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Post by zarono on Sept 21, 2019 20:48:28 GMT -5
Howard must have done something right, here we are nearly ninety years later talking about his writing
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Post by sorcerer on Sept 24, 2019 18:33:17 GMT -5
It hurts the scene that Conan doesn't leave, but it doesn't ruin it.
Not sure where you're coming from here Sorcerer, REH is quite clear why Conan doesn't leave:
Really? Really really you're not sure where I'm coming from? After reading Hour of the Dragon half a dozen times? Because if you check the entire passage this is the way it reads:
So Conan ran up the stairs, right?
Whoa. An uncanny, stealthy thing lurking in an Hyborean dungeon. I'm betting now he'll hurry up the stairs to make good his escape.
Wow, OK! Now that whole thing with Tarascus and those hints with your latest girlfriend and the creepy noises we heard before make sense! It's all explained. By the way, Conan, weren't you planning on leaving?
Um, so, it has no treasure, and um, it seems pretty big and all, and it's behind you rather than in your way, so it isn't as though there's any benefit to killing it; are you planning on getting on with your escape any time soon? Remember? You were escaping?
So how about - Oh whatever, we all know you're invincible anyway.
Von K, it's a great scene. It's loads of fun; very well foreshadowed, full of suspense, the reader is well on board with this battle when it arrives. But seriously it makes absolutely no sense. The way it was written, this scene is a complete and total triumph of emotional gratification over believability.
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Post by Von K on Sept 24, 2019 20:02:17 GMT -5
You sound a little bitter there Sorcerer. I'm not attacking your integrity at all. You're entitled to a slightly different reading of the scene than mine. For market reasons REH wrote Hour of the Dragon for a British publisher so he wanted to include a good overview for a new audience as to what Conan was about. There's no way he would ever have Conan evading an iconic fight with a great ape in a yarn intended for a new audience that had never seen him fight one. For storytelling reasons Conan just evading the ape would make for an anticlimactic ending for the scene. It makes for a fuller more tense and climactic scene to see Conan both assess and fight the creature before getting out, satisfying the reader's curiosity as to what this thing actually is. For characterisation reasons Conan's atavistic curiosity sometimes holds him riveted at such times. He's instinctively a bruiser a battler and a direct actionist with full confidence in his own prowess (and knowledge from previous encounters with such creatures) who would much rather take the initiative and face the thing rather than risk getting attacked from behind. All of which, imho, makes for a scene which is pitched perfectly for it's market, satisfying for the reader, fully in character for Conan, and therefore also eminently believable. How would you have written the scene?
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Post by sorcerer on Sept 24, 2019 21:30:43 GMT -5
You sound a little bitter there Sorcerer.
No, I'm simply different from you, Von K. I don't connect with Howard the way most of you do, so I'm neither bitter about his writing nor feel that you fail to respect my integrity. I agree that the battle needed to happen, more or less for the reasons you enumerate.
And truthfully, I don't know how I would have written the scene. The obvious solution is to somehow present the monster from the front, but this detracts from the disturbing hints of intelligence that arise from its expectation of finding Conan in the cell. Its behavior indicates that it has devoured others, and that grants the encounter a subtle richness.
The next solution would be to create a barrier of some kind. Possibly a door to be battered down would work to add tension as Conan wondered whether to risk the noise, and if he took the risk, was then committed to a race against time.
A third solution would be to make Conan unable to take advantage of the immediate escape route. The stakes could have been raised by turning the stair into a dangling chain or some other climb which he knows he could not ascend both rapidly and quietly. This possibility seems most promising, but it doesn't really need to be explored.
Because ultimately, the battle with the ape is already quite good. The gray ape, the thugs at the seashore, and the Khitanian wizards all worked because of the way they were foreshadowed to create suspense and connect them to the rest of the book.
Rather, if I were to improve the novel, I would look at some of the continuity issues across the chapters, and then turn to scenes like the one with the ghoul, or with the vampiress, or with others that I have trouble remembering because after two reads through, they still left scant impression on me. And if I were Howard, I would most definitely weave more of Conan's values and ideas into moments when introspection seemed inevitable, such as the trip on the river with Countess Albiona. Those were to me always the real gems in the Conan stories.
Even those missed opportunities are probably not the biggest problems, though. The real problem with Hour of the Dragon is the way in which Howard spends nine tenths of the novel building Xaltotun into an absolute demon only to deflate him at the end before letting the sidekicks kill him. That was a serious mistake, and would need a great deal of work across numerous chapters to repair.
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Post by Von K on Sept 25, 2019 18:36:06 GMT -5
Rather, if I were to improve the novel, I would look at some of the continuity issues across the chapters, and then turn to scenes like the one with the ghoul, or with the vampiress, or with others that I have trouble remembering because after two reads through, they still left scant impression on me. And if I were Howard, I would most definitely weave more of Conan's values and ideas into moments when introspection seemed inevitable, such as the trip on the river with Countess Albiona. Those were to me always the real gems in the Conan stories.
Even those missed opportunities are probably not the biggest problems, though. The real problem with Hour of the Dragon is the way in which Howard spends nine tenths of the novel building Xaltotun into an absolute demon only to deflate him at the end before letting the sidekicks kill him. That was a serious mistake, and would need a great deal of work across numerous chapters to repair. In raw structural terms the scene with the ghouls is a speedbump to slow Conan down before he can gain on the bearer of the Heart too soon. This kind of thing is a common trope of pulp fiction, which ERB and others have used to great effect, and that likely goes back in storytelling tradition through Dumas and earlier. REH's approach is a classic example of how to do it right - told with flowing energy and lyrical intensity, with fantastic imagery and hints of weird mystery which also add to immersion and worldbuilding, seamlessly immersing the reader and maintaining forward narrative drive whilst accomplishing it's objective. It's also brief, a mere 1k words or thereabouts so it's not simply padding the narrative. In raw structural terms the scene with the vampiress Akivasha is there for pacing and to help set up the big climactic battle between the Priests of Set and the Khitanians. Yet again this is another example of how to do such a scene just right for this kind of yarn - once again, same as I said above for the other scene, told with flowing energy and lyrical intensity, with fantastic imagery and hints of weird mystery which also add to immersion and worldbuilding, seamlessly holding the readers attention and maintaining forward narrative drive whilst accomplishing it's objective. This scene has the addition of one of those moments of introspection you wished there were more of, where a disillusioned Conan contemplates the reality of Akivasha's real nature compared with the legend. Now, as for Xaltotun, that is no mistake but once again good structuring from REH. Xaltotun is absolutely not the big bad of the yarn - the conspirators are, and Conan's own flaw, his refusal to take the kingship seriously, creates the major weakness that the conspirators exploit. Xaltotun is the most powerful but he is not thematically the most important antagonist. He is structurally and thematically subordinate to the conspirators in spite of his great power and the threat he represents. Xaltotun is if anything an asset of the conspirators who gets out of control. He is raised by the power of the Heart in the hands of the conspirator's magiker Orastes, gets out of control and is then finally laid low by the power of the Heart in the hands of Conan's own magikers - Zelata and Hadrathus. That's good structure and uses the right character's to deal with the problem and in the structurally right order. Similarly the end of the book lines up Conan's allies to take down each of the conspirators in appropriate fashion. Tiberius trickery taking down Valerius is a good extra ironic touch. Whilst King Conan, as the leader of Aquilonia's army defeats the King of Nemedia, the head of his army. The mass battle between the armies of Nemedia and Aquilonia makes for a fantastic climax to the yarn. And the final line is literally perfect both in terms of characterisation and theme. There's a good reason so many fans of REH cite this as their favorite Conan yarn and one of the best sword and sorcery yarns ever written to boot. That's all just my 2c imho.
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Post by scottoden on Sept 25, 2019 19:07:37 GMT -5
A very good and concise 2c, IMHO
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Post by Von K on Sept 26, 2019 14:26:50 GMT -5
A very good and concise 2c, IMHO Thanks Scott. Some of it expands on the 'synchronicity of all the elements' you mentioned before of course.
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Post by sorcerer on Sept 26, 2019 17:24:57 GMT -5
Although I don't like glossing over a substantive post, I have only so mich time and space to formulate a reply, so I'll focus on this:
In raw structural terms the scene with the vampiress Akivasha is there for pacing and to help set up the big climactic battle between the Priests of Set and the Khitanians. Yet again this is another example of how to do such a scene just right for this kind of yarn - once again, same as I said above for the other scene, told with flowing energy and lyrical intensity, with fantastic imagery and hints of weird mystery which also add to immersion and worldbuilding, seamlessly holding the readers attention and maintaining forward narrative drive whilst accomplishing it's objective. This scene has the addition of one of those moments of introspection you wished there were more of, where a disillusioned Conan contemplates the reality of Akivasha's real nature compared with the legend.
I found the encounter with Akivasha insincere.
The scene is captivatingly written, and I agree that it moves Conan where he needs to be. Yet, it was sprung on us without any reference beforehand, leaving extensive exposition to be delivered even while the action was underway:
Howard's contemporary, Lovecraft, would never have dropped something like this on the reader out of nowhere; he understood the payoff that arrives after development. And the impact of the scene afterwards, which could have been genuine...
...dissipated instantly, without any later reflection, revisitation, or reconsideration. This last is a recurring problem with many Conan stories; we are left to look at the action "in raw, structural terms" because he is a character all to often untouched by genuine events; a person who heals rapidly and totally from the most devastating wounds, showing little regret for the loves he has lost or dreams left behind.
I concur with Harold Hayes: "The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds." If you look at the successful elements of the story* such as the relationship between Conan and Zenobia, his conflict-ridden exchanges with Publio, or his mutiny aboard the Venturer, you can see the events of a long life echoing forward, for good or for ill. Conan's meetings with Akivasha and with the ghouls were empty of meaning. They did not threaten him beforehand; they left no mark upon him; they never really happened.
Lastly, as for Xaltotun, I hope you'll take this brief remark not merely as a backhanded jibe, but as an invitation to further develop your position: Von K, Conan is wiser than you. He knows that it is not Tarascus, nor Valerius, no, nor Amalric, but Xaltotun who is the real master.
* Yes I do realize that by this I mean "elements that I personally enjoyed." I want to write fiction I like.
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Post by scottoden on Sept 26, 2019 19:11:19 GMT -5
But, he also knows, via a lifetime's experience, that bereft of his sorcery Xaltotun is no threat to him. So he sends the right tool for the right job, Hadrathus and Zelata, while turning his attention on the real threat to *him*: the army of Nemedia and its allies. Even Thugra Khotan, Xaltotun's contemporary, once bereft of his temporal army, is dispensed with in half-a-second, by a thrown sword. Nabonidus, earlier in life, despite great intellect and other aids, is killed with a flying chair. No, Howard knew exactly where to spend his dramatic currency.
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Post by Von K on Sept 27, 2019 19:26:37 GMT -5
This last is a recurring problem with many Conan stories; we are left to look at the action "in raw, structural terms" because he is a character all to often untouched by genuine events; a person who heals rapidly and totally from the most devastating wounds, showing little regret for the loves he has lost or dreams left behind.
The Conan yarns are episodic pulp fiction featuring a larger than life hero in serial form. With episodes separated by sometimes decades in the life of the protagonist. Their episodic nature only potentially becomes a ‘problem’ if you’re thinking of re-ordering and converting the material into a modern context where the conventions are different. Say, a modern TV series. That’s certainly worth considering if you were thinking of adapting Hour of the Dragon into a more condensed and optimised dramatic form, like the screenplay for a 2 hr movie. But the original yarn is a novel, and novels have more freedom than shorter dramatic forms to wander and explore interesting (and surprise) diversions and other such incidents. That’s one of the big advantages of writing a novel as opposed to say, the sort of dramatic screenplay where every beat can be vital and must contribute to the whole. It’s perfectly acceptable in a novel to include occasional scenes and incidents that lie outside of the core dramatic throughline, but yet which contribute in other ways, such as deepening the worldbuilding experience or atmosphere or weird menace. Shorter forms usually can’t spare the space for that kind of thing. Which may also tangentially cover your point regarding Lovecraft. I’ll take it as a jest, and receive it in good faith. King Conan may well be wiser than me, as may also Robert E Howard himself, especially with regard to his own creation. But I’ll just re-emphasise what I already said in my previous post, that Xaltotun was the most powerful antagonist, which in no way contradicts Conan’s opinion. As Scott says above Conan was also wise enough to choose the right people to use the Heart to bring Xaltotun down. And make the best use of his own abilities in the place where they could be the most effective. A good leader knows when and who to delegate important tasks. If you were talking about adapting Hour to a different medium, and developing it along slightly different lines to the novel to accommodate that medium, a 2 hr movie for example, my stance may well be different. But for me the original yarn, as a Swords and Sorcery novel, is superb just the way it is.
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Post by sorcerer on Sept 28, 2019 17:40:08 GMT -5
The Conan yarns are episodic pulp fiction featuring a larger than life hero in serial form. With episodes separated by sometimes decades in the life of the protagonist. Yes, but even in an episodic format there can be both continuity and change. Solomon Kane meets N'Longa in an early story. Then he meets him again, when he receives his iconic staff. These meetings tie together separated adventures, and the addition of a staff gives concrete reality to changes that arise because of Kane's adventures. Howard allows the events of a story to have consequences for a character more rarely with Conan, which is too bad.
Right before meeting Akivasha, Conan kills a serpent who is allowed to roam around and eat Stygians. This feels like what you are talking about. We know Stygia has a poor track record safeguarding human rights, and Hyborea is lousy with giant snakes. That's fine. But soon after that there's this vampire who shows up and disappears. Since when did Hyborea ever have vampires? "Hey by the way it does, and hey look she's vampire" is worldbuilding?
Compare the passage just earlier when, before he becomes a corsair, Howard has Conan thinking about his old life on the sea; so then when he wakes up aboard the Venturer, the captain asks who he thinks he is, and Conan roars, "I'll show you!" I am totally on board. No explanations required midway; I don't care that I can't tell whether he ripped the captain's arm off or just dislocated it; I'm not really even particularly scornful that Conan was seemingly killed, left in the ocean, fished out like driftwood, and then pops up strong enough to tear people's arms out. The scene works! It's great! This is how Howard should have made the way for Akivasha's scene. Because he didn't, I came away from that feeling that there really are no vampires in Hyboria. That's what I mean when I say it's insincere.
It was not only that he was powerful (before the novel's end), but that Conan recognized him as the true enemy - he addressed his letter to Xaltotun before the final battle. The conspirators are many; Xaltotun is one. The main bulk of the novel deals with the quest to find the Heart that will destroy him, not the conspirators. Moreover, one of the most memorable passages in the entire book was dedicated to Xaltotun:
I have plumbed deep in evil, but there is a limit to which I, or any man of my race and age, can go. My ancestors were clean men, without any demoniacal taint; it is only I who have sunk into the pits, and I can sin only to the extent of my personal individuality. But behind Xaltotun lie a thousand centuries of black magic and diabolism, an ancient tradition of evil. He is beyond our conception not only because he is a wizard himself, but also because he is the son of a race of wizards.
Xaltotun is not only more powerful than the conspirators, but more ancient and more evil. He is widely regarded as the real villain of Hour of the Dragon, and this is reflected in the wikipedia entry which does not mention the conspirators except as "a group of conspirators," while the entry in conan.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hour_of_the_Dragon states:
The plot is a loose melange of previous Conan short stories, most notably "The Scarlet Citadel" with which it shares an almost identical storyline. Taking place during Conan's reign as King of Aquilonia, it follows Conan's deposing by court plotters, and eventual attempt to retake his throne through all the lands of Hyboria. An ancient resurrected wizard, Xaltotun, serves as the main enemy to Conan, and much of the book revolves around Conan's quest to retrieve the Heart of Ahriman in order to defeat the wizard.
So no, the conspirators can hardly be regarded as the true antagonists. The true villain of Hour of the Dragon is Xaltotun.
Xaltotun was not merely defeated by side characters; he was deflated before he was defeated. That was a mistake.
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Post by Von K on Sept 28, 2019 22:35:30 GMT -5
Yes, but even in an episodic format there can be both continuity and change. Solomon Kane meets N'Longa in an early story. Then he meets him again, when he receives his iconic staff. These meetings tie together separated adventures, and the addition of a staff gives concrete reality to changes that arise because of Kane's adventures. Howard allows the events of a story to have consequences for a character more rarely with Conan, which is too bad.
REH was getting fewer sales than he would have liked with Kull and Kane. Conan is his most commercially successful character generally because he had a better idea of what the readers of Weird Tales and it’s editor Farnsworth Wright wanted by that time, and developed the series along those lines. Thus he nixed the philosophical musings of Kull in favour of more action and deliberately made the Conan yarns stand alone tales so that a new reader could just jump right in at any point in the series and be on board with the character from the get go. There was no point to weaving in continuity when he was unsure of even getting a sale from one yarn to the next. Howard biographer and scholar Mark Finn doesn’t rate the Conan yarns as among his best work, but emphasises that REH was deliberately cultivating a more commercial character with Conan. There are a few references to them in other yarns: And another from Hour of the Dragon itself: It’s clear that the Hyborian Age (REH never refers to Hyborea or Hyboria) has not only vampires but werewolves, shapeshifters, witches, demons, and ghouls, in addition to the giant serpents, great apes and the other more unique creatures that appear in the yarns. Tascela from Red Nails may also be some non-standard form of vampire. He had to be deflated first using the power of the Heart in order to be defeated. That was the point of retrieving the Heart. I have never felt that REH made any kind of mistake with this.
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Post by sorcerer on Sept 29, 2019 10:34:22 GMT -5
REH was getting fewer sales than he would have liked with Kull and Kane. Conan is his most commercially successful character generally because he had a better idea of what the readers of Weird Tales and it’s editor Farnsworth Wright wanted by that time, and developed the series along those lines. Thus he nixed the philosophical musings of Kull in favour of more action and deliberately made the Conan yarns stand alone tales so that a new reader could just jump right in at any point in the series and be on board with the character from the get go. There was no point to weaving in continuity when he was unsure of even getting a sale from one yarn to the next. There is always a point to weaving continuity into a single story. Even if we ignore the value of having past adventures leaving a mark on a character across tales - which there clearly is, and can be achieved nearly effortlessly - there is no excuse for failing to provide continuity within a single work. For the most part, Howard does provide such continuity by doing things like
- Showing Xaltotun's dismay at seeing the unfamiliar map early on,
- Showning Orastes growing haggard under his association with Xaltotun,
Showing Valerius ultimately defeated by the consequences his misrule, Bringing back Zelata at the final battle, and Having Conan call for Zenobia in the end.
But he doesn't always do this when he should.
Really? I actually recall the reference in Black Colossus, which I read as fanciful lyricism rather than literally, but the fact that he even mentions vampires earlier in Hour of the Dragon does help (even if it may have been by accident). And I'll grant that this does make the encounter seem better connected to Hyborea as a whole, so you've definitely made a good point.
However, it still doesn't address the main issue with Akivasha - she was not sufficiently foreshadowed. And this is not a complaint that I base on some prior notions of how encounters should work; I figured this out by reading Hour of the Dragon. Imagine that the opening chapter were skipped, and then all of the information about Xaltotun is given in chapter three after his name is mentioned during the capture of Conan; is that good writing? Imagine that all the hints leading up the gray ape are left out, and then come to Conan's mind as he is crouching by the stairs watching the thing approach him; is that good writing? Well, Akivasha has a legendry built up around her, so Howard is clearly trying to make her a rich and compelling character, but instead of building the scene beforehand, he drops everything on the reader during and after the encounter. This slowed the action, hobbled its emotional impact, and passed by the opportunity for an absolutely riveting scene.
I'd like to conclude by thanking you for the taking the time to discuss this with me. Your posts make me think that I would be well advised to finish his Solomon Kane stories; even though they are really not as well written as Conan, there is probably more genuineness there. My sense has always been that Red Nails came after Howard had lost interest in Conan, and probably that loss of interest had already begun by Hour of the Dragon, which (as noted before) was a rehashing of earlier Conan tales.
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Post by Von K on Sept 30, 2019 20:22:19 GMT -5
According to REH Red Nails was going to be the last fantasy yarn he planned on writing. The general consensus is that he would likely have moved into writing Westerns. Continuity in Conan mostly comes from the general life and career of the main character himself, rather than specific details linking individual yarns. REH never told us what Conan did with the Star of Khorala, for instance but in a sense that kind of thing just adds to the mystery and mystique, and gives fans and pastichers plenty to mull over. Maybe that's part of the secret? Quite a few timelines of Conan's career have been written though.
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Post by sorcerer on Oct 11, 2019 19:29:07 GMT -5
By the way, I just finished the Solomon Kane story Hills of the Dead, and I think it does display more of the authenticity missing from Howard's later Conan stories. (For those who haven't read, this is the story that provides continuity to the Kane stories, bringing back an earlier friend and introducing the staff you've always seen in the artwork.) And though the plot feels somewhat contrived and also rather simple, once we finally get to the thick of the plot it's quite compelling. The story does start badly, though, and I almost put it down after the first chapter. Once he reached Conan, Howard no longer made these kinds of mistakes of pacing or trimming.
It seems to me that Howard's skill peaked around 1933 with Tower of the Elephant, when all the lessons and habits from Kull and Kane were available to him, and at the same time Conan was fresh and new. In 1934 he did still produce the inspired Gods of the North, but only a little later with Queen of the Black Coast he was already recycling dialogue. Although I don't really enjoy the later stories much (with the exception of Man Eaters of Zamboula) it may well be 1935 and later that one should read to get the best lessons about how to put together a good yarn; there was less real inspiration in his work, leaving whatever still worked to be primarily the result of the skills he'd learned. I'll be damned if I have the patience to read stories like Red Nails again, though. Solomon Kane is clumsier, but far more satisfying to read.
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