The God in the Bowl as a pre-genre Police Procedural

[sherlock]

I've got a post up over at BlackGate.com which looks at "The God in the Bowl" (which many of my friends don't care for) as a police procedural before the genre really existed. And I think, viewed in that light, it's a better story than it's given credit for. Sort of a summation of the post:

I’m not saying looking at “The God in the Bowl” as a pre-genre police procedural makes it a Robert E. Howard classic. However, when putting it within the proper context, what you’ve got is a workmanlike procedural with a couple of interesting characters (Demetrio and Conan). And things are absolutely about to pick up. What Howard has done to this point is set up a blistering Conan action scene, leading to a supernatural Hyborian finale. Instead of being bored with a non-action Conan story so far, credit Howard for having managed to enmesh Conan in a police procedural which is about to shift gears into an action sword and sorcery tale.

You can click on over to the rather long essay (about 5,000 words). Obviously, I'm biased, but I think I've made a decent assertion that Howard, who was incredibly diverse, stuck his toe in the waters of another genre that he is not associated with.

Bob B.

[johnnypt]

I actually just reread this over the weekend and thought about the possibility of a detective magazine taking the story had Howard decided to dust it off after Weird Tales started slowing down the payments and needed other outlets. It seems after it was rejected by WT, he took bits and pieces from it, mixed it with the Nestor synopsis and some of the ideas from the new Phoenix opening and got Tower of the Elephant. But you do wonder what made him think of combing the two genres.

It might have been interesting to try to rework it into a "Law & Order: Nemedia", with Jerry Orbach as Demetrio:

"What do we have here? Dead rich guy, a big barbarian with a sword, but the guy was strangled and a big empty bowl...I hate Mondays..."

[Von K]

Thanks for the link to your article Bob, very interesting, with some great comments.

Deuce already covered the point about this yarn being partly an extension of his debate with HPL on police corruption.

One thing that I felt about tGitB is that it has a very theatrical feel, the way it's all set up. I'd imagine this yarn would be easy to adapt into a mini stageplay. Is he also dabbling with the occult detective genre? Quite a lot of experimentation from REH in this tale.

I agree with Bob in his previous article on Mike Harrison: that REH would have done very well in the detective genre if he'd persevered with it, that his approach would likely have been closer to Spillane's with Mike Hammer.

[johnnypt]

Sept 18, 2017 19:55:58 GMT -5 sherlock said:

I've got a post up over at BlackGate.com which looks at "The God in the Bowl" (which many of my friends don't care for) as a police procedural before the genre really existed. And I think, viewed in that light, it's a better story than it's given credit for. Sort of a summation of the post:

I’m not saying looking at “The God in the Bowl” as a pre-genre police procedural makes it a Robert E. Howard classic. However, when putting it within the proper context, what you’ve got is a workmanlike procedural with a couple of interesting characters (Demetrio and Conan). And things are absolutely about to pick up. What Howard has done to this point is set up a blistering Conan action scene, leading to a supernatural Hyborian finale. Instead of being bored with a non-action Conan story so far, credit Howard for having managed to enmesh Conan in a police procedural which is about to shift gears into an action sword and sorcery tale.

You can click on over to the rather long essay (about 5,000 words). Obviously, I'm biased, but I think I've made a decent assertion that Howard, who was incredibly diverse, stuck his toe in the waters of another genre that he is not associated with.

Bob B.

Very good article, Bob.  It almost does seem like should one of a series of "Demetrio the Inquisitor" stories.  He makes out the least bad of the three.  It could work as a play because it's a little on the talky side, which might work better with actors putting some life into the lines (hence my Jerry Orbach comment).

As I mentioned in another thread, I don't blame Wright for rejecting it since it didn't necessarily work for WT.  But it's worth reading in context of Conan's (and Howard's for that matter) development.