My love-hate relationship with the Internet frequently rears its ugly head when I come into contact with people I’ve never met face-to-face. While this medium occasionally produces camaraderie, friendships, and a distilled form of communication for people who use words effectively and with meaning, it’s really hard for folks who are not so epistolary in nature. I’m speaking, of course, of the Robert E. Howard discussion groups to which I belong. I have butted heads with the trolls before, many of whom may have a legitimate point buried in their ramble somewhere, and many of whom just want to pick a fight and call it a discussion. While skimming through the groups last week, I came across something interesting from one of the trolls.
This particular member of the Yahoo Group is one of the more onerous ones, who is fond of phrasing his personal opinions as speculative questions, and then staunchly defending his opinions when shown evidence that contradicts his ideas. Having been shouted down more than once by more knowledgeable persons on the list, he made the following observation last week. One can almost feel the pulpy give of his sour grapes as he writes:
Sometimes I think that what’s right or wrong about REH is judged by the majority. The minority is left screaming on the sidelines. Remember, history is written by the victors.
My biggest problem is when a topic is thrown out there for discussion, if you’re in the minority, you get your ass whipped, your head kicked in, and spat on. It doesn’t take too many of these to learn that being a “lurker” is just fine…Let the other guys talk about guns, military maneuvers [sic] and old movies because if you talk about REH, and say the wrong thing, you get castrated.
Yeah, maybe a blog is a safe thing. You write your opinion and that’s it; no criticism, no defense.
Ignoring all of the mild digs in the above screed, our Cheesewhiz poster seems to think that the victors, whoever they may be, have won the war. What he doesn’t seem to understand is, there is no war going on. It’s not even a police action. No, what’s going on in Robert E. Howard studies is nothing less than totally subversive, literarily liberating, guerilla warfare.
For decades, Robert E. Howard remained mired in the science fiction ghetto, weighed down by the barnacles of countless lesser imitators, trapped in the sargasso weeds of Conan books written by diverse and inferior hands, and even keel-hauled by his own stewards. After all, wasn’t it former fan John D. Clark who asked readers not to look for deeper or hidden meanings to Conan’s stories, because they just weren’t there? And wasn’t it de Camp, the so-called champion of Conan himself, who exclaimed more than once that the whole of sword and sorcery was just good, old-fashioned fun?
Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the current field of Robert E. Howard studies knows that the statements made by mssrs. Clark and de Camp (and others, to be sure) are patently false. They betray a lack of deeper reading and a disregard bordering on contempt for the audience of heroic fantasy. In fact, Howard critics and scholars, while they may disagree on everything else, all agree that there are many layers to Howard’s stories; that he had a specific worldview and wrote from that viewpoint constantly and consistently; and that his work is infinitely worthy of deeper, more critical examination.
This goal, one that most of the Howard critics and scholars have embraced at some level, can and will conflict with garden-variety fans of Howard’s work. They may read Howard for escape, or merely because “I just like it, is all.” Whatever the case may be, it makes what the critics and scholars are trying to do even more difficult. It’s hard to conduct a critical examination of Howard’s Barbarian-Kings (or any other popular culture subject) when there’s a nut in a furry loincloth and plastic sword running around in the background shouting, “…and THIS is the scene where Conan says, ‘Turanian Dogs! I’ll split your skulls to the teeth!’” Mind, it’s possible to BE a fan and not be a loon, but fan-activity typically defies that ideal.
As for the former stewards of Conan, de Camp himself was supremely guilty in not helping foment discussion of Howard’s work as criticism-worthy. His final word on the subject of Robert E. Howard, Dark Valley Destiny, is little more than a gossipy treatise on what made Howard so crazy that he would want to kill himself. What few minor points de Camp tried to make about Howard’s work was lost in ad hoc speculation about the savage bullies who tortured a sickly young Robert E. Howard and made him want to lash out with violence.
Since de Camp was the guardian of Conan for so long, and since his influence was flung far and wide in science fiction circles, many of his trademark phrases and backhanded compliments end up in a wide variety of places, such as various fantasy and encyclopedias written by people who should otherwise know better. Why not quote or paraphrase from de Camp? After all, he was closest to the subject, wasn’t he?
De Camp may have been close to his subject by default, but he was a blind man being led around by a seeing-eye dog; he got sensory impressions, he missed a lot of the bigger picture. What the current crop of scholars and critics are trying to do, then, is elevate the discussion regarding Robert E. Howard. Get people talking about the work Howard did, as opposed to the sketchy and contentious facts in Howard’s biography. Kill the rampant speculation, or at least take it in a different direction. Always, though, with a focus on what made Howard such a compelling writer. What themes recur, and how they are currently applicable in the twenty-first century.
It’s doing those things that make people re-think their impressions of Howard. De Camp’s version of Howard, that of an idiot-savant man-child who just happened to get lucky when he wrote a few stories while caring for his mother, to whom he was unnaturally devoted, is very nearly dead. When that particular zombie lurches out of the ground, the current crop of critics and scholars dog-pile on it and pound it back into the dirt from whence it came. Sometimes, even the tangential discussion around that zombie gets a pre-emptive torching, and for the fan that brought it back to life, he may not understand why he got burned.
The reason is simple. It’s been done to death. Resurrecting old goblins only adds to the baggage that the New Turks are trying to overcome. The current critics and scholars are looking elsewhere to subversively and not-so-subversively put Robert E. Howard under the noses of people who don’t have the science fiction community’s prejudices and pre-conceived notions about the man and his work. The Bison Books deal was certainly a positive step in that direction, and it’s no accident that that series played out like it did, with thoughtful, laudatory essays and introductions, and from a respected University Press. The current critics and scholars are loudly applauding any mention of Howard that leaves out his personal life and focuses on his body of work. That’s all that matters in the end. That’s his legacy.
This is sometimes harder than it would appear. Fans and fan-scholars are still out there, either trying to simplify a la de Camp or sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting, “La la la la la I can’t hear you la la la la…” As many of de Camp’s generation continue to die off or simply go away, the field is opening up for widespread study of Robert E. Howard. Popular culture studies and the serious examination of genre fiction are on the upswing in academic circles.
No one starts a discussion of Ernest Hemingway (or, for you skiffy fans, Alice B. Sheldon) by saying, “This was a great writer who was so messed up that he took his own life.” No one does that, even though most people who have read any of the dozen or so Hemingway biographies agree that he was pretty nutty — meaning, nutty for an author. No, when people talk about Hemingway, they talk about his work. That’s what has lasted, and will continue to last. Hemingway’s legacy is his amazing canon of literature.
So let it be with Robert E. Howard.
