From: Michael Martinez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: [rehfans] Thud and Blunder revisited
> When I think about it, Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels are very short but
> packed with action and characters. He, too, seems to have left out the
> mundane details. If he stops to describe the landscape or to explore a
> facet of Barsoomian (or whoever's) society, he is providing information
> which is used later on in the story.
>
> Howard and Burroughs may not be topping the best-sellers lists but their
> works still sell decades after their deaths. Is the compressed writing
> style going to outlast the fully-detailed pseudo-realism that Anderson
> advocated?
I'll have a go at this. A lot of writers seem to mistake verbiage for
something important to say. In fact much of it is only filler. The pulps
were an excellent training ground for many writers because the editors did
not let this happen to any great degree and asked the author to tighten up.
They also mistake verbiage for the ability to write. There are many authors
who can do a sidebar yet keep it interesting and pertinent. The worst case
that I recall is John Norman in his GOR series. All these novels after the
first 2 or 3 got uniformly thick because every chapter or so he had to spend
20 pages describing the religions or history or something of Gor which were
really boring I found. His action was good but he couldn't do an effective
sidebar without bogging down. And there IS something to be said for leaving
a good percentage of it up to one's imagination.
When ERB wrote sidebars it was very pertinent to the scene being enacted or
about to come, basically setting the stage. REH was much shorter with
descriptive material that was background. There is also good reason here
too. REH wrote The Hyborian Age essay as background to his mythical world.
The history of the world and progression of races was laid out there so he
needn't reiterate it in his tales. Of course, this essay was not published
until after his death as I recall which just proves that you can do well
without all the background details.
I'm not sure that it is the compressed style in itself that is important,
more the work itself. The best works of an author survive, and the junk is
only of interest to fans. What makes a work "the best?" I will say it is not
only writing style and perfection of language but also the impression it
conveys overall . As we have seen with the Conan comics of the 70's the
"impression" of the character overshadowed the writings for those who
encountered REH first through that medium. It was the reverse for me, and
the power of his writings attracted me to the graphics the comics presented.
All fiction is "pseudo" if you must analyze it that way. It is also "real"
in that it reflects life. Terms like pseudo-realism mean nothing. It is
either realistic or fantasy. Writing is not-real in that it is a fictional
event. Even an autobiography is fictional in this aspect in that it is not
the real event, although we do tend to accept it as such. In any event, the
REH compressed style will always work.
Scotty Henderson
