say, man is not rendered more spiritual by this series of
existences, but more physical. To him the process heightened individual sensitivity through the
accumulation of experience.
How then does Howard typify an emergent school of thought or literature? He has, as accurately as
possible, reintroduced the single most effective educational device of antiquity, the epic story, as a
framework for the illustration of the basic tenets most conducive to human development. He has employed
a prose style comprehensible and attractive to the broadest possible spectrum of individuals as a vehicle
for correct and constructive beliefs which, if stated in clearer terms, would have met with absolute
rejection by the majority of the readers. He has insinuated a philosophy into a medium which avails itself to
those with little or no interest in philosophy as such, and by doing so, has re-affirmed their instinctive
beliefs at the expense of popular liberal thought.
Howard’s epics make it painfully clear that men are not equal, in any sense of the word. They point out the
inanities of the so-called “selfless” philosophies and religions which clutter the cultural landscape of the
twentieth century. Both democracy and communism suffer at Howard’s pen. Howard despised government
by faceless bureaucrats and puppet rulers. It is not difficult to imagine why he considered the present
epoch an unparalleled disaster.
The only form of government worthy of mention was the rule of one man. Only by this system did he believe
unity and strength possible, and only under the aegis of a good man could government exist. Any other
political condition was worthy only of destruction. It is difficult to believe that the repressive, backward
world that was Cross Plans, Texas at the turn of the century could produce a man like Howard. It speaks
much for his beliefs that it did.
Although several states in the twentieth century have existed roughly along the lines of Howard’s barbaric
humanism, National Socialist Germany probably most nearly fulfilled the ideal. To judge Nazi philosophy and
popular belief, one might be led to believe that it was fulfilled. What turned National Socialism into the
abortive system it became were two factors. The first was the technological aspect of the twentieth century
warfare and its resultant dehumanization. the second, rampant bureaucracy. Only an insensitive, sub-
human bureaucratic mentality could have accomplished the systematic extermination of so many.
Admittedly, Nazism was basically anti-Semitic, and taught that one was only morally obligated to the Nordic
or Aryan race. Individuals considering themselves a superior group do only concern themselves with the
extermination of inferiors, but rather, use them to further their own ends. Intermarriage, etc. could and did
cause local pogroms and violence against subject peoples, but only the vacuous minds of the bureaucrats
could have carried out the Final Solution.
The motivation toward world unity to defeat Nazism to free the oppressed and to attain other high-sounding
goals is a myth. The world united to conquer and kill because Nazism was a threat to their own power. A
generation reveled in the legalized chaos of World War II. Men have wailed and cried crocodile tears for
thirty years hence. How could man have spent six long years at destruction and death and decided it was
“inhuman?” I can only conclude that it is an essential part of human behavior. The industrialization,
destruction of ecological balance, and depersonalization before and after that war may well render it the
least regrettable event of the epoch.
Barbarism, according to Howard, is the natural state of mankind; civilization beyond that of the tribal unit
perversion. Homeric Greece was based on tribal culture as was the later Greece of the city-state to a great
degree. Republican Rome was similarly uni-tribal. The world’s great cultures have become degenerate and
died with the advent of cosmopolitanism and internationalism.
Violence for invidual advantage of the sort in Howard’s epics is the single greatest enemy of a decadent
culture. Too great a measure of self-confidence and esteem are the only human factors capable of
combating depersonalization and the disgusting process of homogenization that Western civilization has
undergone. In Howard’s archetypical world the individual is transcendent in importance to any other unit-
race, tribe or social class. Responsibility toward any other human being can only be based truly on
personal preference – any other motivation is a useless lie.
The fantasy epic of which Howard was master is rapidly becoming one of the most popular literary form of
the day. Scores of imitators have placed their protagonists in every imaginable time and place, but the
message is unchanged. Heroes range from the extraterrestrial to the gothic to the ultraconservative. They
stalk the pages of an undeniably vast quantity of the poplar works published today. However heavily they
are draped in the stuff of civilization, they preach the gospel of barbarism and chaos. Nothing transcends
their purposes in importance, and the battle is sufficient justification for continued life. It is not a message
overly appealing to the weak.
Copyright 1978 Thomas Reid
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REH: Two-Gun Raconteur
The Definitive Howard Journal
The Definitive Howard Journal