I’ve seen people talk about actors and artists that had a terrible time.
My own would be Anne Rice. She wrote Interview with the Vampire after her young daughter died of Leukemia. Then her husband suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.
Robert E. Howard is one that really gets to me, as someone who has had to take care of her mother for some time.
He had no more friends, his mother had been incredibly ill with tuberculosis for years and when he had the confirmation from nurses that his mother would not wake from her coma, he walked out and shot himself with a gun he kept in his car at 30 years old.
Really sad story for an author so young who helped create one of fantasy’s most recognizable characters and helped paved the way for the genre as a whole (not including other things like tabletop roleplaying games and the like).
I always get a bit sad when I look at my Conan books.
Honestly I’m way more sad how little people recognize how insanely influential he is in fantasy. A lot of fantasy (and fantasy gaming in particular) has way more in common with Howard’s Conan, then LotR (well, besides the elves, orcs, dwarves coat of paint), yet even fantasy fans constantly forget about Howard.
I think it might have had more staying power if the movies based on it were better.
A big part of Lord of the Rings’ current spot in the cultural landscape has to do with the PJ trilogy. The books, in and of themselves, were always massively popular, but the movies gave them much greater reach, with all the merchandising, video games, etc. that followed.
Anyone passively familiar with Lord of the Rings will be able to tell you the plot, name a few characters, etc. I’m not sure I could say the same about Conan, except for the titular character.
Conan really didn’t have the same kind of reach overall, which is a shame.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend the movie The Whole Wide World. It’s not a comprehensive Howard biopic because it’s based on the memoir of Novalyne Price Ellis, but it does a good job of capturing his obsessions and awkwardness. Great performances by Renée Zelleweger and Vincent D’Onofrio.
It’s on Tubi.
Second this. That movie made me cry.