Leo Grin wrote:
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.
******
(As a completely tangential aside, I really hate trying to respond
to HTML-encoded messages. I don't at all understand why they refuse
to write those things in such a way that you can break into the quoted
matter to insert comments. Sometimes I can cut the part I want to
quote and then paste it into a blank area I create, which is what I've
tried to do here, but it doesn't always work.)
A point I'd like to make re: REH vs. Tolkien and other "world-creators,"
is that Howard's "creation" seems to me to have been of a wholly different
character, in that he was essentially using actual historical cultures,
etc., to comprise his world. It is a world in which the ancient Egyptians,
the pirates of the Spanish Main, the Cossacks, the Celtic Irish, the Vikings,
and American frontiersmen could all mingle. It's a brilliant world-conception,
in my view, but not the same thing as those guys who sit down and try to
carefully construct a new planet and cultures from scratch. I think
this is one reason Howard didn't need to write such detailed references
either into or apart from his stories -- as many have noted repeatedly,
Bob could assume that you already had a lot of the needed descriptive material
in your head. Why should he spend a couple of pages describing a
Shemite? You know what they look like....
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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.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.
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Well, of course he doesn't admit to self-plagiarism. It's quite
possible that he didn't even recognize what he was doing. But when
I read "Xuthal of the Dusk" and then read "Red Nails," I find it striking
that the basic plot is pretty much identical, with Conan and a female companion
stumbling upon an ancient city lost to the knowledge of man out in the
desert, a city in which super-science features prominently, a city which,
once entered, appears to be an entirely enclosed maze of rooms and passages,
through which roam supernatural menaces, a city in which they encounter
a dark-featured, beautiful woman who turns out to be a princess of Stygian
origin who figured in a rebellion and was brought to this city many years
before, who attempts to kill Conan's companion -- a city which is named
Xuthal in the one story, and Xuchotl in the other... well, Leo, if you
can't see more than just superficial similarity, you're more obtuse than
I thought. And I think the same sort of similarities are to be found
when you read "Iron Shadows in the Moon" followed by "The Devil in Iron."
In both cases, I believe the second version of the story is far superior
to the first, though the difference between "Xuthal" and "Red Nails" is
greater than that between "Iron Shadows" and "Devil". As for others,
well, I haven't really made an attempt to search for another such pair.
These two happened to jump out at me when I was doing other things.
Was Howard consciously "plagiarizing" himself? I've never said so.
I don't happen to think that using the same elements to construct a superior
story is "plagiarism," though certainly I don't think "rewriting" is too
strong a word for these examples. And as I say, I'm not sure Bob
even knew it was happening. (It's interesting that, according to
Patrice's most recent, exhaustive research, "Iron Shadows" was written
in October 1932, "Xuthal" in November 1932; "Devil" was written about a
year after "Iron Shadows," following a hiatus of several months in which
Howard wrote no Conan stories at all, and "Red Nails" was written in the
summer of 1935, more than two years after "Xuthal.")
I gather that you are worried that somehow my suggestion that Howard reused plot elements, or actually reworked entire stories, somehow robs him of his creative genius. That is far from how I see it. In fact, I think it requires a pretty high order of genius to turn "Xuthal of the Dusk" into the superb "Red Nails." I've caught flack in the past for pointing out where Howard had "borrowed" this or that idea, or plot. But hell, this is what writers *do*. The genius lies in *making the story your own,* and at this Robert E. Howard was unsurpassed. In one letter to H.P. Lovecraft he tells the story of "Bigfoot Wallace and the Big Indian" following the account in John C. Duval's biography of Wallace, which purports to quote Bigfoot himself, almost exactly -- but Howard tells the story with so much more passion that you'd almost believe it was *he*, rather than Wallace, who fought the Indian. As Lovecraft noted, part of Howard's genius lay in his ability to actually get in and mentally inhabit past ages.
Rusty
