“The Bloody Crown of Conan”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Gary Gianni

 

384 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345461520

 

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; The Bloody Crown of Conan, illustrated by Gary Gianni, was the third volume to be published. As with the first volume of the series, this volume continues its tribute to one of fantasy literature’s founding fathers by gathering together the next series of Conan stories written by Robert E. Howard, again published here in the order they were published: The People of the Black Circle, The Hour of the Dragon and A Witch Shall Be Born, along with various miscellanea featuring several untitled synopses, a draft story and notes for The Hour of the Dragon; added to all of this is insightful commentary and, of course, original artwork to complement the blood and guts you’re reading about. Each of these tales is a longer-form novella, as opposed to the short stories and snippets we got in the first volume, and it is indeed a delight to see everyone’s favorite Cimmerian once again striding the plains of the Hyborian age. No mindless, muscle-bound slayer he; rather, this Conan – Howard’s Conan; the ORIGINAL Conan – is the ill-educated yet crafty righter of wrongs and slayer of evil. Readers new to the character or, like me, who wish to get reacquainted with the Cimmerian are encouraged to take full advantage of this collection.

 

Really, Del Rey has done fantasy fans a service by republishing all of Howard’s original stories of his most famous of characters in their original form. With The Bloody Crown of Conan, we see Conan in expanded adventures, which allows Howard to flesh out his character somewhat while also slipping in some of the author’s subtle beliefs (Howard did not think that “civilized” was the same as “honorable”, for instance; indeed, after completing Volume one and, now, Volume two, he would suggest that for all their barbarism, barbarians are the more honorable specimen of humanity, as one’s word and honor is everything to them).

 

But we also see a kind of consistency with Conan here, with Howard placing his character in positions of authority: an Afghuli tribal chieftain in The People of the Black Circle, the King of Aquilonia in The Hour of the Dragon and the Captain of the Khaurani guard in A Witch Shall Be Born. As Howard suggests, Conan’s “barbarism” gives him an edge over his “civilized” adversaries, allowing him to navigate the perplexities of the lands he inhabits in ways his opponents couldn’t dream of doing – oh, the wolf is still there, waiting to strike, but it has been chained through self-discipline, although it is the trainer himself who holds the chain.

 

It has been suggested that, by around 1934, Howard had begun to grow tired of his most famous of characters; if true, it cannot be seen in this volume of stories, which still show Howard at the height of his creative powers and Conan still the original barbaric bad-ass he ever was.

“The Story of Greece and Rome”, by Tony Spawforth

 

Yale University Press, 392 pages, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0300217117

Tony Spawforth describes The Story of Greece and Rome as a “personal story” of classical civilization; as such, it is rich in references to contemporary culture, including Harry Potter, 300 and Troy, and it is for this reason that his book stands out in a crowded field of histories of the Ancient World for its liveliness and wit. Although aimed at readers “who have little or no background” in the subject, there is, I think, much to stimulate the experienced classicist, as well. In the earlier chapters there are some jerks in the narrative as Spawforth moves between describing historical events and museum pieces, the focus being on material evidence and archaeological discoveries, which is, nonetheless, a strength of the book.

And throughout the whole the sheer sense of wonder Spawforth still feels at the civilizations of Greece and Rome is thoroughly infectious. Spawforth manages to write about the histories of these Western cultural juggernauts while juggling many elements, facts, historical figures and cultural influences at the same time; it is impossible not to be impressed by his obvious erudition. Because of that, the story really flows with a continuity that many other, similar books on this topic sadly lack. The drawback of this (positive) attitude is that Spawforth cannot stop to examine anything in depth; he simply glides through time and places, pointing out interesting facts like an over-active tour guide hopped-up on caffeine.

This is a warning I’ve issued about other books, but it bears repeating with this one, as well: if you know a lot about Greek and Roman history, then you will be able to enjoy this book in full, for Spawforth offers few explanations of what he is describing, along with many references to people and places he (it would appear) assumes the reader is familiar with. But that fits with the author’s overall style, as he writes in a conversational manner, as if we were sitting around and he was relating this incredible tale (albeit a tale we have heard before). Not a criticism, really, but if you are a newcomer to the histories of Greece and Rome than I fear a lot of what is spoken of here will fly over your head, in spite of his earlier claim.

The Story of Greece and Rome is a sweeping, beautifully written story covering eight and a half millennia – from the first traces of Neolithic life in what we now call Greece to the fall of Rome in the late 400s A.D. We get the well-known stops on this tour (the Minoans, the Mycenaeans who displaced them, the Dark Age, the Iliad and Odyssey) before the rise of the Classical Greece that began Western civilization (or so we like to think, as Spawforth points out). Then Rome, from village alliance to world empire, meeting along the way Julius Caesar, Augustus, Cicero, Virgil, Nero and a cavalcade of generals, warmongers, thugs and, crucially, historians. It all here, and it’s all terrific, as Western culture, under the pen of a teacher and admirer, has never looked so good.

“The Mystery of Charles Dickens”, by A.N. Wilson

Harper, 368 pages, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0062954947

“The power which he proceeded at once to exhibit was the one power in letters which literally cannot be imitated, the primary inexhaustible creative energy, the enormous prodigality of genius…an incomparable hunger and pleasure for the vitality and the variety, for the infinite eccentricity of existence”. Thus was the pronouncement of one brilliant writer, G.K. Chesterton, about another, Charles Dickens, and after reading A.N. Wilson’s The Mystery of Charles Dickens one will perhaps be better able to determine just where that inexhaustible creative energy and so forth came from (hint: it wasn’t a good place). The adjective “Dickensian” is well on its way to becoming overused (just like “Kafkaesque”), but it won’t go away anytime soon.

Just over 150 years after his death, Dickens is as omnipresent as ever, so be prepared to hear it over and over for the foreseeable future, as well as one adaptation after another of his works. Wilson’s work is nonlinear, beginning as he does with Dickens’s death and recreating that last day of his life as he makes the habitual hour’s journey from his home at Gad’s Hill to his mistress’ house in Peckham; there, he suffered a seizure and was returned to his home to die a respectable death, surrounded by his (estranged) wife and (some of) his many adult children. Wilson is also much focused on the final novel, the half-completed The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which he sees as a kind of ne plus ultra of his subject’s life and work – his life, especially.

In the last half-century or so, biographers of Dickens have chosen to focus on highly specific areas of his life and accomplishments – i.e., his relationship to family, to society, to the theater and so on – but the most incisive works have explored the man’s convoluted psyche. And oh, brother is it convoluted, for Dickens seemed to know and understand everything and everyone, a talent he displayed across fifteen novels, countless articles and not one, but two, magazines. But for all that, he seemed to lack self-awareness: today, with the benefit of history and hindsight, we can recognize how “the enormous prodigality of genius” that animated his writing and his life served not only to conceal, but to smother a profoundly conflicted nature – a “divided self”.

Exploring the dualities of Dickens’ temperament, Wilson makes much of his shamed secrecy about his ordeal as a child laborer in a blacking factory and his hatred of a mother who, he felt, did not love him. It would seem that, no matter how much Dickens accomplished in life, or the fact that he was probably the most famous and beloved writer in England, he could not escape the buried anguish of his early history: “I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back” he states in an autobiographical fragment published after his death, and bitterness over this episode may illuminate why so many of the maternal figures in his novels are hateful. But this divided self was a two-edged sword, as Wilson makes clear:

But the divided self is also a source of creativity. Dickens could see that the gallery of characters who had been buzzing out of his head since ‘Boz’ first ventured into print had not come from a calm, happy place, but from a cauldron of self-contradiction and self-reproach, a bubbling confusion of moral centres. The capacity to create fiction was an artistic way of describing the capacity to self-deceive. The creative urge was the artistic way of describing the urge that used, battered and, if necessary, destroyed the loves of those closest to him. It has been rightly said that the murderer in Dicken’s last novel [The Mystery of Edwin Drood] is himself a kind of novelist. He is shaping his own story.

Wilson is more than alert to Dickens’ tendency to punish fictional characters for the offenses committed by people in his real life, and combs the novels for evidence of these many dark impulses. The Mystery of Charles Dickens is not intended to be a comprehensive biography, and it contains little to no new information about its subject; rather, it is a work of reinterpretation (as dirty as that word can be) of Dickens and his work as it seeks to delve into the man’s sometimes impenetrable psyche to see what can be found and draw forth all that he can. Wilson has a keen sense of how writers operate and, combined with a seemingly natural intuition about human nature, has managed to create a perceptive and lively portrait of an obviously immensely creative and deeply disturbed artist, one whose work is with us now and will be for all time.

“Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979”, by Dominic Sandbrook

 

Penguin UK, 840 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1846140327

This is the fourth book in this series by Dominic Sandbrook on the history of Modern Britain and, just like the other three, it never fails to impress and inform without once being irrelevant or imbecilic. Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 picks up the story at Wilson’s return in 1974 and journeys through the Callaghan years until Thatcher steps through the door of Number 10. It also proves that everything old is new again: idiot teachers teaching pointless subjects, racial strife, economic meltdowns, radical philosophies, over mighty unions, uncontrollable immigration…it’s all back, baby, but the first run-through occurred some five decades ago. If Seasons in the Sun was in need of a spokesman it would be Basil Fawlty: the decline of the UK in the eyes of the world is best reflected in Mr. Hamilton’s rant upon entering the hotel – “couldn’t find the freeway. Had to take a little backstreet called the M5” – while part two of the book (entitled “A damn good thrashing” in reference to an episode where Fawlty’s car breaks down; another symbol of the poor quality of British industrial products), while his tirade against men who carry themselves like “orang-utans” reflects the anxiety that the middle classes felt about changing social circumstances (would it be going too far to say that anyone who wants to understand the British middle-class psyche in the 1970s should take Fawlty Towers as one of their starting points?)

Anyway, as this little episode illustrates, Sandbrook is at his best when using the popular culture of the time as a kind of microcosm for what the hell was going on cross Britannia. The book opens with the trials and tribulations that George Lucas underwent while filming Star Wars in England, what with the film crew beginning “work at 8:30 before a mandatory tea break at 10. At 1:15pm they had an hour for lunch, and another mandatory tea break at 4:30pm. At 5:30pm the day ended. Lucas had assumed this meant they would begin wrapping up, but by the second day of filming he realized that stopping at 5:30 meant stopping at 5:30. Even if he were in the middle of a scene, the crew would stop dead when the clock reached the half hour”. He enquired if they would consider working overtime, and was told it would have to be put to vote each morning; whenever they voted on overtime, they invariably voted no. and this was just a friggin’ movie; when it came down to running the country, the unions were King and nothing happened without their say-so. Along with the strikes, there were shortages, 30% inflation, awful food, British–Leyland cars, suicidal trade unionists, clueless industrial management and the all-pervading sense of the inevitability of national decline (at least the soundtrack was good – mostly). Britain was indeed seen by all and sundry to be the newest “Sick Man of Europe”, not least by the British, themselves.

If you have read all of the author’s prior books in this series, then his modus operandi is by bow familiar: just read and select from a vast supply of secondary literature, covering not only politics, but also popular culture and social reportage, and throw it into the mental blender for a book to pop out. Sandbrook rightly insists that the years between 1974 and 1979 were important: as well as a prelude to Thatcherism, the period was “a decisive moment in our recent history”. Damn right. After the “Winter of Discontent” it was obvious to only the most blinkered that the Trade Unions had to be broken and put in their place, something that only the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher had the incentive to do. But of course it isn’t that easy, for Sandbrook takes what has become the conventional view that the real turning point in British politics came not in 1979 but in 1976, when James Callaghan and Denis Healey refused to reflate their way out of trouble and used the IMF to instill a spirit of economic realism into the Labour Party. Rather, Sandbrook believes that “there was rather more continuity between Margaret Thatcher and her avuncular predecessor, ‘Sunny Jim’, than we often think – even though it would pain both left and right to admit it”. This overstates the case, but it is true that Callaghan wanted to make many of the changes that Thatcher was to make but hoping to do so in a non-divisive way and so maintain a spirit of social solidarity. But the unions, through their militant action, cut him off at the knees and paved the way for the Conservative triumph. Thank bloody God.

“1984”, by George Orwell

 

328 pages, Penguin Books Signet Classics, ISBN-13: 978-0451524935

There are times when I am up in the middle of the night and think about George Orwell – it’s not what you think – and wonder: Just what would he think of us and the world we have created? Perhaps he would ask out loud, “How did I get it so wrong? The world hasn’t been divided into three totalitarian superstates, the privation and rationing of postwar Britain was not standardized by any Soviet-style central planning and labor camps and censorship are not the norm” – at least, not yet. Perhaps our awoken Orwell would see more parallels between our brave new world and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (reviewed on May 20^th, 2022), what with its and our legions of tranquil populations of pretty people living in a pleasing drug-and-sex induced semi-coma. And knowing what Orwell knew about real poverty, he could hardly fail to observe that the underclass of today’s Britain lives in relative splendor. Infectious diseases all but wiped out? High living standards? Daily showers? Compared even to middle-class people of his day, the average council-flats resident has comforts and leisure opportunities beyond measure. He needn’t spend twelve hours a day at harsh labor; he needn’t necessarily work at all. What Orwell hoped socialism would achieve has instead been delivered by a capitalist-funded welfare state. You’re…welcome?

None of this could have been foreseen in 1984, Orwell’s dystopian social science fiction novel in which so many now well-worn terms were first introduced: Big Brother, doublethink, Thought Police, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, memory hole, 2 + 2 = 5, proles, Two Minutes Hate, telescreen, Room 101 and, of course, Orwellian. Orwell once defined himself as a democratic-socialist in the essay Why I Write (published in the Summer 1946 edition of “Gangrel”), and he could write caustically about his former associates, as he did in this passage from his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier: “’Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England” (no wonder Orwell left). This is hard to square with the writer of perhaps the most famous book to stand athwart history, yelling Stop, but there we have it. And who better than a former Socialist to give warning about what his compadres were really about? Who better than an insider to tell you what is happening on the inside? Throughout 1984 we are witnesses to what to the radical left must seem like Heaven but which to everyone else can only be described as Hell: Surveillance, Futurology and Nationalism, although of a twisted kind that involves an obsessive sense of loyalty to some real-world entity; in this case, Big Brother.

All done in the name of The People, of course. Orwell thought of the People as decent enough, but he’d be baffled to observe today that the welfare state has created a class of lay-abouts who, liberated from economic anguish, shackle themselves to screens, drugs, alcohol and, in our modern world, technological terrors like the Internet. But considering the breadth of Orwell’s political thinking, it’s a matter of pure conjecture trying to decide just where on the political spectrum he’d be most at home today. Not, I think, as a Socialist, for his particular brand of socialism was primarily a response to the severe privation he suffered from while young. Rather, I would think that the modern Welfare State’s conquering of most brutal poverty would, I think, fire up the Tory side of Orwell: “Why” he would no doubt ask “does no one care about Character anymore? Should the state subsidize endless self-indulgence? Why do all of the enlightened liberals think that there should be no strings attached to welfare payments?” In Orwell’s essay on Kipling (published in the February 1942 edition of “Horizon”) he said that “‘Enlightened’ people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility”, so perhaps he wouldn’t be at all surprised at today’s domineering all-for-nothing ethos, for his bleak vision of this future – this Futurology, as he called it – was as chilling as one could imagine:

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always…always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

I also believe that the Left’s speech codes would make Orwell rethink his socialist instincts, for one of the most notable themes in 1984 is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth where photographs and public archives are manipulated to rid them of “unpersons”, those people who have been erased from history by the Party. On telescreens almost all figures of production are grossly exaggerated, or simply fabricated to indicate an ever-growing economy, even during times when the reality is the opposite. This is especially poignant, for Orwell once associated Socialism with freedom of speech and believed that it was critical to his support for the movement, as he wrote in Why I join the I.L.P. [Independent Labour Party] (published in the June 24^th, 1938 edition of “New Leader”): “And the only regime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a socialist regime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer”. Today, though, it is evident that the impulse to restrict speech is primarily a phenomenon of the Left, for so much speech runs afoul of the Left’s chief obsession, which is international identity politics. That same imperative is why the Left is suspicious of patriotism and why it is such a laughingstock in the book, with love of country replaced by perpetual hatred of fictitious boogeymen and the way in which allies are abandoned and taken up with lightning speed.

The private life is gone in 1984, as houses and apartments are equipped with telescreens so one may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones, the reading of mail, the employment of undercover agents and even the use of children to spy on their own parents. All done by the best and brightest to help the poor and downtrodden, of course. In The Lion and the Unicorn (published in the February 19^th, 1941 edition of “Searchlight Books”), Orwell writes of the “insularity” of his countrymen and the “[i]ntellectuals who have tried to break it down have generally done more harm than good. At bottom it is the same quality in the English character that repels the tourist and keeps out the invader”. Also in The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell says that “I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, and that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone” (Good Lord; Orwell was a Reaganite), or again when he wrote in Politics in the English Language (published in the April 1946 edition of “Horizon”): “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’”. The Left’s present tendency to politicize everything would have simply horrified him.

“The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Gary Gianni

 

 

414 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345461506

 

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, illustrated by Gary Gianni, was the second volume to be published. All of the tales featuring Howard’s uncompromising and unstoppable Puritan crusader are to be found here, again printed in the order they were written and published: Skulls in the Stars, The Right Hand of Doom, Red Shadows, Rattle of Bones, The Castle of the Devil, The Moon of Skulls, The Blue Flame of Vengeance, The Hills of the Dead, Hawk of Basti, Wings in the Night, The Footfalls Within and The Children of Asshur, along with the poems The One Black Stain, The Return of Sir Richard Grenville, Solomon Kane’s Homecoming (and a variant), a fragment of a story called Death’s Black Riders, a short biography of Robert E. Howard and notes on the original Howard text and a moving In Memoriam by H. P. Lovecraft to his friend and fellow literary genius.

 

I think I have always liked Solomon Kane as much (if not more) than Conan, no doubt because of his semi-historical status in our own world. In many ways our dour Puritan protagonist is a prototypical swashbuckling hero-type – just what one would expect from a pulp novelist from back in the day – but in many other ways he isn’t, what with all of the occult horrors and mythical races he encounters and combats (most sinister of all is his left-handedness, once thought to be devilish in itself – and I know you picked up on my play of words, you clever foolscap, you). But one thing Kane has in common with Conan is his larger-than-life status, being suitably fearless and totally bad-ass as he travels the world – especially Darkest Africa, circa the 17^th Century – fanatically rooting out evil in all of its guises, as any good Puritan would. But as with all good, well-rounded characters, Kane isn’t perfect, as we see him battling his personal demons; a Man of God who is also a man of violence, Kane in an interesting conundrum as he seeks to quell his inner conflict with an outer crusade against Evil.

 

If you are a fan of old-school pulp fiction and semi-historical characters and events (Sir Francis Drake even makes an appearance!), then I think you’ll really dig Solomon Kane, written by a master of the genre. Not all of the tales are of equal quality, to be sure, but I never once felt cheated by any of the tales here told (always a risk with any anthology). These are some of Howard’s best works (perhaps he felt liberated from Conan?), with vivid imagery as Kane fights duels in England, pursues bandits in France, slaughters flying beasts in Africa and strikes at ghosts and demons and what-not. But it is always Kane’s zealous pursuit of justice in contrast with Conan’s happy-go-lucky wandering that makes such an impression. Howard could write long and absolutely outstanding curses and loud and blood-curdling booming threats, but few cut so deep as Kane’s quiet statement of fact as he stands over a dead, desecrated child: “Men shall die for this”. You believe him when he says it.

“The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home”, by Denise Kiernan

 

416 pages, Atria Books, ISBN-13: 978-1476794051

The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home by Denise Kiernan is about the designing, building, maintaining and legacy of Biltmore, the largest private home in the United States, by its proprietor, George Washington Vanderbilt. Such as it is, The Last Castle is an interesting look into how the Other Half lives, and we see during the contruction of this megalith how the builder grew right along with his house, as Vanderbilt is educated by those he has hired about new ideas and ways of advancing notions of preservation, forestry, agriculture, farming and the harnessing of the local natural resources. He, and later his bride Edith, become engaged in advancing local arts and crafts as a way of bringing economic growth and opportunity to the people that were now their neighbors.

To tell a complete tale, Kiernan goes on at length about Biltmore even after the death of GW, and you will find that a good deal of the Biltmore story, rightfully, centers on George’s widow Edith and her efforts to make Biltmore profitable once it becomes clear that such Gilded Age castles, of which Biltmore is the supreme example, is of a time past, never to return. Edith guides the house’s transformation into something that will sustain itself and keep it viable as the times change. From Edith the baton passed to her daughter, Cornelia, and from her to Edith’s grandsons, the Cecil brothers, who own the house still. Thus, The Last Castle is a history of more than a great house: it is about a family and a community that all changed to meet the challenges life presented them with.

Kiernan has written about building a monument to a dying era and way of life, and how that monument is transformed into an example of successful evolution. We are informed of George Washington Vanderbilt’s life, a brief history of his family and the source of their wealth and George’s place in that family and way of life. His decision to remove himself and his mother to the wilds of North Carolina to build this enormous edifice in the middle of nowhere is difficult to understand, especially considering the daunting logistical challenges that the project entails (I would certainly have enjoyed reading about how those challenges were met, but while the building of the house and the grounds is discussed, it is not discussed in the detail the title would lead you to believe). I think it is fair to say that this book is not about the building of the house, but about the process of building and the effect on the owner and those around him, and especially on the community in which this structure is sited.

Kiernan did exhaustive research to tell us all about George and Edith Vanderbilt and their daughter, Cornelia. We hear about their travels, their spending (vast amounts) of money, their love affairs, their extended families and everything else you could want in an historical account. One lasting accomplishment of George was that he cared for the thousands of acres of forest surrounding his castle and that he hired fine stewards who nurtured the wilderness back to health and established a school of forestry – the first in the nation – and that the Biltmore Estate is the ancestor of the Pisgah National Forest. We hear about that almost more than we hear about George himself. But I never, ever got a sense of what this house he built must have been like when it was actually occupied; it never became a home in my eyes, just a place to build and show off – then again, perhaps that was all it was meant to be.

“Tales of Mystery & Imagination”, by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Harry Clarke

 

384 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1789509397, Arcturus Publishing

Two creative geniuses separated by several decades are brought together in this beautiful edition – and cheap, too: $5.00 marked down to $4.50! Since Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of suspense and horror were first compiled as Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1902, many gifted artists have tried their hand at illustrating them (notably Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac). But it is perhaps Irishman Harry Clarke who has come closest to evoking the delirious claustrophobia and frightening inventiveness of Poe’s feverish stories. For the 1919 edition of Tales, Clarke created the twenty-four monochrome images whose nightmarish, hallucinatory quality makes you wonder if he was on something, until you remember the stories.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, best known to us today for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, Poe was one of the United States’ earliest practitioners of the short story; he is also considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, and his character, Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, is considered by many to be the model for other literary detectives to come after, from Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot. Lastly, Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career, as any author alive today could tell you.

Henry Patrick “Harry” Clarke was a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement and a stained-glass artist and book illustrator; his work was influenced by both Art Nouveau and Art Deco, while his stained glass was particularly informed by the French Symbolist movement. His work as a book illustrator began with commissions for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock; neither piece was completed and, tragically, much of his work was destroyed during the 1916 Easter Rising. These aborted projects were followed by an edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and thence by his work on Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the work that would cement his reputation as an artist of the first order.

Interestingly, both Poe and Clarke died at the age of 40.

If you are a fan of Poe then you cannot help but admire the works of Clarke that compliment his chilling work. While separated by generations, it is obvious that Clarke could grasp the darkness and horror that Poe conjured up, his grim pictures more than just additions to the dread words, but equal compliments to the same. If one did not know that several decades separated Edgar Allan and Henry Patrick, one would be excused for thinking that the American author had commissioned the Irish artist to compliment his work, so well do they fit with the stories – then again, perhaps he did: I can imagine a tale dreamt up by Poe in which the ghost of an author whispers his directions in to the receptive ears of an artist who is thence driven to an early grave attempting to convey the darkness only he can hear…perhaps, perhaps…

“Hidden History of Detroit”, by Amy Elliott Bragg

 

160 pages, The History Press, ISBN-13: 978-1609492694

I read Hidden History of Detroit by Amy Elliott Bragg in conjunction with Detroit: A Motor City History (reviewed on November 7^th, 2022) and, between the two, Bragg’s book was more entertaining, if not necessarily more enlightening. This breezy, fun look at Detroit’s past is not so much a straight-up history of the Motor City as it is a series of engaging topics and personalities, some of whom even I had never heard of before. This is the Motor City before the motor: a muddy port town full of grog shops, horse races, haphazard cemeteries and enterprising boot-strappers from all over the nation and even the world, many of whom were eccentric characters after whom the major streets of the city are named.

Some chapters ruminate on themes – bars, streets and cemeteries – and some on personalities – such as the fugitive who founded the city, the tobacco magnate who haunts his shuttered factory, the gambler prankster millionaire who built a monument to himself and the historians who created the story of Detroit as we know it: one of the oldest, rowdiest and most enigmatic cities in the Midwest. Often jumping backward and forward decades at a time, Bragg has a knack for highlighting memorable moments that you’ll almost certainly retell over a drink, from Detroit’s ill-fated experiment with wood roads to Jefferson Avenue’s naming (after Lewis Cass’ friend TJ) to the story of Vernor’s namesake – there’s not a dull page.

While not by any means the most comprehensive history you’ll find on Detroit, these funny, warm and surprisingly personal essays are an entertaining and well-assembled introduction to Detroit’s murky origins.

“Detroit: A Motor City History”, by David Lee Poremba

160 pages, Arcadia Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0738524351

On July 24^th, 1701, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac stood in the heart of the wilderness on a bluff overlooking the Detroit River and claimed this frontier in the name of Louis XIV by founding the trading post of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, later to become the city of Detroit; thus began the story of Detroit, a city marked by pioneering spirits, industrial acumen, and uncommon durability, all of it documented in Detroit: A Motor City History by David Lee Poremba (part of The Making of America Series). While Detroit is known worldwide as the City that Put the World on Wheels, what is not widely known is that, prior to the birth of the automobile, a tremendous diversity of manufactured goods transformed Detroit from a frontier town into a great industrial city. What is also not widely known is that, over the course of its 300+ year history, Detroit has been sculpted into a city unique in the American experience by its extraordinary mixture of diverse cultures: American Indian, French, British, American colonial, and a variety of immigrant newcomers.

Poremba documents the major events that shaped this once-small French fur-trading outpost across three centuries of conflict and prosperity. Through a collection of remarkable images that are among the oldest of the city, all linked by informative text, Detroit is revealed as a thriving, bustling manufacturing town that served as the world’s leader in a number of important industries. Readers experience firsthand the struggles of the nascent village against raiding Indian tribes and the incessant political and military tug of war between the colonial French and English, and then American interests. Bessemer steel, iron, steel rails, freight cars, stoves, lumber, drugs and cigars are just a few of the products that helped the city build the capital that was later needed to prosper during the automobile era. Detroit played a pivotal role in establishing the country’s economic and industrial power in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, serving as a center for its well-known civilian and military mass-production resources.

Detroit: A Motor City History examines it all from the foundation through the modern day, and its evolution into a leading industrial center of the Midwest. This visual history provides insight into Detroit’s rapid evolution from a hamlet into a metropolis against a backdrop of important community and national affairs: the decimating fire of 1805, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, both world wars, the industrial dominance of the 50s, the riots of the 60s, the decline of the 70s and the unknown future shown in the 80s.

“The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage”, by Keith Gave

 

Gold Star Publishing, 288 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1949709582

June 13^th, 1997, will go down in history as one of the Darkest Days in the history of the Detroit Red Wings, for that is the day that the career of Vladimir Nikolaevich Konstantinov, one of the best defensemen ever to lace up skates for the Winged Wheel – hell, one of the best defensemen ever to lace up skates EVER – came to a crashing halt when the limousine being driven by Richard Gnida (you son-of-a-bitch) crashed into a tree and caused irreparable brain damage to the Russian hockey star (Russian hockey legend Viacheslav Fetisov and team masseur Sergei Mnatsakanov were also injured; Fetisov recovered from his wounds, while Mnatsakanov did not). It ended also the grand experiment in a different kind of hockey in the NHL, of Russian hockey, as recounted in detail by Keith Gave in The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery and Courage.

As a life-long Detroiter and Wings fan, I already knew much of the story behind Detroit’s acquisitions of the five Russian hockey players – Viacheslav Alexandrovich Fetisov, Igor Nikolayevich Larionov, Vladimir Nikolaevich Konstantinov, Sergei Viktorovich Fedorov and Vyacheslav Anatolevich Kozlov – in the 90s was an interesting one, but the previously untold details in this well-written book reveal danger and intrigue beyond anything I expected. For The Russian Five is the true story of immigrants that became American heroes, teammates that became family and a scrappy, resilient city that became home to the Stanley Cup Champions…twice. It’s a story about hopes and dreams becoming reality, and the harsh reality of dreaming big. The names of the Russian Five are legendary now in the Motor City and their influence is still felt throughout the National Hockey League today as team after team tried, and failed, to emulate what the Wings had done.

Granted, the non-linear style of the book can grate at times, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the players and the topic, but when you are basically compiling five mini-bios, plus a brief history of a hockey team and a sports league, a little jumping ‘round is rather a necessity. Sadly, reading The Russian Five was rather like reading the epitaph of a dear friend; the thrill has gone, the times have changed (damn the Salary Cap) and the players have all moved on. I still love and root for my beloved Winged Wheel, but I don’t know if we will ever see an era like the seasons described by Gave. Mores the pity.

“The Big 50: Detroit Red Wings”, by Helene St. James, forward by Chris Osgood

 

Triumph Books, 336 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1629377773

Evidently, there are a bunch of these The Big 50 books out there featuring sports teams like the Cincinnati Reds or New York Giants, but the one that concerns us today is The Big 50: Detroit Red Wings by Helene St. James, who has covered the team for the Detroit Free Press since 1996, with a forward by Chris Osgood, the sometimes cheered and sometimes maligned former goalie for the Wings for a number of years. What you get are a series of 50 profiles of the men who made (and in some cases, unmade) the Greatest Team in Hockey (screw you, Leafs – and Canadiens, for that matter). There is more to it than that, however, with several little side trips and deviations from the theme.

Such as some hard-to-answer questions about the Wings, like: What if Marguerite Norris had kept control of the Red Wings? Would there never have been a 42-year Stanley Cup drought? Or what if Colleen Howe had brokered a deal with Gordie to play with teenaged sons Mark and Marty in Detroit? How about what if the Wings had stuck to their guns and drafted Pavel Bure in the 1989 draft to go with Lidstrom, Fedorov and Konstantinov? Or even better, what if they had drafted Jaromír Jágr third overall in 1990 rather than Keith Primeau? (Or Derian Hatcher? Or Keith Tkachuk? Or Martin Brodeur? Or…anyone else?) St. James discusses it all from all eras of the Hockeytown franchise.

Probert vs. Kocur. McCarty vs. Lemieux. Everybody vs. Roy. The Fabulous Fifties. The Russian Five. The Captain. It’s all here, a mini-encyclopedia about the Detroit Red Wings that relives their years of glory and gives hope for better days ahead.

“The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Mark Schultz

 

496 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345461513

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, illustrated by Mark Schultz, was the first volume to be published. I first heard of the Cimmerian when I saw the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger adaptation Conan the Barbarian on HBO; to learn from my Dad that this pale imitation of one of his boyhood heroes was meh at best was the height of insanity in my eyes…I mean, AH-nold was Conan; nobody, but NOBODY, could have played that part, and the movie was a rollicking good time with swords and wizards and blood and sex (a little). What’s not to love, right? That movie had to have been the best thing to happen to Conan since Frank Frazetta.

And THEN, I began collecting this Del Rey series of the original, unedited tales of Conan and…damnit, Dad was right again. The movie is still one of my favorites (the sequel? Not so much), but compared to these unadulterated Howard-and-ONLY-Howard tales (sorry, L. Sprague de Camp) the movie really is meh. We can at least be thankful that Howard has the following that he has and that his tales which, I would argue, truly launched the sword and sorcery milieu, are considered modern classics, and to thank Weird Tales for bringing him to the world’s attention – even as we bemoan their inability to pay him what he was owed; ah, well, then as now this literary environment is not for everyone.

The tales to be found in this volume are amongst the classics of the Conan corpus, printed in order of when they were originally published, rather than utilizing some later-day chronology that can only be guessed at, seeing as Howard himself seemed to write stories without regard to their placement in any sort of history. So we get The Phoenix on the Sword, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, The God in the Bowl, The Tower of the Elephant, The Scarlet Citadel, Queen of the Black Coast, Black Colossus, Iron Shadows in the Moon, Xuthal of the Dusk, The Pool of the Black One, Rogues in the House, The Vale of Lost Women and The Devil in Iron. But this collection also offers other Conan-related works, as well, such as the poem Cimmeria, several synopses Howard penned of his stories, various notes concerning the Hyborian Age and even a map drawn by the man himself.

What this volume of Conan lore does is prove that no one could write Conan like his creator could; I suppose I have to give credit to his inheritors for giving it a try and attempting to keep the flame flickering, but to appreciate the full force of the Cimmerian’s appeal one must return to the source material, as Del Rey has done. For all these being tales of blood and gore, Howard’s prose is actually quite good. His descriptions of characters, locations and events are detailed and descriptive, especially of the ancient cities that decorate this savage era. The battles rage and the blood flows with descriptive detail, almost to the point of absurdity: for some reason, Howard often wants his readers to know whose blood this character’s horse slipped on, or the exact positioning of the archers and the pikemen.

Seeing as these tales were written in the 30’s, the dialogue can occasionally be rather stilted or over-the-top; I mean, as uneducated barbarians go, Conan is as philosophical and, um, “kind” as they come, but even so, reading one deep (and lengthy) monologue after another from this muscle-bound philosopher became rather ridiculous after a time. Also, these dissertations read just like that, as if Howard had written an essay for a philosophy class, rather than as a conversation between two persons. This becomes more obvious as the stories flow, for I believe that the earlier tales are stronger than the latter. But don’t fret none, for after a discussion on the meaning of “civilized” comes to an end a ferocious gorilla-thing leaps at our hero and Conan must do what Conan does. This is what Howard’s Conan tales are, in a nutshell: deep philosophical debates on the meaning of civilization masquerading as blood-and-guts fantasy adventure.

“Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder”, by Caroline Fraser

 

Picador, 656 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1250182487

I loved, loved, loved the “Little House on the Prairie” TV show as a kid (and totally had a thing for Melissa Gilbert, too), although I never got around to reading the books. Don’t know why. Anyway, when I found Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser for cheap at 2^nd & Charles (where else?) I snatched it up as an opportunity to learn about the Real Laura. And I wasn’t disappointed, although I was repeatedly surprised, but typically in a good way. Fraser evidently made it her life’s work to learn everything about Laura Ingalls Wilder, including her extended family, her tumultuous daughter, her turbulent times and even the natural history of the Midwest she and her family sought to settle. To read Prairie Fires is to relive the settlement of the American West in all its glory and gore, from the 1870s and 80s when Indians still roamed the wilds uninhibited, to the depression of the 90s, through the Populist Era, the Roaring 20s, the depression of the 30s, World War II and right up into the 1950s. That’s right: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl and symbol of the American conquest of the west and Yankee woman daring-do lived long enough to see America become a global superpower.

Fraser begins Prairie Fires with genealogical research into Wilder’s (and Almanzo’s) families, harking back to the colonial Pilgrim era before flashing forwarding to the Dakota War of 1862. From here, Fraser runs from strength to strength as she charts the path of this ordinary yet extraordinary girl-then-woman and, by example, of other pioneers of her ilk. The thing one learns quickly is that Laura’s own admonition of her works is absolutely true: she stated on a number of occasions that everything in the books “was the truth, but not the whole truth”; thus, while Wilder writes about Pa and Ma uprooting their family from Wisconsin for better prospects in the Dakotas, she leaves out the fact that they did so to run away from their many creditors. The truth, but not the whole truth.

But Prairie Fires is not only about Laura and Almanzo, as she paints a portrait of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as well – and what an unflattering portrait it is: selfish, immoral, manipulative, petty, mentally ill (manic depressive), dishonest, modestly talented, irreligious (flirting with Islam her whole life), plagiarizing, economically incompetent, politically hypocritical, casually anti-Semitic; not at all like her mother, I would argue. For all that, we get glimpses of her intermittent success, for Lane moved in fairly high political and literary circles, made her living by her writing and would have lived well but for her financial naivety. And without Rose’s efforts, it’s safe to say we would not have Laura’s beloved books at all, for she suggested, encouraged (and hectored) her mother into writing all about her life, and we as Americans are the better for it.

Yet Fraser does rather seem to have an axe to grind against Lane, and I finished Prairie Fires with no doubt whatsoever about the absurdity of the charges that Rose ghostwrote the Little House series. Fraser seems generally in favor of collective politics, seems supportive of the New Deal programs and was bothered thus by Wilder’s and Lane’s many criticisms thereof. She spends a great deal of energy detailing the misguided attempts by Laura’s successors to corral her work into the Conservative/Libertarian cause, and in this she is somewhat successful, but her attempts to explain away the fundamental reasons why people like Wilder resented the very New Deal programs intended to help them come across as feeble and not a little condescending.

We read somewhat about a religious heritage of independence going back to the Pilgrims, resentment of land use decrees and crop destruction, but we hear again and again and again the litany of supposed hypocrisies: the homestead act was a Government Program after all, everyone necessarily took jobs off the farm, the bank where Laura worked administered Government Lending, the frontier was only open thanks to the Army, Pa cheated the Railroad, Almanzo’s lying on his Homestead Application – and that’s about it. It’s a mighty thin list to set against decades of hard toil, thrift and scrupulous morality, and it doesn’t bear the weight of being Exhibit ‘A’ in “Wilder’s Real Politics On Trial”.

But enough negativity: Prairie Fires for me was a literal page turner. The writing flows like a prairie river and the detail is exhaustive without ever being exhausting. It answered every question I had about Laura Ingalls Wilder (and many I never knew I had), and along the way I learned more American history and began to understand just how and why families like the Ingalls went to the frontier. While the Laura Ingalls Wilder of my youth is gone – the TV show I so loved has been forever ruined by the historic reality – the Wilder I came to know in Prairie Fires is so much more interesting for being real.

“State of Emergency: Britain, 1970-1974”, by Dominic Sandbrook

 

Penguin Books, 768 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0141032153

If I were forced to come up with a term to describe the of the UK during the early 1970s, it would be “conflicted attitudes” – which in what Dominic Sandbrook did in State of Emergency: Britain, 1970-1974, the third book in his series on modern Great Britain (the first two being Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, reviewed on February 11^th, 2020, and White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, reviewed on February 18^th, 2020). The focus of State of Emergency centers around the premiership of Edward Heath from his surprising victory in June of 1970 to his just as surprising defeat in March of 1974. As to why these two mystifying events occurred, Sandbrook’s conclusion is that, while the British public were, by and large, sympathetic towards his goals, in the end they decided to postpone any further conflict these might create after enduring so much of that during Heath’s time at No. 10: the Oil Shock, the Three-Day Week and strike after strike after strike from the all-powerful Trade Unions that ultimately drove Heath and the Conservatives from power.

This is, in hindsight, rather peculiar, seeing as the Heath government was far more liberal and sympathetic towards the Unions particularly and the lower classes in general than it gets credit for, and actually understood workers’ wishes better than many of the workers’ compatriots did or wished to. Heath and his ministers started with some standard Conservative measures designed to “reward merit” and “not support lame ducks” and so on and so forth, but ended up throwing untold fortunes to ducks both lame and otherwise, not to mention some fouler fowls out of sheer expediency that Harold Wilson would have stopped short of (if Edward Heath ad been an American President he would have been your stereotypical RINO: Republican In Name Only). Thus, the government’s attitudes were conflicted in one sense, the general public’s in another, what with this supposedly Conservative government’s proper concern with inflation warring with its desire to be all things to all people, and so Heath’s government got the worst of every world and no credit from anyone.

Most of the reasons for the ultimate fall of Heath’s government is because his popular support was a mile wide but an inch deep, and that the best thing that he had going for him was that he Wasn’t Wilson (Harold, that is; Heath’s abysmal communicative skills didn’t help, either). Which is strange, considering that for the first time “many people had cars…central heating…indoor toilets…gleaming new kitchens” and so on; the examples of material comfort and advancement were many, as were so any other changes, from the rise of inflation and glam rock, the decline of deference and cinema audiences, to the dark arts of the period’s football and industrial relations. The formidably useless Heath government found itself declaring no fewer than five – FIVE! – States of Emergency during its mere 44 months of power, while also presiding over a wrecked economy, a loss of prestige worldwide and bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA; it also had to suffer the indignities of flared trousers, insane haircuts and beards, and the popularity of the color brown.

State of Emergency is more than a continuation of Sandbrook’s earlier books or a way station between future volumes (two more, so far); it is a meditation on the hubris of men and power, and how the best-laid schemes o’mice an’ men Gang aft agley.

“Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell”, by Tom Clavin

 

Griffin, 416 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1250214607

With Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell, author Tom Clavin attempts to sift through the many, many Tall Tales that litter the historiography of the Old West in order to get to the Truth of what happened at the O.K. Corral and why. To do so, he first takes us to the 1877 founding of Tombstone as a mining town in Cochise County, Arizona. From there we get a complete history of this original lawless Western town up to and after the infamous goings on at the O.K. Corral. This extensive background gave the centerpiece of the tale an added element, as we see how and why it came to pass from a more-complete perspective of many intersecting events.

Thus, we find the Brothers Earp – that would be James, Virgil, Morgan and Warren – coming to town and falling in with the so-called “Law & Order” faction due to their past experiences as lawmen…and their need for regular incomes (originally, they were just there to try their luck at mining and gambling). They soon clashed with the Cowboys – that would be, primarily, Johnny Behan, Frank Stilwell, Pete Spence, Ike Clanton, Florentino Cruz, Frederick Bode, Pony Diehl, Johnny Barnes, Frank Patterson, Milt Hicks, Bill Hicks, Bill Johnson, Ed Lyle, Johnny Lyle, “Curly” Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo (whew!) – a term that was originally a pejorative used to describe anyone who were as likely to rustle cattle as to raise them legitimately (that is, when they weren’t robbing the odd stagecoach). It may be overstating things to say that a clash between the two factions was inevitable, but it’s damn close.

And so we come to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which three cowboys were killed and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. The fight seemed to turn a lot of Tombstone citizens against the Earps, with many viewing them as cold-blooded killers simply because they had kept their heads and performed well in the fight. The Cowboys swore vengeance for the deaths of Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton, which subsequently led to the shooting of Virgil and the murder of Morgan, and thence to Wyatt Earp’s “vendetta ride”.

One would think that a century-plus after the events tempers would have cooled but, if you are a history nerd, you know that this would be a foolish thought. In the great O.K. Divide – between partisans of the Earps or Clantons – Clavin would appear to fall in the former camp, although he does his damndest to be as nonpartisan as he can. Seeing as Tombstone is more than just a history of the infamous fight, but a study of the settling and taming of the West, it succeeds at being so much more than a potboiler. What Clavin has not done is write a radically new take on the story, which is…O.K. Tombstone is a well-researched history of this moment in American time, and he makes a convincing case that, after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, gunfighters didn’t have many places to turn. The old west was becoming at long last civilized.

“Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth”, by Ian Nathan

 

592 pages, HarperCollins, ISBN-13: 978-0008369842

Having read The Lord of the Rings (reviewed on October 1^st, 2022, God Help Me) and watched all the extensive DVD material of all six Middle Earth films, I thought I had learned everything there was to know about the story of Peter Jackson and the making of “The Lord of the Rings” – and then Lo, what do I find but Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth by Ian Nathan. There’s lots to like in Nathan’s book, a British Filmographer, the material of which was gleaned primarily from his own experiences in covering the making of the “Fellowship of the Ring”, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” (and the three “Hobbit” films, but those things have been relegated to a single chapter).

From the beginning the choice of Jackson to direct Tolkien’s much loved if flawed masterpiece was…peculiar, considering his filmography: from warped horror comedies like Bad Taste and Braindead (Dead/Alive in the States), to the drama fantasy Heavenly Creatures (with Kate Winslet in her first-ever role), to the Michael J. Fox vehicle The Frighteners, this was a man with an individual taste in subject matter. Also, in learning his craft on the go, he was able to make connections with a variety of different creative craftsmen over a range of genres, connections especially that helped him build his special-effects studio, Weta Workshop, without which LOTR would never have been made.

Nathan presents Jackson’s trials in bringing the books to film like a spy thriller, full of false leads, breathtaking amounts of work against seemingly impossible deadlines, studio intrigue and, mostly, dumb luck. The complex web of events could have been impossible to understand, but Nathan moves the events along with nail-biting urgency. My inner geek thrilled at the numerous anecdotes featuring behind-the-scenes goings on, such as when Sean Bean and Orlando Bloom were forced to seek shelter in an old woman’s cottage for four days when their car was caught in a flood while driving between locations.

Ultimately Nathan is able to evoke the wonder that accompanied the making of the movies, wonder at the ingeniousness of the production and design crew, the ability of Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens to reduce the essence of Tolkien’s epic into three films, and the fact that these got made at all.

“The Lord of the Rings”, by J.R.R. Tolkien

 

440 pages, Houghton Mifflin Company, ISBN-13: 978-0395193952

Ummmmm…sooooo…it’s okay if I criticize J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s a perfect story or a faultless book without stain or errors, right? RIGHT?! Like, it’s not every day that one can say that the movies were better than the book, but…um…okay, here it goes: “The Lord of the Rings” movies were better than the books. Now, now, now cosplayers, put down your rubber swords and take off your elven ears and listen for a minute, okay? There can be no doubt that Tolkien’s magnum opus established a whole genre of fantasy storytelling and launched a new industry in fantasy gaming, and his epic Epic of Good versus Evil and the bonds of friendship and how the most inconsequential-seeming person can have an importance beyond the obvious and that one must never give up and fight the good fight though the heavens fall…and so on and so forth, is a wonderful message and one that shouldn’t ever be forgotten.

But, damn, brah, who new an epic Epic could drag on and on and on and make one wish for a Nazgûl dagger right between the eyes? Why none of his editors was on the case is beyond me; I mean, do we have to stick with Frodo and Sam for page after page after page?! Can’t we have a break and see what’s happening elsewhere in Middle Earth? Endless descriptions of walking and where the hills over there were in comparison to their location here became tiresome, at best. I get it: Tolkien was an old-school English Country Gentleman Wannabe who saw the glory of creation in England’s Mountains Green and saw evil in all of those dark Satanic Mills, but I could have done with fewer descriptions of scenery and after a while began to just skim over those parts and hope for some action to come – and when the action did come…well, it wasn’t very actionful, was it?

And I’m not alone in this, either: Judith Shulevitz of The New York Times said that Tolkien “formulated a high-minded belief in the importance of his mission as a literary preservationist, which turns out to be death to literature itself”, while Richard Jenkyns of The New Republic thought that Tolkien’s characters were “anemic...lacking in fiber” and overall the book lacked psychological depth. Michael Moorcock, the British-though-transplanted-Texan science fiction and fantasy author in his essay Epic Pooh equated J.R.R.’s work to Winnie-the-Pooh and criticized it for his “Merrie Olde Englande” viewpoint. Even Hugo Dyson, a member in good standing of The Inklings (Tolkien’s literary and debating group at The Eagle and Child in Oxford) had not-good things to say about it, lolling on the couch and shouting “Oh God, no more Elves!” every so often (I feel ya, Hugo).

Okay, okay, okay, it’s not all bad. The sheer creativity in calling forth a world and populating it with peoples and places and history and languages (even if most of the Quenya was cribbed from Old Finnish) is not to be lightly laughed at. I mean, the man wrote out thousands of years of backstory for his world; tales and myths and legends that are mentioned or hinted at in The Lord of the Rings weren’t just throw-away lines, he actually wrote the damn stories down, just to flesh everything out. The problem is, if you don’t read all of those tales and myths and legends, a lot of this detail is lost – but damn, did Christopher Tolkien try to get it all out, what by publishing The Silmarillion in 1977, Unfinished Tales in 1980 and The History of Middle-earth in 12 volumes between 1983 and 1996. But am I really going to read these 14 books just so I can understand Aragorn’s tossed off comment to Arwen Undómiel? Ahhhhh…nope.

And while all of those descriptions of mountains high and valleys low and forests deep and hillocks round can grate after a bit, they do form a kind of poetry for which Tolkien gets almost zero credit for. There were times – and I mean it now – when I could almost see the landscape as he described it, independent of any Rankin-Bass drawing or Jacksonian cinematography. And the messages of hope over despair and friendship against impossible odds are grand and universal and must never leave us. It’s just those instances are strung together in long-winded and overly-important passages that seem never to end. Seriously, Dear Reader, editors are supposed to edit, and if only someone over at Allen & Unwin had taken a red pen to at least some of these wordy passages, then a more tightly constructed and eagerly paced book would have been the result.

Despite all of this, go out and read The Lord of the Rings, anyway; you’ll find plenty of cheap copies that were brought to used bookstores and put up on Amazon after scads of the damn things were printed and sold and went unread after millions of people discovered what a slog it was compared to the movies. I mean, you almost have to read it now, seeing as it’s a cultural milestone and whatnot. If nothing else, you’ll have one over on all those cosplayers who, despite what they say, haven’t read it either and wouldn’t know the difference between Gondor and Gondolin.