Is it possible to be a great writer without being a good writer? I guess it depends on what you mean by great and good.
I consider Robert E. Howard one of the great fantasy writers, on a level lower than Tolkien but higher than most of the others. And yet his writing has many, many weaknesses. The whole, however, is greater than the sum of the parts.
Like most Baby Boomer Howard fans, I first discovered Conan – warrior, thief, pirate, mercenary, and king – through the old Lancer series of paperbacks, most of them with amazing Frazetta covers. That series printed all the Conan stories in what the editors considered proper biographical order. What purists don’t like about them is that the publishers, sensing a cash cow, padded the series out. Unfinished Conan stories were “completed.” Non-Conan Howard stories that could be wedged into the timeline were rewritten to make them Conan stories. And they added pure pastiches done by the editors.
This present collection, Conan the Barbarian, takes a bibliographical approach. All the Conan stories published in Howard’s lifetime are here, in the order published. That means that we begin with two stories of Conan at his pinnacle, as king of Aquilonia, then turn aside to a number of stories about his earlier adventures, and finally conclude with the novel The Hour of the Dragon, a last tale of King Conan (and in my opinion the best Conan story). The collection concludes with Howard’s essay, “The Hyborian Age,” in which he explains the rise and fall of the imaginary prehistoric world in which Conan lived, loved, and slew.
The greatness of Robert E. Howard’s writing, especially his Conan stories, seems to me pretty much unexplainable. There’s a flavor there, or a color, or a scent. Or something. Back when I read the Lancer series, I could (or thought I could) always tell the pastiches from the original stories. There was some quality Howard could generate that other writers never managed to capture.
And yet the prose itself can be pretty bad. Howard wrote fast, for the pulp market, and time was money. Some of his lines are genuinely appalling – one female character says to Conan, “The blaze of your dynamic eyes makes my heart pound in my bosom, and the touch of your iron-thewed arm maddens me.” He had an unfortunate habit of overusing the word “supple” to describe women’s bodies and body parts.
He often wrote purple prose, but you know, purple is a beautiful color, and highly appropriate in many contexts. “They spoke not but went swiftly into the gloom, cloaks wrapped closely around them; as silently as the ghosts of murdered men they disappeared in the darkness.” Conan is “built of steel springs and whalebone.” He describes a goddess as beautiful “like Dawn running naked on the snows.” Asked whether he fears the gods, he answers, “I would not tread on their shadow.”
My conclusion is that these stories are definitely worth reading. Some people like Howard and some don’t, of course. But for me he offers rewards no other author has in stock.
Many cautions are necessary. Howard had 1930s racial views, and his Darwinian racism is very much on display (though it might be mentioned that Conan’s great, tragic love – the female pirate Belit – is described as Shemitic [essentially a Semite]). The language conforms to pulp magazine standards at the time, so there’s no cursing, profanity, or obscenity. There is a lot of female nudity and semi-nudity, though there are no actual sex scenes. That wasn’t done in the pulps in those days.
This Kindle version is just a buck, at least for now, and the text, while containing a number of small errors, was better than many Kindle reprints I’ve seen. Recommended if you like this sort of thing.
I like this sort of thing.