Abstract

Well-wishes for Lovecraft's aunt, who had broken her ankle; on his father treating a cut on his own foot; on E. Hoffmann Price's visit to Lovecraft in Providence, RI; on Howard's trips in Texas and Oklahoma since he last wrote (with an aside on Harvey Bailey); on the weather; on probably being turned down for a book collection of his short stories, but "Worms of the Earth" to appear in Not at Night; on receiving Clark Ashton Smith's The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies and Ebony and Crystal; glad to see Lovecraft's latest story in Weird Tales, and honored he mentioned Nameless Cults in "Out of the Aeons"; on trying to write detective stories without much success, though his agent Otis Adelbert Kline sold one ("Talons in the Dark") to Strange Detective Stories; returning to their discussion of aesthetic values, art, and superiority; on individualism and every person finding their own way to live, leading into an argument on democracy and caste; on freedom and liberty; on the frontier, and the men adapted to it (and Howard's grandfather); returning to their discussion of civilization and barbarians, leading into a few lines on the Great Depression, and on into oppression and execution in Texas, and on Germany and other "civilized" nations, and from there on newspapers and radios (including listing many of the radio-plays that Howard has heard, and the works of famous composers), on barbaric life (particularly German and Briton barbarians versus civilized Romans, with quotations from The Book of History), coming back to violence and law-abidance (with discussion of gunfighters again, and the death of Glenn Hunsucker), and the number of homocides Texas has each year, leading back into talk of criminals and their relations Howard was familiar with (including Rita Kirkpatrick and T. B. Slick), on law and the history and economy of Texas (Reconstruction, shifting cattle markets, etc.); a summing up of the key points made in this letter, with a few expansions; thanks for the post cards (and comparing Quebec and Mexico); praise for Lovecraft's "The Festival" in Weird Tales (with mention of his latest Conan tale "The Pool of the Black One," and Frank Belknap Long's "The Horror from the Hills"), and on rewriting history in the guise of fiction, and how he centers his stories around his characters.

Cited By

TBD

Included In

• A Means to Freedom
• Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard