Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Conan and Robert E. Howard in the Wall Street Journal

Read the whole article at the link (hat tip to Chris Roberson). It's not often that a couple of guys I know (in this case, Mark Finn and Rusty Burke) are mentioned in the WSJ.

OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts: "From Pen to Sword
Conan the Barbarian was first a literary figure.

BY JOHN J. MILLER
Wednesday, December 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger recently won an easy re-election as California's governor. His movie-screen alter ego, Conan the Barbarian, never had to bother with yawping masses of voters--but he seems no less popular these days, judging from a revival movement that's winning a new generation of fans for one of the best-known characters that American literature has produced.

If Conan isn't first remembered as a literary figure, it's because the culture has embraced him so completely on film, in comic books, and as an icon of thick-muscled, sword-wielding manhood. Yet he got his start on the printed page as the invention of Robert E. Howard, a rural Texas pulp writer who lived from 1906 to 1936."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I always like any mention of Howard and little old Cross Plains, Texas, where my husband's uncle and aunt live.