I've been meaning to jump in and comment on this topic but time has been
very limited. Still is, but I did have something I wanted to share.
I think Howard's work is *very real.* The worlds he write about may have
never existed, in the historic sense, but they did exist in the sense that
what he wrote about was real history with minor alterations. As but one
example, Aquilonia is medieval France and Nemedia is medieval Germany, but
Howard did not want to be stuck with having to worry about all the actual
details of medieval history, and he wanted to be able to include, in this
same world, Cossacks, ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, Elizabethan-era
pirates, both English and Spanish, etc. etc. The Hyborian Age is a
hodge-podge of actual historical places, characters, events, and so on, all
jumbled together for two reasons. One is that because it's a "made-up"
world Howard doesn't have to be a slave to whether this or that king was on
the throne and whether this or that event occurred 10 or 15 or 50 years
before or after another, etc. The other, related reason is that this
method allows him to show *universal* human traits and historical patterns.
As to whether the "details of everyday life" are in there, Larry Richter,
in one of the finest essays on REH's style I have ever read (and which I
keep hounding him to allow publication of in a wider forum than REHupa),
has a couple of interesting (and amusingly written) insights:
One of Howard's techniques Larry identifies as "Compression of story
elements. This might be called the production of an ultra-real focus.
Oddly, the necessity of this factor in Howard's work was shown to me by one
of the commercial simulations of Conan. I had never read a Booklength
simulation, and one quick reading suggested to me that the particular one I
had in hand would have boiled down to a very short Howard story, had Howard
had a massive enough hangover to have ever written such a thing. In this
simulation, Conan wandered. Conan shopped. Conan had a meal and a babe.
Conan explained the code of King Arthur as transformed in a
typewriter-assisted time-warp. I was in great fear that he would knit.
"In Howard's stories, domestic life and its details are all but
non-existent. Howard assumes that we will accept that a reiver and brawler
of heroic proportions will be able to feed and relieve himself and handle
the equipment he uses in his daily life. The ruthless editing goes beyond a
beady bright focus on the larger aspects of high adventuring, however.
"Nothing is allowed to remain in the story unless it serves to advance the
work. A Howard story is so vital that it usually resembles a corridor of
doors; it could be taken in almost any direction at almost any point. That
is a part of the thrill of it, and a part of the mechanism that produces
the thrill. Like all things fast, it possesses a dangerous potential
energy. In Howard's case the definition of potential energy would be the
ability to bring you to a conclusion which you might normally resist, but
must accept from Howard due to
your emotional acceptance of what has preceded the crisis event of the
story. This energy could be expended on any twist or diversion, were it
useful or not. It shows Howard's willpower to pursue story that it does not
diverge. In Howard's hands the power builds to the ending, or is used to
drive a situation that builds more power while leading closer to the
ending. Howard avoids intermediate destinations.
"There is enough discarded material bypassed in Howard's best work to form
extra careers for several other writers. In fact, I would suggest that it
has."
And Larry expresses, I think, very well something that I have long thought
about Howard's work:
"Howard wants the reader to do a lot of the work in description of scenes
and characters. His limited but powerful descriptions will tend to be of
the emotional import of the thing described rather than of the physical
parameters of the place or object. They will have light and color, but not
much other visual detail. Swords glimmer and glitter, which incidentally,
if polished weapons are presented to you unawares, is how they are visually
perceived.
"He tells you what the element is needed for in the story, and seems to ask
if you have one to supply. He doesn't want you to drag his ideas around
like luggage throughout your reading unless they have real importance. He
wants you to supply whatever scene you have in your head that will serve
the needs of the story because this works faster, does not present you with
a point to argue with the author on, and is seamless, and Bob knows it."
Years ago I argued with Sprague de Camp in REHupa that his assumption that,
because Howard had used a few names lifted from Robert W. Chambers in
"Wolves Beyond the Border" and "Beyond the Black River" did not mean that
he visualized the setting of those stories as upstate New York. The names
were exotic. The description of the forest, though, was a general
description of the vast forests that once covered the entire US to nearly
the hundredth meridian. A boy from Tennessee (like me) would visualize
from Bob's description the forests of Tennessee; a boy from upstate New
York (like Sprague) would visualize those forests; a boy from Texas (like
Bob) would visualize those of his own state. "Leafy green fastness" really
doesn't pin it down too narrowly, now, does it?
I think Bob's fiction is PLENTY "realistic," because it is about real
humans. Okay, so Conan is pretty invincible as a warrior -- but as a
person, with emotions, with beliefs and attitudes, with personal integrity,
he is a more developed and believable character than most "fantasy"
characters. Conan is a guy I can really imagine sinking a few pints with.
One of my primary gripes with much of contemporary fantasy writing -- and
one of the reasons I don't read much of it, any more -- is that it gives
*too much* detail. Robert Jordan leaves little or nothing to *your*
imagination, he tries to dazzle you with the richness and complexity of
*his*. Well, sorry, I don't particularly care to play that game.
(Especially when, no matter how rich and complex, the stuff he's imagining
seems to all be stuff I've read before.) I have a pretty good imagination,
myself, and I enjoy using it, so the authors I like the most are those that
stimulate my own imagination and direct it toward certain ends (for the
sake of plot), but that allow it some pretty free play. I don't *need* or
*want* everything described in minute detail, because then I am merely a
passive observer rather than an active participant in the act of literary
creation.
I know that my preference is way out of synch with the mainstream of
current fantasy writers and their readers, who seem to share a preference
for richly detailed never-ending soap operas. But it's why I like Bob
Howard, whose preference was to tell you a damned good story.
Rusty
