For those who enjoyed my thoughts on Robert Jordan’s death last week, an expanded edition of same is now the featured article at Black Gate magazine. I added some commentary about the Jordan/Gemmell deaths and their legacies, as well as more specifics on the crash-and-burn of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
Robert E. Howard aficionado John J. Miller, the National Political Reporter for National Review, has conducted an interview with Rusty Burke at National Review Online, focusing on the release of the two Best of REH volumes debuting this summer and fall. Lots of good red meat to savor here.
And for those who missed it, check out John’s article on Howard in The Wall Street Journal from late last year.
Robert E. Howard has finally got his foot in the door at Penguin Classics — well, a toe, anyway — thanks to the S. T. Joshi edited American Supernatural Tales. Besides the expected stories by Hawthorne and Poe, there are stories by many Weird Tales regulars: Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and — gasp — Robert E. Howard.
Given some of the comments Joshi has made concerning Howard in the past, it is a bit surprising to see Howard represented in a collection of this type. Joshi’s introduction to the Howard story, “Old Garfield’s Heart,” is almost glowing when compared to his comments on Stephen King from the book’s introduction. And only one thing caused a bit of a prickle: “Despondent over the imminent death of his mother, Howard committed suicide in 1936.” Seems to me that I’ve heard that one before, but I’m not complaining. Joshi does provide some good biographical information and says that Howard “definitively established the subgenre of sword and sorcery as a viable component of the supernatural or adventure tale” and “wrote poignantly of his native Texas.”
Perhaps Joshi has finally seen what the rest of us have been looking at. His essay in Hippocampus Press’ Two-Gun Bob, while flawed (see Morgan Holmes’ article in TC V4n2), is a far cry from his now-famous comment that Howard produced “subliterary hackwork that does not even begin to approach genuine literature.” In the current project, Howard is treated surprisingly well — it is long-time Howard basher Stephen King who is on the receiving end of Joshi’s critical pen: “the majority of King’s writing is indeed marred by clumsy prose; hackneyed conceptions derived from film, comics, and other media; and a rather dreary prolificity that does not bode well for the endurance of his work.” It’s nice to see someone else under the gun for a change.
LEO ADDS: I see this development in a completely different light. Joshi has been dragged across the coals for his indefensibly inept comments about REH for years (most recently in TC V2n2 for his under-gunned Bran Mak Morn essay, and in the letters column of The Dark Man for his understanding of the subject of REH and philosophy). This (grudging?) inclusion of REH seems more an attempt, perhaps unconscious, to allay or at least mitigate the withering barrage set against him, rather than a heralding of any true Road-to-Damascus moment.
In private Joshi has, if not outright promised, at least strongly predicted that Robert E. Howard will never get into Penguin Classics or the Library of America the way Lovecraft has, words that I’ll relish watching him eat one day when Howard appears in multiple volumes. To the degree that Joshi’s vacuous scorn for REH has softened, perhaps it’s due to wariness engendered by carelessly poking the Howardian dragon one too many times. If tossing a story appearance and some leavened commentary to the raging Two-Gun Bob peanut gallery will reduce the increasingly ubiquitous criticism of Joshi’s own work, then that’s a small price to pay. Seems to have worked in your case, but only time will tell if Howard fandom as a whole will agree.
Speaking for myself, I’m unshaken in my certainty that — despite a hyper-prolific output and many positive contributions — Joshi is, judgment-for-judgment, one of the all-time worst critics in the field, at least when comparing potential to output. This feeling is buttressed by your report that he couldn’t resist using this latest volume to once again whack Stephen King with his critical ankus. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, but a comprehensive anthology (read: celebration) like American Supernatural Tales is no place to sound off on your pet proclivities and blind spots. King is a modern giant in the field, and while only time will tell how much of his work survives, I wouldn’t bet against Salem’s Lot and The Shining at least becoming firmly enshrined as American classics, encasing 1970s America in amber just as the work of Hawthorne, Poe, Lovecraft, and Jackson inform our view of America’s hopes and fears during the years and places they were active. Of King’s short stories, one could at a stroke eliminate the bottom 75% and still be left with enough material for a truly stellar volume, one worthy of standing alongside any other horror writer’s output of the last century. At best — as Joshi so often forgets, you properly judge an author by his best work — King has created in rural, low-rent Maine a literary milieu every bit as evocative and poignant as Lovecraft’s Providence or Sherlock Holmes’ London.
That’s not to say that King is beyond criticism — The Dark Tower, I maintain, was a crash-and-burn of Hindenburgian proportions, and much of his later output suffers from an almost heartbreaking bloat-and-drag. The otherwise magisterial It was nearly derailed by that damn gang-bang and the general psychedelic nubilousness of the ninth-inning horrors. Needful Things is two pounds of horror in a twenty-pound bag — a Salem’s Lot/Our Town-style setup teased out to over a thousand repetitive pages. The Stand was ambitious for its time, but increasingly feels overrated and (King’s lamentable Achilles heel) overlong. Back in the day Don Herron was as reviled in some quarters of King studies as Joshi is in Howard studies, but over time the general thrust of his King essays — that King is talented and occasionally brilliant, but far too often sloppy, lazy, and (above all) derivative — has been gaining purchase among jaded and exhausted fans.
But Don has also written that authors are judged by their home runs rather than their at-bats and strikeouts. It’s not the mountain of mediocre work that matters over the long term, but how many truly great tales are left to posterity. Of all the Weird Tales writers, REH, CAS, and HPL are revered because they knocked it out of the park the most times. Many other authors had one or two “Shambleau”s or “Golden Blood”s or “Red Brain”s to their names, but the Big Three each had dozens, and as decades turn into centuries that makes all the difference.
King, too, has dozens — a few greats, many worthy second-tier near-masterpieces like Pet Semetery and Misery, taut non-supernatural horror/thrillers like The Long Walk and The Running Man, and a sizable mid-list of enjoyable filler on a level with Howard’s “Xuthal of the Dusk” and “House of Arabu” or Lovecraft’s “Dagon” and “The Hound,” stuff that doesn’t approach classic status but which is nevertheless reprinted again and again for the sheer enjoyment of hearing the author’s distinctive voice and flair. As such, King is dedicedly unworthy of being bitch-slapped in a Penguin anthology by an astigmatic, orotund critical misanthrope like Joshi, a man who can’t bear to whistle past a churchyard without casting a few stones at the stained-glass windows.
A book like this is a grand ball, a Hall of Fame ceremony, and the editor/compiler’s proper function in such a venue is not that of judge/jury/executioner (Joshi’s favorite pose) but that of an emcee. And in real life, any Master of Ceremonies harping so caustically on the inadequacies of the honorees would be booed out of the room in short order. Someone on the editorial staff should have brought Joshi to heel and demanded that he save his anomalous critical opinions for Studies in Weird Fiction, enabling American Supernatural Tales to serve as an unfettered glorification of the very best in the field, and of the authors who bestowed those treasures upon us. Instead, by allowing Joshi to run amok in typical fashion and mar Stephen King’s well-earned moment of glory, the Penguin Classics folks have subtly but irrevocably tarnished the reputation of their imprint.
And I take issue with the categorization of King as a “long-time Howard basher.” He wrote Danse Macabre early in his career, and it’s filled with youthful judgments of all sorts that today would likely come out far more charitably. Those opinions were formed at the end of the Howard Boom — when dozens of paperbacks trumpeted Howard’s very worst work as being “IN THE TRADITION OF CONAN!!!” — and I can forgive him for reacting with a certain backlash in the face of all that false advertising. Even so, King had enough good things to say about Howard’s best work that the Wandering Star guys dared to isolate those comments as proud boasts on the covers of the Del Rey trade paperbacks. I dismiss his statement about the bulk of Howard’s non-Conan writings being “abysmal” as a construction of equal parts youthful arrogance and professional ignorance, of a type all-too-familiar among modern genre writers. And yet his money quotes say more of value about REH in a few terse sentences than Joshi has in twenty years of masturbatory ejaculations.
ROB REPLIES: While I take your word for it on the Joshi front (I haven’t been privy to any “private” conversations with him, and you’ve been around longer than I have), I’ll have to disagree where King is concerned. In the Los Angeles Times Book Review for Sunday, April 17, 2005, King doesn’t have anything nice to say about Howard, only that he was influenced by Lovecraft and that many Conan stories are “barely disguised Lovecraft pastiches.” I guess you don’t have to call that bashing, but I do.
AND LEO RESPONDS: If memory serves, King was reviewing a book of Lovecraft criticism [update: it was an excerpt from his Introduction to the book], mentioning REH tangentially in reference to the subject at hand. Should King ever write a Howard review for the Los Angeles Times I’d expect that — between boilerplate sneers at REH’s “abysmal” pulp aesthetic (from the guy who brought us Creepshow, natch) — we’d get red meat like his famous Danse Macabre proclamation that Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell” was “one of the finest horror stories of our century.” Praise doesn’t get any higher than that, and I suspect Joshi could write a hundred books on the Weird Tale without ever uttering something as perceptive or as gracious about our favorite Texan.
MARK JUMPS IN: Two things struck me as I read Rob’s initial blog post. The first one, in deference to the conversation above is this: while “Old Garfield’s Heart” is a fine, fine story and certainly no one would say that it’s not one of the stronger REH horror offerings, “The Black Stone” and “Pigeons From Hell” are conspicuous by their absence as stronger, if not better choices. I mean, as a best foot forward, no one can argue that they are great initial impressions for someone who may never have read REH before. My other thought was sort of along the same lines as Leo’s skewering of Joshi’s comments: say what you will about King’s novel writing — and Leo pointed out exactly the same ones as I would have for bloat and drag (though I really liked The Stand and think that it DOES hold up as a great post-apocalyptic novel), King has always been an exemplary short story writer. In fact, the shorter he writes, the better he usually is. I can think of at least ten short form King offerings that would quite simply NEED to be in an anthology on American Horror Stories. Early King, pretty much right up to Pet Sematary, is really worth the read. After that, you have to tread carefully. But his short story work has always been up to scratch. Another blind spot by Joshi? Or is he merely being a contrarian, since King is a Popular Author? Maybe it’s that the literati don’t like King, and this is a way to sort of suck up to them. Establish bona-fides. Kick the corporate cow, or exclaim that the emperor has no clothes. I don’t know. But this much is certain: as a critic, if Joshi’s thesis statement is that HPL was the single greatest pulp writer to ever walk the face of the Earth, then yeah, everyone else around simply HAS to be bad in comparison, don’t they? It’s his mission statement that I take issue with (obviously), and the fact that he has argued himself into a position that becomes increasingly indefensible as examples pile up on top of him.
Paul Herman at The Robert E. Howard Foundation recently sent me the following information concerning the much anticipated Foundation release The Last of the Trunk, which collects most of the remaining unpublished detritus of Howard’s career.
PAUL: The Last of the Trunk is now available for pre-order. Well, as soon as the website is updated, that is, today or tomorrow. Book should ship in November.
Robert E. Howard generated an enormous volume of written works, around 3.5 million words. In his tiny room in his house in Cross Plains, REH kept a trunk to hold all his output that was still awaiting a sale, as well as works that were rejected, unfinished, something he especially wanted to save, or simply copies of early drafts that he would reuse the back of in typing up another story. At the time of his death, that trunk held literally tens of thousands of pages of material, all hand-typed by REH.
In the early 1960s, Glenn Lord obtained the contents of REH’s trunk. He had the duty, pleasure, and challenge of sorting it all out, and to begin sheparding those works into print. Hundreds of stories and poems poured forth, to see print in assorted books, magazines, and fan publications.
Ever since the publication of Glenn Lord’s The Last Celt in 1976, collectors of the works of REH have been aware of, but unable to read, more than a hundred unpublished stories and fragments. A few were published in the intervening years, but not many.
Finally, in this volume, The Last of the Trunk is being revealed. Virtually all the remaining unpublished prose will be included. While this certainly is not his most memorable or impressive work (those works are already in print), it does fill in lots of blank spaces for the scholars and collectors, and perhaps yield a little more understanding of one of the greatest pulp writers.
This will be the largest REHF publication to date, at 672 pages. Hardback with dust jacket by Tom Foster. Edited and with an introduction by Patrice Louinet. Design by Dennis McHaney. Many of the works are incomplete or unfinished. Many of the complete stories are either boxing or high school papers.
A detailed list of the contents:
Blue River Blues; The Battling Sailor; The Drawing Card; The Jinx; The Wildcat and the Star; Fistic Psychology; Untitled (“Huh?” I was so dumbfounded . . .); Fighting Nerves; The Atavist; A Man of Peace; The Weeping Willow; The Right Hook; A Tough Nut to Crack; The Trail of the Snake; The Folly of Conceit; The Fighting Fury; Night Encounter; The Ferocious Ape; The Ghost Behind the Gloves; Misto Dempsey; The Brand of Satan; Incongruity; The Slayer; The Man Who Went Back; Untitled Synopsis (Hunwulf, an American . . .); Untitled (Thure Khan gazed out . . .); Untitled (As he approached . . .); A Room in London (outline); The Shadow in the Well (draft); Fate is the Killer; The Grove of Lovers; The Drifter; The Lion Gate; Untitled (Franey was a fool.); The Ivory Camel; Wolves – and a Sword; Untitled (I’m a man of few words . . .); Untitled Synopsis (First Draft: James Norris . . .); The Dominant Male; The Paradox; Untitled (Mike Costigan, writer and self avowed futilist . . .); The Splendid Brute; Circus Charade; The Influence of the Movies; Untitled (William Aloysius McGraw’s father . . .); A Man and a Brother; Man; Pigskin Scholar; The Recalcitrant; Untitled (“Arrange, Madame, arrange!”); Untitled (“Yessah!” said Mrs. . . .); The Question of the East; In His Own Image; The Punch; The Female of the Species; The Last Man; The Treasure of Henry Morgan; Untitled (The lazy quiet of the mid-summer day . . .); Through the Ages; The White Jade Ring; The Roving Boys on a Sandburg; Westward, Ho!; The Wild Man; What the Deuce?; The Land of Forgotten Ages; The Funniest Bout; The Red Stone; A Unique Hat; Untitled (“A man,” said my friend Larry Aloysius O’Leary . . .); Untitled (. . . that is, the artistry is but a symbol . . .); Untitled (I met him first in the Paradise saloon . . .); Untitled (Maybe it don’t seem like anything interesting . . .); Untitled (So there I was.); Untitled (Trail led through dense jungle . . .); Untitled (Two men were standing in the bazaar at Delhi . . .); Untitled (When Yar Ali Khan crept . . .); Untitled (Who I am it matters little . . .); A Twentieth Century Rip Van Winkle; The Ghosts of Jacksonville; A Boy, a Beehive, and a Chinaman; Mr. Dowser Buys a Car; A Faithful Servant; A South Sea Storm; The Ghost of Bald Rock Ranch; A Fishing Trip; Friends; Ten Minutes on a Street Corner; The Wings of the Bat
The price will be $53 for REHF members, $59 for non-members. Shipping costs will be posted at the website.
Any questions, let me know!
Either the f/sf world at large is slow to react, or merely unconcerned, with the announcement of the death of Robert Jordan due to complications related to his battle with heart disease. This page will not be a eulogy, as I was not a fan, but I am sorry that he was in so much pain, and I hope that he has found some peace. I am also sorry for the fans of Robert Jordan that he never got to finish his series–though I’ve heard that the twelfth book in the Wheel of Time saga is at the proofing stage. Maybe there will be an ending, or at least some closure, there.
I expect that over on the Official Conan website, a tribute or two will spring up, as some people think well of his seven Conan pastiches. Over at Revolutionsf, a eulogy was briefly discussed, but none of us were fans, and all any of us had in the way of personal accounts were unflattering stories about him, myself included.
I would hope that the f/sf community puts forth a lengthy eulogy of some sort, because Jordan WAS a best-selling author, one of the ones that lots of people “who don’t read any of that stuff” made an exception for. The fans were rabid for his work. I would hate for a little professional jealousy to rear its head and the pro community NOT be able to celebrate that as a triumph. That I (or any of the other Howard Heads) didn’t care for his pastiche work is a trifle in the wake of what he was able to accomplish on his own.
This is certainly not the time, nor the place, for any lengthy commentary on any of the above. But considering that so few people were even talking about this, I thought it merited a short blog entry, if nothing else.
LEO ADDS: I for one am sorry to hear this. A thriving genre needs all kinds of writers to keep it rumbling along in the marketplace of ideas. Jordan brought fantasy much needed attention and sales at a time when the old publishing booms had dwindled, and alternate art forms like movies and RPGs were writhing in an existential crisis. TSR and D&D were floundering, TV shows like Hercules and Xena winked and joked their way through virtual parodies of serious fantasy classics, and a host of promising fantasy authors (Wagner, Saunders, David C. Smith) had fallen off the map, largely replaced by drear and maudlin Druidic and Wiccan fantasy as exemplified by Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood. Jordan hit the marketplace with the colorful, ersatz vigor of the film American Graffiti, which brought the fifties roaring back to popularity in the face of Vietnam and Watergate jadedness.
Jordan seemed for awhile as if he would bridge the gap between the Howard/Tolkien era and whatever modern fantasy was becoming, sort of like a more talented version of Terry Brooks. His major role in the Conan deluge of the 1980s had many fans believing that he not only had created REH’s most famous character, but that his Conan novels were merely prelude to something more grand. When The Eye of the World debuted, garden-variety fans predicted that Jordan was on the cusp of creating the Next Big Thing. His was the first fantasy series of my post-teen years to regularly hit not only genre lists but the main fiction bestseller lists. I remember being somewhat amazed that he did it not with a fantasy more societally and critically palatable, like Watership Down or Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but rather with a long, ongoing series of unapologetic invented-world fantasy books that hearkened as much to role-playing sensibilities as to anything else. It was a watershed of sorts — D&D geek fantasy gone mainstream.
Ultimately he took the fantasy saga to — well, not so much new heights as new lengths, and his success at that endeavor was itself enormously influential in the field. A sizable wake of other authors owe their careers to the success of The Wheel of Time, as publishers scrambled to sign up gals and gents who strove to replicate the appeal of Jordan’s complex, sprawling, wordy, byzantine, endless masterwork.
The Wheel of Time is a curious beast, filled with massive helpings of (to my mind) laudable poetic imagery of a sort missing from far too many of his contemporaries, who for the most part just narrate plot. Publisher’s Weekly gave his most recent book, Knife of Dreams, a starred review, and praised “the breakneck pace, lyrical beauty and astonishing scope” of the series. I can agree with that — at his best, Jordan had a sizable talent for the windswept vistas and sunset-haloed imagery that makes good epic fantasy a joy to read. But too often you get the feeling he’s not quite in command of the conjured images, not writing from inner sight. Rather, he’s hopscotching deftly across a landscape of clichés, names, and images pioneered by better writers. After a Prologue, the first book begins thusly:
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
It’s enough to make your head spin, and yet you can’t help but hope that anyone sharing such a fondness and respect for the evocation of third ages and misty mountains will eventually move beyond such circuitous wordsmithing and strike out to places unknown but clearly his own. Alas, Jordan was much more fond of beginnings than endings, and thus what began as The Lord of the Rings, American Style ended up as a Long March The Bold and the Beautiful for Magic: The Gathering fans, fantasy’s answer to the soap opera.
Much like Steven King’s decades-long affair with his Gunslinger Septology, WoT started out as a strange mix of the off-kilter and the pleasantly derivative, then picked up steam through the middle books and gained a legion of fans who believed. They believed most of all that, despite all the looming signs and portents, he would somehow manage to wrangle and wrap-up the literally hundreds of plot points and story arcs that had replicated across his fantasy world like tribbles.
Then, in excruciating slow motion, each series careened off the rails in stunning fashion, ending as prose train wrecks of heartbreaking scope. With King, Wolves of the Calla was the first hint that something was threatening to go horribly awry, a quiet, creeping dread that The Song of Susannah soon confirmed with an apocalyptic thunderclap of bad artistic decisions, and the series never recovered. Jordan stretched his ambitious tale even further, to a dozen books, until it was not just a Dark Tower but a literary Tower of Babel possessing all of the attendant frenzied hubris such an analogy demands.
Like King, it was Jordan’s fifth book, The Fires of Heaven, that began to betray the creeping bloat and drag that would be his undoing. These early warning signs bloomed to full flower in the successor volume Lord of Chaos, and after that the Wheel of Time began to leak and wobble on its axle. No excuse the fans devised for it and themselves could save them from the spectacle of a precious and elaborate house of cards crashing down before their eyes. Here, courtesy of Amazon, is an all-too typical review that succinctly expresses the frustration and almost physical harm fans felt:
I started reading this series when I was in college. I have since been through medical school, residency, and have been working for several years. I regret that I ever picked up the first book. I enjoyed the first three books, but always anticipated a grand finale that never came. Somewhere after the fifth book, I quit. No longer could I bear to hear about a female character tugging at her hair when she was angry or other such interminably repeated mannerisms. Because of this series, I promised myself I would never start a series that had not already been completed. In fact, I was so disappointed in the time I had wasted in reading these books, that I have read little fiction since. Let my experience serve as a warning to you: don’t start this series until it is done and you know from others that it is worth the investment of time and money. I suspect the series will never be really done…
Sadly, the dreadful wyrd that had haunted a generation of Jordanaires — that the series would remain unfinished — has now come to pass. They are left with the bitter realization that an enormous emotional investment has been sunk into the literary equivalent of a bankrupt hedge fund. I suppose that Jordan may well become the next V. C. Andrews, with ghost writers continuing the series under his name indefinitely — he certainly left enough false leads and tag ends blowing in the wind with which to work. And I can’t help but think that any reader with so little literary discernment that he or she blithely trudged through the first eleven novels in The Wheel of Time — thousands of pages of which all but his staunchest fans judged to be interminable — will have any reason to stop now. Like the guys who read all the Conan pastiches and try with grim seriousness to place them into a logical timeline, there’s little fear that they would even realize that another hand had picked up the flag and was marching forward with it.
If we must delineate Robert Jordan’s legacy in the field, it is that his imperial overstretch conquered wilderness and paved roads that other authors now travel, writers eager to establish literary empires of more glory and permanence. He was a trailblazer and a builder, and if what he left seems to lack the artistry of a Howard or a Tolkien, well, the world needs double-wides and tract homes, too. If he wasn’t a Isidore of Miletus or even a Frank Lloyd Wright, it seems increasingly likely he’ll be remembered as a Sarah Winchester, and that has its own charm. Godspeed, Robert Jordan.
Just as an irritant to those who think this site is afflicted with too much Tolkien content already, it’s worth mentioning that, all due respect for “Black Vulmea’s Vengeance” notwithstanding, the most unforgettable modern appearance of the word “gibbet” is in Chapter Ten of The Two Towers, “The Voice of Saruman.” On the front steps of the tower of Orthanc Gandalf, accompanied by Théoden, Éomer, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, summons the former head of the White Council to account for himself. From his high window Saruman strives to cozen Théoden with a mellifluous offer of “peace and friendship,” but the king of Rohan has learned a hard lesson extremely well:
‘. . .You are a liar, Saruman, and a corrupter of men’s hearts. You hold out your hand to me, and I perceive only a finger of the claw of Mordor. Cruel and cold! Even if your war on me was just — as it was not, for were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit, as you desired — even so, what will you say of your torches in Westfold and the children that lie dead there? And they hewed Hàma’s body before the gates of the Hornburg, after he was dead. When you hang from a gibbet at your window for the sport of your own crows, I will have peace with you and Orthanc. So much for the house of Eorl. A lesser son of great sires am I, but I do not need to lick your fingers. Turn elsewhither. But I fear your voice has lost its charm.’
The Riders gazed up at Théoden like men startled out of a dream. Harsh as an old raven’s their master’s voice sounded in their ears after the music of Saruman. But Saruman for a while was beside himself with wrath. He leaned over the rail as if he would smite the King with his staff. To some suddenly it seemed that they saw a snake coiling itself to strike.
‘Gibbets and crows!’ he hissed, and they shuddered at the hideous change. ‘Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs. Too long have they escaped the gibbet themselves. But the noose comes, slow in the drawing, tight and hard in the end. Hang if you will!’
Memorable invective is a joy forever, whether it be that exchange or Moira’s scornful rejection of Thorfel’s offer to make her his lawfully wedded wife in “The Dark Man.” Churls will complain, as they always do, that words like “elsewhither,” “dotard,” or even “gibbet” itself discriminate against the 21st century reader, render Tolkien’s meaning inaccessible to the great unwashed or the borderline unlettered. Too bad. Howard and Tolkien were master dramatists when they wanted to be (which is why any REH adaptation that doesn’t revel in his dialogue is foredoomed, which is why no Germanic bodybuilder will ever pass muster as Conan), and their kings and malign beings regularly scale rhetorical Himalayas.
Like Mark Finn, I’ve devoured J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, but one place where she falls down hard without any cushioning is Voldemort’s dialogue. His each and every utterance is from a broken-spined, jaundiced-with-yellow-highlightings copy of The Supervillain’s Phrasebook. In a steelcage deathmatch or Thunderdome showdown to determine Most Hackneyed, I might bet on Voldmember even against the de Camp/Carter Thoth-Amon, who couldn’t verbally intimidate Scooby-Doo. When the worst of the worst achieve true immortality despite being killed deader-than-dead, (not just Dark Lords, a “human” character like Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop works as an example) it’s often because a language-kindled nimbus of hellfire blackens the edges of every page on which they appear.
gibbet
noun
1. a gallows with a projecting arm at the top, from which the bodies of criminals were formerly hung in chains and left suspended after execution.verb (used with object)
2. to hang on a gibbet.
3. to put to death by hanging on a gibbet.
4. to hold up to public scorn.
[Origin: 1175-1225; ME gibet (earlier, staff or cudgel), dim. of gibe, staff, club]
HOWARD’S USAGE:
“In any event you hang, either from my yard-arm or from a gibbet on the Port Royal wharves.”
[from "Black Vulmea's Vengeance"]
Having enjoyed Mark Finn’s recent “Thoth-Amon, Lord Voldemort. Voldemort, Thoth-Amon” post, I’d like to follow up on Mark’s references to ophidians as “an eternal symbol of menace, ” and “a symbol of ultimate evil.” They aren’t invariably the ultimate evil in Howard’s work, and therein lies a tale, or two tales, “The Scarlet Citadel” and “The Valley of the Worm.” The former story debuted in the January 1933 Weird Tales, the latter in the February 1934 issue; did readers who were paying close attention wonder about a connection between the Satha of “Citadel” and that of “Valley”?
In the Conan story, once the king of Aquilonia is shackled in Tsotha-lanti’s “very Halls of Horror named in shuddersome legendry,” the next order of business is to introduce Satha, which Howard does by way of “a soft rustling sound, blood-freezing in its implications.” Conan, by this point in his life a formidably experienced practical herpetologist, recognizes “the unmistakable sound of pliant scales slithering softly over stone.” What torchlight is available reveals the owner of those scales to be “the ultimate horror of reptilian development,” an eighty-footer the “titan coils” and footlong, scimitar-like fangs of which beggar “all Conan’s previous ideas of snakes.” Satha’s hide “white as hoar-frost” (Frazetta was unfaithful to the text of “Citadel” in his cover painting for Conan the Usurper) leads the Cimmerian to conclude “Surely this reptile was one born and grown in darkness,” but that doesn’t keep its eyes from being “full of evil and sure sight.” Just how sure, we learn as the story progresses.
The fans who participated in the bus tour at Howard Days 2007 received a special treat. Not only did they get to hear some great stories by the tour guide, long-time Cross Plains resident Don Clark (above), they also heard some great color-commentary by Alton McCowen and Norris Chambers, a man who actually knew the Howards. Those of us who were seated near the front of the bus even got to eavesdrop while these three chatted between tour stops. The trio seemed to know everything about the local area and quickly assimilated each other’s knowledge. One would say, “Did you know so-and-so?” and all the relevant details would follow from one of the others. “Didn’t so-and-so live there?” and so on.
As we passed the little-used dirt roads in the Cross Cut vicinity, Mr. Chambers said, “Boy, I went down that lane a lot.” And another conversation ensued. I tried my best to stay out of their chat, but couldn’t resist a few questions. Alton McCowen told me that he knew someone who had helped build the road from Cross Plains to Brownwood, and that he’d been paid .56 cents an hour for his work. Mr. Chambers piped in, “They built this big road after the war. It wasn’t paved then, and was awful muddy.”
At the bridge into Burkett, the bus stopped. Under the bridge is the Pecan Bayou — covered with shrubs and trees, all green from the heavy spring rains. Don Clark told us all that there used to be carnivals and dances in the Bayou. “After the fair stopped coming,” he said, “there was a lot of ‘parkin’ and sparkin” down there.”
At one of the stops — a no-foolin’ Texas ranch, complete with Longhorns — I cornered Misters Chambers and McCowen (above) for a longer conversation, while the rest of the crowd went to get a close-up look at the steers. Mr. Chambers told me that Doc Howard wasn’t the best driver around: “Once we were driving to Brownwood and he’s got the car stuck in 2nd gear. I told him, ‘You might want to put it in high.’” He also told me about taking Robert’s Chevy “down to get the bullet hole fixed” after the suicide, and that Doc Howard used that car for a good while after.
Mr. McCowen answered my questions about Cross Plains, telling me where the movie theater was located (“Next to the tax office by the library” and that there was no radio station in town; the closest was in Brownwood.
While not the best of drivers, Mr. Chambers had no doubts about Doc Howard’s medical skills. He told me about a minor car accident that he was involved in, saying that one of the girls passed out. He took her straight to Doc Howard to get “patched up.”
About this time, Mr. Chambers’ wife ambled up and listened as her husband said, “When we were first married, we lived with my folks in Cross Cut. Doc Howard would come by sometimes.”
This brought a chuckle from his wife who said that Doc Howard was always hungry. When he came calling, “We had to start the fire in the old stove and cook things — from scratch!” When she didn’t feel like cooking, she told me, she’d just whip up some scrambled eggs.
We started to discuss Dark Valley Destiny as the rest of the crowd returned. Mr. Chambers remembered talking with De Camp and that “He said he would give us a copy, but he never did. We had to buy one.” And then the tour was back on the road and I had to content myself with eavesdropping once again.
