I sent this yesterday in reply to Rusty, but as far as I can tell it never made it to
REH-fans, so I
am resending it. If it did in fact reach you guys the first time, I apologize.
Leo
-----Original Message-----
From: Leo Grin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2001 7:07 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [rehfans] Did Howard have a grand design?
Rusty, I changed this reply to plain text for all of our conveniences. I hate HTML
text, too (blame
Patrice, I think he started it!) :>)
I'm not going to make the mistake of last time and disagree on things that I believe
deep down we
agree on. In other words, you have good points well made, as long as it isn't seen
(not by you, but
by others) as a peculiar Howard fault largely absent from other authors' work.
I don't think your being unfair (or without proof) when you point out the blatant
similarities (I do
see them, too!) between certain Conan stories. I just want to repeat that most
authors do this a
lot, and Howard is hardly unique in this regard, so I fail to see the point in
deliberately
spotlighting this in his work, as if it tells us something unique about him. Again,
take a STAR
TREK or DR. WHO series, or the James Bond or Indy Jones stuff, or Tarzan, etc. To
take several
recent examples of mine (although not as blatant as Howard)...I was recently reading
CAS' Tales of
Averoigne, and several tales felt quite similar...man seduced by succubus and gives
in, monks fight
evil in old temple on the hill in the woods, etc. I have also recently read Jack
London's BEFORE
ADAM and THE STAR ROVER, and several chapters in the latter very much resemble the
former. THE STAR
ROVER is definitely a major elaboration on the exact same ideas presented in BEFORE
ADAM. I
know...Howard's seems "worse" (so to speak), more blatant, but to me they have similar
effects on my
reading experience, that is to say...not much. There is a lot of "self-plagiarism"
going on
everywhere an author has to crank out many stories about a single character (or type
of character),
and it doesn't bother me that much. I can enjoy both stories as separate entities,
and believe that
the character had two similar adventures. I know you have stated as much, but I am
just hoping
others see this as clearly, as opposed to seeing it as a peculiarly Howardian defect.
I do have to disagree with the gist of your assessment of Tolkien's differences from
Howard, though.
It's far too vast and complicated an issue to do it justice here, I think, but Tolkien
obviously
based (and freely admitted to basing) each of his languages in various ways off of
actual historical
languages he enjoyed hearing, and a great many of his names were cribbed from actual
history as well
as real poems, epic stories, etc. Middle Earth is in many ways meteorologically
patterned off of
Europe and it's environs. All of the "world creating" of Tolkien's is very similar to
what Howard
did in more ways than not, I think. Tolkien was certainly more ingenious with the way
he chose and
explained his names and environs (and he had a lot more time and help in doing it),
but the process
is similar in most respects to what Howard did. Middle Earth is our earth a long time
ago, just
like Hyboria. Same idea (fantasy in the mists of earth's pre-history), same process
(use actual
history and language to strengthen and increase the reader's empathy with fantastic
inventions), but
different authors with different talents, markets, and motivations, hence different
results.
And I know you already said it, but I'll state it again for emphasis: Tolkien
"plagiarized", too.
There have been striking parallels drawn between Tolkien's stories and many real earth
stories,
myths, etc., going back to the very first inspiration for his first elvish language
(the real-life
poem he read speaking of Earendil and the stars, which became a cornerstone of his
"mythology").
Even Tolkien's Hobbits have striking antecedents in fantastic fiction of the late
1800's (see The
Annotated Hobbit for details), so even this (seemingly) most original and creative of
inventions was
somewhat plagiarized. Tolkien may have plagiarized from more obscure sources than
Howard (sources
available to a Professor of Linguistics reading old legends in their native tongues),
and he hid his
plagiarism better using his skill with languages, but he plagiarized freely and often
from real
history just as Howard did.
Again, I don't think you are being unfair in your assessment, I agree with most of it.
I only want
to make sure that it can't be blown up (by others, not by you) into what I see as
unfair criticisms
of Howard, criticisms which aren't judiciously applied to other authors' work in the
same
discussion. Without restating and rephrasing things from several viewpoints, some
lurking deCamp
could end up using the opinions presented here in ways we didn't intend.
And finally..."More obtuse than you thought", eh? Which means that you've always
considered me
obtuse, just that now it's growing to a greater level than previously imagined? Just
think of it
this way...my previous obtuseness has been self-plagiarized and rewritten into a much
more effective
level of obtuseness the second time around. :>)
Leo
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Rusty
Burke
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2001 2:09 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [rehfans] Did Howard have a grand design?
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....
********
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.
********
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
