Robert E. Howard's Conan and Charles Saunders' Imaro

It's hard to say what age I first read Robert E. Howard's Conan books. Other kids read them, but it looked over the top. When I did give it try, it was swamped in ornate, awkward language. I looked down my nose at Howard's work. How could any serious reader imbibe this garish garbage?

I happened to read another Howard story where the prose was lean and spare. And I was stunned. The guy could control his language. What at first appeared as an inability to write was actually an intentional, atmospheric construct. So I revisited Conan and came to appreciate its appeal.

I often try things multiple times. Sometimes we miss things the first time around.

Howard died at thirty, in 1936, before any of his stories were collected into books. The first collections, twenty years later, would have probably been similar to other popular magazine collections that publishers were publishing at the time, looking to capture the post WWII interest in books. 

But what about the ordering? As he aged and he might have felt differently toward his characters; he might he have created a more consistent series of novels about this barbarian. The work itself had already suggested a progression of character. Might he not want to clean them up for public?

Conan went through several paperback editions a decade later. L. Sprague de Camp tried to put the series in order and wrote material that put Conan together in an order that made sense to him. The editions stirred up enough interest to fight the legal battles that would eventually become the most popular Conan film: the 1982 Conan the Barbarian, putting Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Hollywood map. There were several subsequent attempts--live action and animated--but they seemed unable to recapture the public's interest.

The 2000s tried to attempted to create a more Howard-centric chronology. This modest revival of interest in Conan may have led to Imaro's revival:

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Charles Saunders' Imaro is a book I'd been meaning to get to. In the 70s, Saunders had been inspired by Conan to write several of his own stories, leading to a few appearances in the fantasy annuals and a 1981 mosaic collection and two sequels, but the second novel took him three years to write, and by then his audience was dwindling and he was unable to finish the series. The publishers weren't interested in a fourth novel.

I'd expected Conan in Africa, but the prose was more controlled. Some might complain that it doesn't rise to Conan's inventiveness, but it has something over Howard's invention: the feel of a novel. The stories build on what's gone before, and Imaro grows from what he's gone through. The past impacts the present. Saunders infused some maturity on the tales. I'd have loved to do a comparison of the early tales and the two subsequent novel versions.

Twenty years after Imaro's first book publication, a fan out of Australia encouraged him to resurrect the character and finish the series. So he did. At first, when the fan contacted him, he didn't have much interest as he'd moved away from this type of work, but he got back into it and found a publisher. 

He excised one story from the series because of it's possible connection to political events in Rwanda that mirrored what he'd written first. Much as one admires his desire to have his fiction not cause damage, it also makes me want to read the original to see what he wanted removed. He revised and added new material. It might be worthwhile to compare the two editions.

Anyway, if you like Conan or are curious about a Conan-type character who experiences growth, this is an interesting book.

Pulp Fiction, Nearly Thirty Years Later

Pulp Fiction [PF] came out almost 30 years ago. If the audience or critics ranked their favorites of the 90s, I bet it would come out on top. It's hard to argue with Titanic or Silence of the Lambs--popular films in their time that people continue to talk about--but PF should still rank the highest. 

 

This might surprise some, for reasons I'll discuss below, but I still think it'd be at or near #1. My favorites of the 90s weren't nearly as big. Time Out and Rotten Tomatoes rank it #1. Probably others. (A bunch of other movies I should rewatch.)

I don't recall my first viewing or if there were multiple viewings, but my latest viewing differed from the first. My first viewing loved everything. There was a coolness about it. The title, the characters and their blithe approach to murder, the way the film repurposed old things and made them feel new and refreshing, the memorable dialogue, the funky plot. Memory told me this was one of the greats.

I rewatched it to see what made it tick, and was surprised. The plot, while beautifully intricate, is rather thin. It's almost like the movie was composed of Tarantino's favorite outtakes (i.e. "Kill your darlings") from every script he'd ever written. Memorable lines, albeit asides. They don't actually advance a plot. Rather, these are show pieces. Dialogue that actors would love to speak. If I suggest Tarrantino is show-boating, this isn't bad-mouthing. It works.

Crazier still is how he brings in five decades of film and music together in one work. I suspect this aspect would be lost on younger generations. They'd probably only see the plot unless they did some deep-diving into movie and music history.

The cussing, when I'd first watched it, felt normal after I'd worked on a ship that had deployed a similar barrage. Since PF, everybody and their dog has drowned the media in cussing so that it's lost its original power. Some find a barrage hilarious, but to me, it's like saying, "Nissan that Nissan guy!" Okay, so what? But Tarrantino makes the swear words hilarious, spins straw into gold-plated art.

The title, while cool, detracts. Crime Stories might be more accurate but less compelling. Only Bruce Willis's story feels pulpy. 

 

One description called it a gang story. Follow the characters. This isn't a gang story--even if it's a pervasive element--at least it's a far cry from being a typical gang story.

The movie uses these definitions, for pulp/fiction:

1. soft, moist, shapeless mass or matter.

2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.

Is this a self-critique? Or maybe a modus operandi? "rough, unfinished" and "lurid" and "shapeless"? Apart from "lurid," which is accurate, only in a nonliteral sense does the title sort of work. Shapeless, sort of--you could ask a number of scenes why they were included--but some of it is beautifully sculpted, and it has finish (some of it, pyrotechnically so) if a little rough in places. Certainly it is not your usual blockbuster. Maybe this is what they had to do to justify the film to the producers (or critics) who might have complained.

Off topic: the movie made 25 times its original investment, the low operating cost is somewhat surprising considering the names that worked on the film.

Minor spoilers:

I misremembered the plot. I thought it was more of a Shakespearean tragedy where nearly everyone died in the end. Instead it ends with the character who has the most compelling story: Samuel L. Jackson's. The narrative switches around and really, few of them land. Just Jackson followed by Willis but his story, while it takes us on some wild loops, isn't as surprising. Jackson's transformation is wildly surprising and feels so authentic. He reframes his whole existence in a line (rewritten from the original, btw)--plus, his newfound change is immediately put to the test. Frankly, I don't recall that at all. Travolta's character story only works in light of Jackson's as a sort of foil.

Could a writer replicate this work as a novel? I don't think so although, no doubt, many have tried.

"The difference between a short story and a novel" by Philip K. Dick

 "The difference between a short story and a novel comes to this...."

"It is in sf stories that sf action occurs; it is in sf novels the worlds occur.... Crisis is the key to story-writing,a sort of brinkmanship in which the author mires his characters in happening so sticky as to seem impossible of solution. And then he gets them out... usually.... But in a novel the actions are so deeply rooted in the personality of the main character that to extricate him the author would have to go back and rewrite his character. This need not happen in a story, especially a short one.... [T]his makes clear why some writers can write stories but not novels, or novels but not stories.... [A]nything can happen in a story; the author merely tailors his character to the event.... As a writer builds up a novel-length piece it slowly begins to imprison him, to take away his freedom; his own characters are taking over and doing what they want to do--not what he would like them to do. This is one one hand the strength of the novel and on the other its weakness."

--Philip K. Dick, The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick [originally 1968, so probably from the 1969 collection, The Preserving Machine.