Sign of the Southern Cross, Black Sabbath

Don't live for pleasure

Make life your treasure

Fade away

Martin Eden (1909), Jack London

A great voyage of the soul...

Jack London is a great writer, full stop. Upon reading Martin Eden (1909) I declare he now resides firmly in my top 10 favorite authors. A list still in progress and subject to change but probably looks something like this (not in any order):

1. JRR Tolkien

2. Robert E. Howard

3. Jack London

4. TH White

5. Stephen King

6. Ray Bradbury

7. Bernard Cornwell

8. Poul Anderson

9. Karl Edward Wagner

10. HP Lovecraft

Reading London is akin to receiving an electric shock. The intensity with which he writes is almost unrivaled. In fact, there’s really only one author I’ve encountered who writes with the same poetic, romantic verve, great splashes of color and blood and rage and wild passion: Robert E. Howard.

I didn’t necessarily think Martin Eden would deliver the same visceral experiences as The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, or The Star Rover, but as it turns out, it did. These are mostly contained in the heart and mind of the titular protagonist, though there are some all-time savage fistfights. But even with no swordplay or sorcery, I literally aloud mouthed, “god damn” after reading various lines and passages--probably at least a dozen times.

Why read Martin Eden if you a sword-and-sorcery fan, or a fan of REH? 

Howard was directly influenced by London, in all ways. 

If you want to know how Robert E. Howard felt, read Martin Eden.

If you want to know how Howard wrote, read Martin Eden.

How Howard struggled with life, with relationships, with his disappointment for the world--it’s all here, in this book. Martin Eden is almost as vital to understanding Howard as his personal correspondence, or One Who Walked Alone. IMO.

How can I make such a wild declaration? Martin Eden was the chief influence on Howard’s own autobiographical novel, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs. It likely influenced Howard’s life choices and how he viewed himself, too. REH scholar Will Oliver does a nice job tracing these influences in his essay “Robert E. Howard and Jack London’s Martin Eden: Analyzing the influence of Martin Eden on Howard and his Semi-Autobiography” (The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies, Vol. 11, Issue 1, June 2020). Which I sought out and read after finishing the book.

Martin Eden is a writer, a frustrated romantic, a boxer. He worked long hours in soulless jobs while wanting to do something else. The book is a story of romance colliding with commerce. Just as Howard was foiled by the whims of magazine publishers and the late payments of Weird Tales, so too is Martin Eden consumed with these struggles, living on the edge of poverty and needing to work back-breaking jobs that left him too tired to write. Yet he pressed on, because he refused to let passion and truth succumb to conformity and mindless work.

But it’s a brutal struggle, and a tragedy, just as Howard’s life was.

Martin Eden is many other things besides. A critique of early 20th capitalism, its long and inhumane working conditions. A critique of class, the cultural elites who look with scorn upon the working-class men and women who actually make the world go round. It’s a critique of the weakness of people, who are fickle and disloyal and petty. 

Eden’s great love, Ruth, abandons him when he needs her most. When he finally meets with success the world comes crawling back but Martin sees through the grift and shallowness. He’s like Conan, a barbarian at odds with corrupt civilization. A rough and uncultured sailor, Eden desperately wants to be civilized, and spends the whole book in this pursuit. He makes, it, but at the expense of his soul. When he finally learns of its cultured ways, “the gilt, the craft, and the lie,” it breaks his heart. 

“I’m no more than a barbarian getting my first impression of civilization,” he observes.

I won’t it spoil any further, just to add if not already apparent: Martin Eden=Recommended.

Rest in peace James Silke

James Silke, best known in S&S circles as the author of the Death Dealer series, recently passed away. He was 93 and lived a full and varied life as a photographer, writer, art director and more.

I'd been slowly working my way through the Death Dealer series and am posting here links to my prior reviews. These unfortunately are not great books, certainly not as good as their fantastic Frank Frazetta cover art ... but they do possess a ridiculous charm of their own, a bit of a "WTF did I just read?" unpredictability that makes them ... notable.

Sword-and-sorcery’s endgame: James Silke’s Prisoner of the Horned Helmet

“This goes to 11:” A Review of Death Dealer Book 2: Lords of Destruction

Death Dealer 3: Semi-enjoyable (?) train-wreck

I'm sure I will get around to book IV.

God speed James Silke!

Some recent acquisitions

Some treasures acquired while out and about or through the post.

The three other images below are postcard ads included w/Lee volume.

About time I picked up Empress of Dreams by Tanith Lee. DMR collected all her tales of S&S in one volume. 

I now have the first six issues of SSOC. I’ve only read the first three of the new run from Titan but plan to read the next three ASAP. Covers are still looking fantastic.

The Trooper is not a great beer, but not bad either. Drinkable, pleasant, reliable British ale with a malty backbone. And of course it’s really all about the can art.

When My Body’s Numb and My Throat is Dry, I grab a Trooper.

Paper books are better than digital: Five reasons why

In many ways life is better today than it ever has been. In other ways, not so much. Parse this statement in whatever way you choose.

One area in which I think we’ve declined is our addiction to devices. We check our phones in Pavlovian, notification driven mindlessness. When we’re not incessantly reaching for our Androids or iphones we’re staring at other screens—televisions, laptops, and digital readers.

This last is arguably the least concerning … until the most recent news. I never switched to the Kindle and today I’m feeling vindicated.

I’m not here to brag, just stating the undisputed fact not all change represents progress. Sometimes we regress and must course correct. Or, we realize that tried and true is so for a reason.

Even without Amazon’s incredibly selfish decision to prohibit downloading books you’ve already bought starting Feb. 26, analog books were already a superior option. 

I get it, Kindle fans. You’ve got bookmarking and search at your disposal. You can “buy” a book and immediately begin reading while I wait for the mail. When you take an extended vacation you’ve only got a single slim device to manage rather than cargo for the overhead bins. 

Good for you. I’m still team paper.

I’m also a digital consumer and user. I’m online, all the time. I have a paid subscription to Spotify. I watch a lot of YouTube content. It’s incredibly convenient to search .PDFs and other e-text for keywords, which I did while writing Flame and Crimson.

But I’m still team paper. Here’s five reasons why:

1. We have enough digital distractions. We don’t need devices to read books when we already have a better technology that allows for an undistracted experience. Studies have proven that reading on screens leads to more shallow processing and can hinder reading comprehension. 

2. Digital media enables piracy. Musicians can no longer depend on album sales for revenue. Being a full-time author today is almost impossible unless you happen to be Stephen King. Midlist paperback author careers that were once a real thing have been undone for many reasons, but among them is digital piracy. Ask a musician how much they make from Spotify.

3. Paper is a more durable medium. It isn’t going anywhere, once purchased no one can take it back. Unlike what we’ve seen this week due to corporate greed, and in other instances with bowdlerization (see point 5). I have a couple books on my shelves more than a hundred years old… your e-reader will be outdated in less than a decade and you’ll forced to upgrade.

4. You don’t actually own anything with digital based subscriptions. I’ve had songs disappear off Spotify. Kindle owners have had titles removed. George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm were taken back by Amazon when a rights issue arose (the irony of these particular titles should not be lost on anyone). I’ve got Orwell, in paper, and there they stay on my shelf. 

5. Censorship and/or lesser forms of content neutering are real. Given our grandstanding need to prove our moral superiority over previous generations by removing “problematic” elements like fictitious evil monsters from D&D I have no faith that a future publisher will not do the same to new editions of my old favorites. Denude them, round off every sharp corner and push them toward some bland middle of sameness, in an attempt to avoid offense. Which is fruitless, given that someone, somewhere is offended all the time. And probably will be offended by this post. Lest you think I’m just picking on the left, take a look at Florida.

In summary I’ll keep my paper books. Unlike digital slop they have edges that can cut.

Ardor on Aros, andrew j. offutt

A cover better than the contents... unfortunately true of many Frazettas.

A very brief review of Ardor on Aros, by andrew j. offutt (1973).

(some spoilers follow)

The good

Great cover by Frank Frazetta, though unfortunately has nothing to do with the contents of the book (save perhaps symbolically, and I’m being generous).

It’s an easy, fast-paced read. Which says something for Offutt’s prose, which if not elevated or inspired does the job.

It’s unrepentant pastiche. Unlike some pastiches which dance uncomfortably with their source material, Ardor on Aros leans in all the way. The protagonist, Hank Ardor, is transported to Aros, a planet conjured from the imagination of three separate beings, one of whom is a female author writing a Burroughs pastiche. He arrives nude and is able to take huge leaps due to the thin atmosphere on the planet. We run into “Dejah Thoris” or someone closely approximating her; he names his two alien mounts “ERB” and “Kline”—the latter named after Otis Adelbert Kline, who wrote his own sword-and-planet including The Swordsman of Mars (1933) and The Outlaws of Mars (1933). Still not sure if this might not be better described as parody.

The bad

The pacing is off. It feels rushed, but not in a great barreling and breathless Burroughs manner. Too much emphasis on seemingly inconsequential details and not enough on important events.

Sexual assault and worse that will likely stop many readers dead in their tracks. Part of this is deliberate; the story attempts to tell a more “realistic” version of A Princess of Mars and what would happen were people walking around nude and taken captive by barbaric conquerors. But it’s still tough to digest.

It’s supposed to include the spicy sex ERB avoids but it’s almost as tame. The violence is more graphically described but it lacks ERBs style. In short, it doesn’t deliver what it says on the tin. The back cover trumpets, “what happens to a red-blooded young graduate looking for sex, fame, and answers when he suddenly finds himself naked, frightened, and several light years from earth? A lot.” Except, not really.

Can’t really recommend unless you’re an S&P completist.

Cold Sweat, Thin Lizzy

I love discovering old songs.

Few things are more rewarding than stumbling across or being served up in the algorithm an awesome tune, looking it up, and getting gobsmacked to discover is more than 40 years old.

See "Cold Sweat" by Thin Lizzy (1983). Never heard it until a month or so ago. Am glad I did, even if I'm pissed I wasn't cranking it 30 years ago. I think you'll enjoy it too, on this Metal Friday. 

Chalk this up to Boys Are Back in Town syndrome. It's borderline tragic that Thin Lizzy's entire legacy is wrapped up in that fine but terribly overplayed song. Thin Lizzy is massively underrated and under-appreciated.

RIP guitarist John Sykes, whom we lost back in December. I'm pouring one out on the curb for you, man. You tore this one up.

An interesting personal insight into Moorcock’s inspirations

Was just listening to an interview with Michael Moorcock on the Monsters, Madness and Magic podcast (recommended BTW). Co-host Dave Ritzlin of DMR Books posed an interesting question, which prompted an unexpected response from this grand master of fantasy (lightly edited for clarity):

Ritzlin: “Earlier, we were talking about the tragic aspect of your fiction. I was wondering if there were any tragedies from your personal life, perhaps the death of a loved one or a romantic relationship that inspired some of your writing, and did it like in a therapeutic way.”

Moorcock: “A few years ago, I would have said no. But since then, I’ve been writing the Whispering Swarm series, which is partly autobiography … as a result I’ve been having to look at myself a bit more closely, as it were. And I think probably my father leaving, which I’ve always said was a good thing for me, I mean he was a pretty dull man and it wouldn’t have been much fun, you know, with him being around when I was younger… but I also had a problem pretty much most of my life, which I didn’t really get to the roots of until I was doing this book. And it’s basically just separation anxiety. It’s abandonment issues as it were, which come from my father leaving when I was what, five or six? … I can’t really think of losing anybody, except my father. Effectively, I suppose he died.”

There is a much separation in Moorcock’s works. I haven’t read all of his stuff, but clearly it comprises a large part of the Elric and Corum stories. Lost eyes/hands, lost loves … severed and destroyed families, separation from home and country. Anything any capable writer without a great personal loss can include in his or her stories, but perhaps given additional resonance and authenticity in these stories due to Moorcock’s very personal loss.

Take this with a bit of a grain of salt. Moorcock later admits in the interview he was writing Elric at a young age, when everything seemed a tragedy (including getting dumped by his then girlfriend), and was “maybe” just channeling teenage angst. Which is a common interpretation of this very angsty character … but maybe it was something more.

Regardless this anecdote is an interesting window into Moorcock as a writer, and his influences, which I don’t think any of us writer types can ever fully know.

Knightriders, a review

(Warning: Spoilers)

Utopias cannot survive contact with the world of commerce. It’s a message delivered in brutal fashion in the catastrophic ending of George Romero’s Knightriders (1981). Idealism meets the hurtling steel of a freight truck, alternative counterculture going under the wheels of the unstoppable economic engine of the 1980s.

The outcome is predictable and sad. But the leadup and the message of the film is magic.

Weird and flawed, too on the nose perhaps with heavy-handed messaging, Knightriders nevertheless succeeds. It’s unpredictable, meaningful, wonderfully anti-establishment, and utterly singular.

The film opens with a knight (Ed Harris) waking up in a forest, naked and in the arms of his paramour. He kneels and prays over the hilt of his sword, enters a nearby pool to bathe … and proceeds to beat his back with a branch in what we can only presume to be some sort of purification ritual.

Right then you know you’re in for an offbeat movie. And if you had any doubts Knightriders goes straight off the deep end when instead of a horse Harris climbs on a motorcycle and rides back to “Camelot.” 

Romero apparently got the idea for Knightriders from the violent medieval reenactments hosted by the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA). He had planned on horses but producer Sam Arkoff told him to put his knights on motorbikes. The rest is history. Despite the obvious anachronisms it makes painstaking efforts toward medieval realism, from the forging of weapons, romance, and chivalric oaths sworn in fealty to a king, who is really only a man (and a flawed one at that) full of grand ideas and a vision of something better.

Knightriders engages with the myth of King Arthur in a very unique way, demonstrating the extreme malleability of the old stories. It skips the “historical” Arthur of the 5th/6th century and the romantic late medieval-ish setting of Excalibur and instead leaps straight into 1980. There are no knights, no nobles, no real king. The story instead follows a troupe of traveling entertainers who put on a combination renaissance fair and tournament, complete with jousting and full-on melee conducted by knights riding motorcycles. At its head is Billy (Harris), a stand-in for Arthur. He is the heart of this comic but earnest ragtag group of misfits.

Instead of Camelot Billy’s “kingdom” is a commune of outsiders, all wanting something different than the 20th century has to offer. It’s got some similarities with the hippie communes of the 60s, perhaps the last gasp on the verge of the decade of excess.

It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I of course know Romero from Night of the Living Dead and its various sequels, and so I thought I might be getting ultraviolence, apocalypse, bloodshed. Knightriders is none of the above. There’s plenty of action, of course (the stunts are fantastic and I winced at a couple of the crashes--stuntmen hit the ground HARD. These guys were not making an easy paycheck). But its basically a character drama spread across a large troupe of actors. All of Romero’s old cronies are in the film … as I was watching every five minutes I was like, “wait, there’s the guy from Dawn of the Dead, and another guy from Dawn of the Dead. That’s the guy from Day of the Dead! Wait is that a Stephen King cameo?” (answer—yes.) Tom Savini plays a major role, not a villain but a foil to the king, and who knew—Savini can act. It’s got an interesting Merlin too, a dude with some medical training but equal parts witch doctor, harmonica playing savant, and prognosticator.

It’s amazing Knightriders ever got made, and unsurprisingly it was a commercial flop. Harris admits in a relatively recent interview that while he remains a fan he knew it was destined for obscurity. It’s too odd and offbeat, non-genre, and the intended audience is unclear. Truth be told it’s also flawed. Some of the acting is, to be charitable, pedestrian. The dialogue in many places is stilted. It’s at least 30-40 minutes too long and badly in need of an edit. It meanders and threatens to lose the thread of story. 

But I can deal with these imperfections, even its deep and abiding flaws, for what we did get. Imperfection is the way of the world. The courage of knights wavers, their honor and fealty are tested by fortune and fame and lust, and often fail. This film does not fail, and for what it lacks in technical artistry it succeeds through heart. I can think of very few films as earnest and sincere. Romero set out to make a statement about the pressures to sell out vs. staying true to your art, and of the extraordinary difficulties of leading a principled life. Of living a values-led life, to whatever end. 

I felt a deep stir of emotion near the end of the film when Harris/Billy/Arthur sees himself not on a bike, but a horse, galloping off on some quest through green lands in a better place. He passes on his legacy in the form of a sword, handing it to a wide-eyed young fan who wanted only an autograph but got much more.

Even if we cannot ever experience earthly utopia the elusive search continues. As long as nonconformists and artists and the disaffected yearn for something more, Camelot beckons.

Stoner by John Williams, a review

(warning: spoilers… though you can’t really spoil a book like this)

It’s not worth talking about the plot of Stoner (1965, John Williams). But because you need some of this in a review, I’ll do it in one short paragraph: Farmer’s son goes off to school to study agriculture. Falls in love with literature instead, and becomes a college professor. Gets married to a loveless woman, has great affair with a younger graduate student, is stymied in his career by petty men, dies. 

Very banal and recognizably average, especially compared to what I usually write about here. But plot is not why you read a book like Stoner.

This book is not about plot. It’s about revelation of character. It’s about love. It’s about illuminating the past. It’s about life and whether it has any meaning and how we might live it in between, against a tide of pettiness and unfairness.

Many men live lives of quiet desperation. They toil in thankless professions and when they pass the mark they leave on the world is ephemeral. But in between, we find moments of glory. Love, great passions that cannot last, but briefly burn as bright as the sun. 

Stoner finds these, and he needs them, because his home life sucks. His wife Edith is a terribly flawed human being, shallow and petty and devoid of passion save when she’s roused by jealousy. There is a breathtaking scene of vindictive selfishness in this book that is a little piece of Mordor. I wanted to reach through the pages and choke this bitch, which to be honest is an indicator of a remarkable piece of writing. In sparse sentences and mainly through dialogue and action Williams brings characters to life through black letters on a white page. We don’t exactly know why Edith is the way she is, but get glimpses in the way she burns everything related to her father upon his death. There is some quiet tragedy in her past that haunts her forever and prevents her from ever being an accessible, whole person.

Writing is awesome, isn’t it?

Stoner is also a book about love.The unqualified love Stoner feels for his daughter, Grace, and the sad separation that comes inevitably with the passage of time. Grace emulates her dad and for a time is cool water to a man in a parched desert.

It’s about the love we can have for literature, which pours through these pages. Of the joy of teaching, the connections you can forge with other people when your passions for a common subject have been roused. I was a failed teacher but a romantic student and understand every bit of this. Passions doused by petty politics playing out in the halls of academia, the power struggles of tenured professors that are all but un-fireable but whose lives can be made sufficiently miserable such that they question the whole enterprise.

Stoner is sad and sometimes pathetic but also surprises with quiet acts of unremembered integrity. Refusing to pass an unqualified, fraudulent student, drawing the great ire of the department chair. The subsequent 30 year war of professional coldness waged by Lomax on Stoner is the great battle. Not the Somme or the Pelennor Fields but a great battle nonetheless, with great casualties.

Yeah, I admire this book. Its sad and wonderful and utterly absorbing. Only 278 pages and there are no spare words, nothing wasted. The style is remarkable, a wonderful blend of startling scenes and images mixed with a wonderful interiority to the character of Stoner. Stoner’s great passions are contrasted with the terrible hardness of early 20th century farmlife, the back-breaking effort that is farming by hand with horse drawn plows. I read this and thought, thank god that is not my lot, I can’t imagine living in that hard world. 

Fantasy comes in many forms and it’s all made up anyway, realistic fiction like Stoner is no more real than Robert E. Howard’s Conan, save that both convey pieces of the truth. That part of the past is now inaccessible to us, but can come to life in the pages of a book.

I’m drawn to the past, and not because I think everything was better back then (though some things were, and other things were not, such is the nature of change). I’m drawn to the past because I’m fascinated by time, which used to be vividly now and is now irretrievably gone. I’m drawn to the past because I get weary of the now, the endless cycles of social media and 24-hour news cycle despair and gnashing of teeth. Of course there was great pettiness in people then as now, and Williams shows us this, unflinchingly. Stoner does not offer nostalgia, and I have not mentioned this but brings home the catastrophe of World War I on a campus of young men, and to a lesser extent the second war. The past was hard, but getting immersed in a novel of a distant place breaks the spell of now, so oddly offers some measure of consolation.

Stoner is a different country, but the human emotion in it rendered so well by Williams is familiar and timeless.

Branching out in my reading, and reaching a crossroads

Squint, and it's Conan? 

I’m a man of multitudes. I read in many genres, including (gasp) beyond the borders of speculative fiction.

Although I prefer fantasy I’m not someone who thumbs my nose at literary fiction (though I wish that worked the other way). As an English major I was exposed to wide range of authors, and loved almost everything I read, from Greek tragedies and Homer to Romantic and Victorian poetry to Hemingway and the modernists. I will pick up contemporary literary/realist works if I find the subject matter sufficiently interesting. 

What interests me most is good writing. Genre is not unimportant, but is secondary. A decade or two ago I was reading every S&S title I could get my hands on, but at present moment I’d rather read a well-written novel than mediocre S&S, or yet another generic epic fantasy series.

Tangible example: I’m currently reading and nearly finished with John Williams’ Stoner. I picked this up following a booktube recommendation and frankly I’m blown away by how good it is. It’s a quiet character study, and yet the emotion and intensity—all within the breast of the protagonist—are equal to epic fantasy. Stoner’s created fictional world of college professordom, if not as original as Barsoom, is just as carefully constructed. The (petty) evils of Stoner’s jealous, flawed, and self-centered wife are as wicked and greedy as Sauron. It is full of wonders of a different and more ordinary but no less potent sort.

But my broad reading palette leaves me in a bit of a bind here.

On the one hand, this is my own damn blog, and can write about whatever I want. It’s unmonetized, I have no obligations to fulfill. If you don’t like the subject matter of a given post, it’s easy to skip it. 

On the other hand, visitors and readers have a reasonable expectation of discussion of speculative fiction and other fantastic content (I include heavy metal under this broad tent). If I started for example writing about the NFL here it would get downright weird on a blog named after an HP Lovecraft short story.

Do I review Stoner here? Or John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction? I don’t know. I don’t really want to start a new blog—I don’t have the energy and I suspect it would be infrequently updated. But that might be a better option.

Is this question even worth asking? Eh. Probably not. Nevertheless I welcome your opinions, and beer recommendations. 

Blogging the Silmarillion--all parts linked

I've finished uploading all my prior Blogging the Silmarillion posts. In hindsight I feel like I wrote as many words as The Silmarillion itself. Hopefully not as dry as an ancient Second Age scroll found in the library of Gondor.

Just a final note, I made no attempt to preserve any spoilers. These are reflections on the text as I read along with it. If you do decide to read/re-read The Silmarillion use these to gauge your own interpretation of the text. I welcome any thoughts/comments.

Introduction

Part 1: The Creation of Arda and Myth-Making

Part 2: Of the coming of elves, and several degrees of separation

Part 3: Melkor strikes back, and the pride and exile of Fëanor

Part 4: Of northern-ness, the death of Fëanor and the creep of doom

Part 5: The breaking of the siege of Angband and other (myth) busting

Part 6: Of Túrin Turambar and the sightless dark of Tolkien’s vision

Part 7: Out of ruined lands and cities, a star of hope arises

Part 8: A straight road is bent and Men suffer punishment divine

Part 9: Closing the book on the Third Age

Conclusion

Rest in peace, Howard Andrew Jones

The news is out, and it is terrible though not unexpected. Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls, the Hanuvar chronicles, and former editor of Tales from the Magician’s Skull, passed away yesterday following a short battle with brain cancer.

Make no mistake, this is a first order tragedy. Howard was not old—56 is the middle of a writer’s career, an age where most are still working and at the height of their powers. He was in the midst of a popular series of books published by Baen, the Hanuvar chronicles, one that will probably be remembered as his best work. 

More than his professional life, Howard had a vibrant, loving family around him that are suffering an unimaginable loss. And it’s all over.

Howard’s death is a catastrophe. Depressing, and a grim reminder of our own frailty and mortality.

Sad and terrible. 

Others knew Howard far, far better than I did, and you can find those tributes elsewhere. Joseph Goodman at Goodman Games, a close friend and collaborator on Tales from the Magician’s Skull, wrote a nice piece. I also found a fantastic and moving tribute on Facebook by author Greg Mele.

Read those pieces, they are from people who knew Howard at a personal level I never did.

I enjoyed Howard’s fiction. My favorite was probably The Desert of Souls. But I think one of his greatest accomplishments were his wealth of posts and essays on S&S, Robert E. Howard, and of course, Harold Lamb. I credit Howard fully for introducing me to Lamb. I’ve got a couple of his Bison Books edited volumes on my bookshelves. A great recommendation, thank you Howard.

As noted previously I served on at least one virtual panel with HAJ, and a podcast. We messaged each other publicly on forums and occasionally privately. He had some nice things to say about Flame and Crimson. I can confirm he was a wonderful human being, friendly and encouraging, non-confrontational and supportive, broad-minded and beneficent. Traits which are increasingly rare these days.

I’ll miss him, and the S&S community will miss him. 

I hope one of the enterprising S&S publishers starts an annual award in Howard’s name. Or keeps his wonderful Skull mascot alive, or The Day of Might going, in his honor. 

There was something of Hanuvar in him, and so his spirit will live on, eternally, in his works.

Gone to the Wolves by John Wray, a review

80s metal... take me back.

Heavy metal ebbs and flows in my veins—but never runs dry. Even as alternative forms of audio entertainment from podcasts to YouTube videos compete for my time, it resurfaces in my workouts, or on long drives where I need to decompress. It is the music I grew up with, it is still the music I listen to most today, and it will remain my favorite genre forever. 

These days metal claims a larger portion of my mind. In part because, as readers of this blog know, I’m writing a memoir about growing up in the context of this unique genre of music. But also because I just finished a wonderful work of fiction on the subject—John Wray’s Gone to the Wolves. 

I’ve read a fair number of works of heavy metal non-fiction, including history (Sound of the Beast, Ian Christe, others) sociological studies (Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture, Deena Weinstein), and autobiographies (too many to count). But I can’t say I’ve encountered a work of literary fiction in which heavy metal plays such a starring role.

Gone to the Wolves begins in Florida in the late 80s, a region and a point in time that saw an underground surge of death metal, the emergence of bands like Cannibal Corpse and Death. It shifts the action to the LA Strip and glam/hair metal, before finishing with a third and final act in Norway, home of black metal. We get the time, the culture, and the place of these three culturally and geographically diverse areas, all done well.

And we get the music. There is a lot to like here. Wray is a very good writer, but has a unique talent for capturing sound and the emotion it engenders in its subjects. Reading the book feels like going to a concert, and at times casts a potent spell.

But, more than music Gone to the Wolves is really about the unique friendship shared by its three main characters. The protagonist is Kip, a teen who leaves an out of state broken home to move in with his grandmother in Venice, FL. There he befriends Leslie, a gay, black, nerdy teenager with a big brain for metal. The two later meet Kira, a wild, untamed thrill seeker and Kip’s love interest. The characters don’t speak like any teenagers I know, or knew of; they are too articulate, too smart, too informed. But it works in a dramatized novel.

The dynamics are fun, the characters work, and the story pulls you in. The trio fall into the underground of Florida death metal, graduate high school and leave for L.A. and the crazy party scene on the strip. When that begins to spin out of control and Kira loses patience with its falsity, she ultimately ends up in Norway in the early 1990s. Which as anyone who knows heavy metal’s history was home to some crazy shit—church burnings, an attempted overthrow of a Christian nation, and the revival of the pagan gods of the old north.

I love the details and the commentary of the time. A character named Jackie launches into a soliloquy about the division in metal, one side Dionysian ecstasy and the other set the chaos of Set, as played out in chick friendly hair metal vs. the heavy, real shit, thrash and death metal. It struck me as true. As did the early scenes of hanging out in the middle of nowhere, crowded around a fire with friends, drinking and living for today. I had similar experiences.

I also identified with Wray's portrayal of metal fans as the outsider, apart from the conversations about popular music and fashion-seeking, but instead embracing loud and commercially unfriendly bands, adopting their fashion and making it and the metal lifestyle, well, everything. 

I recognize these kids.

But I did have some issues with the book, and a look at Goodreads indicates that others had similar.

It feels like too much is crammed between its covers, in particular the third and final act which morphs into a dark crime thriller. Its tonally different and a bit jarring after the character studies and bildungsroman of parts 1 and 2.

Kira is suffering from deep trauma that is not given adequate treatment, leaving her feeling a bit like an archetype rather than a believable character. And yet, Kira is possessed of something I recognize—the need for authenticity, to move beyond the falsity that papers over so much of life. This was a big part of metal subculture, the battle of true vs. false metal, as sung in explicit fashion by the likes of Manowar. Wimps and posers, leave the hall.

Metal bands fall along on a spectrum, from the tongue-in-cheek “evil” antics of Ozzy Osbourne to actual death worshipping bands like Mayhem and Burzum. So if you’re a metal fan you know which direction the book is heading—toward Norway, drawn by Kira’s authenticity seeking. Wray seeks to explore metal’s darkest recesses but it requires a bit of a stretch to get the action there. Overall I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book a lot more, which felt true, and the latter section something of the false. But I get why Wray went went there.

I’ve got my limits and black metal is a bridge too far; some of it has atmosphere I can appreciate but it’s too one note/wall of sound for me, as well as genuinely disturbing, even enervating. I made it to Slayer and Sepultura and that was far enough. Metal has dark corners I don’t need to explore and the characters in the book come to feel the same: “This isn’t where I thought my love of rock ‘n’ roll was going to take me,” Kip says at one point, as they pursue Kira’s trail into the heart of Norway, toward a possible rendezvous with death.

Metal remains an untapped source of literary expression, and with Gen-X in the ascendancy and the Boomers and the Beatles mercifully in the rear-view mirror it’s time to reflect on what it all meant. Wray’s novel is a welcome addition to the conversation.

Celebrating Rob Zombie, graphic artist, at sixty

Master of many arts, including graphic.

Editor's note: We don't get many offers to guest post here on The Silver Key, but here's a rare exception--my old Cimmerian and DMR Books collaborator Deuce Richardson. And he's chosen a subject who hails from a city about a 5 minute drive from my house. Enjoy! And thanks Deuce.

By Deuce Richardson

Rob Zombie turned sixty yesterday. Where have the years gone?

I don't wish to discuss Rob's musical legacy (some excellent stuff, but very uneven), nor his cinematic work (I haven't seen enough to have an opinion). No, I'd like to examine his creative endeavors in the realm of graphic arts. 

Let's start at the start. Robert Bartleh Cummings--the Man Who Would Be Zombie--was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the heart of Lovecraft Country, to a couple of carnies. That's correct; his parents worked for a carnival. That ended in 1977 when a violent riot broke out at the carnival, with Mr. and Mrs. Cummings deciding to find a better line of work and a better environment for their children.

Rob lived most of his childhood and teen years in the 1970s. It was a decade of grooviness, decadence, schlock and pop culture masterpieces. His young brain soaked all of it up like a sponge. Musically, he gravitated to theatrical bands like Alice Cooper and KISS. Cinematically, Italian horror movies and the oeuvre of John Carpenter. 

When it came to the graphic arts, the Seventies were also bursting at the seams with groovy energy. There was Frazetta, of course, but Marvel comics and the horror mags over at Warren as well. In addition there was plenty of gonzo art in ads aimed at kids. I vividly remember seeing such in comics ads from that period. This was the era of Jack Kirby, Big Daddy Roth, Basil Gogos and Jim Phillips. Rob has name-checked all of them as artists he admires. I don't see much of Gogos in his own work, but plenty of the others, plus a little bit of Bernie Wrightson. 

So, there was Robert Cummings growing up in the white trash section of Haverhill--not that far, incidentally, from an even younger Brian Murphy---dreaming lurid Technicolor dreams and working on his art skills. Upon his graduation in 1983, Rob packed up for New York City and enrolled at Parsons School of Design. Almost immediately, he formed White Zombie with Sean Yseult. 

White Zombie released Soul-Crusher in 1987 and Make Them Die Slowly in 1989, along with a couple of EPs. Rob's art was featured on all of those, as well as on playbills and promotional materials. Incidentally, 1989 was when he adopted the "Rob Zombie" moniker.

Below is the original artwork from the 1985 Gods on Voodoo Moon EP, which came out before Soul-Crusher.

Rob seems to have really come into his own, art-wise, in the run-up to the release of 1992's La Sexorcisto. White Zombie fans would see a flood of art from Rob Zombie for the next few years. Below is the inside artwork for La Sexorcisto. 

Rob not only did art for the band. In March of 1993, he was invited onto Headbangers Ball. He proceeded to paint, in real time, various gonzo macabre art on the divider screens of the set. None of it was Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, but it was certainly cool. A great demonstration of Rob Zombie's raw talent.

Rob Zombie on Headbangers Ball - March 6, 1993

Mike Judge played a big part in breaking White Zombie via Beavis and Butt-Head. He took it one step further, bringing on Rob Zombie to come up with the art for the "Peyote Sequence" in 1996' Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. It was a match made in White Trash Valhalla. As Rob said in an 2018 interview:

“The best time I ever had was, I was driving around Austin with Mike Judge, and he was trying to explain something to me, and he was doing it in [Beavis and Butt-Head’s] voices. He’d do one, then do the other, just back and forth. Really bizarre to watch the two different voices come out of him,” Zombie chuckles. “It’s like Billy Bob Thornton doing the Sling Blade voice. You just can’t believe that’s the same person, that this is happening.”

 “I had the script, and it just said, ‘Beavis hallucinates the greatest music video of all time.’ That was all it said. And then he let me just come up with whatever crazy stuff I came up with. I was on tour, and I was drawing all these designs, and I kept faxing them to Mike Judge at that time. And that was the sequence. … It was just crazy stuff, like monsters playing guitars, TVs morphing into creatures; I don’t know, it was just supposed to be some trippy LSD thing. … Seemed to work out OK!”

It certainly did. I remember sitting in the theater and seeing that sequence and telling my bud, "Rob Zombie did that. I guarantee it!"

Rob Zombie's art output slacked off sharply after that. I have no idea why. It coincided with the break-up of White Zombie. History seems to indicate that we usually get about five to ten years of top-drawer work from most artists. I'm just glad to have been there when Rob was cranking out his cool retro-groovy-shock art.

Below, you can find a gallery of Rob's work.

Blogging the Silmarillion--of faith and resisting despair

I finished re-reading The Silmarillion last night and so will update the remainder of my prior posts on the book.

I don’t have a whole lot else to add, other than if you haven’t yet read The Silmarillion, you ought to make the attempt. In fact, I’ll say you must give it a valiant effort, if you’ve read and enjoyed The Lord of the Rings. It adds a tremendous resonance and depth to the events of that book, and to a lesser degree The Hobbit.

Upon re-reading my old posts I do have one thing to add.

In Blogging the Silmarillion I talked a lot about the problems Tolkien explores within his broader legendarium: Death, and the pursuit of deathlessness. Power, and possessiveness. Loving the works of one’s hands too much. But I wrote comparatively little on the answers offered in The Silmarillion. These include courage and companionship, but above all, faith. That there is, as Sam sees in the star of Eärendil far above the Ephel Dúath, light and high beauty for ever beyond reach of the Shadow.

Even if you’re not of religious faith it’s important to have it in a general sense. Faith in our basic goodness. Faith that life is worth living. And that something greater may always be waiting, even at the brink of disaster, as long as we do not give in to despair.

Eärendil’s perilous voyage to Valinor succeeds because he refuses to succumb to despair. Húrin and Túrin give in to it, and commit the ultimate capitulation of suicide. Despair is a tool of the enemy (think of the Ringwraiths, for whom its their primary weapon) and a deadly foe. But even a bitter defeat can be a step towards ultimate victory. It’s perhaps the greatest lesson The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion have to teach us.

Aragorn is a descendant of the faithful, a group led by Elendil who obeyed the law of the Valar and kept the friendship of Elves. The faithful preserved the seed of Nimloth the Fair, survived the drowning of Numenor and carried the seedling of the white tree to Middle-earth. And ultimately prevailed against the overwhelming might of Sauron.

Today our own fourth age brings with it new burdens and challenges. The struggle continues, possibly toward a long defeat. But as always, new hope arises.

Blogging the Silmarillion part 5: The Breaking of the Siege of Angband and (other) Myth-Busting

Blogging the Silmarillion part 6: Of Túrin Turambar and the sightless dark of Tolkien’s vision

Evil never dies: Parts 3 and 4 of Blogging the Silmarillion updated

There is much goodness in Tolkien. But ample darkness, too.

In The Lord of the Rings, evil is exemplified in Sauron and the orcs and Shelob. But The Silmarillion greatly amplifies it. We get to know Sauron’s master, Melkor/Morgoth, the very embodiment of evil and most powerful of all the Valar. Along with dragons, balrogs, and the lust that invades even the hearts of elves like Eol and his son Maeglin.

But balanced against this Tolkien reminds us what goodness is, again and again. And how it should respond to evil: Hammerstrokes, but with compassion, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis. 

You think we’d know this but we don’t.

Evil is real. It’s not just the stuff of faerie, embodied in the evil monsters and beings of the early Ages of Middle-Earth.

It’s the twisted terrorist running a car through a crowd of partygoers.

It’s in the actions of the ruthless dictator or soulless CEO.

In Tolkien’s Catholic-inspired universe we are fallen creatures, made in the image of an omnipotent creator but imbued with free will—with all the potential for greatness but also horrors that entails.

So it’s important we be continually reminded of the good, and the incredible sacrifices required for the maintenance of peace. And how the good can fail, how good people can succumb to base impulses and commit evil. 

Being good isn’t easy.

We see this great drama played out in The Silmarillion in the chapters I’m working through. Here are the recaps, as I continue to restore my full posts from the Blogging the Silmarillion series.

Part 3: Blogging The Silmarillion: Melkor strikes back, and the pride and exile of Fëanor

Part 4: Blogging The Silmarillion: Of northern-ness, the death of Fëanor and the creep of doom