Conan and the Acolyte: Robert E. Howard and F. T. Laney by Bobby Derie

I had previously read the January or February 193[7] WT with a Rimel story in it, and had been utterly unimpressed.— F. T. Laney, Ah, Sweet Idiocy! 2

Weird Tales, Jan. 1937

Duane W. Rimel’s story “The Disinterment” appeared in the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales; if Francis Towner Laney read the magazine through to ‘The Eyrie’, the letters pages of the magazine, he would have run across Clifford Ball’s “In Appreciation of Howard”—an homage to Robert E. Howard, the Texan pulpster who had died the year before. That would likely have been his first introduction to Howard.

F. T. Laney occupies an odd place in Howard scholarship. He missed the period when Howard was actively writing and didn’t come to pulp and fantasy fandom until about 1939. He rose to prominence in the early-to-mid 1940s as a member of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA), and as editor and publisher of The Acolyte fanzine (1942-1946), which was devoted primarily to H. P. Lovecraft. Yet being where he was when he was, and a vocal part of fandom, Laney ended up being at the confluence of a good deal of Howardian interest and ended up playing a silent but important role in Robert E. Howard’s legacy.

In the course of being an editor of a Lovecraft-oriented fanzine and searching out material, Laney came into contact with a number of Lovecraft’s correspondents, including Clark Ashton Smith, Duane W. Rimel, F. Lee Baldwin, Emil Petaja, Fritz Leiber, H. C. Koenig, Nils H. Frome, R. H. Barlow, August Derleth, Donald and Howard Wandrei, F. J. Ackerman, E. Hoffmann Price, and Stuart M. Boland; many of whom were also correspondents with Robert E. Howard, and it was largely through these contacts that Laney became in contact with things Howardian.

Laney got in touch with F. Lee Baldwin through their mutual friend Duane W. Rimel, and beginning in December 1942 Baldwin began working on material for The Acolyte, both in terms of a regular column (“Within the Circle,” a continuation of Baldwin’s column from The Fantasy Fan in the ‘30s), and writing to former pulpsters and their correspondents for material. (Laney 13) As part of this mailing campaign, in early 1943 Baldwin contacted Robert E. Howard’s friend F. Thurston Torbett, looking for information on Howard for a potential article, which can be read in F. Thurston Torbett and F. Lee Baldwin on Robert E. Howard. The correspondence stretched into 1944, and Baldwin’s article on Howard never appeared, nor did he mention the Texan in any of his other articles in The Acolyte.

CAS, Laney, & Bob Hoffman, circa 1940s

In November 1943, Laney moved to Los Angeles, California, where he met pulpsters like Emil Petaja and Fritz Leiber, and fans like Forrest J. Ackerman. Robert H. Barlow, the young literary executor of Lovecraft’s estate, had moved to San Francisco in 1938-1939, where he began attending university and indulging in fan projects, including one small press-effort to publish a collection of Robert E. Howard’s poems. Barlow began contributing to The Acolyte with the Summer 1943 issue, though his only direct contribution regarding Howard would be the Barlow-Lovecraft satire “The Battle That Ended the Century” (The Acolyte Fall 1944); more on Barlow and Howard’s can be read in The Two Bobs: Robert E. Howard and Robert H. Barlow.

E. Hoffmann Price had returned to his native California in 1934, stopping along the way to visit Robert E. Howard in Cross Plains, Texas, and settling near San Francisco. He became a friend and correspondent with Barlow; who even visited Price accompanied by an aged James F. Morton in 1939. (BOD 53, 355-357) It is not clear when exactly Laney got in touch with the native Californian but a letter from Price to Laney, dated 22 July 1944, on the subject of Robert E. Howard, was published in The Acolyte #9 (Winter 1945). This may have been inspired by Price’s essay “Robert E. Howard” in the fanzine Diablerie #4 (May 1944), as Laney was a friend of the publisher Bill Watson (Laney 31), or maybe it came from the same place as F. Lee Baldwin’s questions to F. Thurston Torbett.

Whatever the case, Price began contributing letters to The Acolyte, beginning with The Acolyte #7, then the letter concerning Howard in #9, and letter in #10 (Spring 1945) announcing the death of Dr. Isaac M. Howard:

Conan and the OAK, Part 5 - 1936 - 1946 by Bobby Derie

A week before [Robert E. Howard] killed himself, he wrote to Otis Adelbert Kline (his literary agent except for sales to Weird Tales): “In the event of my death, please send all checks for me to my father, Dr. I M. Howard.” His father found two stories on which he had typewritten: “In the event of my death, send these two stories to Farnsworth Wright, Editor of Weird Tales, 840 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago.” (IMH 84)

Robert E. Howard had made preparations for his death; Kline confirmed in a letter to Carl Jacobi that:

About three weeks ago he wrote me a letter saying that, in case of his death I should get in touch with his father. (IMH 68)

Kline’s letter is praiseworthy, both of Howard's and Kline’s ability to market him, noting that despite caring for his dying mother, Howard “has been doing a lot of brilliant writing, and we have opened a number of new markets for him with character-continuity series.” (IMH 68)

As a client from May 1933 to July 1936 (38 months), Robert E. Howard had cleared at least $2150 through Kline’s sales—and almost assuredly more, when you consider the stories that don’t appear in the ledger or Otto Binder’s commissions list. The Kline agency for its part probably cleared about $250-300 in commissions (at least the standard 10% of Howard’s sales, possibly 15% for sales before 1935). By the numbers, this wouldn’t make Howard the Kline agency’s best client; in 1936 John Scott Douglas “was good for at least thirty to forty dollars a month commissions in New York alone.” (OAK 16.1) However, Kline also stated that:

I send back for keeps approximately 80% of the material I receive [...] Of the other twenty per cent, I accept perhaps a fourth, and sometimes as high as a half, depending on how the stuff runs. The balance is returned to the writers for revision, some if [sic] it again and again, until they have done as well as they can do with it. Only then is it put on offer, and of course not all of it goes to New York. Some goes to Canada, England or other foreign countries. I select the markets to which it seems best suited. (OAK 16.2)

By this standard, at least, Howard seems to have been ahead of the pack: the only story Kline is known to have sent back without trying it on the market was “Wild Water” (IMH 19), and while Kline initially struggled to market Howard’s fiction, and advised him on revising his work and breaking into new markets, as the years went on Kline was selling a greater and greater percentage of the work that Howard sent him; Binder’s commissions list for the New York end of the business in 1935 lists more commissions from sales of the Texan’s work than any other client. (OAK 5.18) If Howard was not Kline’s best client, he was at least a steady one, and an appreciative one, as Kline uses a statement from Howard in the brochure for his United Sales Plan:

Conan and the OAK, Part 4 - 1936 by Bobby Derie

1936 brought a few ruffles to the Kline-Howard relationship, beginning with a letter from Howard to agent August Lenniger, dated 27 December 1935:

I have received your letter of the 17th, and read it with much interest, together with the literature that accompanied it. Mr. Otis Adelbert Kline handles most of my work, and I have no reason to be dissatisfied with him. However, there’s no harm in having more than one string to a bow, as in the case of my friend, Ed Price, who does business with both yourself and Mr. Kline, and seems to be doing very well indeed. I notice that in your ad in the December issue of the [Author & Journalist] you state that, in the case of a professional who has sold $1,000 worth of stuff within the last year, you will waive reading fees and handle his work on straight commission. Well, I sold considerably more than a thousand dollars worth of stories. If you are willing to handle my work on a straight commission basis, I’ll be glad to send you some yarns and let you see what you can do with them. Of your ability as an agent there is of course no question. As to my yarns, I write westerns, adventure, fantasy, sport, and occasionally detective. I have been a contributor to Weird Tales for eleven years, and a 70,000 word novel, The Hour of the Dragon is at present running in that magazine as a serial. Action Stories is running a series of humorous western shorts, one of these stories having appeared in every issues of the magazine for about two years now. In the past few months I have made three new markets, Western Aces, Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Adventures. In addition to the magazines above mentioned my work has appeared in Ghost Stories, Argosy, Fight Stories, Oriental Stories, Sport Stories, Thrilling Adventures, Texaco Star, The Ring, Strange Detective, Super-Detective, Strange Tales, Frontier Times and Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine. (CL 3.395-396)

Western Aces
October 1935

Gus Lenniger was, strictly speaking, Kline’s competition, although the two were on friendly terms, and by unusual circumstances shared a client in E. Hoffmann Price, whose situation combined with the non-exclusive nature of Howard’s agreement with Kline probably precipitated the confusion. As Price tells it, he had Lenniger as his agent, but wasn’t getting sales, so:

I wrote Otis, and sent him a novelette with which Lenniger had no luck whatsoever. All I expected, in my ignorance, was some advice which I could utilize. After all, Otis and I had drunk from the same barrel. He suggested a revision, and a second revision, and then, a substantial cut. It was only then that I learned about his agency business. As a friend, he was giving me a hand. He was not looking for another client. He never once suggested that I dump August Lenniger. He took my much revised script, sold it, and also, a short story which had got nowhere. Each salvage operation was in the crime field. And then, August Lenniger got his stride. I had never had any cause for complaint. That it had taken him awhile to express himself in terms meaningful to me was natural. [...] Stories for Kline went to him as “Hamlin Daly” yarns. My “official” agent got E. Hoffmann Price stuff. Oddly, each sold to publishers which the other was not selling. An arrangement of this sort could not, and of course, should not last long. It did not. (BOD 33)

Kline had a slightly different take on events, in a letter to Otto Binder dated 14 May 1936:

I really gave Price his start in the detective story field. When he wanted to branch out he came to me, and at that time I told him I was busy with my own writing and didn’t want to take on anymore clients. I recommended Lenniger. He sent him four or five novelettes and a bunch of shorts, and Lenniger didn’t sell a damn thing for him over a period of six months. He then asked me if I would check up and see what was wrong for him. I agreed to do so, and he wrote Lenniger for a couple of the novelettes. He revised them under my directions, and I sould them right off the bat to Dell for 1 ¼ ¢ a word. He then wrote for some more, and during that six months period I sold, all told, five novelettes which Lenniger had been unable to sell because he didn’t demand revisions, and three or four short stories. With all all of these sales editors began to notice Price’s name, and Lenniger began to sit up and take notice. He sold a short story for Price, and started going around to editorial offices trying to get assignments. Then he sold a novelette, and some other stuff, and kept getting Price more assignments. In spite of that fact, I solde twice as much for Price over the period of a year as did Lenniger. I continued this record for another year. [...] Lenniger,  however, kept boring in, using the assignment method. He kept contacting new editors, asking for assignments for Price. Then he would wire or airmail Price, and naturally he wouldn’t turn down any orders for stories if he could possibly dill them, on the “bird in the hand” theory. This ran down my stock of Price stories, and of course ran down my sales. I got him the Pawang Ali assignment from Tremain, and if I had been in New York regularly could have gotten him a lot of others and beaten Lenniger at his own game. As it is, he is cashing in on a man I trained for the work, and the only way I can beat him is through the New York end. (OAK 16.6-7)

Howard had also dealt with Lenniger briefly in 1933, when Lenniger, Price, and Kirk Mashburn had the idea for an anthology that never materialized. (CL2.240; 3.14, 41) The extent to which Howard intended to use Lenniger as an agent isn’t clear, but the issue was further complicated by a letter from Howard to William Kofoed, dated 8 Jan 1936:

Conan and the OAK, Part 3 - 1935 by Bobby Derie

1935 began with a letter from Kline to Howard, dated 28 Jan 1935; Leo Margulies rejected a synopsis for “The Silver Heel,” a Steve Harrison detective story, and Kline suggested they might try it on Roy Horn’s Two-Book Detective Magazine; though if they did, nothing came of it. (IMH 23) Kline gave a few of the Dorgan rewrites to his employee Miller to market, without apparent success. (IMH 369) Then on 13 May 1935 there was a letter from Howard to Kline:

I’m writing this to ask for some information in regard to Weird Tales. As you know, for some time I’ve had a story in almost every issue. One of those yarns you sold Wright, yourself, “The Grisly Horror,” you remember. The others I sold him direct. For over a year, as I remember, I’ve received just half a check each month — just barely enough to keep me alive, but I didn’t kick, because I knew times were hard, and I believed Wright was doing his best to pay me. But this month there was no check forthcoming — and this check would have been much bigger than any check I’ve gotten for a long time from Weird Tales. I wrote Wright, telling him the trouble I’d been in, and explaining my desperate need for money, and up to now he’s coolly ignored my letter. No check — and not the slightest word of explanation. The case is simple enough: Weird Tales owes me over $800, some of it for stories published six months ago. I’m pinching pennies and wearing rags, while my stories are being published, used and exploited. I believe Wright could pay me every cent he owes me, if he wanted to. But now, when I need money worse than I ever needed it in my life before, he refuses to pay me anything, and ignores a letter in which I beg him to pay me even a fraction of the full amount. What’s his game, anyway? Is Weird Tales still a legitimate publication, or has it become a racket? Of course, anything you tell me will be treated as confidential, just as I expect this letter to be treated. I don’t want to cause anybody any trouble or inconvenience. But Weird Tales owes me something like $860 and naturally I want to learn, if I can, if there’s any chance of ever getting paid. (CL 3.308-309)

Howard wasn’t alone; the Great Depression hit Weird Tales and the other pulps hard, and there was likely nothing Kline could do, except tell Howard he wasn’t alone—Kline himself was still selling stories to WT, including the serial “Lord of the Lamia” (Mar-Apr-May 1935). Whatever Kline’s response, Howard appeared to find it acceptable, as he wrote to Emil Petaja:

I have found him very satisfactory in every way, and do not hesitate to recommend him. (CL 3.369)

One of the selling points of Kline’s agency was foreign sales, and in 1935 it appears, after a good-faith effort to move stories in the United States, he tried to place them in Canada or the United Kingdom; Howard already having had a few stories published in the UK Not at Night anthologies before Kline became his agent. The stories included the Dorgan yarns, “Swords of the Hills,” “A Gent From Bear Creek,”  “The Voice of Death,” “The Names in the Black Book,” “The Grisly Horror,” as well as “Hawks of Outremer,” “Jewels of Gwahlur,” “Beyond the Black River,” “A Witch Shall Be Born,” and “Red Blades of Black Cathay,” (a collaboration with Tevis Clyde Smith). (IMH 358, 360, 362-363, 364-365, 366, 367, 369-370, 371) None of these stories sold in foreign markets, but Howard had also prepared a stitch-up novel of his Breckinridge Elkins stories, and Kline wrote in a letter dated 8 Oct 1935:

I recently had an inquiry from an English publisher on four Western novels submitted to him some time ago. It has occurred to me that it might be well to offer than a carbon copy of your novel A Gent from Bear Creek. The American publisher who is considering the original has not yet reported. (IMH 31)

Kline also encouraged Howard, like E. Hoffmann Price, to “splash the spicies.” Edited by Frank Armer (of Strange Detective and Super-Detective Stories), this was a fresh market for Howard. Kline wrote of the spicies:

Your story “The Girl on the Hell Ship” seems to be pretty close to what Frank Armer wants for Spicy Adventures, although it may not be quite hot enough for that book. However, I am trying it on Armer and will let you know his reaction. Price has done quite well writing for this magazine, as well as Spicy Detective. Perhaps he could give you some good tips on this sort of thing if you are interested in following up. Armer paid Price 1¢ a word for these yarns on acceptance. [...] No, I don’t think anyone has any prejudice against your name; however, I do think it wise for you to use a pen name on sexy adventure stories since you are identified with the straight adventure and Western field under your own name. (IMH 31-32, OAK 1.4-5)

Howard successfully broke into with “She-Devil” under the title “The Girl on the Hell Ship,” as by “Sam Walser,” which appeared in Spicy Adventure Stories Jan 1936. (IMH 371) With good news often came bad: Wright reported that Magic Carpet Magazine was definitely defunct, and would returned the unpublished Sailor Dorgan yarns, and Margulies rejected “The Trail of the Bloodstained God” for Thrilling Adventures, with Kline reporting:

Margulies recently wrote me that he would not use chronicles of violent action, unless adequate attention was given to plot conflict, motivation and character reaction. The theme of jewels, or treasure secreted in an idol, jewel decorations for idols and idols with jewel eyes has been done over and over so much editors are beginning to tire of it. I have received a number of stories of this sort—some of them quite good—and have been unable to place them because of editorial objections to this theme. The story also is an odd length for many magazines, as it is neither a short story nor a novelette. However, I’ll show it around—perhaps we can place it to your advantage somewhere. (IMH 32, OAK 1.4-5)

Magic Carpet
July 1933

On the surface, 1935 was not the best year for Howard; by the ledger (and Kline’s letter of 8 Oct 1935), Kline had managed to sell only “Black Canaan” ($108.00), “The Last Ride” (a collaboration with Robert Enders Allen, $78.75), “War on Bear Creek” ($54.00), “Weary Pilgrims on the Road” ($54.00), and “The Girl on the Hell Ship” ($48.60) for a total of $343.35 after commissions. (IMH 367-371) However, the ledger does not include all of Howard’s stories that were published that year outside WT, including “The Haunted Mountain,” “Hawk of the Hills,” “The Feud Buster,” “Blood of the Gods,” “The Cupid from Bear Creek,” “The Riot at Cougar Paw,” “Boot Hill Payoff,” or “The Apache Mountain War” so the total was undoubtedly higher—Howard probably cleared closer to $600 through Kline’s agency in 1935.

Part 1, Part 2
________________________

Works Cited

BOD    Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda)

CS       The Conan Swordbook

FI         Fists of Iron (4 vols.)

IMH     The Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard

MF       A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E.                                Howard (2 vols)

OAK    OAK Leaves: The Official Journal of Otis Adelbert Kline (16 issues)

WT50  WT50: A Tribute to Weird Tales

Conan and the OAK, Part 2 - 1934 by Bobby Derie

Super-Detective Stories
May 1934

In 1934, Kline’s agency would still be busy trying to move Howard’s fiction, and Howard for his part wasn’t slowing down his production. In December 1933 Howard sent Kline “A Gent from Bear Creek” and “The Daughter of Erlik Khan,” both of which sold in 1934; so too did “A Stranger in Grizzly Claw” and “The Names in the Black Book” (a Steve Harrison tale and the sequel to “Lord of the Dead,” accepted for Super-Detective Stories, the successor to Strange Detective Series). (IMH 364-365) The novelette “Swords of Shahrazar” was initially rejected, but Kline returned it to Howard with advice to rewrite it in a letter dated 21 Feb 1934:

Start the story by introducing your chief character and his major problem, and of course setting the scene. Make the action pop right from the start, and keep it popping. Forget that a story went before, and make this story a unit that stands by itself. I’m not telling you all this because it coincides with my own taste, but because it seems to be what [Leo] Margulies wants. And he’s the boy who O.K’s the checks. (IMH 20-21, OAK 10.11)

Howard did rewrite the story, and it did sell, though Margulies still felt it too long, and Kline clued Howard in to the hard limits on word counts among different markets in a letter dated 30 Apr 1934. (IMH 21-22, OAK 10.11-12)

There are no more letters from Kline to Howard or vice versa in 1934, but something of their business can be reconstructed from from the account-book. The Breckinridge Elkins stories (“The Road to Bear Creek,” “War on Bear Creek,” “A Man-Eating Jeopard”) were selling well to Action Stories; the exception, “A Elkins Never Surrenders” was reworked as “A Elston to the Rescue” and eventually sold. The weird detective and terror tales yarns fared worse: “Sons of Hate,” “The Moon of Zambebwei,” “The Black Hound of Death,” “Black Canaan,” and “Pigeons from Hell” were all rejected, though Kline managed to sell “The Moon of Zambebwei” to Weird Tales, where it appeared as “The Grisly Horror” in the Feb 1935 issue—though the agreement between Howard and Kline allowed Howard to submit stories to WT on his own (and thus not pay Kline a commission), the strategy at least got a sale; Kline would repeat the practice with decent results for some of Howard’s other rejected weird terror stories, including “Black Hound of Death” and “Black Canaan.” (IMH 365-369)

Weird Tales
January 1934

Sometime in spring 1934 (“Alleys of Darkness” was published in the Jan 1934 WT and was paid for in June), Kline must have made the suggestion that Howard change several of the Steve Costigan stories to Dennis Dorgan stories, as he had done with “Alleys of Darkness.” The boxing yarns simply weren’t selling, but with a fresh name and title Kline could try them again on the same markets. So “Sailor Costigan and the Destiny Gorilla” became “Sailor Dorgan and the Destiny Gorilla,” and the same with “The Yellow Cobra”, “The Turkish Menace”, “The Jade Monkey”, and “Cultured Cauliflowers,” “A New Game for Costigan,” and “A Two-Fisted Santa Claus.” Even then, the stories failed to sell. (IMH 358, 360, 362; FI 3.318-319) However, a new market opened up in the form of Jack Dempsey’s Fight Magazine, edited by Jack Kofoed, the former editor of Fight Stories and Action Stories; Kofoed asked Howard for stories, and Howard was willing to supply them. Though Howard and Kline’s agreement was non-exclusive, he asked if Kline would handle it at his normal 10% commission; however, Kline declined. (FI 3.319, CL 3.404)

Overall for the year, counting rewrites, Howard was supplying one or two stories a month, of which Kline sold seven, although he would continue to market the rest, and would eventually sell a few others. For 1934, he received payment for “Alleys of Darkness” ($45.90), “The People of the Serpent” ($85.00), “A Gent From Bear Creek” ($46.75), “The Daughter of Erlik Khan” ($195.50), “Swords of Shahrazar” ($124.95), “The Names in the Black Book” ($85.00), “A Stranger in Grizzly Claw” ($51.00), “The Road to Bear Creek” ($32.50); “The Grisly Horror” was sold but not paid for until 1936, and so received $666.60—a sizable increase over the previous year. (IMH 358-366)
________________________

Works Cited

BOD    Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda)

CS       The Conan Swordbook

FI         Fists of Iron (4 vols.)

IMH     The Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard

MF       A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E.                            Howard (2 vols)

OAK    OAK Leaves: The Official Journal of Otis Adelbert Kline (16 issues)

WT50  WT50: A Tribute to Weird Tales

Conan and the OAK, Part 1 - 1933 by Bobby Derie

"Until recently—a few weeks ago in fact—I employed no agent."

—Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Jul 1933 (CL 3.82, MF 2.605)

For the first years of his pulp career, Robert E. Howard acted as his own agent, dividing his working time between writing and revising stories and poems, and drafting letters to submit those stories to markets both new and established. The Texan’s access to market news was largely limited to what he could read on the pulps in the stands, industry scuttlebutt from his letters to Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price, and August Derleth, and the occasional guidance from editors. In early 1932, Howard supplemented this by joining the American Fiction Guild, a professional organization aimed at freelance writers, whose organ Author & Journalist contained advertisements for upcoming pulps and other market news. (CL 2.337) Around the same time, an unknown agency offered to represent Howard:

Hundreds of part-time authors have been dumped on the market, and that makes competition tougher. The part time writer is often more efficient than the professional; he’s had more time to study style and literature. An agency wrote me wanting to handle my stuff for a year or so. They bragged on what they’d done for Whitehead; I wrote Whitehead and he replied cryptically that he considered himself heap damn fortunate to have gotten out of their talons as soon as he did. (CL 2.368)

Otis Adelbert Kline

Howard turned them down, but the idea had merit: an agent devotes their energies to selling your material, freeing the writer to writing, allowing them to produce more; a good agent had representatives and connections in more markets than a lone pulpster might be aware of, and could handle the complicated issues of anthology reprints, overseas sales—or even radio serials and movie adaptations. Perhaps this is why in the spring of 1933, Robert E. Howard signed on with an agent: Otis Adelbert Kline.

Kline had been a writer in the pulps in his own right, today most remembered for his Edgar Rice Burroughs-esque serial novels like The Planet of Peril (1929), Jan of the Juggle (1931), The Swordsman of Mars (1933) for Argosy, but he was also an early contributor to Weird Tales, and anonymously edited the May-Jun-Jul 1924 issue. (WT50 84, IMH 175) Robert E. Howard was aware of Kline as a writer, and considered him a good one (CL 2.123, 302); Lovecraft was more critical, considering Kline’s fiction among “the pallid hack work of systematically mercenary writers[.]” (MF 2.560) Whatever his merits as a writer, Kline fell into being an agent; in his own words:

In 1923, I helped another writer, an old timer who had quit for eight years and with whom I had previously collaborated on songs and movie scenarios, and one musical comedy, to come back. He quickly told others of the help I had given him, and they told others, so presently, I had an agency, international in its scope. Soon I was selling the work of other writers as well as my own in foreign countries as well as the US. Presently, also, I was representing foreign publishers, literary agents and authors in this country, and similarly representing US publishers, authors and syndicates in foreign countries. (OAK 15.4)

The foreign angle was Kline’s United Sales Plan, as detailed by his friend and occasional client E. Hoffmann Price:

In addition to domestic marketing, Otis developed his Unified Sales Plan: every story which he accepted for handling in the States went to his foreign representatives. Although Otis did not by any means originate the foreign rights angle, he was a pioneer among his competitors in that he regarded every story as having foreign sales potential. He is not only increased his clients’ income—his approach won him new clients. (BOD 36, cf. OAK 5.9-12)

While much of the correspondence between Howard and Kline is no longer extant, the few letters that remain give an outline of their business relationship. Kline waived reading fees (a fee for reading a manuscript and trying to sell it), and worked on a straight commission: 10% of whatever the story sold for went to Kline. Kline, who was centered in Chicago, also had associates in other cities: if he couldn’t sell a story, himself, Kline would send it out to an agent. If they sold a story, they got a 5% commission, on top of Kline’s 10%. The checks generally went directly from the publisher to Kline, who subtracted his (and his associates’) commission, then cut a check to Robert E. Howard. So, for example, “Guns of the Mountain” (5,000 words) was sold to Action Stories by Kline’s associate V. I. Cooper for 1¢ per word, for a total of $50—of which Kline got $5, Cooper got $2.50, and Robert E. Howard received $42.50. (IMH 363) This practice was not always strictly followed, as magazines sometimes paid Howard directly, and he would cut a check for the commission to Kline. (IMH 372)

Trash or Classics: The Readers and Writers of Pulp Magazines (Part 2) By Todd B. Vick

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!”―William Faulkner

The pulp magazine industry experienced its zenith during the 1920s and 1930s. Aside from a small resurgence of great writers in the 1940s and early 1950s, who got their start in the pulps, the 20s and 30s delivered more recognized pulp writers than any of the other decades. The readers of the golden era of pulps read stories from pulp greats such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Hugh B. Cave, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester Dent, C.L. Moore, Sax Rohmer, and the list goes on. This same era of the pulps would also instill into the minds of a handful of young readers the desire to become writers.

Jack Kerouac

A whole generation of young readers in the late 20s and early 30s spent their free time with their noses in pulp magazines. Many of these readers would, as adults, be the political movers and shakers of the 1960s. In fact, one such group of readers were later called The Beat writers. "Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs all acknowledged the influence of pulp magazines (named because of the cheap wood pulp paper used to print them) on their later work."[1]

Both Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg would claim that certain stories they had read in the the various pulp magazines had inspired them to become writers later in life. Kerouac was so influence by the pulps that in 1959 his "fantasy novel, Doctor Sax, served as a tribute to the pulp magazine characters (especially "The Shadow") he loved as a child growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts.[2] In Doctor Sax, Kerouac writes:

Young Jack Kerouac

On Saturday night I was settling down alone in the house with magazines, reading Doc Savage or the Phantom Detective with his masky rainy rainy night—The Shadow Magazine I saved for Friday night, Saturday morning was always the world of gold and rich sunlight."[3]

While attending Bartlett Junior High School (1933) Kerouac read pulp magazines and enjoyed characters such as "The Green Hornet" and "Phantom Detective." These characters and stories inspired him to create "his own stories, encouraged by the school librarian, Miss Mansfield, who ran an after-school discussion group and writing club."[4] Kerouac always claimed that this early influence from the pulps sparked his desire to be a writer.

Allen Ginsberg was a bit of a loner who not only enjoyed listening to Flash Gordon and The Shadow on the radio, but he spent a lot of time reading his favorite pulp magazines. "In early 1941 his first work appeared in print when two pieces were published in the school magazine, the Spectator."[5] Ginsberg attributes his early desires to write to those radio shows and pulp magazines which sparked his imagination.

Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg never mentions (that I could find anywhere) specific writers from the pulps that he enjoyed, but he has mentioned specific magazines he read frequently; these include Weird Tales, Black Mask, and The Shadow. And, of course, we all know Ginsberg would later become a world renown poet and political figure for civil rights in the 1960s, ultimately writing his now famous and frequently banned poem "Howl."

The last of these Beat writers to read pulp magazines as a young person was William S. Burroughs. Of the Beat writers and poets, Burroughs is probably the most eccentric. Never afraid to draw attention to himself, he thrived on the pulp magazines that were the strangest: Weird Tales, Planet Stories, Amazing Stories, Strange Tales, and others. Burroughs actually mentions pulp writers who had a profound impact on his writing. Topping that list is, of course, H.P. Lovecraft. However, Burroughs has also mentioned, in various interviews, Robert E. Howard as someone he read and enjoyed. Burrough's work titled Naked Lunch centers around a kind "pulp magazines" tone. Additionally, in a chapter titled, "Wind Die. You Die. We Die." from Burrough's book titled Exterminator!, Burroughs writes,

Funny what you find in old pulp magazines. "Wind Die. We Die. You Die." Quite haunting actually . . . the middle-aged Tiresias moving from place to place with his unpopular thesis, spending his days in public libraries, eking out a living writing fiction for pulp magazines . . . good stories too . . . [6]

William H. Burroughs

Here Burroughs is recognizing those who influenced him as a writer, describing in uncanny detail some of the events in certain pulp writers' lives that they have conveyed to their readers in biographies and interviews. Burroughs took offense at how the literary community maligned the pulp magazines and their writers. As a Harvard graduate in 1936, Burroughs witnessed first hand the comments and criticisms that were herald against pulp magazines. Portions of his novel Naked Lunch are not only a hat tip to the genre and its magazines but an attack against those who had the gall to demonstrate a kind of literary snobbery toward pulp writers.[7]

Some of these same critics, after Burroughs wrote and published Naked Lunch, would tag Burroughs as a pulp writer. Something they intended as an insult. Burroughs took it as one of the highest compliments he could be given.


Works Cited

1. Weidman, Rich. The Beat Generation FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Angelheaded Hipsters. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid. (Italics already present)
4. Evans, Mike. The Beats: From Kerouac to Kesey: An Illustrated Journey through the Beat Generation. Philadelphia: Running, 2007. Print.
5. Ibid.
6. Burroughs, William S. Exterminator!: A Novel. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.
7. See the essays in Harris, Oliver, and Ian MacFadyen. Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Especially Timothy S. Murphy's chapter titled "Random Insect Doom: The Pulp Science Fiction of Naked Lunch."

Trash or Classics: The Readers and Writers of Pulp Magazines (Part 1) By Todd B. Vick

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!”―William Faulkner

Pulp Magazines had humble beginnings. Being the offspring of the penny dreadfuls and the dime novels, the pulps had about the same reputation; at least in the beginning. The pulps were conceived in the late 19th Century when Frank Munsey overhauled his previous dime novel called Golden Argosy. Though it looked more akin to a small sturdy magazine or pamphlet by today's standards, it set a precedent for what would later be the first pulp magazine called Argosy. Golden Argosy had a balanced blend of fiction and nonfiction articles. Its audience was teen aged boys, and it had a fair level of success. The magazine changed names several times over the years but typically kept the same format of including both fiction and non fiction. That is until late 1896, when it adopted the name Argosy Magazine and switched to strictly fiction. Thus, the pulp magazine was born. 

April 1912

Beginning in December 1896 Argosy Magazine had the entire market for pulp magazines pretty much to itself. That is until January of 1905 when Munsey added another pulp called The All-Story Magazine. The All-Story Magazine, which changed its name to The All-Story in 1907 and then All-Story Weekly in 1916, set an industry standard by publishing authors who would eventually become some of the biggest names in the industry: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, and A. Merritt.[1] Additionally, in May of 1905 a pulp called The Monthly Magazine published by Story Press Corporation joined the pulp market fray. It would eventually be bought by Louis Eckstein's Consolidation Magazine Corporation and later be known as The Blue Book Magazine.

In November of 1910, a fourth pulp magazine would emerge called Adventure. While it was "[N]ot as historically or culturally significant as Argosy and All-Story, Adventure enjoyed an even better reputation and today remains highly regarded by pulp collectors for its overall excellence." (Hulse 55) Under these auspicious beginnings and over the next 5 decades, hundreds of pulps would pop up. Some lasting decades, some only a few issues. The golden era for these magazines would be the 1920s and 30s and thereafter the industry would slowly wane until it was overshadowed by comic books and cheap paperback books.

Several writers cut their teeth in the pulp magazine industry and would eventually break free of that industry to write novels and gain recognition as writers. Some of these writer's works are now included in the curriculum of public schools here in the U.S. Other pulp writers died in mid-career and still managed to be carried onward by fans and scholars who kept their works alive even today. But the undercurrent of these popular magazines were the eyes that were tightly fasten to their pages; the readers—both adults and kids— who handed over their hard earned money and read the stories. It would be several decades after the golden era of the pulps that popular culture would witness the industry's full impact.

The intent of this article is two-fold. First, to examine a handful of writers who, while they were working on novels, also attempted to break into the pulps. Some of the names of these writers might surprise you. Second, to examine a few pulp readers who, as children during the pulps' golden era, were so influenced by the stories it convinced them to become writers. Several of these names might surprise you as well. 

Hemingway's 1923 passport photo

Let's begin with the writers. Aside from those who were actually publishing their works in the pulps, who also garnered a large following, there were aspiring writers who not only read the pulps, but were also attempting to breach their covers with articles of their own. One such writer was Ernest Hemingway. "By the time Hemingway was in his early teens, pulp magazines were a presence on every newsstand." (Earle All Man! 33) Even though Hemingway was reading the pulps in his early teen years, between 1918 to 1922 (ages 19 to 23 years of age) he was submitting short stories to The Saturday Evening Post. However, during this same time span, Hemingway was submitting stories to Adventure, Blue Book, and Argosy[2] According to a letter written to a good friend—Will Horne—in 1919, "Hemingway stated that Burroughs, who 'perpetrated Tarzan & the Apes,' was urging him to write a book." (Earle 33) This is, of course, another indicator that Hemingway was actually reading the pulps, and possibly corresponding with their authors.[3]

Since the pulps were being published weekly and bi-weekly, stories typically followed a particular formula, were written fairly quickly, and too often not re-written (edited) simply due to lack of time[4] Hemingway didn't deviate from this formula, as his early pulp submissions reveal. Hemingway submitted "war stories, boxing stories, gangster stories, romances, and at least one story told from the point of view of a dog." (Earle 35) Of course, everyone knows eventually Hemingway's novels were published, and the rest is history. What many people do not know is that Hemingway, to some degree, cut his 'writing teeth' in the pulps.

Another well known writer who weaved in and out of the pulp arena was none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald really never needed the pulps, or the slicks (literary magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, etc.) for that matter. Born in a well-to-do upper middle class family, Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, and by age 13 the school newspaper published a mystery story he'd written. When Fitzgerald was 15 he was sent to a well-known Catholic boarding school in New Jersey called Newman. He spent his remaining school years at Newman, graduated and it was on to Princeton.

First Edition Cover for
This Side of Paradise

While at Princeton he sharpened his writing skills and wrote for The Princeton Triangle Club and their Nassau Literary Review, as well as the Princeton Tiger (the college's literary humor magazine). By March 1920, at the age of 23, Charles Scribner's Sons published Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side of Paradise. So where do the pulps fall into this story? In the 1920s, as an already established writer, Fitzgerald (with his wife Zelda in tow) moved to Paris, France. The Fitzgeralds soon met Ernest Hemingway and thus began a meaningful and helpful relationship for F. Scott Fitzgerald. With money running short, and Fitzgerald's debut novel only doing moderately well, the Fitzgeralds needed cash. Hemingway, who had already established himself as a magazine writer, introduced Fitzgerald to the world of not only the pulps but of a larger market in the arena of the slicks.

In April of 1920, H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan started a kind of "high brow" pulp magazine called Black Mask. The intent of Black Mask was to attract the best writers of the pulps and low end slicks. This idea did not quite work the way Mencken and Nathan planned (mainly because both carried an elitist attitude and looked down their noses at pulp fiction magazines and their writers). In the beginning they culled material from The Smart Set, a literary magazine, which left the first few issues' stories of Black Mask dry, dull, and boring (slow-paced yarns). Something not conducive to the more rapid quick, action packed stories of which the pulp readers were acquainted. Eventually, Mencken and Nathan were able to obtain writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Carroll John Daly, all whom were able to write faster paced well written stories conducive to pulp readers. These three eventually became the staple writers for Black Mask. H. L. Mencken and F. Scott Fitzgerald were friends, and so Mencken regularly accepted Fitzgerald's work for The Smart Set.

Even though Fitzgerald, like Mencken, frowned upon the pulps and pulp writers, he certainly had no qualms about making extra cash from them. Mencken had also tried his hand in the pulps prior to The Smart Set and Black Mask with his creation of magazines such as The Parisienne and Saucy Stories, using both his colleagues and friends—Hemingway and Fitzgerald—in those magazines as well. Moreover, after seeing the kind of bankroll he could acquire—$15,000 to $20,000 per year—Fitzgerald was more than happy to submit his stories to various slicks and pulps.[5] In time, Fitzgerald was able to balance his time devoted to novels as well as short stories and garner a lucrative career from both.

[1] Ed Hulse discusses this in greater detail in his work titled The Blood 'N' Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction (Murania Press, 2013)
[2] David M. Earle discusses this period of Hemingway's life in a goodly amount of detail in his work titled All Man!: Hemingway, 1950s Men's Magazines, and the Masculine Persona.
[3] Unfortunately no such letter from Burroughs to Hemingway exists, the only evidence for it is Hemingway's claim made in his letter to Will Horne.
[4] All these points are detailed in Earle's work All Man!
[5] Here's an interesting tid-bit of historical trvia. Through this time period - the early to mid-20s, Fitzgerald was publishing quite a few short stories to various pulps and slicks, many of which focused on the "flapper" movement of the day. The flappers coupled with the popular music of the time set a new trend throughout the 1920s. It was during this period and Fitzgerald's exposure to the flappers via the various popular stories in the slicks and certain pulps that he coined the term "The Jazz Age" which is still used today to describe the era.

Works Consulted/Cited

Earle, David M. All Man!: Hemingway, 1950s Men's Magazines, and the Masculine Persona. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 2009. Print.

Earle, David M. "Pulp Magazines and the Popular Press." Volume II: North America 1894-1960 The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines (2012): 197-216. Web. <http://uwf.edu/dearle/earle.pdf>.

Hulse, Ed. The Blood 'N' Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction. N.p.: Murania, 2013. Print.