"But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer"
About this Quote
Failure is doing a lot of work here: it’s both confession and preemptive rebuttal. Robert E. Howard, a pulp writer who built whole mythologies under deadline, frames his disappointments against a sturdier, almost frontier-grade metric of success: not applause, not security, not even prestige, but the bare fact of making a living from words in a place where that wasn’t a thing you did.
The line “this section” matters. Howard is staking a regional claim, turning geography into a kind of credential. In early 20th-century Texas, “writer” wasn’t an obvious trade; it was an eccentricity, maybe even a soft one. So he masculinizes the vocation with pioneer language and family lineage. He doesn’t just write; he “earns,” he “was the first man,” he stands in a chain of grandfathers who worked with tangible materials. The subtext is defensive pride: if the culture around you treats writing as airy or unserious, you anchor it to the oldest American myth of legitimacy, the self-made trailblazer.
There’s also an emotional sleight-of-hand. By admitting “whatever my failure,” he lowers the reader’s expectations, then replaces the usual scoreboard with a private one he can win. It’s a coping mechanism, sure, but also a clear-eyed statement about art as labor. Howard’s tragedy is that he needs the romance of pioneering to dignify work that was, in reality, grinding commerce. The quote vibrates with that tension: insecurity transmuted into identity, survival reframed as legacy.
The line “this section” matters. Howard is staking a regional claim, turning geography into a kind of credential. In early 20th-century Texas, “writer” wasn’t an obvious trade; it was an eccentricity, maybe even a soft one. So he masculinizes the vocation with pioneer language and family lineage. He doesn’t just write; he “earns,” he “was the first man,” he stands in a chain of grandfathers who worked with tangible materials. The subtext is defensive pride: if the culture around you treats writing as airy or unserious, you anchor it to the oldest American myth of legitimacy, the self-made trailblazer.
There’s also an emotional sleight-of-hand. By admitting “whatever my failure,” he lowers the reader’s expectations, then replaces the usual scoreboard with a private one he can win. It’s a coping mechanism, sure, but also a clear-eyed statement about art as labor. Howard’s tragedy is that he needs the romance of pioneering to dignify work that was, in reality, grinding commerce. The quote vibrates with that tension: insecurity transmuted into identity, survival reframed as legacy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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