"Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen"
About this Quote
The bravado here is quiet, almost stubborn: a fifteen-year-old in the cultural backwoods of early 20th-century Texas deciding he has a "profession" before he has any of the infrastructure that makes a profession legible. Howard loads the sentence with barriers - never seen a writer, never seen an editor, only the vaguest ideas - then uses them as a springboard rather than an excuse. That "Never the less" is doing heavy lifting. It signals a self-made ethos with a chip on its shoulder, the voice of someone who expects skepticism and preemptively overrules it.
The intent is partly autobiographical, partly myth-making. Howard is explaining his origin story the way pulp writers often package themselves: raw talent plus work ethic, unassisted by salons or gatekeepers. The subtext is class and geography. Publishing is imagined as a distant city-state populated by mysterious specialists; procedure is opaque, maybe deliberately so. By stressing that he had never even encountered the archetypes of literary life, Howard positions himself as both outsider and invader.
Context matters because Howard's career was built through magazines, editors, and a marketplace that wanted relentless output. This line hints at the grind behind the legend of Conan: not inspiration but apprenticeship-by-mail, learning the rules by colliding with them. The irony is that his "vaguest ideas" would soon meet one of the most procedural systems imaginable - pulp production - yet the sentence insists the real credential was decision. He chose the job first; the world had to catch up.
The intent is partly autobiographical, partly myth-making. Howard is explaining his origin story the way pulp writers often package themselves: raw talent plus work ethic, unassisted by salons or gatekeepers. The subtext is class and geography. Publishing is imagined as a distant city-state populated by mysterious specialists; procedure is opaque, maybe deliberately so. By stressing that he had never even encountered the archetypes of literary life, Howard positions himself as both outsider and invader.
Context matters because Howard's career was built through magazines, editors, and a marketplace that wanted relentless output. This line hints at the grind behind the legend of Conan: not inspiration but apprenticeship-by-mail, learning the rules by colliding with them. The irony is that his "vaguest ideas" would soon meet one of the most procedural systems imaginable - pulp production - yet the sentence insists the real credential was decision. He chose the job first; the world had to catch up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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