Editing Robert E. Howard (section)

===Criticism===
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|quote     = Although he had his faults as a writer, Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unmatched for vivid, gripping, headlong action&nbsp;... In fiction, the difference between a writer who is a natural storyteller and one who is not is like the difference between a boat that will float and one that will not. If the writer has this quality, we can forgive many other faults; if not, no other virtue can make up for the lack, any more than gleaming paint and sparkling brass on a boat make up for the fact that it will not float.
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|source    =—[[L. Sprague de Camp]], ''[[Conan of the Isles]]'', "Introduction", 1968
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Criticism of Robert E. Howard and his work often turns towards biographical details and "backhanded {{nowrap|compliment[s]."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Finn|2006|p=234}}</ref>}} Some imply that Howard was an uneducated [[Savant syndrome|idiot savant]] and that his success was due more to luck than skill.<ref name="Roehm 2007 5">{{Harvtxt|Roehm|2007|p=5}}</ref>

The first professional critic to comment on Howard's work was [[Hoffman Reynolds Hays]], reviewing the [[Arkham House]] collection ''[[Skull-Face and Others]]'' in ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]''.  Under the title "Superman on a Psychotic Bender", Hays wrote, "Howard used a good deal of the Lovecraft cosmogony and demonology, but his own contribution was a sadistic conqueror who, when cracking heads did not solve his difficulties, had recourse to magic and the aid of Lovecraft's Elder Gods. The stories are written on a competent pulp level (a higher level, by the way, than that of some best sellers) and are allied to the Superman genre which pours forth in countless comic books and radio serials."<ref name="Finn 2006 233–234">{{Harvtxt|Finn|2006|pp=233–234}}</ref> Hays then moved on to Howard himself and the genre in which he wrote:

{{blockquote|A sensitive boy, he was apparently bullied by his schoolmates. ... Howard's heroes were consequently wish-projections of himself.  All of the frustrations of his own life were conquered in a dream world of magic and heroic carnage.  In exactly the same way [[Superman]] compensates for all the bewilderment and frustration in which the semi-literate product of the Industrial age finds himself enmeshed. The problem of evil is solved by an impossibly omnipotent hero. ... Thus the hero-literature of the pulps and the comics is symptomatic of a profound contradiction.  On the one hand it is testimony to insecurity and apprehension, and on the other it is a degraded echo of the [[epic poetry|epic]].  But the ancient hero story was a glorification of significant elements in the culture that produced it.  Mr. Howard's heroes project the immature fantasy of a split mind and logically pave the way to schizophrenia.<ref name="Finn 2006 233–234" />}}

In a review of [[Michel Houellebecq]]'s essay "H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" published in the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', April 17, 2005, [[Stephen King]] implies that Howard did not work at his craft and was merely [[wikt:pastiche|pastiching]] [[H. P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]].<ref name="Roehm 2007 5" /> King described his disapproval of the [[sword and sorcery]] genre, and [[superhero]]es, in his book on writing ''[[Danse Macabre (King book)|Danse Macabre]]'': "[It] is not fantasy at its lowest, but it still has a pretty tacky feel. ... Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless. The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his potbelly miraculously gone, his slack muscles magically transmuted into those "iron thews" which have been sung and storied in the pulps for the last fifty years."<ref name="King 2010 204">{{Harvtxt|King|2010|p=204}}</ref>  On Howard in particular, he wrote:

{{blockquote|Howard overcame the limitations of his puerile material by the force and fury of his writing and by his imagination, which was powerful beyond his hero Conan's wildest dreams of power. In his best work, Howard's writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks. Stories such as "[[The People of the Black Circle]]" glow with the fierce and eldritch light of his frenzied intensity. At his best, Howard was the Thomas Wolfe of fantasy, and most of his Conan tales seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out. Yet his other work was either unremarkable or just abysmal.<ref name="King 2010 204" />}}

An exception to this, in King's opinion (again from ''[[Danse Macabre (King book)|Danse Macabre]]''), was the author's Southern Gothic horror story "Pigeons From Hell". King referred to this work as "one of the finest horror stories of our century."

In the foreword to "Two-Gun Bob", a collection of essays on the subject of Howard, fellow fantasy fiction writer, [[Michael Moorcock]], wrote: "The ability to paint a complex scene with a few expert brushstrokes remains Howard's greatest talent, and such talent can't, of course, ever be taught."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Moorcock|2006|p=9}}</ref>  Howard scholar Rob Roehm considers the use of the phrase "can't ever be taught" to be a variation on the recurrent theme of Howard's lack of skill or training.<ref name="Roehm 2007 5" />  Moorcock's foreword goes on "[Howard's] greatest hero, Conan the Barbarian, is his best, created from whole cloth, with a nod to [[Natty Bumppo]] and [[Tarzan|Tarzan of the Apes]], and most closely representing the kind of person Howard, home-bound, mother-worshipping, suspicious of big cities, would in his dreams most like to be."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Moorcock|2006|pp=9–10}}</ref>  Roehm counters that none of the assertions made about Howard in that comment are true, although none of them are unique to Moorcock either.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Roehm|2007|p=6}}</ref>  In ''Wizardry & Wild Romance'', Moorcock has also written both that Howard "brought a brash, tough element to the epic fantasy that did as much to change the course of the American school away from previous writing and static imagery as [[Dashiell Hammett|Hammett]], [[Raymond Chandler|Chandler]] and the ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]]'' pulp writers were to change the course of the American detective fiction" and that he "was never a commercially successful writer in his lifetime. His brash, hasty, careless style did not lend itself to the classier pulps. Most of his work appeared in the cheapest of them."<ref>{{Harvtxt|Roehm|2007|pp=5–7}}</ref>