A random late night thought.

I just finished the excellent movie "The Whole Wide World". It's a story about the schoolteacher Novalyne Price and her relationship with the pulp writer Robert E. Howard. (Howard created Conan and Kull, and was a member of the writers' circle that also included Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.)

In this film, which is a direct adaptation of Price's work "One Who Walked Alone", we are presented with the portrait of a very unique and socially-estranged young man. Howard was totally dedicated to his mother and when she lost consciousness for the last time, he penned a short poem and then shot himself. The poem:

All fled, all done
So lift me on the pyre.
The feast is over
And the lamps expire.

My interest in Howard was a direct result of his association with Lovecraft and I was struck by the similarities between the two men. Both were social misfits who had serious problems with relationships. Howard pushed away Price, while Lovecraft was unable to make his marriage to Sonia Green work. Both men were hermits and exhibited arguably unhealthy dependencies upon their mothers. Both suffered from depression and a negative perspective of the world around them.

And both of them are produced the most influential work to come out of the pulp era. They left their respective genres radically different than they found them.

My random late night thought: Is a certain amount of madness necessary to achieve greatness? Is that which is significant in each man's work the ability to bring forth in normal people the primal urges and fears that have been domesticated and subjugated by modern rational civilized life? Does it take "flawed" individuals of these types without the social and rational filters to dig deep into our collective souls to expose the basic irreducible elements that resonate with us on a fundamental level. Are "sane" and socially-adjusted individuals even capable of creating stories and art that can manipulate us on these unsophisticated but essential levels?