10/23/2024
Lost Tales of Scruffy City: Conan the Lost Barbarian was Found by a Knoxville Writer
In the literary world, most people are aware that Pulitzer Prize winner James Agee was a Scruffy Citizen, that famed screenwriter/director Quentin Tarantino spent a couple of formative years in the area, that legendary novelist Cormac McCarthy lived here for nearly the first half of his life, that history-changer Alex Haley resided through his last decade in nearby Clinton. Local-boy-done-good stories are usually a source of civic pride, and Knoxville has certainly embraced its role as inspiration to celebrities of various stripes. But there’s one literary great whom Knoxville has been slow—some might even say loathe—to embrace as its own. So, each year, around Halloween, in a few Downtown bars and restaurants like Scruffy City Hall on Historic Market Square, a small celebration called “13 Eves of Hallow” takes place in honor of Scruffy Citizen Karl Edward Wagner.
The son of a TVA official, Karl Edward Wagner was a big, red-maned bear of a man who grew from schoolboy comic book collector to rebellious med-school student to struggling young author. When he enrolled in University of North Carolina medical school, where he graduated with a psychiatry degree, he had the highest I.Q. of any student, ever. He opted out of becoming a doctor though, and devoted himself to writing epic fantasy.
In his career, Wagner authored dozens of short stories, a couple of poetry collections, and a handful of novels, several of which featured amoral anti-hero Kane, the red-headed, muscle-bound warrior-mage who was his most famous literary creation (1970s), and eventually won the World Fantasy Award in 1984. Was it a coincidence that Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs' pro-wrestling moniker was Kane... we think not.
Wagner also edited The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1980-1994, DAW Books) and three volumes of Robert E. Howard “Conan” stories, important for having restored the texts to their originally published form (and for introducing many of us to the controversial cover art of Frank Frazetta, he of the Molly Hatchet album covers). If not for Wagner, the world might never have enjoyed Arnold Schwarzenegger muscling over unforgettable cinema lines like, “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women” in Conan the Barbarian (1982). Wagner even wrote a screenplay for Conan III for movie producer Dino De Laurentiis
When his wife left him because of his drinking, Wagner drank more. He died on Oct. 13, 1994, at age 49, from complications of what Wagner himself called “writer’s disease.”
