[Abe Sargent]

On Howard

If you have never read a story by REH, such as Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, or other characters, then you need to read this post. We need to discuss Howard, and what he cares about.

Some people have accused HP Lovecraft of being racist. Consider, for example, in the Call. The way he describes the savage tribe of people in Greenland is hardly complementary. His depiction of the people of New Orleans are similarly unflattering. A good word for these folk is degenerate. Lovecraft depicts many non-white people as degenerate worshippers of the dark ones. To be fair, he doesn’t generalize. He never states that all of the people of Greenland are at the same level of savagery and evil as that one tribe. He also happily has lost enclaves of white people that have inbred and become degenerate as well. New England is rife with old towns centuries old that time and morality have past by. He’s equal opportunity.

There are some stories that appear to have latent tones of discriminatory outlook such as Horror at Red Hook. For the most part, it’s not there (and remember, this is a guy who married a Jew.) I believe that Lovecraft was likely a person who shared the believes of his day in white superiority, but it really doesn’t impact his work. For example, if you read Winged Death, set in Africa, most Africans are depicted as normal people, or even brave.

Howard, on the other hand, completely changes this. Howard really cares about race. His stories are rife with ideas of race. Take a look at man Conan/Kull stories that you will see the white Aryan fighting against evil races of others. Whether it’s the serpent men of Valusia or the little people of Wales, his people really are cognizant of race and bound to battles between them. There is a lot of racism in Howard’s works, but not in the traditional sense of black vs white (Although he does have some yellow peril stories). Howard embraced the underdog, and shared a real affinity for natives. His entire ethos embraces noble savagery. He doesn’t find evil in savages, unlike most white writers of the time. Instead, he finds it in other races. A modern reader may be uncomfortable reading some of his stories. For example, we will not read The Children of the Night, which is blatantly racist and whose pro-Aryan lines could be read in a very poor context post-Hitler. Do you really want to read lines like this:

For I come of a royal race, and such as he is a continual insult and a threat, like a serpent underfoot. Mine is a regal race, though now it is become degraded and falls into decay by continual admixture with conquered races. The waves of alien blood have washed my hair black and my skin dark, but I still have the lordly stature and the blue eyes of a royal Aryan.


We’ll skip past most of this stuff, but one story slides into it.

On other news, the works of Howard were brought into the Mythos. Both his own works brought them in, and Lovecraft did as well. He mentions long lost Valusia and its serpent men in many stories. Other references appear. If you pick up a collection of Conan stories, you are reading Mythos works. But they aren’t adding anything to the Mythos, or using elements of the Mythos. We won’ be picking up a Kull story or a Conan story. I just want to point out that they all occur on the same world.

Okay, let’s Black Stone it up!