Today
Two Americans writing in the 1930s, from opposite ends of the pulp economy
Today’s authors
- Robert E. Howard (1906–1936)
- Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
Robert E. Howard
On Howard’s prose
“Howard’s writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks.”
Stephen King.
Kull before Conan
Howard’s most famous creation is Conan the Barbarian — who developed out of an unsold Kull of Atlantis story.
Kull comes first. “The Shadow Kingdom” (1929) is his debut, and the debut of a whole subgenre: sword and sorcery, sometimes called low fantasy.
Reading notes: “The Shadow Kingdom”
- The editor of Weird Tales was so impressed he bought it for $100 — roughly $1,750 today, and the most money Howard had ever made.
- Like Conan, Kull is an exceptional swordsman from an “uncivilized” background.
- Unlike Conan, Kull suffers from self-doubt, constantly asking whether he is in fact capable of being king of Valusia. Perhaps as a result he has no sense of humor, is completely uninterested in romance, and is frequently mired in paranoia.
- By mixing fantasy, horror, and mythology with historical romance, action, and swordplay, Howard essentially invented the subgenre we now call sword and sorcery.
- In many ways the true plot is the growing friendship between Kull and Brule — a homosocial bond forged as they fight through hordes of snake-men plotting against the throne.
- Fun fact: Howard seems to have been the first to imagine lizard-like monsters who disguise themselves as human beings, thereby launching a durable style of conspiracy theory.
Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston’s career, and its second life
- Trained as an anthropologist; spent much of her career collecting and transcribing folk tales and traditions from Florida and later Haiti, where as part of her research she underwent initiation as a Vodou priestess.
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), now a canonical American classic, was not well received on publication.
- By her death in 1960 most of her work was long out of print. Her writing returned to prominence only after Alice Walker’s 1975 essay for Ms. magazine, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” (later “Looking for Zora”).
Hoodoo, not Vodou
“Uncle Monday” is not about Vodou. It draws on Hoodoo: a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs created by enslaved Africans in the southern United States, combining various traditional African spiritualities with Christianity and elements of Indigenous botanical knowledge.
Reading notes: “Uncle Monday”
- Uncle Monday is first seen appearing to walk on water — like Christ — but is also repeatedly associated with the local fauna, especially alligators, and of course with magical powers.
- The story is local folklore, but it also makes good use of one of the two basic plots often attributed to the novelist John Gardner: “a stranger comes to town.” (The other, “a person goes on a journey,” is even more typical of traditional fantasy, high and low.)
A note on that attribution: it circulates widely but without a traceable source in Gardner’s published work.
Two kinds of magical authority
| magic | Howard | Hurston |
|---|---|---|
| source of the magic | ancient evil, external | community practice, inherited |
| the outsider is | the hero | the power |
| the story is told by | an omniscient narrator | a community that already believes |
For Thursday
- “The Debutante” by Leonora Carrington (BBCF 752)
- “Leaf by Niggle” by J. R. R. Tolkien (BBCF 798)