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    The Iron Man
    The Iron Man
    The Iron Man
    Ebook55 pages1 hour

    The Iron Man

    By Robert E. Howard

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in 1930 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Iron Man' is one of Howard's short stories about the sport of boxing. Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard - a bookish and somewhat introverted child - was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South. At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, 'Golden Hope Christmas' and 'West is West'. In 1924 he sold his first piece - a short caveman tale titled 'Spear and Fang' - for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, was a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago. Conan featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936 which is why Howard is now regarded as having spawned the 'sword and sorcery' genre. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateFeb 12, 2015
    ISBN9781473398047
    The Iron Man
    Author

    Robert E. Howard

    Robert E. Howard (1906- 1936) grew up in the boomtowns of early twentieth-century Texas, eventually settling in Cross Plains where he lived for the remainder of his short life. Deciding early on a literary career, he spent the bulk of his time crafting stories and poems for the burgeoning pulp fiction markets: Weird Tales, Action Stories, Fight Stories, Argosy, etc. Howard's literary reputation was assured with the publication of "The Shadow Kingdom" in 1928, which featured a unique blend of fantasy and adventure which has since been termed Heroic Fantasy. The creation of Conan the Cimmerian, Kull the Conqueror, Solomon Kane and many more has earned him lasting recognition.

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    • 4/5
      I am the least sporty person you could wish to meet, so why have I read a whole bookful of boxing stories? Well, these are written by one of my favourite authors, Robert E. Howard.

      In fact the few books I have in the sporting genre (The Abysmal Brute by Jack London and Never Come Morning by Nelson Algren being the only other two that spring to mind) I have bought because of the author rather than the subject, and they're all about boxing, strangely enough. It's a sport I wouldn't think of watching, and yet I've enjoyed these books about it.

      Anyway, this is a book of two parts: The Iron Man section is a short essay and three stories about fighters who generally have no finesse and simply soak up masses of punishment until their opponent is worn out and they can be demolished by a sledgehammer blow. They would be the epitome of Jack London's Abysmal Brute, but Howard still makes them personable and their struggles to overcome psychological, financial, criminal and romantic problems carry the interest of the stories, rather than the bloodily-described fights, for me at least.

      The second section of the book is about one of these Iron Men, called Dennis Dorgan (who Howard also wrote about as "Sailor" Steve Costigan). Dorgan is as thick as a brick, built like a wall and has a heart of gold. The stories are humorous in tone, which still works for the most part, despite the 80-odd years since they were written.

      All the Dorgan stories are written from his viewpoint and in his voice, which adds to the charm. While this isn't exactly Oscar Wilde or P.G. Wodehouse, Howard was well able to have Dorgan spout "unintentionally" funny lines. I chuckled my way through most of the stories and laughed out loud a couple of times.

      The plots all involve Dorgan hammering on, or being hammered by, another man-mountain, either in or out of the ring. However, the set-ups for the fights are different enough from one tale to the next to maintain interest. From the Far East, Triad gangs, missionaries and bandits, to the Californian coast, crooked promoters, gangsters and high-society nincompoops, Dorgan and his faithful bulldog, Spike, cut a funny, bloody swathe.

    Book preview

    The Iron Man - Robert E. Howard

    The Iron Man

    by

    Robert E. Howard

    Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    Contents

    The Iron Man

    Robert E. Howard

    Chapter I

    Chapter II. Scenting the Kill.

    Chapter III. White Hot Fighting Fury.

    Chapter IV. Iron Mike’s Dread.

    Chapter V. The Roll of the Iron Men.

    Chapter VI. A Cinch to Win!

    Chapter VII. Framed.

    Robert E. Howard

    Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard – a bookish and somewhat introverted child – was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South. Although he loved reading and learning, Howard developed a distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on the world. He became a passionate fan of boxing, taking it up at an amateur level, and from the age of nine began to write adventure tales of semi-historical bloodshed. In 1919, when Howard was thirteen, his family moved to the Central Texas hamlet of Cross Plains, where he would stay for the rest of his life.

    At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, ‘Golden Hope Christmas’ and ‘West is West’. In 1924 he sold his first piece – a short caveman tale titled ‘Spear and Fang’ – for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. He published with the magazine regularly over the next few years. 1929 was a breakout year for Howard, in that the 23-year-old writer began to sell to other magazines, such as Ghost Stories and Argosy, both of whom had previously sent him hundreds of rejection slips. In 1930, he began a correspondence with weird fiction master H. P. Lovecraft which ran up to his death six years later, and is regarded as one of the great correspondence cycles in all of fantasy literature.

    It was partly due to Lovecraft’s encouragement that Howard created his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian. Conan – a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago – featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936, and is now regarded as having spawned the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre, making Howard’s influence on fantasy literature comparable to that of J. R. R. Tolkien’s. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    Howard was enjoying an all-time high in sales by the beginning of 1936, but he was also deeply upset by the ill health of his mother, who had fallen into a coma. On the morning of June 11, 1936, he asked an attending nurse whether she would ever recover, and the nurse replied negatively. Howard walked to his car, parked outside the family home in Cross Plains, and shot himself. He died eight hours later, aged just thirty.

    Chapter I

    A CANNON-BALL for a left and a thunderbolt for a right! A granite jaw, and chilled steel body! The ferocity of a tiger, and the greatest fighting heart that ever beat in an iron-ribbed breast! That was Mike Brennon, heavyweight contender.

    Long before the sports writers ever heard the name of Brennon, I sat in the athletic tent of a carnival performing in a small Nevada town, grinning at the antics of the barker, who was volubly offering fifty dollars to anyone who could stay four rounds with Young Firpo, the California Assassin, champeen of Los Angeles and the East Indies! Young Firpo, a huge hairy fellow, with the bulging muscles of a weight-lifter and whose real name was doubtless Leary, stood by with a bored and contemptuous expression on his heavy features. This was an old game to him.

    "Now,

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