Re: Robert E. Howard's Conan
Posted by:
Knygatin (IP Logged)
Date: 25 November, 2019 01:00PM
I finally finished reading The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition from cover to cover, all of Howard's twenty-one Conan tales, plus related material, drafts, fragments, and synopsis. All from original publications and manuscripts. And free from Sprague de Camp's heavy editing.
Some personal favorites, not saying they are necessarily the best, but which in hindsight stand out as most memorable:
"The Scarlet Citadel"
"The Tower of the Elephant"
"The Slithering Shadow" [the most Klarkashtonish]
"Queen of the Black Coast"
"The People of the Black Circle"
"A Witch Shall Be Born"
"Shadows in Zamboula"
"The Black Stranger"
"The Snout in the Dark" [draft]
Honorable mention: "Red Nails" (much evil in this one), "The Hour of the Dragon" (several fine moments, albeit rambling and overlong).
But most Conan tales hold a similar level of quality. Unfortunately they all follow the same predictable overall story structure, which challenged my patience after a while. I think they were written to sell loose newsstand numbers to spontaneous buyers on the street. I don't recommend anyone to read all these stories in a row.
The greatest qualities lie in the details and the immediate segments inside the stories, not the story compositions themselves.
Howard's descriptions of Conan's body and psyche is almost a unique art-form in itself, and he is able to paint Conan dynamically over and over, from different angles, tremendously impressive and convincing, especially so in the earlier stories. (His scantily clad women though I find more stereotyped; I think CAS and Leiber did this better.) Conan may be stereotyped in the movies, but not so in the hands of Howard! Here is real flesh and blood, and a demigod.
The second thing that strikes me is Howard's handling of large-scale big armies, war, strategy, and the immediate violence of fighting. He is in total control. Astounded, I humbly bow down.
Howard also had, in spite of his young age, a complex and penetrating insight into the evil operations of corrupt politicians and despots. I cannot fathom where ever he got all that knowledge. It is fully applicable upon the world of today; and yet hardly anyone today seems to be able to penetrate it. Except for Howard in retrospect. In this regard he was a modern Shakespeare.
It seems to me Howard restrained the fantasy elements so that the stories would uphold a certain sense of historic verisimilitude. I grew a bit bored with all the giant snakes and apes. But he handles supernatural forces extremely well. And this makes him one of the giants of genuine weird supernatural literature, tapping understanding from mystical dimensions, that have not been equaled since; not by Leiber, not by Jack Vance, not by anyone.
I think Howard's foremost inspiration for his adventure yarns was E. R. Burroughs. I look forward to reading the best of the Tarzan novels, and see which I rate the highest of Conan and Tarzan.