“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.