3: The Junto
I feel that it gave Bob a specialized,
intimate, if small, sort of audience that he need. Most of its readers were
rebellious young intellectuals in that epoch of the depression. Bob’s fire and
spirit symbolized all sorts of protests—expressed and inchoate—that we felt,
though only in a very limited sense was he any kind of political rebel nor at
all any sort of slogan shouter or cliche monger. (BT 177)
After graduating from Howard Payne, Robert E. Howard was
drawn into a new amateur press association created by his friends Harold Preece
and Booth Mooney, both ex-Lone Scouts, which they had cooked up after a meeting
in San Antonio. They called the venture The Junto,
after Benjamin Franklin’s paper; contributors would send their material to the
editor (initially Mooney), who would prepare a single typewritten copy that
would be circulated to each the first member on the mailing list, who would add
their comments and send it to the next, and so on. Contributors included Harold
Preece and his sisters Lenore, Katherine, and Louise; Booth Mooney and his
brother Orus; Robert E. Howard and his cousin Maxine Ervin; Tevis Clyde Smith,
Truett Vinson, Herbert Klatt, and others. (BT
129, TJ 22) Given the circulation
system, the fact that so few “issues” of the Junto survive should not be surprising.
 |
| The Junto Vol. 1 No. 7 Image supplied by Howardworks.com |
The contents of the Junto
included poems, fiction, essays, sketches, and rants—the typical
bread-and-butter for any APA—with subjects including women, politics, and
religion, all of, which served as fodder for Howard’s growing correspondence
with various members of the Junto gang.
Howard recruited Smith (“I’m going to
give your name to Booth Mooney as a possible subscriber to The Junto; a pretty good paper for that type.” CL1.190; see also “A Pretty Good Paper” - The Junto, Part 1),
was glad to see things by his friends in an issue (CL1.219, 231), and was disappointed when they didn’t (CL1.197, 231, 247-248). It also proved
an occasional source of argument.
One of the early controversies involved “One of the Hell
Bent Speaks” signed by “A Modern Youth” (A.M.Y.), in the October 1928 issue
(vol. 1, no. 7). This fostered a great response from the Juntites, with Howard himself stirring the pot (CL1.231, 239-40, 244, 253; Rob Roehm
goes into greater detail of the affair in “A Pretty Good Paper” - The Junto, Part 2 and Part 3). In one issue, the Junto gang had decided to have some fun
writing each other’s biographies, but Bob wrote to Clyde Smith begging off:
I have forgotten whether you or Truett
were to write my biography but at any rate I’ve decided I don’t care to have
mine appear in the Junto. There are
several reasons, the main one being that as several of my cousins receive it,
my mother would be pretty near bound to hear about it and there are a good many
things in my life that I don’t want her to know about. Another thing, I don’t
care to have my inner self bared before the readers of the Junto because I have decided that some of them are crumbs.
Understand, you have my permission to write anything you want about me in a
novel, biography or anything that comes under the title of professional art,
and that you will get money for, but I don’t wish to drop my mask before the Junto readers as I have dropped it
before you and Truett. (CL3.487)
This was probably in reference to Mooney’s call for
autobiographies from the Juntites.
(see “A Pretty Good Paper” - Part 3 and Part 4). Lesser arguments concerned a
“pornographic” turn—apparently James S. Strachan included a study of a “naked
negress” (CL1.355, Part 5).
The Junto continued under Mooney’s editorship from April 1928 to spring
1929, when he no longer had time for it, and the position was picked up by
Lenore Preece. (TJ 22-23, Part 6)
The first issue under Preece’s editorship was to have been
the June 1929 number (vol. 2, no. 1), but a new Juntite lost the issue (and was quickly expelled), so the first
proper issue of her run was July 1929. (TJ
23) This issue included Harold Preece’s article “Women: A Diatribe,” about
how there was no such thing as intellectual women; it was designed to get a
rise out of Bob Howard—Bob and Harold had been arguing about the same subject
in his letters (CL1.287-292)—and
apparently worked. (BT 176-177, Part 7)
By spring 1930, reports of the Junto were fewer in Howard’s letters (CL2.17, 30), and apparently feedback from the Juntites was poor, so Preece decided to discontinue the paper. (TJ 23-24) For the nature of its
composition and the period in which it was published, the Junto had provided a valuable resource for Howard, not so much in
refining his prose or poetry, or even as a creative outlet, but simply for the
connection with a wider group of writers, even amateurs, which provided him
much-needed encouragement, criticism, and companionship.
The final echo of the Junto
saga was a proposal by Juntite Alvin
P. Bradford to self-publish a small collection of their poetry, under the
proposed title Virgin Towers. (TJ 24, CL2.195) Howard sent Bradford copies of his poems, but ultimately
nothing came of the endeavor. (CL2.198)
In 1932, Lenore Preece, Clyde Smith, and Robert E. Howard approached
Christopher House to publish a collection of poems to be titled Out of the Sky, but asked for the return
of the manuscript. (SFTP xxvi, CL2.245)
As the business with The
Junto wound down, however, Howard
began to correspond with someone who would bring him into touch with the
burgeoning fan press for science fiction and fantasy: H. P. Lovecraft. In an
early letter to Lovecraft, who had responded positively to one of Howard’s
poems, Bob modestly replied:
I am glad you liked “Reuben’s
Brethren”. It has never been published save in a small privately circulated
paper. (CL2.126)
The original publication for “Reuben’s Brethren” was The Junto as “The Skull in the Clouds.”
The Junto (not counting comments by Robert E. Howard):
The Junto (vol. 1, no. 6) - Sep 1928 - “Age”, “Surrender--Your
Money or Your Vice”, “Them”
The Junto (vol. 1, no. 7) - Oct 1928 - “A Hairy Chested Idealist
Sings”, “More Evidence on the Innate Divinity of Man”
The Junto (vol. 1, no. 8) - Nov 1928 - “To A Man Whose Name I Never
Knew”, “Swings and Swings”
The Junto (vol. 1, no. 9) - Dec 1928 - “A Song For Men That Laugh”,
“To the Evangelists”, “The Galveston Affair”
The Junto (vol. 1, no. 10) - Jan 1929 - “Ambition in the Moonlight”
The Junto (vol. 2, no. 2) - Jul 1929 - “Hate’s Den”, “The King and
the Mallet”, “Singing in the Wind”
The Junto (vol. 2, no. 3) - Aug 1929 - “Heritage”, “Surrender”
The Junto (vol. 2, no. 4) - Sep 1929 - “Nectar”, “Etched in Ebony”,
“Midnight”, “Sentiment”, “Musings”
The Junto (vol. 2, no. 8) - Jan 1930 - “The Skull in the Clouds”
The Junto (vol. 2, no. 9) - Feb 1930 - "Feach Air Muir
Lionadhi Gealach Buidhe Mar Or"
_______________________
Works Cited
AMTF A
Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2
vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)
BT Blood
& Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)
CL Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3
vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)
CLIH Collected
Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)
HAJ The
History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)
LC The
Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)
LRBO Letters
to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)
LRS Letters
to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)
LS “Robert
E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)
LSL Lone
Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)
PWM Robert
E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)
SFTP So
Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)
THA The
Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)
TJ “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the
Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn
Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study
of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)
UL Uncollected
Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)
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