Cimmerian sighting: Evaluating Don Herron's hard look at Stephen King

Essayist/raconteur Don Herron is best known ‘round these parts for his outstanding Robert E. Howard criticism, which includes essays and editing duties in seminal works like The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph. Elsewhere he’s also regarded as an expert on the works of renowned mystery and noir writer Dashiell Hammett.

Based on this photo, he also wears a fedora and trenchcoat better than anyone.

But a lesser-known side of Herron’s resume includes his Stephen King criticism. I myself was unaware of Herron’s work as a reviewer of the king of horror until coming across his essay, “King: The Good, the Bad, and the Academic” from Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen King (1986, NAL/Plume).

Seeing as how I’m writing for The Cimmerian website, whose now defunct print journal was home for many Herron essays, this next statement may make me seem like a suck-up, but that’s fine, I’ll say it anyway: I think Herron’s essay is perhaps the best in Kingdom of Fear. This is no mean feat, given that some of the other contributors to the volume include horror immortals like Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, and Harlan Ellison.

Whether or not you agree with that assessment, it’s rather indisputable that Herron’s essay is the most provocative of the lot. I first started typing “equal parts criticism and praise,” but upon further review it’s decidedly tipped in favor of the negative. Considering that Kingdom of Fear was published in 1986—arguably the height of King’s creativity and popularity—Herron’s final analysis of King as a talented but flawed writer is rather ballsy. Herron pulls no punches, neither for King nor his legions of fans and admirers. For example, he rips Douglas Winter’s book Stephen King: The Art of Darkness for containing too much fan-worship and not enough honest appraisal. Writes Herron: “[It] strikes me as remarkable because Winter never once disagrees with a King dictum, he does not suggest that one of the novels under discussion might, just possibly, have a minor flaw or two. In this respect it is typical of most of the new criticism, where the critics, like the audience of teenage girls who buy so many of the King books, find everything to be just wonderful.”

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian website.

The Devil You Know: A review

Maybe if we cry together
Maybe if we cry as one
The tears that fall can kill
the fire
And keep everyone from
Atom and evil

--Heaven and Hell, Atom and Evil

I am one of those rare breeds who prefers the Ronnie James Dio-fronted Black Sabbath to the Ozzy Osbourne years (I acknowledge Black Sabbath's early greatness, but my favorite album remains Heaven and Hell). So it was with great anticipation of another Dio-Tony Iommi collaboration that I bought The Devil You Know.

After a couple play-throughs, The Devil You Know is what I would consider a slow burn--nothing jumps out at you at first listen, but it seems to get better with each subsequent spin. Still, I can't shake the feeling that, after waiting for 14 or so years since the last Black Sabbath album (1995's Cross Purposes), and 17 years since the last Ronnie James Dio-fronted Sabbath album (1992's Dehumanizer), I wanted something that immediately grabbed me by the throat. Sadly, there's no pulse-pounding Neon Knights to be found.

There is at least one bona-fide awesome song on this album, Bible Black. If you've ever heard Sign of the Southern Cross or Children of the Sea, Bible Black is in that same epic vein--a slow, melodic, acoustic intro, followed by an explosion of sound and Dio lauching into the song with his inimitable voice. My other favorites on the album are shaping up to be Atom and Evil (both a biblical allusion and a warning about unchecked nuclear proliferation), Follow the Tears, and Neverwhere.

The rest of the songs are solid if rather unspectacular, though I hope that changes with subsequent listens. As of now, the only ones that I'd rate as sub-par are Rock and Roll Angel and Eating the Cannibals.

Dio's voice doesn't have quite its old range and power anymore, but at 66 years old he's still pretty damned amazing. And if he's lost a little off his fastball he sounds arguably more evil and "metal" than ever, if that makes sense. The guy is a metal god, as is Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler, who pound out some awesome riffs on the album. The sound of the album is dark and bass-heavy, about what you'd expect. Iommi also launches into a couple memorable guitar solos (remember those?)

It's worth noting that the title of album and its artwork are a clever play on words and images--Black Sabbath is of course known for its use of satanic lyrics, but the band itself is the "devil" all metal fans know and love so well. The cover art (see below post) is exceptional, and appears to fuse both traditional Black Sabbath imagery and the Dio Sabbath/solo years. I might be reading into the image too much, but I can't help but feel that the long-horned demon bears more than a passing resemblance to the devil creature on Holy Diver and a handful of Dio's other solo albums.

The Devil You Know: I've got it in my greedy hands

Today I did something rather out of the ordinary in my all too ordinary life--I bought a CD on its first day of release: The new Black Sabbath (scratch that, Heaven and Hell) album, The Devil You Know.

I know, I'm a damned lunatic. Stand back.

It's way too early for me to post an honest review and frankly, I haven't given my full attention to the album yet. But my initial impression is that it's got a good, dark, bass-heavy sound, decent if not soaring vocals by Dio, and at least one early leader: a great song named "Bible Black."

More on this to come.

Slaughterhouse-Five: A review

And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

During World War II, author Kurt Vonnegut was taken prisoner by the Germans and held captive in the city of Dresden, which was later reduced to flaming rubble during a harrowing fire-bombing by American forces. According to Vonnegut, the city was a gorgeous center of art, architecture, and fine civilian life; its value as a military target was negligible. “What I’ve said about the firebombing of Dresden is that not one person got out of a concentration camp a microsecond earlier, not one German deserted his defensive position a microsecond earlier,” Vonnegut said.

Somewhere between 25,000 and 120,000 civilians (the upper figure is an early estimate, which has since been revised downward to 25,000-40,000) were killed in the inferno of incendiary and high explosive bombs. As such, Dresden remains a controversial, dark chapter of America’s involvement in the war.

Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut’s look back on this dreadful event. It’s not a traditional biography, but a modified account of his own experiences as seen through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a tall, awkward, disconnected dreamer who is drafted into the army and thrust into combat. Pilgrim is a pathetic soul with the appearance of a “filthy flamingo,” involved in tragic events beyond his control.

Captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Pilgrim and 100 other soldiers are shipped to Dresden to serve as prison-labor. At night they sleep in a storage-cave beneath a slaughterhouse amidst the butchered carcasses of animals, and it’s this arrangement that allows them to survive the attack. After the firebombing, they emerge the next morning to find the once-beautiful Dresden so utterly destroyed that it resembles the surface of the moon.

A part of me feels guilty for reviewing Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five on a science fiction/fantasy Web site. The connections of this classic anti-war novel to the science fiction genre are tenuous, but it attains this designation (in some circles) due to the presence of the Tralfamadorians, a race of aliens that capture Pilgrim and bring him back to their planet for examination. During his months on Tralfamadore, Pilgrim is placed in a sort of zoo, his body and mind laid bare to the curious aliens.

The Tralfamadorians may be simply the imagination of an unwell, traumatized mind. Pilgrim is emotionally unbalanced, suffers a head injury after the war, and reads voraciously of the novels of science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, one of whose novels concerns an alien abduction that sounds suspiciously like Pilgrim’s own experiences on Trafalmadore. But the Tralfamadorians—real or not—allow Vonnegut to explore the concept of time and our place in it, which is the larger theme of the novel. The Tralfamadorians can see in four dimensions and have no concept of time; life just is, and human existence is a series of events and happenings with no beginnings and ends. Events simply occur; wars are fought, we are powerless to stop them and it’s ridiculous to think we can. Free will is a farce.

Pilgrim’s time among the Tralfamadorians allows him to experience his life in this fourth dimension, moving his mind back and forth to the past and future, seemingly at will. He is able to see his own death, and relive events from his childhood, his marriage, and his career as an optometrist. But Pilgrim’s wandering, time-traveling mind returns again and again to the terrible events of Dresden, an experience so powerful that his mind is unable to make sense of it. It just is, and all he can do with the rest of life is to try and look upon the good times in his life, the moments of joy, and not linger too long over the blackened, shrunken bodies of Dresden, or a fellow American and friend executed for salvaging a teapot from the ruins.

Actor Ethan Hawke (of Dead Poets Society and Hamlet fame) serves as the narrator and does a nice job reading with an understated, dispassionate voice that perfectly fits the tone of the novel. This Blackstone Audio production also includes an unexpected and enlightening 10-minute interview with Vonnegut on the final disc. Here Vonnegut reveals that Pilgrim’s character was based on a real person, Edward Crone, an American who died in Dresden. “He just didn’t understand the war at all, what was going on, and of course there was nothing to understand—he was right,” Vonnegut says.

This review also appears on SFFaudio.com.

Cimmerian sighting: Of Wolf Larsen and embracing the Howardian hero

“He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God’s thunderbolts,” Wolf Larsen was saying. “Hurled into hell, he was unbeaten. A third of God’s angels he had led with him, and straightway he incited man to rebel against God, and gained for himself and hell the major portion of all the generations of man. Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times no! God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater. But Lucifer was a free spirit. To serve was to suffocate. He preferred suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility. He did not care to serve God. He cared to serve nothing. He was no figure-head. He stood on his own legs. He was an individual.”

—Jack London, The Sea Wolf

Occasionally when I read Robert E. Howard I wonder: What is it that attracts me to his writing? Is it his great, galloping storytelling? Yes—if pressed, I would say that this is Howard’s finest trait as a writer. Is it the swords and sorcery trappings of Howard’s Conan and Kull stories? Yes—I’ve always felt an attraction to arms and armor, lost civilizations, and monsters and magic, which is probably why I favor these characters above Howard’s others. Is it is his disdain for civilization? Yes, this too—as an office worker in 21st century America, I have my frustrating, bad days where I feel an apathy or outright disgust for “the system.”

But do I also read Robert E. Howard for wish-fulfillment, for the vicarious thrill of stepping into the personas of Howard’s self-sufficient, strong, warlike heroes? Yes, I do. When reading stories like “The Shadow Kingdom” or “The Phoenix on the Sword,” I admit to imagining myself as a larger-than-life barbarian-king from an impossibly ancient era, living by the simple, violent code, “By this axe, I rule.”

I actually arrived at this realization not while reading Howard, but while re-reading one of his favorite authors and literary influences—Jack London, and specifically London’s The Sea Wolf. In this book we’re introduced to Wolf Larsen, the brutal, iron fisted captain of the sealing schooner Ghost. London spends considerable pages trying to convince the reader of Larsen’s despicable nature. Larsen is more beast than man: He rules with an iron fist, crushing his crew brutally underfoot, particularly those who dare to exhibit a will of their own. He doesn’t truck with weakness, or morality (in Larsen’s eyes, these qualities are one and the same). He forbids his crew to go to the aid of a young crewmate, frozen with fear in the rigging (“The man’s mine, and I’ll make soup of him and eat it if I want to,” Larsen says). He scoffs at the idea of an immortal soul.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Good news on The Hobbit front: "Sequel" idea nixed

So if you haven't already heard the news, Empire Movie News is reporting that Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson have nixed the idea for a "bridge" film between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The revised plan is to do just The Hobbit, albeit broken up into two films. You can read the story here at Empireonline.

As you may recall, back when The Hobbit (film) was originally announced, del Toro and crew had planned on two films: The Hobbit, as well as a hazy sequel, the latter to be based on Tolkien's loose notes of the 60 years in between The Hobbit and the start of The Fellowship of the Ring.

This idea is now off the table, which in my opinion is a Very Good Thing. With all due respect to del Toro and Jackson--talented filmmakers both--creating their own stories of Middle Earth was a recipe for disaster. Tolkien's imitators are legion, and none of his literary successors in my opinion have come close to equalling the unique feel of Middle Earth or its mythic depth. I was skeptical of this sequel business from the get-go and I'm glad to see it's fallen through (I was picturing some ham-fisted quest storyline with cameos by every single actor in the LOTR films, and a half-assed Sauron origin story tacked on).

There will be complaints that The Hobbit does not need to be made into two films, it's a money grab by New Line Cinema, etc. There may be some padding needed to make two complete films, but hell, I'll gladly fork down the dollars to watch them both. I also note that although The Hobbit is only 280-odd pages, there's a whole lot of adventure and events crammed between its covers. I think you could make a nice clean break after Bilbo recovers the ring and he and the dwarves emerge from the Misty Mountains.

But then again, this is coming from someone who'd give his eyeteeth to see a full-on Silmarillon and Children of Hurin done in the exact spirit of the books. Maybe one day...

Cimmerian sighting: Heroic Visions takes a rather dim view of Howard

This past weekend I landed a major score at a local used bookstore, a haul that included no fewer than four works of swords and sorcery, a Weird Tales anthology, and a Year’s Best Fantasy collection. Needless to say I’ve got some good reading ahead of me. (Don’t ask me where this book store is: I won’t divulge my secrets until I’ve plundered the rest of its treasures).

Unfortunately, my excitement was dimmed upon discovering that the first book I opened, the Jessica Amanda Salmonson-edited Heroic Visions (1983, Ace Fantasy), begins with an essay that both exalts the S&S genre while managing to simultaneously land a swiping, drive-by broadsword blow on none other than Robert E. Howard.

Here’s the offending paragraph by Salmonson:

Heroic fantasy, in recent decades, has seemed too often to be epitomized by Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, and this is a sad state of affairs. The millennia-old heritage of magical and heroic tales does not begin or culminate in the rather simplistic fictions of the pulp era or the current, slavish imitations thereof. Howard’s work is admirable; he was surprisingly well-read, and invested his stories with the hodge-podge of an amateur historian or Harold Lamb fan, creating something primal, evocative, intriguing. Stylistically, he was weak. The dozen-score imitators of Howard have tended to capture the weakness of his style, but not the primal thread of his limited though worthwhile heroic vision—his, shall we say, pathos. Without denying Howard’s genius or even qualifying it, it must be recognized that glorifying his rudimentary sword and sorcery as “ideal” heroic fantasy is akin to assuming Doc Smith’s old-fashioned space opera is “ideal” science fiction. No area of fantasy should be so stagnant and devoid of stylistic and conceptual growth or variety.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.