Like Cormac McCarthy, But More Barbaric

It's Robert E. Howard's 105th birthday. Grognardia quotes H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 tribute to him:

No one could write more convincingly of violence and gore than he, and his battle passages reveal an instinctive aptitude for military tactics which would have brought him distinction in times of war. His real gifts were even higher than the readers of his published works would suspect, and had he lived, would have helped him to make his mark in serious literature with some folk epic of his beloved southwest.[...]That such an artist should perish while hundreds of insincere hacks continue to concoct spurious ghosts and vampires and space-ships and occult detectives is indeed a sorry piece of cosmic irony!

I like how that first part makes him sound like Cormac McCarthy.

Did I mention that I saw the Vincent D'Onofrio/Renée Zellweger take on Howard, The Whole Wide World? It Was Pretty Good.

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Sneak peek: Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi is interviewed in next month's Believer...