Jack London's Influence on Robert E. Howard

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 This scene from the play is influenced by what Robert. E Howard read in Jack London’s novel “Star Rover.” The theme of reincarnation occurs frequently in Howard’s stories.


Howard:  There can be no going back now. The whole house feels abandoned. There is only the sound of the clock and I used to hate the damned ticking when I was here, alone, as a boy. It seemed to mock my aspirations when it struck the hour! (Laughs). What’s more, I did witness something that holds true to what I just spoke of. I slept out on the prairie one night, near an old Indian village at Paint Rock. Nothing remained except an air of desperation and death. The rock faces were grey, covered with moss, and I imagined I saw faces carved between the fissures as I settled down for the night before riding home. The ululation started beguilingly. The fire, just ashes, scattered with the breeze, as I awoke and heard the chanting and plangent voices in the distance. The images were indistinct, but I know what I saw as the grey forms caroused around a tree in the camp as a Ghost Dance. The world the Indians knew would soon come to an end and the dead would re-join the living. The Indians painted their faces ochre and wore white costumes that could stop bullets. The dance lasted for hours but to me it was only fleeting. Their movements were anti-clockwise, then they would fall to the ground; visions of the new world to come being seen in their delirium. My eyes were still closed when I saw this and I must have gone back to sleep. I remembered every detail when I awoke and wrote it down when I returned home. It is amongst my papers somewhere. I meant to look for it the other day and I forget. Little understood by what I had seen years previously, I believe that traumatic events are captured by some means and are seen by those who are perceptive to the world as it once was before civilization encroached and extirpated all that was sacrosanct. Perhaps someone will see my shade one day as I will see them. I will wonder who they are, as they will think the same of me. . .


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