A major (and, sadly, perennial) discussion has broken out across several of the online Howard forums in the past six weeks regarding de Camp’s controversial role in the promotion of Conan and the study of Robert E. Howard. In the ad nauseum back and forth that has ensued at the redoubtable website, www.conan.com, one of the points that I tried to make is that de Camp’s misinformation continues to poison the waters of literary relevance by distracting people with the surface reflection of Howard’s life, and a distorted vision, at that, causing them to ignore all of the nourishing fish that swim in the deep waters underneath. Okay, not my best metaphor ever, but you get the idea. These charges were met with a resounding, “Nuh Uh!” from Gary Romeo and a number of other de Campistas.
Lest anyone think that, just because L. Sprague de Camp has joined the choir invisible, his shadow doesn’t fall across the biographical details of Robert E. Howard anymore, may I present to you Mr. Arnie Fenner, a gentleman who was a minor somebody on the Howard Fanzine Scene of the 1970s and who now dines out solely on the fact that he actually knows Frank Frazetta.
To be fair, Fenner and his wife also collect and edit the Spectrum series of yearly fantastic artwork, and a wonderful collection it invariably is. Having no problem with their editorial efforts nor their eye for art, I will confine my bile-spewing to the fact that Tim Underwood let Fenner have a crayon and a few sheets of Big Chief to write an introduction to the forthcoming book, And Their Memory Was a Bitter Tree: Queen of the Black Coast and Others. Despite that redolent and Byzantine book title, this hefty tome will be of interest to maybe the nine or ten people on the planet who don’t have all eight Frazetta Conan paintings yet, or the dozen or more people who haven’t bought the three Del Rey Conans and wish to own eight of Howard’s stories about the legendary Cimmerian. That’s right, eight stories. Eight paintings. All for a mere one hundred dollars.
It’s this fact and this fact alone (meaning, the book is only going to appeal to the completist) that keeps me from issuing a Jihad on Arnie Fenner. Not because he knows Frank Frazetta, but because of the hatchet job he did on Robert E. Howard in the introduction to the book. Sure, this guy was a fanzine person back in the heyday of Howard publishing, but he’s been out of the loop for far too long, relying instead on his thumbworn copy of “The Miscast Barbarian” instead of checking out the publishing that’s been happening in Howard Studies in the past ten years. Some of that publishing is even available on the Internet! How very late 20th century.
Fenner’s intro is titled “Whispers of Immortality,” which sounds nice until you realize he’s talking apparently about Frazetta and not Howard. Here’s a juicy quote that starts the ball off right, and really puts the reader in the proper frame of mind to read some Robert E. Howard stories.
…more questionable are his own claims… of having to carry a pistol to ward off a host of unnamed “enemies” or of being an unbeaten participant of back alley “iron man” fights. Friends disputed Howard’s tales of being bullied in his youth, no one has been able to support any of his assertions regarding “assassins” waiting in ambush, and photographs of Robert show him as an unscarred, well-fed and not terribly muscular young man — certainly not the bare-knuckle brawler he alleged to be in his correspondence. He was the only one who seemed to be aware of his “reputation for toughness.”
First off, let’s take the old “imaginary enemies” bit off of the table, okay? In Texas, everyone has a gun in their car. In Cross Plains, in oil country, in the 1920s and 1930s, everyone had a gun. It was the culture, not paranoia. I found an instance of thieves ambushing a woman in an automobile, just like Howard described to Ed Price (the source of the “unseen enemies” speculation that de Camp cheerfully ran with), which I published in Blood & Thunder, a book that Fenner either hasn’t read, or dismisses completely. In fact, there’s a lot that reading B&T would have done a world of good for both Fenner and his nattering little introduction, but let’s move on for now.
Furthermore, Howard boxed. We’ve now got several eyewitness accounts of him doing so at the Ice House. I’m sorry that Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson weren’t in town when Howard did such things, but Dave Lee was and that’s who Robert was running with on those particular nights. By all living eyewitness accounts (and a couple of dead ones), Howard was a capable, if not accomplished, amateur boxer and frequently held his own amongst the roughnecks. When Robert discussed his fights, it was usually to list his injuries. Hardly bragging. But don’t let that stop Fenner from getting it wrong.
Regarding the bullying — who exactly disputed that, Arnie? Which friends? There are three sources that Howard was bullied as a boy (Novalyne Price, Isaac Howard, and Clyde Smith), and no one seemed to dispute the claim. The controversy over the bullying involves to what degree that Howard was bullied, and whether or not it was the psyche-scarring, soul-shattering event that de Camp made it out to be. Rusty’s article lays it all out quite nicely. You know, the interwebs can be a marvelous tool, should you choose to use them.
And finally, the photographs. I published one photo of Howard, roughly 17 or so, skinny as a rail with boxing accouterments on. The next chapter, some four years later, shows Howard filled out and squaring off with Dave Lee. Again, these photos are all available online at www.rehupa.com and I assure you, the quality of them prohibits seeing any kinds of scarring or any circumstantial bruising that may have occurred during the time that Howard was a regular at the ice house.
That whole paragraph that Fenner wrote is so chock-full of misinformation and flat-out wrongness, it makes me wonder why on earth it was even included. What does this have to do with Conan? Or Frazetta? Or the two together? Doesn’t it sound rather like Fenner is just slightly contemptuous of Howard, if not judgmental? He sure hasn’t taken any cues from the introductions to the Del Rey volumes, which actually manage to introduce and comment upon the texts featured without abject character assassination or snarky asides about the author.
But let’s get to the heart of the matter, shall we? Here’s that famous old hairshirt, slightly rewoven to give it a fresh new look:
…his co-dependent relationship with his mother — a relationship that prompted him to live at home at an age when his friends were marrying and raising families — reinforced the self-destructive feelings that surfaced whenever her health deteriorated.
We should be grateful, I suppose, that the word Oedipal wasn’t trucked out. I would love it if, just once, someone could somehow mention the suicide without linking it to his mother. Howard was Hester’s caregiver, that much is true, and they were close, in the very same way that Howard and his father weren’t. But the old theory about him being distraught is over twenty years out of date. Pick your favorite scenario: depression, despondence, altered state of consciousness from a lack of sleep, an accumulation of stress, or mix and match them all. But please stop peddling the town gossip, circa 1936. Howard was his mother’s primary caregiver. There is ample evidence to suggest that Howard was clinically depressed for as long as eight years. His mother’s deteriorating condition certainly contributed, it wasn’t the primary, nor the only factor in his decision to end his life.
Regardless, all of this is purely academic, and not worth mentioning while you are introducing eight stories about a character who embraces life with both arms and cuts a swath through his world in wide, vibrant arcs. Why keep bringing up mom and the suicide? It’s because Fenner doesn’t have anything meaningful to say about Conan, so he’s filling the space to get to the end of the page. And when he does have something to say about Howard’s writing, this is what we get:
…while Robert certainly was a tremendously gifted storyteller with a wholly original voice, capable of spinning an exciting yarn in first draft that could capture his reader’s imagination…he simply wasn’t a great writer.
…his writing is more rudimentary than lyrical and there is very little variety in his fiction. His characters are essentially very similar, regardless of the setting or time period…and he often recycled his plots and repeated situations, phrases, and descriptions. Attention to detail never got in the way of the story Howard wanted to tell….
Nice backhand. I’ve never met Fenner in person, so I have no idea what the shape of his head actually resembles, but let me just float this thought out there into the void: when you’re writing an introduction to a book by a famous author, you should at least pretend to like what you’re introducing. “Wasn’t a great writer?” Okay, Jack, you’re the expert, I guess. Not quite sure what you’re basing that on, but Jeez Louise, keep it to yourself, lest someone stray across that line in the intro and put the $100 book back on the shelves. “Wasn’t a great writer?” The Del Rey books haven’t gone out of print since they started publishing the trade paperbacks. Tens of thousands of people are coming to REH from the comics, the role-playing games, and now the MMORPG. And every new fan gets online and says, “Holy smoke! Where was I all these years! What else has Howard written that I don’t know about?” Never mind the generations of writers he inspired, nor the enduring presence of Conan in popular culture. If Arnie Fenner, the art expert, says Howard wasn’t a great writer — in an introduction to a book full of Howard’s writing — I suppose we should take him at his word.
As for that second paragraph, let me just confirm it for you: Fenner’s an imbecile. Either that, or he is willfully ignorant of the handful of significant critical advances that have occurred in the two decades when he was warming up to Frazetta and forgetting that he used to publish Robert E. Howard fanzines. Either way, this man has no business waxing intellectual about Robert E. Howard.
Howard’s use of poetical style is well documented by nearly everyone who’s written critically of the man in the past two decades (even de Camp noted it, Arnie; this is REH 101, here). For anyone to charge that there is little variety in Howard’s fiction tells me, among other things, that he hasn’t read any of Howard’s humorous writing. In other words, he’s basing that opinion on Conan and maybe some of the desert adventures that were turned into Conan stories. Giving Howard’s stories more than a cursory glance would reveal that they are, in fact, very different in tone and timbre, and that ridiculous excuse was part of de Camp’s defense for turning unsold Howard action stories into Conan yarns. Again, let me ask the Powers-That-Be at Underwood: Did Rusty Burke turn you down? Could you not find one of the websites that would have led you to, oh, I don’t know, ANY of us who could turn in an inspired, emotionally connected introduction without all of that hackneyed and tiresome crap cluttering it up.
I’m asking Underwood this because there is a responsibility here, one that the Howard scholars are taking seriously, and that is to present REH in the best possible light — especially in projects such as this. What Fenner did is little better than vomiting up the exact same whackjob sentiments that de Camp used to kick off the Lancer books — and it’s highly probable that’s where Fenner got his template from, at that. After all, it was okay for de Camp to point out Howard’s shortcomings in all of his Conan introductions. So, too, then, should Fenner air what he feels are Howard’s personal character defects. See, folks, when all you’ve read is de Camped Conan, some twenty to thirty years ago, and then get asked to write something about Robert E. Howard, this is what they come up with.
What’s worse is that Fenner refrained from doing all of this when he wrote the text pieces for the Frazetta books that Underwood published several years ago. Why do all of this now? Is Frazetta under attack by the Howard community? I very much doubt it. We all liken him unto a god. There’s no badmouthing. Howard fans readily acknowledge Frazetta’s part in the success of Conan. So, where does Fenner get off? Is he somehow embarrassed that he was involved with Howard fandom? Is this a bridge-burning exercise to show us that he’s now above it all? I honestly don’t know, but if Arnie somehow thinks that his introduction is going to reel in the Howard fans, he’s got another think coming. There’s not any more room on my bookshelf for the same old party line. Tell me something new, offer your own observations on the material being presented, or shut the hell up and pass the next time someone asks you to write an introduction to a Robert E. Howard collection, because you’re doing it wrong.
For a fraction of the cost, you can buy those eight Conan Frazetta paintings, along with a comic book adaptation of the REH story in question, from Dark Horse Comics. At least you’ll be supporting a group of people who are enthusiastic and positive about what they are publishing.
MARK ADDS:
I have been informed by several people that there will also be a $25 hardcover edition available. This is wonderful news for the nine or ten people who don’t own Frazetta’s Conan paintings. The one hundred dollar slipcased edition will remain the lofty prize of the fan who must own one of everything, no matter how flawed or corrupted.
STEVE ADDS:
Nicely done, Mark. I’m sure Our Reason for Blogging is looking down from Valhalla and thinking, “I want that Finn guy for my shield-wall.”
Notice how Fenner’s “tremendously gifted storyteller with a wholly original voice” butts heads with his “simply wasn’t a great writer”? And it would be helpful if he’d tip his hand by listing some of those he is willing to anoint as great writers, but apparently that’s asking too much.
“His writing is more rudimentary than lyrical” — Really? Rudimentary? Even with the tremendously gifted storytelling and wholly original voice? Howard’s poetry is the blood in the veins of his prose; too bad the batteries are dead in Fenner’s lyricism-detector.
After the Fenner debacle and in the wake of the Maggie situation, I would like to use this blog as an opportunity to propose something to Robert E. Howard’s fans.
Even the Gods so glorious must march at the last, down the dim dusty road to death the destroyer.
