I can
agree with your qualifications of my statements, but I want to make sure
they don't cloud up the original questions Mike asked.
I also
agree that it is inaccurate to say the whole of Howard's Hyborian Age was
created by the end of March. 1932 (I didn't mean to imply that sweeping a
claim). But "The Hyborian Age" (the essay I was talking about, not the
universe as a whole) WAS completely finished by April 1932, which tells me that
Howard didn't make up the stuff in that essay as an "afterthought",
merely using it to collect lots of scattered data which he had already generated
by writing the other Conan tales (which is what Mike asked).
That essay, along with the maps, list of names, and
the stories PHOENIX ON THE SWORD, FROST GIANT'S DAUGHTER, and GOD IN THE
BOWL were all part of the genesis of the Conan tales and of Hyborian
"history", so to speak. By the time he had revised PHOENIX, he felt
the need for some sort of sweeping historical base from which to "make stuff up"
from later, hence the essay.
Of
course he added much as he went along in each story (every author does), but he
was careful (not lucky or aimless, but careful) not to contradict past "history"
while elaborating. He wasn't perfect (as your Tamar example demonstrates),
but as one can see from reading The History of Middle Earth, neither was Tolkien
(widely considered the master at world-building, and rightly so). If
Tolkien's various drafts, synopsis', etc. were held to the same standard that
Howard's writings (published and unpublished) have been, it would stand as
hopelessly contradictory. Howard changing the name of a city is a very minor thing
compared to Tolkien, say, completely revising chapters of THE HOBBITT to more
closely match his new historical data presented in The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien endlessly changed and reused names in drafts (like your Punt example) as
well, and anything was subject to change before the book went to print (which is
one reason why The Silmarillion was such a difficult book to edit and put
out...too many inconsistencies among drafts). But like you
said, if you just take what Howard actually published, the consistency is
largely there.
Howard
says he had no precise knowledge of the Southern Kingdoms, but Tolkien had very
little knowledge of the lands east of Middle Earth. But Howard did
envision the kingdoms as African in nature, and any story data given about these
kingdoms keeps that in mind. He didn't write some :southern" stories, put
African names in there on a whim, then later write the Hyborian Age and infer
these lands were African because he had earlier (without any real reason) used
theme names. I'm sure you agree with all of this, I am
just clarifying to more fully answer Mike's question.
One
disagreement: I would never guess that Howard's changing of a single city
name was an indication of him abandoning the concept of "global cohesiveness"
just because the story was meant for England. I would chalk it up to his
simply forgetting he had named the city in the earlier story before I would
suppose that. I think you are reading to much into the "center of
Ireland/Heart of Ahriman" connection, but who knows? I think connections
like Dale Rippke noting similarities in the ways he described ancient
Giant-Kings of Acheron/Stygia in various stories are much more illustrative
of the "professionalism" you speak of.
Perhaps my phrase "carefully" outlined was too much when referencing the
Conan stories, but I maintain that Howard was the type of writer who usually had
to know where he was going before embarking on the writing of a story. The
fact that he often started outlines, even if they quickly petered out, shows
that he valued getting some sort of structure into his head before writing, and
that he had a much tougher time completing the story without this
structure.
For
those who are interested, Ed Waterman's article ONE WHO WROTE ALONE is online
at:
One
telling excerpt from this article that relates to our
discussion:
�Do you always outline your
stories?�
�Absolutely.� He paused, thinking. �Oh, once in a while, I put a sheet of
paper in my typewriter and start out and get where I�m going with no outline at
all. But the way I explain such things is that it�s either been gestating in my
mind, or I have lived it or knew about it in some other life.�
On a dark, lonely road with the stars dim and far away, reincarnation was
not a topic I wanted to explore. He settled back in his seat. �I don�t want to
leave the wrong impression. Most of the yarns I write are planned very
carefully, and they�re complete with a detailed outline.�
I asked him what he meant by a detailed outline, and I gathered from what
he said that he made notes and arranged them in order. But it was not the way I
outlined history or one of my speeches. He said his outline helped him to know
his characters, what they wanted, and where they were going. The outline helped
for it made the yarn stick in his mind. Then when he sat down at the typewriter,
he went straight through the story. Even so, it took a big wastebasket to hold
the pages he threw away.
- pg.
78
Now I
am aware that Howard may have been exaggerating the meaning of "detailed", but
the point for Mike to take back to his friends on the other list is that Howard
didn't just aimlessly pick names out of the air without any reason or thought to
consistency, which is what Mike seemed to assume. Even if he was inventing
something on the spot, said invention got filtered through Howard's preconceived
notions (largely established through The Hyborian Age essay way back in March
1932) of what the consistent history was. Again, he wasn't perfect in his
use of names, etc., but there was thought behind it, a good deal of it. He
didn't know much about the southern kingdoms, but whenever he did mention them,
the names and people look and sound African, not Greek or whatever. That's
my point, anyway.
To go
off on a tangent...there can be much debate about how many plot points were
blatantly "reused" (as blatantly as BY THIS AXE I RULE became PHOENIX ON THE
SWORD) but I think most of it is speculation rather than fact. Some of the
stories have striking similarities, but unless there are very convincing
elements reproduced verbatim, then it's as facetious as saying that all of
Howard's Irish heroes were the same because they all had straight black hair and
icy blue eyes. I don't buy that Howard was as self-derivative as people
make him out to be. Some, yes, but not nearly the wholesale reusing of so
many stories that people say.
Just
because many of his magic buildings were green stone or more than one Conan tale
has a lost city or a reincarnating wizard doesn't strike me as any more
derivative than Tolkien's putting every villain in, on, or under a mountain, or
Star Trek episodes showing multiple encounters with "peaceful technology
inferior" aliens ending in questioning the Prime Directive. Yes, when many
stories are written about a single character in a single genre and universe,
certain elements seem to get reused, but if so I think it is usually more
unintentional than not. Does Howard ever mention to others something like
"you know that new Conan yarn I've got in Weird Tales? Pay it no mind,
it's just a rehash of an earlier story I did." I'm not sure Howard would
have admitted to the self-plagiarism of this magnitude, because I think it was
largely unintentional. In some instances, yes. But not the many
examples that are bandied about when we talk about the Conan stories.
Anyone who has tried to write a series of stories (or TV shows or whatever)
knows exactly what I am talking about.
But I
basically agree with your points, and am thankful for the
clarifications.
Leo
Leo Grin a �crit :
The Hyborian Age essay was most certainly NOT an
afterthought.
Check out this link:
http://www.rehupa.com/lit_article_conan_typescripts.htm
You'll see that The Hyborian Age (and the Hyborian maps) was written in
March 1932, the same time as
the very earliest Conan stories.
Howard also discusses in at least one letter the trouble he went
through
to make sure the stories contained consistent details from the beginning,
noting that
without this pseudo-history in mind he wouldn't have been
able to get a proper feel for capturing
the realism of the
stories.
Well, Leo, while I completely
agree with you re. De Camp et al. and Howard's greatness, I don't believe the
"Hyborian Age" ever was what you imply.
While I certainly agree with the fact that, as a whole,
REH created a coherent universe, I don't think it is accurate to say that REH
created the whole of his "Hyborian Age" in March 1932. For example, as REH
himself wrote to Schuyler-Miller in March 1936, he had no very precise idea of
the southern kingdoms. Howard's maps do not include the countries south of
Stygia.
REH added stuff and consistence to his universe
as he was writing the stories; this is true for the "Hyborian Age", but also
for Conan's "biography". Punt was first intended to be a city ("The Snout in
the Dark", 1933). When REH abandoned that story, he later recycled the name,
and used it for a country ("Teeth Of Gwahlur" and "Red Nails".) REH had
probably never thought of Punt - city or country - before writing "The Snout
in the Dark" (and sorry for using the decampian name.)
He also had no scruple to change Aquilonia's capital from Tamar ("The Scarlet
Citadel") to "Tarantia" (THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON), and to recycle elements from
former stories when writing the novel: no need to have global cohesiveness
with the other Conan tales, since that one was initially to have been
published in England.
The Conan stories published in
Weird Tales, i.e. those completed and sold, are quite coherent, but that the
unsold, uncompleted or, in the case of THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON, not intended at
first to be published in Weird Tales, should not be included in this
"coherent" universe.
In other words, what strikes me so
much in the Conan stories is much more Howard's professionalism than any
"fannish" (for lack of a better term) interest in creating his universe. What
he knew, was that his readership, by which I mean the Weird Tales readers,
would care about such a thing as cohesiveness.
When he
wrote THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON, this was for the British market, and since the
novel had a definite Celtic/Arthurian aspect to it, he did not hesitate to
"violate" the cohesiveness of the stories published in Weird Tales by
replacing Tamar by Tarantia. Tara, in Celtic mythology, is the mystical center
of Ireland, and the novel revolves around Conan's finding the "Heart of his
kingdom", i.e. the "Heart of Ahriman", which was hidden in a temple in
Tarantia.
Not fannish, but professional.
Howard carefully outlined most of his stories, and
he was
careful to keep up a seamless illusion when referencing "ancient
Hyborian history".
While I wholly agree with
the latter part of that proposition, I have to disagree about the beginning.
Howard's synopses for the Conan stories, when they
exist (there are ten synopses for the Conan stories), are, as a general rule,
extremely detailed as to the beginning of the story, and very, very, loose as
to the ending. Most of the time, in fact, there's no real ending.
Most Conan stories simply do not have a synopsis.
"Rogues in the House" doesn't even have a draft; REH wrote it in a single
session and sent if off.
The synopsis for "The Scarlet
Citadel" does not cover a page, and is double-spaced. The last sentence alone
sums up the second half of the story: "He finds a rival wizard imprisoned, and
frees him, and this wizard summ ons a huge bird or dragon, on which Conan
rides back to Aquilonia, raises an army, and defeats the Kothians." Hardly
what I call a detailed outline.
When REH wrote "Queen of the
Black Coast", he had absolutely no idea of how the story would end; there's no
synopsis. Howard wrote an unfinished draft, ending at the middle of the story,
the last few pages being part-story, part-synopsis, that does not cover the
whole story; some aspects of the story were changed as he wrote his second
draft.
Even for such a mammoth project as THE HOUR OF
THE DRAGON, REH only wrote a two-page synopsis, that only cover about the
third of the novel.
Patrice
