Sunday, March 04, 2007

Robert E. Howard Days Coming in June

Thanks to Charlotte Laughlin for the link.

Cross Plains creator of Conan died young : Local Attractions : gosanangelo.com: "Some Texas writers become famous after years of hard work, and some live long enough to enjoy their celebrity. For Robert Ervin Howard, 40 years would go by before his writings would bring him fame, long after his death by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, the mystical land of Cimmeria and the sword-and-sorcery genre of fiction, died more than 70 years ago when he shot himself while grieving his sick mother. She would die 30 hours after her son. They are buried side by side in Brownwood’s Greenleaf Cemetery.

Howard was one of America’s most prolific writers, and perhaps the weirdest. He has been mostly forgotten by his peers, and his life was so unremarkable that not many folks remembered much about the man. He was described as “a social misfit who was so dependent on his mother that even as a grown man he could never leave her for more than a weekend.”

In June, his hometown of Cross Plains will again host a special weekend of commemoration focused on the Howard home and Howard’s manuscripts, notes and other articles."

No comments: