A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap

Tap crossed that line... which way?

There is a picture of me going to see KISS on their hotly anticipated, sold out 1996 reunion tour. In it I’m standing on my parents’ front lawn with two friends and my brother. All four of us are in KISS makeup.

I’m wearing a Spinal Tap t-shirt.

I love KISS, they’re a fun band who have written some rocking hits. But I also recognize them as ridiculous.

If you've read any of my metal posts here you know I’m a fan. I love the music, I take it seriously. But I also laugh at it. Metal is sometimes awesome, sometimes terrible. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes dumb. Powerful, but sometimes just too damned loud.

Hard rock and metal can be mocked. They should be mocked. Mockery and the ability to absorb it is the sign of a healthy genre, and rock and metal can take it.

Some genres and their fans take themselves too seriously. I see this sometimes in sword-and-sorcery circles; call John Jakes’ Brak or Lin Carter’s Thongor or Gardner Fox’s Kothar what it is—derivative and often dumb, though fun and something I will read and enjoy—and panties get bunched.

But we need good-natured mockery. Parody is a sign of respect that you’ve made it. S&S can take the likes of Mention My Name in Atlantis, and heavy metal can take Spinal Tap. Spinal Tap took the piss out of metal better than anyone before or since in their 1984 mockumentary. And metal bands (most, anyway) love them for it.  We all could use a little more laughter in our lives. Even if the world is ending (it’s not, though one would think so scrolling any social media app) the remedy is laughter.

I just finished reading A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap, and experienced quite a few chuckles. Laughter is rare to pull off in the written form, I have found. This book made me laugh. But I also learned a lot. I love the film, and when I saw there was a memoir coming out penned by director Rob Reiner I knew I had to have it. Published by Gallery Books, my copy at least came signed by Reiner himself, complete with certificate of authenticity. Cool to have a signature of the man who not only gave us the best metal mockumentary ever, but also The Princess Bride, Stand by Me, and a Few Good Men, among others.

Reiner’s signature is not the only cool and unique feature of the book: It’s also double-sided, like the old Ace Doubles. Flip the book over and “book 2,” Smell the Book, is 60 pages of “interviews” conducted by director Marty DiBergi with band members Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls--an oral history of the band in their voices. Which is pretty funny. You get lines like this:

David: I was at Sacred Sacrament. My mom was a big Catholic.

Marty: Religious?

David: No, five foot ten.

Or old album titles like “Jap Habit” and “Bent for the Rent,” the latter a British expression for what you do for the landlord when he’s bugging you and you can’t pay him, so you do him a favor…

But the meat of the book is the memoir portion. A breezy but well-told history of how the principals came to meet each other, make the film, its reception, and lasting legacy. It offers an illuminating, behind the scenes look, and I learned several things I did not know. For example:

• Spinal Tap barely made it to the screen. The studios to whom Reiner pitched the film did not know what to make of it, just about everyone passed on it.
• It made very little money upon its release and Reiner and co. made almost no money even on licensing until a lawsuit spearheaded by Harry Shearer was able to wrest the rights to the film back and amend missing royalty payments. One city in which it was well-received right out of the gate, I’m proud to say, is Boston, in which it played continuously for a solid year.
• Spinal Tap played real shows before the movie came out to sharpen their playing, including at Gazzarri’s on the Sunset Strip—with opening act Iron Butterfly. No one knew who they were or suspected that they were a parody act (this is circa 1982-83, pre-film, and new metal acts were showing up in the scores.) Spinal Tap was just another unknown metal band.
• Reiner refers to several hilarious-sounding scenes that didn’t make the final cut, as 40+ hours of film was ultimately reduced to a lean 82-minute run time. There were often 3-4 versions of a given scene. Apparently some of these deleted scenes are on a special edition that I need to seek out (my copy is believe it or not VHS). For example, originally the band had an opening act called the Dose, who had a beautiful and easy female lead singer; her dalliances with Tap explain the famous scene where the band has unexplained cold sores on their mouths during a record launch party. But this subplot was left on the cutting room floor.
• The dialogue is almost entirely unscripted and improvised. Reiner, Christoper Guest, Shearer and Michael McKean scripted scenes and had the outlines of the movie plotted, but the actual dialogue was ad-libbed, and many of the verbal jokes utterly spontaneous expressions of the characters they created. Even a young Fran Drescher, then 25, fell into her role and extemporaneously came up with “Money Talks and Bullshit Walks.” That’s talent.

Spinal Tap 2 is just hitting and I’m a little worried. I know someone who got invited to an early screening and he was underwhelmed; he described it as just OK, certainly not terrible but lacking the punch and wit of the original. I will see it for myself, but regardless of whether it holds up as a worthy sequel we’ll always have the OG. The ultimate documentary, if you will, rockumentary, of the world’s loudest band.

Disconnect

“Jeremiah, maybe you best go down to a town, get outta these mountains.”

“I've been to a town Del.”

--Jeremiah Johnson

Technology has taken a wrong turn. Smartphones and algorithms and social media have stoked political division, stolen our attention, and sewn intrapersonal division and conflict.

I approve cancelling your favorite digital channels. I approve cancelling it all including ChatGPT. I don’t hold out much hope of any of this happening. I’ve seen people boycott Facebook and Twitter and now BlueSky and then return a day later. Or hop to the next platform of promised peace and civility where it all happens again.

I have faith in individuals. I suspect they’re out there, people who have made the silent choice. I don’t have faith in society at large.

It’s sad that we’re so angry and riven that we can’t even pause to acknowledge death. Our news cycle of endless hot takes won’t allow it. 

Robert Redford passed this week. Ironically he is now remembered by a meme.

But maybe that’s not so bad if it leads you to the source. 

In “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972) Redford plays a man who decides to go into the woods and live off the land. Looking for a suitable place to trap, a man tells him:

Ride due west as the sun sets. Turn left at the Rocky Mountains.

No GPS needed.

It was hard to watch this film. It is so anti 2025. The pace is slow. The dialogue is minimal, the shots long and extended. I found myself reaching for my phone, and the urge to look at … what? Pushed it away. And kept watching.

Soon it became nice to watch this film. The scenery was beautiful, the slow unfolding of the story, real cinema. The sparse dialogue is memorable, and no wonder, because John Milius wrote it.

Then it became meditative to watch this film. I was reminded what real hardships are (this isn’t a film of escape; terrible things happen). I was reminded of what beauty is. 

I’ll remember this film… I’ve already forgotten the 30 second reels on LinkedIn.

The ONLINE world is on fire. The real world is not. You don’t need an primeval forest or unexplored frontier to escape. The answer is the title of this post.

You just have to turn it off.

Which way you headed, Jeremiah?

Canada, maybe. I hear there is land there a man has never seen.

Well, keep your nose in the wind, and your eyes along the skyline.

Of pastiche and John C. Hocking’s Conan and the Living Plague

These dead are unquiet...

I don’t mind pastiche … which is I suppose a bit of a lukewarm way of saying I support it.

Nonetheless it’s how I feel.

I’m on record as loving SSOC and Roy Thomas stories and even (gasp) some of the old Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp Conan stories. I’m not a purist, as long as we have unadulterated Howard somewhere in print I’m good with new stories and interpretations. The Del Reys stand, so bring on the rest.

No one will ever match Howard at his own game, because he himself was of course in every story. Unless you have access via medium to his soul, or his ghost visits your shoulder like Conan did Howard and compels you to write, there will never be another REH.

While I used to indulge in Conan pastiche it’s not something I seek out anymore. I don’t read much of it these days … but once in a while I dip back in. I’ve bought the first half dozen SSOCs. I’ve read Scott Oden’s The Shadow of Vengeance and S.M. Stirling's Blood of the Serpent. I still feel a dim stir when I see the name of “Conan” in new art and stories.

What do I think makes for a good Howard pastiche? I have a few boxes I like to see checked. Here they are, and as with everything I write, YMMV.

The first and faraway most important: The story must be good, above all else. This almost covers for breaking any of the subsequent rules that follow.

The character should closely mirror the original. Conan should feel like Conan, act according to the broad parameters of his established nature. If not, why write him? That said, if a pastiche writes an immature Conan or an aged Conan reflecting on his deathbed, I would expect some new ground to be broken.

The world should feel that way too. I don’t think you should eliminate Hyborian Age countries or distort the literal map Howard laid down. The same goes for its peoples; Cimmerians should be mostly brooding and fierce, Picts savage and Pict-y. But I’m OK with adding to what is there, exploring a new island in the Vilayet or a dark and forgotten corner of Stygia, creating outlier characters and so on.

Here's what I don’t care about.

Established timelines. Because pastiche isn’t canon there is no need to connect up all the history. There is no way Conan could pack in all the adventure from every pastiche into one lifetime, so we can assume that pastiche operates independent of other pastiche—and even the originals. I don’t care how or when pastiche fits into the established storyline, even Howard’s chronology. Telling me that Conan couldn’t have done something because he was 27 at the time and a pirate might be technically accurate, but it also makes me yawn. YMMV.

Writing style. I admire when someone like Scott Oden can mirror Howard’s prose, but I don’t find it necessary. When someone covers a song I actually prefer hearing their own interpretation. Bruce Dickinson covering Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on Nativity on Black is not trying to be Ozzy … and its awesome and still honors Black Sabbath. Likewise Rob Zombie put his own unique Charles Manson inspired spin on Children of the Grave and Yungblud is fanastic covering “Changes” with his very different voice, albeit the same lyrics. Honor the original but do something new. It can sound different, whether musically or on the ear of a reader. The style should be appealing of course but it doesn’t have to sound like REH’s prose. YMMV.

***

This is a big roundabout way of saying that author John C. Hocking checks my boxes with Conan and the Living Plague, one of two complete novels published in the recent Conan: City of the Dead by Titan Books (2024).

I’m not a fan of plot summaries and I don’t feel like doing one here. But here’s what I liked about it:

Conan feels like Conan. I really like when we get to see how strong Conan is in non-combat situations. There’s a great early scene of him wielding a log-like wooden “sword” that leaves  hardened mercenaries with their mouths agape; we see him lifting stone doors of crypts that baffle other strong men, on and on. Fun. But he also comports himself with the same rough barbaric code of honor, the same ferocity in battle but not recklessness, and so on.

The writing, which includes some really fine turns of phrase and metaphor. Hocking is an underrated stylist even within the small circle that is S&S but I really enjoyed passages like this:

Pezur saw Conan bare his teeth in an unconscious snarl of defiance and felt a surge of kinship with the barbarian. He knew the Cimmerian felt the rigid touch of those distant eyes as keenly as he did.

Indeed, Conan sensed the unnatural scrutiny as well as if the dim figure had reached out across Dulcine and laid a cold hand upon his breast. The undulled instincts of the barbarian sent the same thrill along his nerves that he might have felt confronting a lion in a jungle grove. Though he could not give it a name, he knew there was danger here, a danger born of black sorcery.

“What are you, devil?” growled Conan.

It’s not Howard’s style but it doesn’t have to be.

The fast pace. The chapters are short and end on something of a cliffhanger, the action  almost unrelenting. Yes, we do have other characters, a small cast, which you need in a novel that doesn’t spend time inside the characters’ minds. But it’s still recognizably S&S, nothing like A Game of Thrones or its epic fantasy ilk. It reads fast.

A few particularly memorable scenes. A harrowing trip through dank underground crypts pursued by a horde of ghouls, and later an encounter with waves of plague infected living that attack in mindless zombie like hordes and whose touch brings death, are suitably hair-raising and stick with you.

Nice fights with mini-bosses. No spoilers but Conan has a nice mano-y-mano with a towering armored plague knight that was really freaking cool, a sorcerer wielding dangerous spells, and so on.

The sword-and-sorcery easter eggs (don’t think I didn’t see these, John). Two paired soldiers hold Conan at crossbow point, one named Rald and the other, Duar. A spell ripped right out of Jack Vance. Nice little nods there to the S&S faithful. And there’s also Lovecraftian menace and oblique reference, including the likes of the Hounds of “Thandalos.”

Little dashes of humor. Conan engaging in a bit of self-deprecation over his (very) short career as a sorcerer. A mercenary mutters that a sword weighs as much as his wife. And so on. It’s OK to have a little fun in S&S.

Rare 2019 Perilous Worlds edition... it's mine! mua-ha.

The plague and the characters needing to mask anticipates the COVID-19 pandemic. Prescient but happenstance because the novel was written pre-COVID (I have a rare copy of a limited printing from 2019), but it nevertheless serves as prospective commentary and evokes memories of the real-world outbreak.

I noticed a few wobbles (a side character is given a backstory late for no reason; perhaps too much description of architecture and rooms and the like, one of the big bads, a demon, is set up well but removed from the stage too quickly), but these are minor and hardly worth noting. 

What Conan and the Living Plague is not, is REH. It never will be, nor can be. And that’s OK. It’s still a hell of a lot of fun and a worthy S&S novel.

Bruce Dickinson at the House of Blues, Boston MA Sept. 11, 2025

If all Bruce Dickinson had was his solo career he’d still be remembered in the annals of heavy metal. Bruce’s best solo efforts—Accident of Birth, Tyranny of Souls, and The Chemical Wedding—comprise a power trio any metal band would be proud to have in their catalogue. 

And oh yeah, he did that Iron Maiden thing too.

I got to see Bruce solo for the first time last night at the House of Blues in Boston. My buddy Scott and I battled through brutal Boston traffic to get in but it was worth it. We met up with another friend for dinner and a couple beers before meandering in.

Bruce means a lot to me for a number of reasons and he did not disappoint. Even at age 67 he was still bringing the fire, and his air raid siren voice.

Here’s the setlist. Yes, I got see him perform the “Star Bangled Banner” (which Bruce is performing at the Pittsburgh Steelers game this weekend) and “Flash of the Blade,” a deep cut off Powerslave. Unexpected and fun. I deliberately stayed away from any reviews so as not to be spoiled, and was pleasantly surprised by it all:

1. Accident of Birth

2. Abduction

3. Laughing in the Hiding Bush

4. Shadow of the Gods

5. Chemical Wedding

6. Star Spangled Banner

7. Flash of the Blade

8. Resurrection Men

9. Rain on the Graves

10. Frankenstein

11. The Alchemist

12. Book of Thel

13. Road to Hell

Encore:

14. Tears of the Dragon

15. Gods of War

16. The Tower

I’m semi-embarrassed to admit I’ve barely listened to Bruce’s new album The Mandrake Project, released last year. But I greatly enjoyed “Rain on the Graves” and “Resurrection Men” and will work to rectify that.

Bruce is a very creative, musical dude. Last night he at turns played drums and an instrument called a theremin, which is played without touch, detecting hand movement only. Weird, and fun.

Here is a little bit of probably my favorite Bruce solo song (though “Jerusalem” and “Return of the King” are in the running), “Tears of the Dragon,” off Balls to Picasso, recorded on my cell phone. It's tinny as all cell phone recordings are but you can still get a sense of his power and presence:

I owe Bruce’s solo stuff a proper essay. When I look at the lyrics of “Chemical Wedding” and “The Alchemist” he’s telling us a story about the nature of human existence, and the possibility of transformation.

And so we lay

We lay in the same grave

Our chemical wedding day

Also I'm 99% certain I saw Jeff Talanian, creator of the Hyperborea RPG. Jeff if you're reading this let me know if you were there.

Celtic Adventures wrapup and on into Cimmerian September

Worth your 10 cents...

I just closed the cover on DMR Books’ latest release, Celtic Adventures, and had to say a few words about the final entry collected therein: “Grana, Queen of Battle,” by John Barnett.

Because it’s damned good. 

Were it anthologized amid a dozen modern S&S/historical adventures it would not be out of place—except it would likely be the best story in the collection. And it was written in 1913 for The Cavalier. That’s pre-World War I for those keeping score at home, and yet it is in no way dated. In fact, it is burning with life in these pages.

“Grana, Queen of Battle” is a novella comprised of six chapters and 94 pages. Each chapter is a standalone story with minor reference to the preceding chapter, the same type of thing Howard Andrew Jones was doing with the first book in his Hanuvar series. Clearly this is the stuff from which sword-and-sorcery would be made. Short, episodic stories building on one another, action-packed, relatively small stakes (save to Grana herself of course).

Grana O'Malley is a badass S&S style heroine. Per the introduction she was a real person, a formidable Irish pirate whom the English dubbed Grace O’Malley. She comes alive in these pages thanks to Barnett’s skill. REH dedicated “Sword Woman,” his story of Dark Agnes, to the man. No wonder; you can feel the influence.

In the barest space imaginable—the first three pages—we meet a dying Irish chieftain, Dubhdara. Sonless, his lands and castle must pass to his daughter Grana. We meet Grana’s sidekick, a rawboned and lean fool in motley named Bryan Tiege, deadly with a sword. And we meet Grana, “a woman whom Fate restricted to a petty stage, but who might have ruled a kingdom. A woman who mastered men, whom men followed because she was stronger, bolder, and more daring than themselves.” And we get the setup for the conflict of the first chapter, a brewing coup by Red Donell, who with his lord on his deathbed schemes to take the castle for himself--even as Dubhdara breathes his last, and Grana offers her dying father a few comforting final words.

All of this is done with incredibly deft strokes of detail and emotion in just three pages. The economy is worth studying for anyone writing this stuff.

It’s positively wonderful and reminds me why I read S&S and classic historical adventure.

***

It’s Cimmerian September, the equivalent of the high holy days for sword-and-sorcery and all things REH.

I don’t typically participate but the enthusiasm I’m seeing feels around the interwebs is contagious. I might have to get in on it, either with something by Howard or a Conan pastiche. Or both. 

What are you planning to read?

Celtic Adventures: Of Conan, a chasm, and “People of the Dark”

This cover makes me want to drink Guinness and fight.

When I read I don’t go looking for symbols … but sometimes they just hit me in the face. Or in the case of Robert E. Howard’s “People of the Dark,” plunge me into their depths.

DMR’s Celtic Adventures has been a good read so far. I’m a poem and a few stories in, having finished the poem “The Druids” by Kenneth Morris, “The Devil’s Dagger” by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, and Fiona MacLeod’s “The Harping of Cravetheen” … plus a long overdue re-read of Howard’s story.

Howard wrote “People of the Dark” in 1931 and it was published in the June 1932 Strange Tales. It’s been reprinted a few times since, including in DMR Books’ new anthology, which collects six old-school short stories and two poems (all published between 1895-1948) about swashbuckling tales of adventure and magic set in old Ireland.

So far all of have been good but it’s hard to top REH. Here’s the major beats of the story: A modern man, John O’Brien, enters Dagon’s Cave (portentous name) where he plans to kill Richard Brent. Brent has won the heart of O’Brien’s love, Eleanor; O’Brien, jilted, learns Brent is en route to the cave and pursues with a revolver in his pocket and vengeance in his heart. But this is no ordinary cave; it was once known as the Cavern of the Children of the Night, reportedly once home to the (now extinct?) ancient race of Little People that lived in the underworld of Ireland and Britain, preceding the Celts.

The story takes a major twist when O’Brien falls down a flight of ancient stairs, strikes his head heavily on the stone floor, and awakes to find himself… Conan. Not Conan of Cimmeria, but Conan of Eireann, the Irish Reaver. Deuce Richardson, who contributes a colorful introduction to the anthology, places the tale at roughly 100 BC—millennia after The Hyborian Age. Conan of Eireann however is not very far removed in mien from Howard’s greatest creation—muscular, black-haired mane, wields a sword, swears by Crom. Even more strange, O’Brien remembers being Conan, so has apparently awakened some ancestral memory.

Nearly 2000 years before Conan of Eireann entered this very cave in pursuit of his lost love, Tamera, who has fallen in love with the blonde Gael warrior Vertorix. Vertorix and Conan bury their quarrel as they find themselves confronted by a blood-mad horde of the Little People.  A great combat ensues, and Conan is separated from Vertorix/Tamera. And here’s where it gets heavy.

Conan is pursuing something he cannot grasp, in darkness. So far beneath the earth he passes underneath a river, water dipping overhead. Then back up the stairs and out, into daylight. And finds himself standing on a precipice, staring down into an impassible chasm.

On the other side, Vertorix and Tamera, confronted by horror.

The contrast is striking. The chasm is positioned in the story immediately after Conan emerges from labyrinthine, shadowed tunnels. Below is Howard’s subconscious thinking; above in the light an insurmountable barrier, a clear vision of his own life. He describes it as both a cleft and a gorge; a narrow valley of sheer rock walls, at the bottom of which is a rapid river, the source of the great carving.

A chasm is a primordial image, literally and figuratively. Deep time because water has carved it out, over millennia. But a chasm can also represent spiritual and moral divides, an insurmountable gap in relationship or experience. This chasm is both a gulf between modernity and the past, time that we cannot bridge, and the relationships we cannot consummate. “Howard” on one side, unrequited love on the other. 

Read that as you will; characters aren’t always the author, and of course Howard wrote “People of the Dark” three years before he’d meet Novalyne Price Ellis (and lose her to Truett Vinson). But of his own admission he was a man born out of his time.

This thought exercise and striking (to me at least) literary symbol prompted me to dig a little deeper. At reh.world I found a link to an essay by Ståle Gismervik noting that Howard composed two drafts of “People of the Dark.” In the revision Howard added a depth and richness not in the first draft, which was a barer bones, straightforward, and incomplete adventure. 

Perhaps he sensed something more profound lay in its stark outlines.

“People of the Dark” was adapted by Roy Thomas and Alex Nino in Savage Sword of Conan #6 (April 1975) … which I happen to have. Images follow. Pretty awesome … but the story has been “freely adapted” (aka., heavily modified) from Howard’s original. Instead of Conan the Irish reaver, the narrator John O’Brien wakes to find himself transformed into the real deal, Conan of Cimmeria. The change is drastic but I suppose reasonable given that this is Savage Sword of Conan, although the mag did do faithful non-Conan adaptations. The ending (which I won’t spoil here) is also quite different than the prose story, with a different outcome for our narrator.

Maybe Howard himself would have anticipated Thomas had he written the character prior to 1932. At the time of “People” Conan was a nascent figure, almost ready to evolve from Kull and Conan of Eireann, and whatever other combination of prize fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers and honest workmen with which he had come in contact. Conan of Cimmeria eventually stalked fully formed into the Dec. 1932 Weird Tales, in “The Phoenix on the Sword.” But his ghost is here in “People.” Conan the Irish Reiver separated from his full becoming by a chasm, ready to be bridged.

TL;DR, read Celtic Adventures for wild Irish adventure and more.

The chasm...

Revisiting H.P. Lovecraft's "The Silver Key"

I don’t expend a lot of digital ink on H.P. Lovecraft, but everything I do is related in one way or other to the old gent from Providence (b. August 20, 1890). So I figured in recognition of his birthday I’d return to the story that inspired the name of my blog—and a lot more.

I began to give serious thought of starting a blog some eighteen years ago. I had plenty of grist for the mill: I was reading a shit-ton of fantasy, playing RPGs, and listening to heavy metal, and wanted to share my thoughts on it all. Blogging was a thing; I did some research, settled on blogspot as my platform of choice, and was eager to begin. 

But I paused: I was lacking a name, and didn’t want to rush the decision. I wanted something that aligned with what I planned to write about—all things fantastic, with an S&S and horror and heavy metal bent. But I also wanted something which revealed something personal about me, and my beliefs.

And so was born “The Silver Key,” after the Lovecraft story set in his Dreamlands cycle. A somewhat obscure entry,  but one of which I’m inordinately fond. The quote I’ve borne on the masthead remains as true today as the day he wrote it:

"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other." 

The quote describes the plight of Randolph Carter, who once wandered his illimitable imagination until age 30, when some combination of obligation and science and the cowed insistence of the masses begin to harden him, fossilizing his ability to dream. The story is loaded with great quotes about Carter’s plight, here’s one I like, because I recognize myself in Carter’s reaction:

“He did not dissent when they told him that the animal pain of a stuck pig or dyspeptic plowman in real life is a greater thing than the peerless beauty of Narath with its hundred carven gates and domes of chalcedony, which he dimly remembered from his dreams; and under their guidance he cultivated a painstaking sense of pity and tragedy.

Once in a while, though, he could not help seeing how shallow, fickle, and meaningless all human aspirations are, and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold. Then he would have recourse to the polite laughter they had taught him to use against the extravagance and artificiality of dreams; for he saw that the daily life of our world is every inch as extravagant and artificial, and far less worthy of respect because of its poverty in beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own lack of reason and purpose.”

I too recoil at the “logic bros” who think life can be reduced to the movement of atoms or chemical reactions in the brain … yet never think to question why they place such high value on their own opinion and proving everyone else wrong. Isn’t it all meaningless, logic bros? And what of our curious need to dream?

Feeling the hollowness at the center of life, Carter seeks out the occult and strange books of lore (here the story tips into the Lovecraftian). Finding these empty too he briefly contemplates suicide, but presses on. And eventually begins to dream again, though not as deeply as he did during his youth. During one of these dreams, his long-dead grandfather tells him of a strange and mysteriously engraved silver key in his attic. Carter finds the key and takes it on a trip to his boyhood home in the backwoods of northeastern Massachusetts, enters a mysterious cave, and is never seen again. 

His story remains for us to ponder, back here on earth.

My focus here has changed over the years, in conjunction with changes in my own life. It’s broadened. I’ve gotten more personal, biographical, sentimental with the passing of years and some momentous, life-changing events. 

But I’m recommitting to the work of exploring the fantastic, guided by the principle that there is no cause to value real things over that which we imagine.

Yes, there is firm ground under out feet. We need to perform work, however ordinary and prosaic it may be. We still need to farm and build, code and heal, teach and serve. The material world is a real, impersonal thing, and likes to remind us of this. Full retreat is not an option, at least for me.

But we also need to dream. We need fantasy. I need it like the very air or water. "The Silver Key" reminds us of that.

Others on my wavelength seem to respond to this story with similar enthusiasm. James at Grognardia recently wrote about The Silver Key as part of his Pulp Fantasy Library series, stating “When I was younger, I didn't hold this particular story in very high esteem. However, as I trudge toward old age, I judge it much more favorably. I suspect that those attuned to the imaginative currents that run between early fantasy fiction and tabletop roleplaying games will likewise find that “The Silver Key” offers a potent metaphor.”

A couple other interesting notes.

Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright initially rejected the story in 1927 but later asked to see it again and it eventually ran in the January 1929 issue. Wright later stated it was “violently disliked” by readers. Why, I wonder? Probably because it has no action, no external conflict. Not a lot happens … and yet everything happens. Might it be readers hated it because it revealed some void in their own lives? People hate having mirrors turned upon them.

I live in Northeastern Massachusetts, and have encountered odd spaces in the woods. Who knows, perhaps I too shall disappear into dream as Carter once did, and meet him, and if I do:

I shall ask him when I see him, for I expect to meet him shortly in a certain dream-city we both used to haunt. It is rumored in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, that a new king reigns on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, that fabulous town of turrets atop the hollow cliffs of glass overlooking the twilight sea wherein the bearded and finny Gnorri build their singular labyrinths, and I believe I know how to interpret this rumor. Certainly, I look forward impatiently to the sight of that great silver key, for in its cryptical arabesques there may stand symbolized all the aims and mysteries of a blindly impersonal cosmos.

Read "The Silver Key" on Gutenberg.

White Noise by Don DeLillo, a review

At the time Don DeLillo wrote White Noise (1985) computers were still a discrete object and something that you engaged with on an occasional basis. We had PCs but they were chained to desks and their applications limited.  Today we’ve got a device 100x more powerful with a bottomless scroll and an insatiable appetite for our attention. ChatGPT and other AI applications spit out answers that flatter you and may or may not be correct, with the only certainty that you haven’t learned a damned thing. And here comes a new bright shiny and it's time to stare at the next thing!

We have WAY too much information at our disposal and most of it is noise, not signal. 

This is the low hum of DeLillo’s novel.

You don’t need a plot summary; as with a book like Stoner the plot is entirely secondary and almost irrelevant. Remarried suburban well-to-do husband and wife raising a family are outwardly OK but inwardly unhappy, living a life of mindless consumption. The husband is a college professor who has built his entire career teaching an undergraduate seminar on Hitler. Weird, but he’s the king of his odd fiefdom of hyper-specialized knowledge.

The family is awoken from its torpor by a chemical spill which briefly threatens to tip the novel into postapocalyptic territory. It does not, but exposure to the chemical lends an apocalyptic air to the rest of the book. The husband is poisoned, likely fatally. His wife is caught taking experimental pills to remove her fear of death. This leads to some late novel drama that I won’t spoil here.

Is it worth your time?

Qualified yes. You need to read outside your genre; White Noise won a National Book Award and DeLillo is a wonderful stylist.

We are drowning in white noise more than never. Even though the technology of the book is dated the underlying message is even more relevant today than 1985.

I recognize myself in the novel’s protagonist. My head is stuffed with useless information; I have become an “expert” on things like sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal, but I could not fix a car engine or build a house. I suspect many of you will identify.

Now the qualifications.

It’s a postmodern novel and rather enervating. I’m much more aware of what I consume (even if I still eat too much junk food and drink too much beer); I know that you are impacted by that with which you choose to spend your time. And this book doesn’t have a particularly uplifting message ... though neither does A Song of Ice and Fire and people seem to like that well enough.

I would not recommend reading too many postmodern novels without a strong foundation of other works. Balance this stuff with heroics or fantasy or the spiritual because there is none of that here. It offers no answers to life, just an (admittedly beautiful) depiction of our powerlessness, and helplessness in the face of death.

It’s the usual stuff: God doesn’t exist, we’re just chemical reactions, even a gorgeous evening sunset is just natural phenomena—and quite likely the result of toxic fumes from the spill. 

None of this is presented as a Good Thing by DeLillo; the protagonist goes from complacency to ennui, to unnerved, and finally disappointed by the state of the world. He refuses to engage with it, the hard cold data of it, and remains in a state of denial. And when he does attempt action the book steers into something of the pathetic and comic.

But if you want to learn how to incorporate theme into your work, or what heroic fantasy/S&S pushes back against, or how to create believable characters, I’d recommend White Noise.

Sword of the Gael by Andrew J. Offutt, a review

Sword-and-sorcery typically works better in the short form than the novel, and I think I know why. It’s a lot harder to sustain breakneck action over 250-300 pages. I was reminded not for the first time of this maxim while reading Andrew J. Offutt’s Sword of the Gael (1975, Zebra Books), which I found to be a bit of a mixed bag.

Sword of the Gael is the first in a series of six books from Offutt (and later co-writer Keith Taylor) of Cormac Mac Art, a quasi-historical/mythic High King of Ireland out of medieval Irish legend. Robert E. Howard wrote a handful of stories about the character collected posthumously in Tigers of the Sea, two of which were completed by S&S author Richard Tierney. It is from REH’s interpretation of Mac Art that we get Offutt’s series. 

Got all that? If you want to learn more about Taylor's participation in the series check out this Q&A I did with him over on DMR Books.

Sword of the Gael opens with a couple fantastic chapters that hooked me out of the gate. A dragon-prowed ship bearing Cormac and his crew capsizes in a storm; many men drown but about a dozen or so including the mighty Dane Wulfhere the Skull-splitter cling to the wreckage and survive after they wash ashore on a rocky isle. Combing the barren spit for any signs of life or life-giving water they happen across a temple of anachronistic construction. Something not of Roman construction, nor even ancient Celtic, but of Atlantis. And it’s occupied by a hostile Viking crew.

Had Offutt ended there it would have made for an excellent short story. But after this well-done piece of Howardian world-building and weirdness we never see nor hear of Atlantis nor the temple again. A classic unused Chekov’s gun. Maybe we will in the second book, The Undying Wizard (1976) however this is not pitched as a series nor a book one. And after the great opening sequence the story begins to flag.

But hold your judgement for a moment. 

Though it fails to live up to its opening promise there are many interesting elements in the reminder of the book that carried me through to the end. Offutt says in the introduction he read millions of words and took thousands of words of notes researching ancient Ireland, aka., Eirrin, and in the process fell in love with its history and legends. This is evident. The story feels historical and interesting in a way a lot of generic fantasy does not, clothing and food and Irish culture faithfully depicted. We get so little of Ireland/Eirrin as the setting of fantasy novels (Taylor’s Bard is a notable exception) that this was welcome, and moreover well-rendered. Here’s a bit of that rendering, from a monologue delivered from Cormac’s love interest, the Irish princess Samaire:

There are no former sons of Eirrin, Cormac of Connacht! It’s a spell there is on the fens and the bogs, and the cairn-topped hills of green Eirrin called Inisfail, and it envelops us all at birth like a cloak about the mind. We are forever under it—even those who so long and long ago moved across Magh Rian to Dalriada in Alba. Eirrin-born is Eirrin-bound, as if by stout cords and golden chains.”

This stirs my Irish blood. What do you expect with a last name like Murphy? More than a bit of Eirrin is in me (as well as Danish blood from my mother’s side). 

Speaking of stirred/spilled blood, we also get a desperate pitched battle against Picts, and a fun battle against a pool dwelling giant squid. We get a reasonably well done and familiar story of a hero’s homecoming, back to the land that once declared him an exile. Cormac is the son of a murdered high king but cannot return to Eirrin because of a killing he committed years before at a great assembly, a sort of great fair and friendly gathering of competitive clan rivals where no quarrels are permitted (not unlike a Danish Thing). But the young and hot-headed Cormac is goaded to violence and flees his homeland for a dozen years.

Offutt isn't Howard but he’s a good storyteller in his own right. Sword of the Gael is earnest (Offutt even includes bits of his own verse); you cannot fake its enthusiasm. As a standalone novel it’s not entirely successful. But it’s an interesting failure, entertaining enough, and moreover instructive for writers working in the field. I’d give it a tentative recommendation to S&S fans.

I am Werewolf Boy

Written storytelling has a unique and curious aspect. If a story has a great enough impact on you as a child or young adult, re-reading it can take you back to a distinct place and time in your life, even decades later. It’s a power that I don’t think movies quite possess, perhaps because of the images you form in your brain while reading, or the tactile book you once held in your hand.

After a span of 40-odd years I obtained and re-read Monster Tales, and once again was Werewolf Boy.

This proved to be a fun collection, obviously written for adolescents though it certainly has sharp edges. Every protagonist is a kid and few have happy endings. The 70s “hit different” man.

I enjoyed some of the stories more than others. The standouts included “Torchbearer” and “The Call of the Grave.” “Wendigo’s Child” by horror veteran Thomas Monteleone was pretty good too, if a bit telegraphed.

I also remembered “The Vrkolak” though I remembered it being better. It reads like a PG version of Friday of 13th with Jason swapped out for a giant toad, and murder replaced by scaring a nasty camp counselor half to death.

But the story that most captured my imagination was Nic Andersson’s “Werewolf Boy”, both now and then. I am plagued with a lousy memory but somehow I recalled most of the beats. I think what makes it  memorable was my identification with the protagonist, Stefan, a young boy who is treated with a cruelty that stays with you.

(spoiler alert coming)

The story is set long ago in medieval Europe. Stefan is caught out in the woods coming home at night with a puppy. A sadistic local baron is out hunting with his cruel hounds Arn and Bern and tree the young boy. As he reaches for a branch Stefan drops his helpfless pup to the ground. And watches in horror as the hounds tear it to shreds.

To add injury to insult, the baron calls Stefan down, strikes him cruelly across the face with his whip, and rides off laughing.

That’s some callous shit and a shock for anyone to read, but especially when you’re eight years old or so.

But vengeance is Stefans. He encounters a hideous old witch in the woods (she’s missing her nose, which we find out is also the baron’s doing), and asks if she’ll cast a spell to grant him revenge. She does, but not without great cost. The spell turns the boy into a werewolf—and also costs him his soul.

Memory is not just a recall of facts, but also of feelings, emotions. It can be unlocked by a certain smell, a sound—or a story. It can even make you... transform.

As an adult, I found myself shape-shifting, into 10 year-old me. I remembered being shocked by the baron’s cruelty, then (and now). I remembered reveling in Stefan’s vengeance, and thinking how cool it would be if I could become a werewolf, and take care of a few childhood problems of my own. 

The bits in the story of Stefan’s transformation from boy to beast and development of a shocking new power and inhuman sense of smell are well-rendered. The fights with Arn and Bern are a slightly less bloodless but no less ferocious version of something in The Call of the Wild. And so were burned into my memory, there for the retrieval--and re-living.

“Werewolf Boy” is an effective little tale and I was pleased to re-read it. And equally pleased to learn that it had the same effect on at least a couple other readers. While searching for details about the author I came across a couple threads where folks who had also read the story long ago were asking if anyone could recall it from its details.

Evidently this story holds a stranger power over more people than just myself.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally have a copy of Monster Tales, and equally pleased to become a werewolf boy once more.

The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell; a review

“Myths formulate things for you. They say, for example, that you have to become an adult at a particular age. The age might be a good average for that to happen—but actually, in the individual life, it differs greatly. Some people are late bloomers, and come to particular stages at a relatively late age. You have to have a feeling for where you are. You’ve got only one life to live, and you don’t have to live it for six people. Pay attention to it.”

--Joseph Campbell

Myths—the old great ones—are true. Not because they necessarily happened—though some have, in some form or fashion, even if distorted or exaggerated over centuries and millennia of retelling—but because they convey timeless truths about the human condition. We recognize something of ourselves in them. The wanderings of Odysseus. King Arthur and the quest for the Grail and the fall of Camelot. The Celtic myths and legends, of Cú Chulainn and the Tuatha Dé Danann. These stories endure because they tell us something profound about human nature, both how it is and how it might be different, how we might live better lives. 

I was reminded of everything I love about myth in a recent reading of The Power of Myth. Published in 1988, the book is an extended conversation between Joseph Campbell and television journalist Bill Moyers (who just passed away last month) that took place in 1985 and 1986 at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch and the Museum of Natural History in New York. Portions of the interview were aired in a six-hour PBS series, which proved wildly popular at the time and led to a Campbell revival. The interviews spanned more than 24 hours and The Power of Myth is the complete edited transcript. 

Campbell passed away just a year after the interview and The Power of Myth serves as a repository of his thinking late in life. I’m glad we have it. I cannot do justice to his unique intellect except to say he understood humanity at a level few have before or since. His great genius was in comparative mythology. Campbell spent a lifetime studying the great myths of all the world and came to find they shared much in common. People across cultures and ages are different, but also struggle with the same concerns and problems—the aimlessness of youth, the difficult transition from childhood to adult responsibility, aging and death. And these common stories become encoded into myth.

The Power of Myth is not Bulfinch’s Mythology. It is not a history of the myths, but instead addresses their metaphysical aspects: What are myths? Why do we need them? How have they come to endure?

The answers lie in the pages of this book, but also Dr. Robert Johnson, a contemporary of Campbell and like him a student of Carl Jung, who said of myth, “People have such a tendency to think that mythology is something that happened way back yonder, but mythology is a current, immediate, living thing. Everybody has his own myth, churning away inside himself.”

This speaks to me.

I spent much of my life walking around in a fog, consuming music, books, porn, social media, whatever. Never turning inward; never attempting to come to grips with my unconscious self that ruled my actions like an unseen hand on the tiller. Myths offer a way out, into a higher plane of existence, because they make you look within, where the answers lie, and where the dragon waits. This is the hero’s journey and one we all must undertake. I have personally experienced it, and see the same story and archetypes and patterns play out again and again in the broader culture. 

Jung and Campbell have somewhat fallen out of favor today. We have a blossoming field of neuroscience plumbing the depths of the human brain at a physical, biochemical level. I suspect the scientific community would consider the idea of a shadow self or the collective unconscious unscientific, speculative, lacking empirical support. But they continue to provide a working model of the human psyche and development that speaks to me, deeply. I have to come to believe in dualism. Mind and body are separate though related. Although concepts like love and honor and pride are not physical objects they exist, and so are of no less import than physical matter. We need abstract symbolic language to navigate the concrete world. Myths offer the roadmap.

The real quest is within, our foe to be conquered is the unexamined life, the un-individuated self. We believe our lives will be fixed if a certain politician gets into office or some bill is passed; we are mistaken.  The hard truth is that no calvary is coming over the hill; we must accept the burden of accountability, which is paradoxically liberating. Says Campbell: 

“Ultimately, the last deed has to be done by yourself. Psychologically, the dragon is one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego. We’re captured in our own dragon cage. The problem of the psychiatrist is to disintegrate that dragon, break him up, so that you may expand to a larger field of relationships. The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down … Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, and Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. That’s the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma. Your life is the fruit of your own doing.”

As Jung said in The Undiscovered Self, “A million zeroes joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but the fatally shortsighted habit of our age is to think only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations.” Adds Johnson: “You have to have some sane people as individuals before you can talk about community. Otherwise you have a community of sickness.”

This is not a call for selfishness; it’s a call for living an authentic life and then sharing the bounty outwards. Being curious about other people’s lives; expressing true empathy. This is the truth at the heart of the Holy Grail myth, in which the knights set out each on their own path, entering the Forest Sauvage at their own entry points. Per Campbell:

“The theme of the Grail romance is that the land, the country, the whole territory of concern has been laid waste. It is called a wasteland. And what is the nature of the wasteland? It is a land where everybody is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you’re told, with no courage for your own life. And that is what T.S. Eliot meant in his poem The Waste Land … the Grail becomes the—what can we call it?—that which is attained and realized by people who have lived their own lives. The Grail represents the fulfillment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness.”

Once we have found ourselves, we help others. That completes the circle. Perceval recovers the Grail only after he formulates the question to the wounded Fisher King: “What ails thee?” 

“The question is an expression, not of the rules of the society, but of compassion, the natural opening of the human heart to another human being,” Campbell explains. “That’s the Grail.”

It’s not easy, but life is hard, and has always been thus. But Campbell chose to play it. His lessons are worth reading. "I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera--except that it hurts".

On a bit of a lighter note, if you’re a Star Wars fan The Power of Myth contains some insightful analysis of the film. For example, Campbell describes Darth Vader as an unformed man, undeveloped as a human individual, but is instead a bureaucrat living for an imposed program (Lucas was a big Campbell devotee and Star Wars an homage to his teachings). Vader’s monstrous mask is a symbol; when taken away his “strange and sort of pitiful undifferentiated face” is laid bare. 

We need the myths; without the great stories we lack the models and language to become self-sufficient individuals, susceptible to propaganda and mass subjugation. Fortunately we have Campell’s teachings as a north star to guide us out of our own personal wasteland, if we brave the journey. We must.

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, a review

Lady Gaga would appreciate this romance....

I don’t read much romance. But when I do, I read The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. It’s an old romance, a medieval romance. Definitely not a bad romance.

There is something to old.

Many of today's fantasy authors attempt to replicate the medieval age by slapping armor on a modern talking dude operating within a modern moral framework. Which is not wrong (it’s fantasy; they can do what they will), but it’s also not the past; it’s a contemporary novel draped in the outwear of the archaic. 

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult is old, and feels it. It traces back to the 12th century and likely older Celtic legends. Its soul is medieval. Modern politics are as out of place here as a 9mm pistol. Women are married off to mollify tension between kingdoms; children are taken as chattel slaves; men risk everything to ride to the defense of other lords. Kings make the rules … and they are not all good.

The story is a basic tale of star-crossed lovers. Iseult, an Irish princess, is promised as a bride to King Mark of Cornwall. But she and Mark’s young nephew Tristan fall in love and begin an affair. Conflict ensues. 

What makes it “new” is the deeply medieval moral framework in which the story exists. All the same petty jealousies and betrayals that we recognize today are here but with medieval twists. When Mark discovers the affair he’s pissed and orders the lovers … burned at the stake. No trial, no one riding to their defense. This is pre-bill of rights, pre-courts. I feel like the Old Norse Thing settled disputes far more equitably. We experience a terrible/wonderful tension of illicit love at conflict with fidelity to lord/honor and obligation, each side fairly represented in a classic courtly love which fueled so many medieval romances. Other modern dissonances: Tristan decides for Iseult that she shall marry King Mark (she has no say). Tristan falls for another Iseult, Iseult of the White Hand, marries her, and then leaves her hanging, marriage unconsummated, when he realizes he still loves the OG Iseult. Iseult of the White Hand returns the ill favor a hundredfold in a stunning end that I won’t spoil here (can 1000 year old stories be spoiled)? There is deference to God; Iseult takes a test of purity to prove her innocence, submitting her flesh to a hot brand. 

You don’t see this type of thing being written today. Maybe we do and I’ve missed it.

Tristan and Iseult is part of the Arthurian cycle, occupying the same shared universe, but only peripherally. Arthur and his knights are mentioned in the story but play no significant role. The tale serves as likely inspiration for the Launcelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle. There are small incursions of magic, including a magic dog with a bell that distracts its owner from grief, a gift from the mystic isle of Avalon. Most notably it includes a love potion whose accidental ingestion causes Tristan and Iseult to fall madly in love. The potion has been the subject of much debate; was it placed here to remove some of the responsibility for the affair, or evoke our sympathy? Far be it from me to criticize timeless works but it did not feel wholly necessary and may have made more sense to a medieval audience.

I read an accessible modern-ish retelling assembled by French medievalist Joseph Bediere in 1900, translated into English in 1945. It is told with the reference point of a Celtic bard talking to an audience of nobles, breaking of the fourth wall with direct references to the reader. We are a listener in this hall of fire. This device allows the tale to cover a lot of ground but without the detail we’d expect in a modern novel. For example, battles are relayed as events that occurred minus the up-close cut and thrust of Joe Abercrombie. But some are desperate and memorable, including Tristan’s one-on-battle duel on a small island vs. the massive and intimating Irish champion the Morholt (what a menacing name; a possible precursor to The Mountain?) Speaking of the Mountain the combat and the broader story features a liberal use of poison. 

I was moved by the incredibly touching end image, a persistent vine that even when cut continues growing to connect the two graves. Love endures all.

Recommended of course.

Notes

• The tale endures the ages, adapted by Richard Wagner and others. 

• This seems to be the kind of thing Old Moon is reviving and I backed their recent Arthurian/dark fantasy kickstarter here.

• No need to find old books; you can read Tristan and Iseult right now on Project Gutenberg.

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck, a review

John Steinbeck is rightly remembered these days as a Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and secondarily, East of Eden; almost no one talks about his foray into Arthurian myth.

Yet his heart lay in time-shrouded tales of questing knights and the shining castle on a hill. Steinbeck was ensorcelled by the stories of King Arthur his entire life. They were his gateway to a true love of reading at age 9, and from youth all the way to his death in 1968 the stories of King Arthur were never far from his mind. 

Steinbeck embarked on his own spin on Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, writing The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights in a two-year period from 1958-59. Sadly the book was never finished … but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it.

You should. I just did, and I’m better for it.

The King Arthur stories are not (just) stories of dudes in armor riding off on great quests. They are part of our western literary canon, but even more so, part of the fabric of western myth. They instruct us how to behave, but also where we fall short.

And so we have passages like this (cue Nicol Williamson); not a celebration of our species’ predilection for violence, but certainly a good as explanation of any as to why we’re still fighting wars in the 21st century in the shadow of millions of heaped corpses still fresh from the 20th: 

“Then Arthur learned, as all leaders are astonished to learn, that peace, not war, is the destroyer of men; tranquility rather than danger the mother of cowardice, and not need but plenty brings apprehension and unease. Finally he found that the longed-for peace, so bitterly achieved, created more bitterness than ever did the anguish of achieving it.”

Here is Steinbeck’s Merlin, wise beyond comprehension to the point of being able to see the future, yet he too is subject to the lusts that rule men, falling helplessly under the binding spell of Nyneve:

“In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins. I have told you your certain future, my lord, but knowing will not change it by a hair. When the time comes, your feeling will conduct you to your fate.”

This is a tale of many characters but Launcelot is the central figure; Launcelot who is the best of all knights, but of course with a fatal flaw; who despite his love for Guinevere wins every bit of our admiration because when asked if he is content to be the world’s perfect knight the question nearly splits him in two before he regains his composure. This internal struggle is rendered beautifully by Steinbeck:

A black rage shook Sir Launcelot, drew his lips snarling from his teeth. His right hand struck like a snake at his sword hilt and half the silver blade slipped from the scabbard. Lyonel felt the wind of his death blow on his cheek. 

Then, in one man he saw a combat more savage than ever he had seen between two, saw wounds given and received and a heart riven to bursting. And he saw victory, too, the death of rage and the sick triumph of Sir Launcelot, the sweat-ringed, fevered eyes hooked like a hawk’s, the right arm leashed and muzzled while the blade crept back to its kennel.

Lancelot and Guinevere.

Launcelot is if not the “greatest” knight the most sympathetic, because he wrestles with his conscience and occasionally fails, yet never relents. Unlike the perfect Galahad who recovers the grail, for Lancelot every day is a battle that leaves him bone-weary, either with foes eager to test their mettle or against his own weaknesses—vanity, violence, disloyalty. And yet we love him for it, as does his young cousin and knight in training Sir Lyonel:

Sir Lyonel knew that this sleeping knight would charge to his known defeat with neither hesitation nor despair and finally would accept his death with courtesy and grace as though it were a prize. And suddenly Sir Lyonel knew why Lancelot would gallop down the centuries, spear in rest, gathering men’s hearts on his lance head like tilting rings. He chose his side and it was Lancelot’s.

This is a book of quests, and one of my favorites is when Lancelot confronts a broken Kay, who used to be a great champion but is now a shell of his former self. Lancelot asks him why he has fallen; Kay explains the weight of responsibility, and the mundane, soul-crushing management required of a kingdom:

“Granite so hard that it will smash a hammer can be worn away by little grains of moving sand. And a heart that will not break under the great blows of fate can be eroded by the nibbling of numbers, the creeping of days, the numbing treachery of littleness, of important littleness. I could fight men but I was defeated by marching numbers on a page.”

I suspect a modern office middle manager, or Kull at his writing desk, would be nodding his head sagely. Lancelot does as any good friend should; he dons Kay’s armor and shield and rides out to knock a hundred men off their horses and send them groveling back to Arthur’s court to submit to the queen as Kay’s prizes, unbeknownst they were fighting the greatest knight in the land.

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is of course notably unfinished, published posthumously in 1976; leading one to speculate. Did Steinbeck finally lose interest in Arthur? Was it becoming tedium, because the story was not his and he knew how it would end? Could he not bear to engage in the full measure of tragedy in a time when he and his wife were reportedly at their happiest?

We don’t have an answer. In its early stages Steinbeck described it as the greatest work of his life. Keep in mind this was late in his career, AFTER all his major works were completed.

It is perhaps fitting the story ends with a kiss, perhaps the most passionate and illicit in western literature. From there it’s all downhill for Camelot. Perhaps Steinbeck did not wish to deal with the full measure of the tragedy. Which seems unlikely given the tragedy in his better known literary works, but Le Morte D’Arthur is the big daddy of tragedy.

We can only guess. But I’m glad we have what we have. Highly recommended.

A few notes: Because it was unfinished and Steinbeck indicated that it took him some time to get down the style, he intended to go back and do rewrites. As such it’s a uneven to start and does not truly get going until the Morgan Le Fay chapter about 100 pages in. Up until then it feels like a beat-for-beat translation of Le Morte D’Arthur with updated diction, but at that point takes on something of the pace of a modern novel.

A perilous quest...

Most critics then and now did not care for the book, mainly because they were expecting something much more Steinbeck and not a faithful adaptation/quasi translation of Malory. Steinbeck’s agent was puzzled upon seeing an early draft, leaving him stung by the reaction. Perhaps they were expecting a family of migrants on a dusty trek/quest to California, riding flatbed trucks instead of chargers? That does sound cool come to think of it but not what we get here. I suspect Steinbeck held Le Morte D’Arthur in such reverence he found no need to try to improve upon it; he set out to tell the same story in plainer English and IMO for what we have, succeeded. 

He might also have felt like the original stories were being lost. In an age of radical literary experimentation and increasing Hollywood exploitation (then and now) he was not wrong. 

My edition has a wonderful series of letters at the back, most from Steinbeck to his literary agent or his longtime friend. These offer terrific insight into his first-person research that included trips to Wales, Glastonbury, Tintagel and other places associated with Arthur. We get valuable insight into Steinbeck’s writing process, including his struggles to find the right literary voice and approach, eventually settling on “a close-reined, taut, economical English, unaccented and unlocalized … it just as simple as that and I think it is the best prose I have ever written,” Steinbeck says. And everywhere his love of Malory that shines through any faults he found in the original. Steinbeck was very well versed in the old stories and I enjoyed reading his own analyses of the myth, as here where he compares the stories to modern televised westerns:

And it can be shown and it will be shown that the myth of Arthur continues even into the present day and is an inherent part of the so-called “Western” with which television is filled at the present time—same characters, same methods, same stories, only slightly different weapons and certainly a different topography. But if you change Indians or outlaws for Saxons and Picts and Danes, you have exactly the same story. You have the cult of the horse, the cult of the knight.

Steinbeck felt the profound human truths at the heart of the story, truths which transcend time and place, and sought to preserve it whenever possible. This is not George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, it is something much older and in my opinion, far deeper. It will endure the ages.  To close with Steinbeck: “I am not writing this to titillate the ear of the twentieth century. Perhaps I am overambitious, but I am trying to make it available, not desirable. I want the remote feeling of the myth, not the intimate feeling of today’s man who in his daily thought may change tomorrow but who in his deeper perceptions, I am convinced, does not change at all. In a word I have not been trying to write a popular book, but a permanent book.”

***

A few other thoughts about Arthuriana.

When talking about the north stars of fantasy most seem to skip the King Arthur stories. If I had to speculate, it’s because they occupy some liminal space between mythology, history, and national epic. You can’t really compare Sir Thomas Malory with Dunsany or Tolkien, Howard or Leiber, Lewis or LeGuin, Martin or Rowling.

But of course they are largely fantasy, replete with spells and giants and magic swords. And if you choose to classify them as such, it’s hard to think of anything more fantastic. 

Robert E. Howard, The Life and Times of a Texas Author: A review

How do you review a new Robert E. Howard biography? Perhaps with the question: Do we need a new Howard biography? After all, we have two major works already: L. Sprague de Camp’s Dark Valley Destiny and Mark Finn’s Blood and Thunder. There are others too, which I have not read and cannot comment on: David C. Smith’s Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography, and Todd Vick’s Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard. 

The field seems well sown. But let’s dig a little deeper.

   

DVD is well-researched and eminently readable but ultimately a flawed work. It places its emphasis on Howard’s psychology, starting from a place that there must have been something wrong with REH and then building that case with outdated and clumsy psychoanalysis (for more, see here).

If Dark Valley Destiny frames REH’s life as a story of tragedy, a literal Dark Valley from which there was no escape, Finn’s Blood and Thunder is a thunderous corrective. Its strength is its compelling case as Howard as Texas writer, a young man who drew from his surroundings and the recently closed Texas frontier to give us pulp adventure that shows every sign of literary immortality. It’s also a cracking good read by a born raconteur. What it does lack is scholarly apparatus, footnotes and avenues for further research.

So yes, you can make the case for new Howard biography. Willard M. Oliver has added a new voice and a new chapter in Howard scholarship with the newly released Robert E. Howard The Life and Times of a Texas Author (University of North Texas Press, 2025). And I’m happy to report it’s very good.

Oliver’s biography is not a middle ground between DVD and B&T but instead cuts a new channel—scholarly biography, as exhaustively researched as DVD and as fair as Finn’s reappraisal. It’s a substantial book, more than 500 pages counting references and works cited. The heart of the book is Oliver’s theory that Howard’s desire for personal freedom was the motivating force of his life and writing career, perhaps the apex in his personal hierarchy of values: “I have but a single conviction or ideal, or whateverthehell it might be called: individual liberty. It's the only thing that matters a damn” (letter to H.P. Lovecraft, 1932).

And yet as deeply as Howard strove for freedom another value equally as powerful presented a formidable counterweight: The call of community. This was chiefly apparent in Howard’s obligation to provide care for his ailing mother and her battle with tuberculosis. Howard depended on a literary community of magazine editors and loyal readers. And finally, he desired a meaningful relationship with Novalyne Price Ellis, one he was ultimately denied. When Price asked REH to delegate his mother’s care to nurses or other paid help Howard refused: it was his obligation. Oliver paints an arresting scene in which Howard, out driving on a date, slams on the brakes of his car, telling Price, “I want to live! I want a women to love, a woman to share my life and believe me, to want me and love me. Do you know that?”  

Values dissonance can result in emotional growth and meaningful change, but generally only after a crisis. Howard was unable to reconcile the opposition of personal liberty and communal obligation and his mother’s death provided the way out.

Robert E. Howard The Life and Times of a Texas Author gives us all of this, all of Howard’s life, in probably as much detail as any fan could want.

Following are some of the details and bits I enjoyed, either because they're well-presented, interesting, and/or new (to me). 

• Oliver does a fine job setting up Howard’s time and place—the actual town of Cross Plains. It offers rich detail of his family history/parents and settlings in the United States. 
• There is some great material here on Howard the poet—his love of verse, his early sales, and being one of the most prolific poets in WT history. Howard’s poetry even received rare praise from mercurial Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright. Fans often forget this or overlook his wonderful poems.
• New to me; Howard’s deliberate construction and cultivation of an Irish identify (pp. 197-198); I knew about his strong Gaelic interests but not how far he adopted them into his own life—singing old Irish songs, Gaelicizing his middle name, etc.
• His youthful, beer-swilling trips with Smith and Vinson as detailed in the Junto (p. 215), told here evocatively and dude-bro awesome by Oliver.
• Oliver does a nice job introducing “The Shadow Kingdom” and its important place as the origin of sword-and-sorcery but also one of Howard’s most poetic and vivid stories, as well as how popular it was with WT readers and editors (my ego is pleased to find myself cited here, and elsewhere, in the work—pp. 245-246).
• Howard’s fatiguing medical condition is covered here with more research, care and nuance than DVD.
• There are several new pics of REH I had not seen before. This was a very pleasant surprise.
• We get some well-placed details on the Great Depression, focused on Cross Plains and the closure of its two banks in 1931 (p. 308).
• Howard’s love of westerns and the role of the frontier in his books. Although he wrote straight two-fisted westerns he also wrote some weird westerns, a genre for which he is considered the founder (p. 315)
• I enjoyed the detail on Margaret Brundage’s artistic process. A prolific cover artist for Weird Tales, she would actually read the stories, pick the scenes that seemed most salacious/sexy, draw them using pastel chalk on canvas, and tack the image to a wooden frame before dropping them off at the WT office (p. 338).
• Black Mask, Dashiell Hammett and the birth of hard-boiled detective, meting out tough personal justice outside the law. Howard wrote his own hard-boiled detective stories but never loved the form and it was his least successful literary foray (p. 350).
• Howard getting half-checks from a struggling Weird Tales before these too ceased due to the magazine’s financial woes (p. 412). If I had read before that WT was cutting Howard half-checks with the promise to pay the rest later if so I had forgotten this detail.
• Howard’s love for the Texas landscape and its barbarian ethos, which likely would have been his next literary venture (p. 436).
• Oliver’s speculation that Hester’s death provided the occasion for Howard’s suicide and was not necessarily the inciting incident; I agree, though would add it was the result of an irreconcilable clash of values (p. 455).
• Details about a will Howard wrote near the end of his life which reportedly bequeathed all his worldly possessions to friend Lindsey Tyson. And destruction of said will. Oliver says this may have been gossip, not fact.
• A nice summation of Howard’s character by Price and his circle of friends and WT collaborators, post-suicide. This was sad, especially the letters of remembrances and posthumous praise to the Eyrie from heartbroken WT readers (p. 466).

Does the book contain any flaws? From a research perspective I cannot say; I’m not a Howard scholar and lack the qualifications to fact-check a book with this level of detail. But everything I read seemed accurate and, as noted, Oliver provides voluminous references for cross-checking. It perhaps is a little slow to start; try as I might I’m just not interested in genealogy and so I found the early chapters a bit dry. If Oliver is not as colorful a writer as DeCamp or Finn he’s certainly economic and journalistic and his style is very accessible (which is in itself, an art). The book does not delve into Howard’s racism, which is fair enough, as IMO it does not transcend its time and place and is therefore unremarkable. I imagine some might criticize this decision. There is little to no post-mortem discussion of REH’s legacy, but as Oliver himself states that’s a story requiring a book-length work of its own. The price of the hardcover may be steep for casual fans, as is its length, but I doubt many casuals will pick it up. 

In summary, any criticisms I have are minor. I believe Robert E. Howard The Life and Times of a Texas Author will join the front ranks of Howard scholarship; I can’t see another Howard biography surpassing this one for research, even-handedness, and thorough attention to detail. Time will tell.