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Post by themirrorthief on Aug 4, 2017 0:14:58 GMT -5
Howard's gift is the fact he was so visual. You seem to be appear to see with your eyes what is going on. And there is always an underlying tension that is hard to define. He was a genius of the highest order.
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Post by deuce on Aug 4, 2017 0:49:34 GMT -5
I actually just pulled this book out since I'm going to read Desert Adventures next and maybe I'll try to do a full history of El Borak. Cool! Do you mean a history of FXG as a character within the stories? |
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Post by johnnypt on Aug 4, 2017 6:54:05 GMT -5
I actually just pulled this book out since I'm going to read Desert Adventures next and maybe I'll try to do a full history of El Borak. Cool! Do you mean a history of FXG as a character within the stories?
I'd love to try and play around with something like that, but I just don't have the time to sketch it all out. My plans have already been derailed, I haven't been to touch a book in the past three weeks. So maybe just a chronological read through, the early stuff first, then the Del Rey. At this point I'll probably try to do the Kirby O'Donnell stories and Fire of Asshurbanipal first, then hold the El Borak stuff until after Labor Day.
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Post by johnnypt on Aug 8, 2017 7:54:24 GMT -5
I did end up going back to the Early Adventures and am reading that first. Can't believe he wrote that many pages of Khoda Khan's Tale just to stop, but he did it later on in his career too.
The Iron Terror is quite an oddity: it sounds like it's going to be a Mundy-like adventure but ends up as sci-fi. Interesting how he kept trying to get Gordon & Allison into a full fledged adventure together but they didn't work out until he went back to them later separately. There's also a hint of Burroughs' Mucker going on with Allison, though he's far more refined than Billy Byrne.
I think partially why the published (and unpublished from that era) El Borak stories were among his better work was that he'd gone through the creation and refining process years before. When it came time to resurrect him, he not only had a full formed character just about ready to go, he had a cast of supporting characters to join him who ended up branching out on their own (Khoda Khan in Names in the Black Book and Yar Ali in Fire of Asshurbanipal). On the French Connection DVD, William Friedkin does a commentary track on several deleted scenes with Gene Hackman. They ended up being completely superfluous to the film, but it was good thing to shoot them since they helped Hackman get into and understand the character of Popeye Doyle. I look at these stories performing a similar function for REH to "get" who El Borak was. They do also provide a sort of backstory for the later tales, though they may not specifically be "canon". And they, taken with the early Bran Mak Morn stories, essentially function as "The Book of Lost Tales" in terms of Steve Tompkins' "Connected World of REH" theory.
Should finish the "Kid Allison" stories tomorrow, then back to Kirby O'Donnell, the later El Borak and FoA (I'll try replacing Clarney with Allison in my mind and see if it works). Then I'll probably crack open Steve Harrison's Casebook.
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Post by kullagain on Aug 9, 2017 11:42:39 GMT -5
I actually think these stories are highly overlooked. All but "Three bladed Doom" are without fantastical elements, but there is still always the "air" of brutal mysticism at work, kind of like with the first season of "True Detective."
I also find the atmosphere setting and the picture painting of Howard's to be growing in these stories. More people need to look at and essay about this character and his tales.
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Post by johnnypt on Aug 11, 2017 7:45:29 GMT -5
Started on the El Borak stories this morning. Swords of the Hills isn't really a great name for this story when there's not a lot swords involved. The Lost Valley of Iskander is a better choice. But I have to agree with whoever decided to pass on this story. It's really rushed, how did Roy Thomas and Howie Chaykin get 51 pages out of this for their Conan-ization? It's actually closer to the early El Borak stories than the later ones. It's very reminiscent of the Tarzan stories of this era (1927-1934) where Tarzan runs into someone and they go find a hidden city, it's just missing the girl.
Also want to give high praise to both of David Hardy's essays in each of the two El Borak books, everything you need to know about Mr. Gordon is included in them.
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Post by deuce on Sept 4, 2017 15:18:24 GMT -5
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Post by keith on Sept 26, 2017 7:08:07 GMT -5
I actually just pulled this book out since I'm going to read Desert Adventures next and maybe I'll try to do a full history of El Borak. |
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Post by keith on Sept 26, 2017 7:14:20 GMT -5
I'm quite an El Borak fan myself. But I'm glad David Hardy mentioned "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" and Steve Clarney in his article on Gordon. Clarney and his Afridi pal Yar Ali (there were a few Pathans by that name in REH's stories and verse, and I suspect Clarney's blood-brother was a younger relative of the grizzled old wolf, Yar Ali Khan, who appears more than once as Gordon's loyal henchman) interest me partly because they aren't fleshed out and there's a lot of room to speculate about their origins and other adventures.
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Post by Von K on Sept 27, 2017 7:45:32 GMT -5
Welcome aboard Keith - good to have you back on the scene...!
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Post by deuce on Oct 25, 2017 11:05:16 GMT -5
An unfinished, posthumous "rewrite" of Three-Bladed Doom is out there. Scroll down to pages 14 and 15: efanzines.com/WCSFA/WCSFAzine13.pdfHere's the most relevant portion: Then, says [publisher Donald M.] Grant, “When Glenn Lord
asked me to give “THREE-BLADED DOOM” a reading for possible publication, I did so willingly enough.
After some deliberation, I sent it off to author Darrel Crombie… a Nova Scotian, and to date his only published
fantasy… has been WINGS OF YVRN in the paperback anthology SWORDSMEN AND SUPERMAN.”
Crombie promptly rewrote the novel into “…the almost completed LAIR OF THE HIDDEN ONES… an
unexpected thrill, written in a fashion… I have not been able to find for years…. The original Howard novel is
quick, savage, rough. Crombie, who is a word-stylist with a marvel of imagination, has taken an action-filled
yarn – a gem in the rough – and transformed it into a jewel of value without destroying the basic Howard
elements. Added are strong droughts [sic] of fantasy and word pictures that allow one to enter the fantasy worlds of
Mundy, Lamb, and yes, A. Merritt!”I have to wonder if DMG and Crombie had access to the shorter, second version of TBD. Howard definitely moved the tale in a more weird/supernatural direction with that version in regard to the origin of the Zurim/Hidden Ones. I could see a more "Merrittesque" or "Mundyesque" take proceeding from the second version. It would be interesting to read Crombie's unfinished rewrite. Here is the best write-up about him online: desturmobed.blogspot.com/2016/01/darrel-crombie.html |
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Post by keith on Oct 31, 2017 8:08:04 GMT -5
Since this is Halloween, it's suitable, I think, to remember an event that took place on the afternoon of the 31st October in 1917, in the Middle East. It's an event that the legendary El Borak was certain to have heard about. During the summer of 1917 ("Son of the White Wolf") T.E. Lawrence had been leading his Arabs northwards to Damascus, and El Borak had been with him. Lawrence, though, had left Damascus by the 4th of October, and Gordon had been occupied in destroying the would-be empire builder Osman Pasha, and avenging some of his slaughtered victims.
Where Gordon was by Halloween, REH has never told us. But doubtless he was doing something desperate.
So were the men of the Australian Light Horse, 4th and 12th Regiments. They were making the last great cavalry charge in the history of war, taking the wells at Beersheba, in Palestine. They charged against entrenched Turkish positions and machine guns, across four miles of open ground, swinging two-foot sword bayonets. The Turks holding Beersheba knew the Light Horse were mounted infantry, not old-fashioned pure cavalry, and they expected them to dismount and move forward on foot. They were puzzled, at first, when the Australians just kept charging at a full-out gallop, and then they realized these nut jobs weren't going to stop. Nor did they. Reaching the Turkish trenches through a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, they leaped their horses over barbed wire entanglements and trenches filled with foes, and then, finally, sprang down from the saddle and went to work like William Wallace in a raging fury. They took the town and the crucially important water supply.
Halloween, October 31st, 1917.
I like to think that when Francis X. Gordon heard about it, he perhaps said with a sardonic laugh, "Those men are insane. Here's to them."
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Post by deuce on Nov 1, 2017 0:06:33 GMT -5
Since this is Halloween, it's suitable, I think, to remember an event that took place on the afternoon of the 31st October in 1917, in the Middle East. It's an event that the legendary El Borak was certain to have heard about. During the summer of 1917 ("Son of the White Wolf") T.E. Lawrence had been leading his Arabs northwards to Damascus, and El Borak had been with him. Lawrence, though, had left Damascus by the 4th of October, and Gordon had been occupied in destroying the would-be empire builder Osman Pasha, and avenging some of his slaughtered victims. Where Gordon was by Halloween, REH has never told us. But doubtless he was doing something desperate. So were the men of the Australian Light Horse, 4th and 12th Regiments. They were making the last great cavalry charge in the history of war, taking the wells at Beersheba, in Palestine. They charged against entrenched Turkish positions and machine guns, across four miles of open ground, swinging two-foot sword bayonets. The Turks holding Beersheba knew the Light Horse were mounted infantry, not old-fashioned pure cavalry, and they expected them to dismount and move forward on foot. They were puzzled, at first, when the Australians just kept charging at a full-out gallop, and then they realized these nut jobs weren't going to stop. Nor did they. Reaching the Turkish trenches through a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, they leaped their horses over barbed wire entanglements and trenches filled with foes, and then, finally, sprang down from the saddle and went to work like William Wallace in a raging fury. They took the town and the crucially important water supply. Halloween, October 31st, 1917. I like to think that when Francis X. Gordon heard about it, he perhaps said with a sardonic laugh, "Those men are insane. Here's to them." Great write-up, Keith.  The centenary of such valor and ferocity should be remembered and those fighting men honoured. |
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Post by deuce on Feb 12, 2018 12:44:48 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Feb 22, 2018 10:34:31 GMT -5
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The centenary of such valor and ferocity should be remembered and those fighting men honoured.
