The Knight stands against nihilism

Excellent book... unfortunate cover blurb.

“It is honor, Able. A knight is a man who lives honorably and dies honorably, because he cares more for his honor than for his life. If his honor requires him to fight, he fights. He doesn’t count his foes or measure their strength, because those things don’t matter. They don’t affect his decision.”

The trees and the wind were so still then that I felt like the whole world was listening to him.

“In the same way, he acts honorably toward others, even when they do not act honorably toward him. His word is good, no matter to whom he gives it.”

--Gene Wolfe, The Knight

Character matters. There is truth in the world of ideas. 

I was listening to a podcast the other day. One of the guests--an author, self-described philosopher, and entrepreneur—concluded a view of the world I find abhorrent: Objective truth does not exist, values are manufactured and none better than others, and the purpose of life is maximizing personal happiness. 

I’m leaving this dude’s name out because I don’t know him, and I’m attacking the idea, not the individual. But I do wonder: How do you end up in your mid-50s endorsing nihilism? Cheerily admitting there are no such things as absolute moral values … which means that everything is in theory permitted? It’s a train of thought that leaves dragons hoarding wealth they’ve ruthlessly abstracted from others, swelled with hubris, unable to see that their gold is derived from the thankless labor of uncountable generations who built civilization, created the human project from squalor, and allow for the existence of privileged coastal millionaire elites.

Few openly admit to nihilism, but many act that way.  “I’ll extract wealth from the less fortunate, because no one is watching. And after all, it’s technically legal and I can get away with it.” 

We each have the freedom to construct our own meaning and live our own lives as we see fit … except when that freedom infringes on or destroys other’s lives. The strong are obligated to lift up the sick, weak, and needy. Because it’s honorable to do so. And I would argue, an obligation that is an objective truth of the human condition. How long does this last if everyone behaves like a selfish douche canoe?

Imagine if Able of the High Heart was a nihilist? It would make a much different book than Gene Wolfe’s The Knight. 

The story centers around a small boy who enters through a portal from our world to Mythgarthr, a world of high fantasy, gods, magic, monsters… and stouthearted knights. After an encounter with an elflike being, Disiri the Mossmaiden, Able rapidly grows into a powerful man and embarks on a journey into knighthood.

This sudden transformation means we get a uniquely compressed character arc. Able goes from an adolescent experiencing the vicissitudes of life, to young man called to perform duties to others, to grown man called to service to his own heart and conscience. From learning from others to teaching others the way. As we all should, objectively. Because if we don’t do this, we’ll leave the next generation in shambles. Which should concern you unless you’re a nihilist and think that death and life are one and the same.

Of course, we’re never going to be perfect. We throw away much for pleasure. Reject responsibility to others because it doesn’t maximize our momentary well-being. As Able does with the vixen of the woods. This is part of growing up. I think we all have to indulge in pleasures of the flesh. 

But at some point adults realize it’s time to fight the dragon. 

As noted recently I struggle with Wolfe. I find him needlessly opaque and allusive, at times impenetrable. Not so much with The Knight, which I enjoyed, if not unreservedly. Even here Wolfe does not make the journey easy for the reader. The story is told in an epistolary/letters from Mythgarthr to modern earth style which I don’t love, which leaves important sequences glossed over or relegated to the background. Able often for example will completely gloss over a battle, and only later do we realize the extent of his heroism through offhand remarks from observers after the fact. 

… but that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Knights with a code of honor don’t crow about their accomplishments. They don’t virtue signal on Instagram and sell self-help books as they lead deeply insulated, selfish lives. That would be … dishonorable. 

There’s much other great stuff in here that make the The Knight a memorable journey. Wolfe-ian symbols I’m quite certain I failed to grasp. When Able plunges three times into a deep pool, beyond air and endurance, to retrieve his armor and sword, and hears the horns of Aelfrice/elfland, we feel a mythic power we cannot articulate, literally and metaphorically deep. But one lesson we can be sure of: Unless you confront the metaphorical dragon it becomes terribly real.

I’m sure I will tackle The Wizard after a palate cleanser. For now something a bit lighter is in order.

My daughter has a Substack. Which is very cool.

I started this blog back in September 2007, a time when things were different. Iron Man was still a year away from kicking off the MCU superhero craze. The iPhone had just launched in June and so we weren't yet staring at screens all day. No Instagram, and even Facebook was barely a thing, which made blogs like this if not hip hangouts, then places were real dialogue would sometimes occur.

In September 2007 my oldest daughter, Hannah, was only five years old, and just starting kindergarten.

We've come a long way baby. The MCU grew to massive proportions then deflated in a super hero sized bout of fatigue. YouTube and TikTok are our inherited legacy, and blogs like this have gone the way of DVDs and vinyl--the refuge of die-hard holdouts. Fortunately we've still got spaces for blogging and other long-form writing. Updated platforms like Substack.

Hannah is now 23 and has a Substack of her own.

I suspect my average reader will not be hip to her essays (though if you happen to have 18-25 year-old children who are thoughtful about culture, movies, and music, have them take a look). Hannah and I are very different, with different cultural touchstones, entertainment tastes, and life experiences, but we also have many things in common. We're both avid readers, we love The Lord of the Rings films, and most notably we share a passion for language and for writing. 

And now, we each have our own little bit of cyberspace where we share our writings with the world.

I post this here not to direct traffic her way, just to say that I'm incredibly proud of Hannah and wish her the best in her new endeavor. I've read her handful of essays as well as other work she completed for school, and she's really good--better than I was at her age, when I was still doing my best impression of Animal House's Flounder (fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son, though I was giving it a go).

Every dad wants their kid to be successful, and she's become a fine young woman, an excellent first year teacher, and now, a fledgling blogger. May she not have to endure the same typos, gaffes, and occasional trollish comments her Dad has suffered. I expect she will, but that's the writing life, and the wages of fame and glory.

Good luck kid.

Gene Wolfe is intimidating. The Knight is not. I also recommend smoked brisket.

I’ve got a Gene Wolfe sized hole in my reading. 

Wolfe is generally accorded of the most respected and literary fantasy authors--ever. Readers are enthralled by his fierce intelligence, incredible imagination, vivid world building and 3D characters. But even his most ardent fans acknowledge he can be tough, reading his stories not unlike grappling with water or a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu master. Half of the reviews of The Book of the New Sun are people who don’t seem to understand what’s going on yet declare that “you have to read this.” 

Weird.

As for me, I read the first Book of the New Sun, The Shadow of the Torturer, some 10-12 years ago. Read is perhaps generous; I muddled through, and after closing the cover was left puzzled—not defeated, but feeling like I didn’t grasp it all and probably needed a second attempt. I’ve enjoyed a few of Wolfe’s short stories and deflected off few others; “The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun” in Grails: Quests of the Dawn left me scratching my head and disappointed, but “A Cabin on the Coast” from the Year’s Best Fantasy 11 was terrific. I also liked “Bloodsport (not the one with Jan Claude van Damme) in Swords and Dark Magic well enough.

The best thing I’ve read by Wolfe is his essay “The Best Introduction to the Mountains,” a moving and poetic elegy to JRR Tolkien that you can read online in its entirety. Wolfe blends a poem by Robert E. Howard into the piece, S&S fans. Writes Wolfe of Tolkien’s greatest literary legacy, “Freedom, love of neighbour, and personal responsibility are steep slopes; he could not climb them for us—we must do that ourselves. But he has shown us the road and the reward.”

Check it out.

But as for his fiction… I’m decidedly mixed. Wolfe loves unreliable narrators and I’m generally not a fan of this device which perhaps explains my ambivalence. But I haven’t given up on Gene, and so decided to have another go with what others have described as his most accessible work—his The Knight and The Wizard, two novels often published together.

I’ve begun reading The Knight. And am happy to report, it’s fantastic. Teenage boy is transported into a magical realm and an encounter with a lusty sprite transforms him into powerful man, and a knight, Sir Able of the High Heart. It’s a straightforward narrative… yet there are clear Wolfe-ian undertones of, a lot more going on under the surface than our narrator understands.

I’m not quite halfway through and will have a review up here on the blog later.

***

In other happy news Spring has finally arrived in New England. I broke out the smoker yesterday and made a brisket that was decidedly on-point. And enjoyed it with my father. No sides necessary, other than beer. I'm getting better with the smoker, which really comes down to low and slow. All good things take time to make.

So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future. -- Jack London

Facebook ripped me off

I punched my name into this handy plagiarism detection tool published by The Atlantic, and like millions of other authors discovered Mark Zuckerberg ripped me off. The nerve of this douche!

There I am! Above the whiskey. Of which I now need a few shots.

In case you missed the recent news, “Meta and its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg deliberately and explicitly authorized a raid on LibGen—and Anna's Archive, another massive digital pirate haven—to train its latest AI model.” Millions of books have been ingested into Llama 3 without author compensation, or even notification.

What makes it even worse is that the fine folks at Facebook (I almost wrote that without a sneer) could have put some thought into the decision. Taken a few extra weeks to do the right thing. But instead chose to behave like Somali pirates operating on the open ocean.

What the fuck, Zuck.

There is of course complexity to this. How does fair use apply to the output of generative AI? Is feeding a machine training data the equivalent of a person reading? Will slowing AI development with more rigorous author protections and safety guardrails put us behind foreign competitors like China?

But that’s a battle for someone else to fight. Me? I’m tired of the techo-obfuscation and the excuse-making. This is pretty close to outright theft. Facebook could have done this the legal and proper way but its leadership team chose to operate like immoral assholes. Which should surprise no one.

I've written before that I'm not a fan of generative AI, even though I believe it has incredible potential and is here to stay. It’s just beyond galling that big companies like Meta and OpenAI scrape data from wherever and whomever they want and then sell it back to you in the form of subscription products. And then rigorously defend their own gated fiefdoms with impenetrable legalese and teams of lawyers.

The moral of the story: Laws don’t apply to big companies like they do individuals.

Honestly I am not THAT pissed. Just looking on, feeling bemused, disappointed and disempowered, sort of like the victim of a drive-by egging. Perhaps Llama 3 will now create some kick ass S&S haikus using the genre elements I outline in Flame and Crimson. Maybe there will be a class action suit and I will be entitled to a $3.87 payout after the lawyers take their share. We’ll see.

The Rage, Judas Priest

It's a testament to the greatness of British Steel that a song as good as "The Rage" is buried deep on side 2. Wait, do people still refer to albums, and sides? I do.

There is a reason this album is a stone-cold classic. To use a sports analogy its bench is deep ... I don't think it has one weak track and it all sounds awesome, songs stripped down to bare steel. You will find an album "none more metal," to paraphrase one Nigel Tufnel.

The start of "The Rage" is quite unexpected, a funky solo bass intro followed by a jazzy, swinging drum beat that lulls you in to a false sense of security. Where's the rage?

But wait, it's coming. An angry, fist-thrusting metal assault, pounding beat and heavy guitar backed by Rob Halford's soaring vocals. 

The breakdown at the end with the rapid fire (snare? I'm not a musician) is divine. It sounds like a machine gun. See 4:06 of the below video.

Maybe it is. Happy Metal Friday.

When we talk with other men

We see red and then

Deep inside our blood begins to boil

Like a tiger

In the cage

We begin to shake with rage

The Ring of the Nibelung/Roy Thomas and Gil Kane

The Ring is mine!

Over the course of my lifetime I’ve been exposed to Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung in many and various ways. The story, or pieces thereof, from the Old Norse literature upon which the operas are based. The thematic content from modern works like The Broken Sword and The Lord of the Rings. Even the music, which I’ve heard in various and sundry films including Apocalypse Now ("The Ride of the Valkyries") and Excalibur (“Siegfried’s Funeral March," "Prelude to Parsifal").

But I haven’t ever seen the opera nor read a full literary treatment of the work. And was overdue to scratch this niggling itch … but wanted to have some fun, with a low bar to entry. And so, I scooped up a treatment I did not know existed until quite recently: Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, the complete graphic novel as adapted by the great Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, with Jim Woodring.

This was enjoyable. I plowed through it in just a few hours over a few nights. It’s a product of DC Comics, released in 1991, and checks in at a relatively hefty 191 pages. It includes some welcome introductory material, including a foreword introducing the biography and talents of the authors, and an introduction to Wagner’s opera cycle by Brian Kellow of Opera News.

The Ring of the Nibelung is a somewhat complex story, with four acts/operas (Wagner prefers music dramas) spanning long periods of time, told through different sets of characters ranging from gods, giants, and dwarves to the heroic albeit mortal race of humans known as Nibelungs. It starts with the creation of the world, and ends with its downfall at Ragnarok. The centerpiece is the story of Siegfried, a mortal hero sent to slay a dragon, reclaim the gods' stolen gold and rescue the Valkyrie Brunnhilde. These stories are bound together by a golden ring that grants its wearer dominion over the world. Yes, there are some Tolkien parallels here, which JRRT denies and to be fair he likely drew on Wagner’s common influences, not the operas. But we’ve got a greedy dragon hoarding wealth, a precious ring fought over by two brothers (one of whom kills the other to take it for himself), a broken sword reforged, and many other familiar elements.

Overall it's a gorgeous, epic, deeply thematic story well told by Thomas—and as you’d expect from his pen, it moves. Kane’s artwork is marvelous, beautiful, comic booky and muscular but not garish. The men are jacked and the women beautiful. Rather than me attempt to word-paint here are some of the panels:

What does it all mean? There’s a lot to dig into, too much for me after one rapid reading of an adaptation in graphic novel form. But The Ring is undoubtedly a Great Story, and like all great stories contains truth. I’m quite fond of Sir Roger Scruton’s “Reflections on The Ring of the Nibelung,” which he describes as a story for “modern people, for whom the path to heroism is overgrown.” 

From that essay:

Wagner’s story of gods and heroes, of giants and dwarfs, is not a fairy tale. It is addressed to modern people, who have lost the ways of enchantment, and for whom the path to heroism is overgrown. It is a story in which law and love, power and property are all caught up in a life and death struggle between the forces that govern the human soul.

Love without power will not endure, and power without law will always erode the claims of love. We live this paradox, and without the gods to maintain the moral order the burden of it falls entirely on our shoulders. 

Gods come and go; but they last as long as we make room for them, and we make room for them through sacrifice. The gods come about because we idealize our passions, and it is by accepting the need for sacrifice on behalf of another that our lives acquire a meaning. Seeing things that way we recognize that we are not condemned to mortality but consecrated to it. Such, in the end, was Wagner’s message. Yes, the gods must die, and we ourselves must assume their burdens. But we inherit their aspirations too: freedom, personality, love, and law. There is no way in which we can achieve those great goods through politics, which, if we put too much faith in it, will inevitably degenerate into the kind of totalitarian power enjoyed by the dwarf Alberich. But we can create these things in ourselves, and we do this when we recognize the sacred character of our joys and sufferings, and resolve to be true to them.

For more reading and listening, check these out:

Reflections on “The Ring of the Nibelung”

Wagner Götterdämmerung - Siegfried's death and Funeral march Klaus Tennstedt London Philharmonic

The Empress of Dreams—an (overdue) appreciation of Tanith Lee

I don’t write fiction, but I’ve read enough of it to make some observations about what makes for good writing. Here’s one: Good writing results from knowing what to emphasize, and what to leave out. 

Poor writing is usually not the result of a bad idea, nor even of clumsy or artless style. Rather it suffers from being bogged down in needless detail, not placing proper emphasis on the right things. Good storytellers know where to aim the lens. When to let it linger, and when to move it along. Then comes inventive plot, believable character, and good word choice and style. In no particular order.

Tanith Lee is such a storyteller. She’s a writer of atmosphere and romance and decadence and depth who accomplishes this with an economy of words that astonishes. She seems to have an unfailing instinct for what is boring (what to leave out), what keeps the story moving (what to emphasize). Lee then harnesses these principles to a wonderful and unique style that makes every word a pleasure, the act of reading immersive. Dense yet somehow elegant, evocative, lush, and dreamlike. A master of the craft.

The result is that a short story collection like The Empress of Dreams moves, and contains multitudes. 

This 2021 collection from DMR Books includes16 stories written over the course of Lee’s career, the earliest from 1976 (“The Demoness,” originally published in The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories 2), and the latest 2013, just two years before her death (“A Tower of Arkrondurl,” originally published in Legends: Stories in Honor of David Gemmell). All can be grouped loosely as sword-and-sorcery. There are some who seem to want beefcake heroes and epic battles and slaughter out of S&S. You don’t get that here. What you do get is dark magic. Atmosphere. The true weird, displacement and strangeness in quasi-medieval settings that derived from Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith and continued through to Jack Vance and Michael Shea. For modern comparisons, look to the likes of Schuyler Hernstrom or John Fultz.

Some of these stories are S&S through and through. Mercenaries in search of gold, a hot meal, or a new start in life. Warriors encountering strange towers. Everything is small stakes (well, if you count your life as small stakes).  But there’s also deep symbolism, engagement with themes and the human condition. “The Woman in Scarlet” explores the fickleness and disloyalty of women in a frank albeit oblique way—it’s told from the vantagepoint of a female sword--that I think a man would have trouble writing. Fearless, edgy stuff. “Odds Against the Gods” is about a young woman in search of her past, and her identity. Lee writes strong men and women in her stories, lusty and brave and three dimensional. Four pages into this collection a woman is enjoying the pleasures of another woman, and later on the attentions of a man. If this type of thing offends you, sorry? Look elsewhere. 

I haven’t even mentioned her imagination which at times seems unshackled from the earth. In “The Pain of Glass” Lee conjures a story about a goblet spun from a patch of desert on which a dying woman is separated forever from her true love. Part of her ethereal voice and spirit is absorbed into the sand and later heated and molded into a glass that seeks its soulmate, traveling from hand to hand over years. Those who drink from it are changed:

“Is the cup ensorcelled?”

“I cannot definitely tell you,” Jandur answered. It was a fact, he could not.

“It is—what is it?”

“Alas, I cannot say. Mystical and magical certainly.”

“Does it affect all—who—touch it?”

“In various ways, it does. Some weep. Some blush. Some begin to sing.”

“And you,” said Razved, with another warning note suddenly entering his voice; that of jealousy, “what do you feel when you take hold of it?

“Fear,” Jandur replied simply.

“Ah,” said Razved. “It is not meant for you, then.”

But again, what unites all of these disparate stories is terrific writing. Here’s how Lee renders the changing face of an arrogant town guardsman, whose veneer of invulnerability crumbles beneath the insult of an insouciant outsider who refuses to be intimidated:

Razibond’s face was now a marvellous study for any student of the human mood. It has passed through the blank pink of shock to the crimson of wrath, sunk a second in superstitious, uneasy yellow, before escalating into an extraordinary puce—a hue that would have assured any dye-maker a fortune, had he been able to reproduce it. More than this, Rozibund had swollen up like a toad. He cast his wine cup to the ground, where it shattered, being unwisely made of clay, and, disdaining his knife, heaved out a cleaverish blade some four feet long.

Wonderful.

Admission—I had read Lee prior in the likes of Swords Against Darkness, The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, and Amazons, which I re-read while researching and writing Flame and Crimson. But I’ve never any of her many novels, of which she’s written more than 90(!), nor a collection. This was a mistake. I think she is close to a first rank S&S writer. She’s that good. In fact she might now rank as my favorite female S&S writer. I feel that strongly after reading this collection. C.L. Moore’s best short stories (Black God’s Kiss, Shambleau, Hellsgarde) and Leigh Brackett’s The Sword of Rhiannon are as good or arguably better as anything in here but The Empress of Dreams as a whole is in incredibly diverse and strong all the way through, hit after hit or at least strength to strength.

Lee’s literary debt to Vance is evident and admittedly her greatest influence, and so it is appropriate that the collection ends with “Evillo the Uncunning,” which originally appeared in Songs of The Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance (2009). This story ends with Lee’s short appreciation of Vance, in which she writes, “I don’t quite believe Jack Vance invented the Dying Earth. Part of me knows he’s been there. Often.” 

Lee seems to be having a bit of a resurgence these days due to the Neil Gaiman controversy, which has brought to light Gaiman’s liberal borrowing from Lee’s flat earth stories. No one would have a problem with this had Gaiman admitted as much; Lee certainly admits to her own great indebtedness to Vance, for example. The fact he has seemingly never admitted to Lee’s influence does him no honor. See more here. 

What criticisms do I have of this collection, if any? Lee loves open-ended endings perhaps a little too much. Not all her stories do this, but enough fall into the category of leave it up to the reader to figure out the meaning. I’m of a mixed mind of these types of stories; it can rob them of impact, leaving you with the feeling you’ve read something unfinished, scratching your head. But these are also the sort of stories that stay with you; you are made to put the pieces together and assemble the meaning, and when you do, you participate in the story. And it lingers. As this collection does.

We're living in an outrage machine

Tanith Lee = anti-outrage.

Ronnie James Dio once sang that you’re living in a time machine. Today we’re all living in an outrage machine. I don’t like it … yet here I am, in the machine, expressing my outrage. 

Outrage sells, and consumes.

I am old enough to have worked in a pre-internet era. As a newspaper reporter I conducted interviews with a hand-held notebook. Typed the stories into a computer disconnected from the internet. Formatted the stories into columns, printed them out. Then with Xacto knife and wax created pages that were shot with a camera and eventually printed.

And there was your newspaper. I even delivered them for extra cash. 

Yes I’m a dinosaur.

As quickly and efficiently as we worked this process took time. A breaking story would need at least 12 hours to make it into the next edition. Newspapers and nighttime television were our primary mechanism for consuming the news. There was a sane rhythm to it, a chance to consume and discuss. Or ignore it altogether.

Then, like today, stories provoked outrage. But the way to express it was to vent to your significant other, or your friends over a beer at the bar. Then you went back to the real world.

That model is long dead. Newsprint and ink were replaced by cable news, which in turn has been replaced by ubiquitous, permanently connected devices, fueled by algorithms which serve up outrage 24-7.

We read outrageous things, post angry comments, people shout back and attempt to “own” each other.

Balanced reporting that took some modicum of measured thought has been replaced by polarized information.

There are advantages to screens and 24-7 news cycles and social media. Speed of reporting and dissemination. More perspectives. But it comes with a cost. 

Algorithms manipulate our emotions by showing us viral posts of outrage and angry comments. These clicks drive ad revenue. And so we’re being fed a lot of outrage. Overfed.

There’s too much of everything. Endless scrolling is not only possible, it’s incredibly easy to fill hours. 

Yes, there are corners of sanity online, good people doing good work. But the algorithm doesn’t prioritize these. It takes work to find them.

Somehow we need to break the cycle and take back our attention. Focus on the things that matter. And stop walking around staring at our machines, distracted. And outraged.

Do you feel this? I do. And yet I find myself doom scrolling, time and again. Beat myself up over it and promise to do better next time.

One way to break the cycle is through sustained, offline reading. I’m currently reading Tanith Lee’s The Empress of Dreams and it’s conjured a wonderful spell in my mind of somewhere else. A place of danger and dark fable and the weird and unexpected, happily somewhere else than online hell.

Your thoughts (and outrage) are welcome as always.

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.