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Post by sorcerer on Jul 23, 2019 21:48:26 GMT -5
I speculate as to what he would have done had he not took his own life. I figure he would have moved on to westerns/historicals and been another Louis L'amour, Zane Gray, or Herman Wouk type author. I wonder. He seemed to work primarily on passion:
I know that for months I had been absolutely barren of ideas, completely unable to work up anything sellable. Then the man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen--or rather off my typewriter--almost without any effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. (Howard, Dec 14, 1933 to Clark Ashton Smith.)
Tragedy and depression can cause a writer to dry up. Once his mother had died, would Howard's mind have ever again been ready? He probably knew the answer to that question better than any of us.
All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre; The feast is over, and the lamps expire.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jul 24, 2019 7:20:03 GMT -5
All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre; The feast is over, and the lamps expire. Those are a couple of my favorite lines by Howard. I 'borrowed' them for a memorial I wrote called In Memory of Robert E. Howard. I think it could bear a rewrite at this point. I riffed it off pretty quick, tidied it up, and haven't revisited it since. www.deviantart.com/zlzf33/art/In-Memory-of-Robert-E-Howard-733541541
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Post by sorcerer on Jul 25, 2019 11:57:37 GMT -5
I get 404 Not Found from that link.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jul 25, 2019 12:07:02 GMT -5
I get 404 Not Found from that link. Found a 'Share link', I'll try it. fav.me/dc4qc9x
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Post by sorcerer on Jul 25, 2019 21:18:26 GMT -5
OK it works now - it reads like a song. Did you have a melody in mind?
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Jul 25, 2019 22:25:22 GMT -5
OK it works now - it reads like a song. Did you have a melody in mind? Ha, I get that a lot. Played in bands for so many years, I guess I'm stuck in a lyrical rut. But no, didn't have any specific melody in mind when I wrote it.
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Post by sorcerer on Aug 11, 2019 19:13:49 GMT -5
So I finally got around to reading Pigeons From Hell; I was a bit fatigued the first time around, so I read it again aloud to my wife today. I've read horror fiction by Howard before that didn't work well at all, but this was extremely good.
And, I think where it goes right, as well as where it goes wrong, does a great deal to illuminate how Robert Howard wrote successful sword a sorcery. Because if this had been a Lovecraft story, it would have been subtlely different:
First person narration would have strengthened the reader's connection to Griswell (and made his rant about witches in Salem more appropriate), The menace would have been revealed much more slowly, with a focus on ambience rather than action and dialogue
Griswell would have spent most of the story alone, without being able to count on Buckner as a reassuring ally, Buckner's confidence and experience would not have been able to easily overcome the horror, showing it to be beyond or outside of man's ability to overcome,
The story would have likely contained loose threads, rather than ending with the old man dead, the house fully explored, and the horrors extinguished, and
- It probably would have had a better title than Pigeons From Hell.
But these stylistic fingerprints and others besides are very likely to be exactly what make sword and sorcery work:
Use third person narration to focus on places, action, and dialogue that can be vividly experienced, Build ambiance with action and dialogue, Use second and third characters as foils to set off the main character's strengths, Build the protagonist by showing him overcoming trials, attributing his successes to his traits, and Weave numerous threads together so that they build a satisfying conclusion.
So thanks for the suggestion, Chis - Pigeons From Hell is a fantastic story. Although there's a lot of bad Robert Howard out there (and if you don't believe me, I can only say, " Ka nama kaa lajerama") I do have to admit, there is a great deal of breadth to Robert Howard as an author that I had no idea existed before visiting this forum.
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Aug 13, 2019 14:09:35 GMT -5
I do have to admit, there is a great deal of breadth to Robert Howard as an author that I had no idea existed before visiting this forum.
Sorcerer, you're welcome. I like Pigeons. And I don't mind that REH's horror style differs from the cosmic style employed by Lovecraft. It was just Howard's "way", I imagine. He was more blood and guts, and less dancing around an issue. My first REH story ever was when I discovered The Macabre Reader --- a neat old Ace paperback with several pulp greats in it: Wandrei, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, etc. The story was The Cairn on the Headland. REH has several great horror tales. Have you read In the Forest of Villefere? Wolfshead? People of the Black Coast? The People of the Dark? Those are just some I recall off the top of my head that I really enjoyed.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2019 16:11:52 GMT -5
I think, his friend and correspondent H.P. Lovecraft summed up 'The Secret to REH's Success' nicely with the following words:
It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr. Howard's stories stand out so sharply, but the real secret is that he himself is in every one of them, whether they were ostensibly commercial or not. He was greater than any profit-making policy he could adopt -- for even when he outwardly made concessions to Mammon-guided editors and commercial critics, he had an internal force and sincerity which broke through the surface and put the imprint of his personality on everything he wrote. Seldom, if ever, did he set down a lifeless stock character or situation and leave it as such. Before he concluded with it, it always took on some tinge of vitality and reality in spite of popular editorial policy -- always drew something from his own experience and knowledge of life instead of from the sterile herbarium of dessicated pulpish standbys. Not only did he excel in pictures of strife and slaughter, but he was almost alone in his ability to create real emotions and spectral fear and dread suspense. No author -- even in the humblest fields -- can truly excel unless he takes his work very seriously, and Mr. Howard did just that in cases where he consciously thought he did not. That such an artist should perish while hundreds of insincere hacks continue to concoct spurious ghosts and vampires and space-ships and occult detectives is indeed a sorry piece of cosmic irony!
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Post by Von K on Aug 13, 2019 17:46:43 GMT -5
I think, his friend and correspondent H.P. Lovecraft summed up 'The Secret to REH's Success' nicely with the following words: It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr. Howard's stories stand out so sharply, but the real secret is that he himself is in every one of them, whether they were ostensibly commercial or not. He was greater than any profit-making policy he could adopt -- for even when he outwardly made concessions to Mammon-guided editors and commercial critics, he had an internal force and sincerity which broke through the surface and put the imprint of his personality on everything he wrote. Seldom, if ever, did he set down a lifeless stock character or situation and leave it as such. Before he concluded with it, it always took on some tinge of vitality and reality in spite of popular editorial policy -- always drew something from his own experience and knowledge of life instead of from the sterile herbarium of dessicated pulpish standbys. Not only did he excel in pictures of strife and slaughter, but he was almost alone in his ability to create real emotions and spectral fear and dread suspense. No author -- even in the humblest fields -- can truly excel unless he takes his work very seriously, and Mr. Howard did just that in cases where he consciously thought he did not. That such an artist should perish while hundreds of insincere hacks continue to concoct spurious ghosts and vampires and space-ships and occult detectives is indeed a sorry piece of cosmic irony!Thanks for posting the fuller version Hun. Ol' HP sure knows where it's at when it comes to REH.
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Post by sorcerer on Aug 23, 2019 19:00:29 GMT -5
I think, his friend and correspondent H.P. Lovecraft summed up 'The Secret to REH's Success' nicely
No. Lovecraft did correctly identify a key feature of REH's writing, but REH's way of putting himself into the stories was most definitely not what made his writing great. Or do you also agree with Lovecraft's assessment that, "REH’s best weird tales, without question, were the short 'King Kull’ series," as Lovecraft wrote in 1936? In case anyone is unfamiliar with these stories, try The Shadow Kingdom, which you can read for free right here. REH was "in" this story as much as his Conan yarns, but Shadow Kingdom was nowhere near The Tower of the Elephant.
There are lessons to be learned from studying Robert Howard, but "just put yourself into your stories" is not one.
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Post by Von K on Aug 23, 2019 19:57:23 GMT -5
You could also rationalise that as being because he learned how to express himself better as time went on. Lovecraft's preference was for the weird elements in a yarn. Those early Kull yarns lean more to the weird end of the spectrum than the later Conan yarns, esp Mirrors of Tuzun Thune. HPL exchanged some correspondence with Robert Bloch where he expressed the opinion that REH's Conan yarns leaned a little too much towards blood and thunder for Weird Tales for his taste. Hope I got that right, long time since I read the letter. To me Shadow Kingdom is an interesting study in Kingly paranoia expressed in symbolic terms and woven into a great weird yarn in its own right. REH gave some writing advice to Novalyne Price Ellis which is relevant here: Imho in truth there's no one secret to great writing but hundreds upon hundreds of them, accumulated and internalized through decades of reading, writing, observation and instruction. The key role that personality plays is that each writer is different and will tend to accumulate and prefer techniques and suites of techniques, to name but two of many factors, according to their own unique personality. In other words that the tools (techniques in this instance) are extensions of the person and personality of the one who uses them. Well, that's the way I look at it anyhow. But REH's central piece of advice there is really one of the core secrets. A general belief among some editors in the pulp days was that to write about a million words was a good apprenticeship. REH served most of his writing apprenticeship by writing poetry more than prose I'd imagine. But some of REH's early apprentice work deserves a place in American literature.
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Post by Von K on Aug 28, 2019 2:49:05 GMT -5
I think, his friend and correspondent H.P. Lovecraft summed up 'The Secret to REH's Success' nicely
No. Lovecraft did correctly identify a key feature of REH's writing, but REH's way of putting himself into the stories was most definitely not what made his writing great. Or do you also agree with Lovecraft's assessment that, "REH’s best weird tales, without question, were the short 'King Kull’ series," as Lovecraft wrote in 1936? In case anyone is unfamiliar with these stories, try The Shadow Kingdom, which you can read for free right here. REH was "in" this story as much as his Conan yarns, but Shadow Kingdom was nowhere near The Tower of the Elephant.
There are lessons to be learned from studying Robert Howard, but "just put yourself into your stories" is not one. Here's some more evidence to support Lovecraft's view: From Memories of Robert E. Howard, by Norris Chambers and Ben Friberg.
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Post by Von K on Aug 28, 2019 3:09:11 GMT -5
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Post by ChrisLAdams on Aug 28, 2019 11:27:55 GMT -5
I remember that article, Von K! It was great. Another 'secret' of Howard's success was write, write, write. His volume of output is absolutely astounding, by any comparison. If a man writes 5 million words, a good million are bound to find favor with a following. Not everything he churned out did--those are the 'last in the trunk' pieces, etc that we completists appreciate today. They're also pieces that Bob himself reworked into different stories that did go on to become successful. Howard just had a very charismatic way of writing that was full of pulsing energy and vibrant albeit concise ways of describing settings and characters. I've often said of the man that he could say in 10 words more than many could say in a hundred. And those ten would make the hair on your neck stand on end and your heart to race.
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