Willard ‘Will’ Oliver’s Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author has been out for a couple of months now. I have read it. It is excellent. Now that I (hopefully) have Internet connectivity that allows more than an hour of online work every few days, I’m going to post my review.

In the interest of full disclosure, I've 'known' Will for over a decade. He joined the Swords of REH forum back around 2014 and immediately started posting what you could call 'hard' Howard-oriented material. No fluff. Lots of minutiae and obscure stuff. Not long after, he joined the Robert E. Howard United Press Association. REHupa has long been a launching-pad for Howard scholars. Rusty Burke, Leo Grin and Steve Tompkins all first showed up on the Howardian radar after joining REHupa.

Mr. Oliver became famous for his big/huge 'zines' for REHupa. They would range from twenty to forty pages, sometimes more. All of it laid the groundwork for his REH bio. I finally met Will at Howard Days 2022 and 2023. Great guy.

So, how is the book?

Wellll...that's the thing. I have buddies who are Howard scholars. Good men and Howardians of note like Brian Murphy, John Bullard and Jim Cornelius. All of them have beaten me to the punch on this. That's fine. I've landed some early punches elsewhere and elsewhen. None of them agree with me on everything, but we tend to be on the same page. So, what I'm going to do is link to their reviews and add some commentary, rather than just reiterating points they've already made.

Brian Murphy fired the first salvo in early May. He states this:

'Oliver’s biography is not a middle ground between [de Camp’s Dark Valley Destiny] and [Finn’s Blood & Thunder] but instead cuts a new channel—scholarly biography, as exhaustively researched as DVD and as fair as Finn’s reappraisal. It’s a substantial book, more than 500 pages counting references and works cited. The heart of the book is Oliver’s theory that Howard’s desire for personal freedom was the motivating force of his life and writing career, perhaps the apex in his personal hierarchy of values: “I have but a single conviction or ideal, or whateverthehell it might be called: individual liberty. It's the only thing that matters a damn” (letter to H.P. Lovecraft, 1932).'

I totally agree with this. Other REH commenters, like Roy Krenkel and Leo Grin, pointed this out long ago. Howard was willfully independent in many ways. He would often portray himself as a liminal figure, an Outsider on the edge of civilization.

"Following are some of the details and bits I enjoyed, either because they're well-presented, interesting, and/or new (to me).
(...)
There is some great material here on Howard the poet—his love of verse, his early sales, and being one of the most prolific poets in WT history. Howard’s poetry even received rare praise from mercurial Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright. Fans often forget this or overlook his wonderful poems."

REH hardly ever gets his due as a poet. Easily one of the great American poets, in my estimation.

"New to me; Howard’s deliberate construction and cultivation of an Irish identify (pp. 197-198); I knew about his strong Gaelic interests but not how far he adopted them into his own life—singing old Irish songs, Gaelicizing his middle name, etc."

This has been known in Howard circles for a long time—Glenn Lord didn’t name The Last Celt ‘The Last Celt’ for nothing—but has been downplayed by some REH scholars. Bob tried to teach himself Gaelic. Most of his heroes--from Kull to Cormac Mac Art to Conan--had Celtic elements. "Conan" is an ancient Gaelic/Celtic name. "Costigan" is an Irish Gaelic surname.

"Howard getting half-checks from a struggling Weird Tales before these too ceased due to the magazine’s financial woes (p. 412). If I had read before that WT was cutting Howard half-checks with the promise to pay the rest later if so I had forgotten this detail."

As before, this is something known for a long time. At Howard Days 2006, Don Herron hammered that fact into my brain, pointing out that REH hated Farnsworth Wright by the time Bob died. Haefele also delved deeply into Wright's reindeer games in Lovecraft: The Great Tales.

John Bullard posted his review at Adventures Fantastic on June 2. According to him, he actually wrote it almost a month earlier, but there were complications.

"Before this new biography appeared, if you wanted to know anything about Robert E. Howard, you really only had four major biographies to turn to: Dark Valley Destiny by L. Sprague de Camp et al., “A Short Biography of Robert E. Howard,” by Rusty Burke, Blood & Thunder The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, by Mark Finn, and Renegades & Rogues The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard, by Todd Vick. I found each one to be acceptable for some aspect of Howard’s life—Rusty’s was the go-to for a concise bio, Mark’s was great for a better, fuller look at Howard’s life and influences on his writings, Todd’s was most useful for a clear and concise timeline of Howard’s life, and de Camp’s was of interest only to read the interviews of the people that knew Howard and his family while ignoring most of de Camp’s amateur psycho-analyzing and attempts at passive-aggressive character assassination of Howard.
Now, with Will’s voluminous book, you get the best parts from all four previous biographies with additional new insights and thoughts about Howard and his life by Will and other Howard scholars since those biographies were written. It is now my go-to book for any biographical information and writing information on Howard as it has just about everything I will need or want."

I'm very much onboard with this evaluation of Mr. Oliver's book. Will has downplayed or bypassed most of the bad points of the previous REH bios.

'So at this point, you may be thinking “That all sounds great, but here’s the big question for you, Mr. Reviewer: is this 470+ page beast of a text easy on the reader? Will a non-academician, non-REH Scholar, average Joe Q. Public person who has a slight interest in learning about Robert E. Howard find the book an interesting, rewarding, easy read?” In answer to that, I will say, in general, “Yes”. (...)

However, if you really want to learn as much as you can about what is known about Howard’s life and writings, then this is the book for you. Will’s writing style is not that of your average professor with the big, dry, sleep-inducing sesquipedalian wordage. He keeps it at about high school level, and his constantly using Howard’s own words wherever possible to illustrate his points, as well as the statements by friends and acquaintances, keeps you learning as you read.'

Once again, I think that John pretty much nails this. Will writes with a good, readable style. While this bio is from an academic press (Sam Houston University), he keeps the Eurobabble and sesquipedalian jargon to a minimum. That is not as easy a feat as some might think within such a venue. Oliver keeps it real and sane.

Finally there is Jim Cornelius' review. Jim's view on REH has always been a bit different from most, coming more from the 'Wild West/frontier' angle. I sorta hit 'im up to write this for Howard's death-day, thinking that I would post my review on the same day. The cyber-gods laughed at my fragile mortal schemes. Jim's post went up, but my attempts were futile.

"It took a little while for my indie book store to get this scholarly tome into my hands, and I didn’t intend to delve in immediately, as my attention has been elsewhere. But perusing it proved a dangerous dalliance — I was soon swept into the current and ended up reading the whole thing. All 473 pages of it (plus notes). Like I said, it’s a scholarly biography. But, obviously, it is a helluva read, too. Oliver writes with such deep understanding and empathy for his subject, that it renders the ultimately tragic story of a creative but tormented man accessible even to those who are not as deeply invested in Howardiana as so many of us are."

Indeed. Oliver has delivered a biography that REH novices can access which also offers new insights/info to hardcore scholars.

"Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author is one damned fine piece of work. If you are at all interested in the life and works of REH, pick it up. And raise a horn to Will Oliver, who has given us a chronicle that will stand until the mountains crumble and the oceans once again drink our civilization."

Strong stuff!

As I've said elsewhere, I'm doubtful that any one biography can encompass all that Bob Howard was as a person and also convey all the facets of his prose and poetry. If so, I think it would have to be twice the length of Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author. As it is, I would say Will Oliver's new book more than suffices until that hypothetical tome ever sees the light of day.

Raise your mead-horns high, sword-brothers, and salute a truly worthy book devoted to the life and works of the immortal Robert E. Howard.