Adventure classics -- REH's wonderful women

People of the Black Circle

by Robert E. Howard

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Conan-creator Robert E. Howard a specialist in spunky heroines? Not the first characteristic that leaps to mind in considering the king of 1930’s pulp fiction, but I dare you to find a spiritless or even resigned woman in any of Howard’s stories. Especially not in today’s discussion of one of his best, People of the Black Circle, whose heroine Yasmina defies protocol, not to mention loss of life and sanity, to rescue the soul of her beloved brother from wizardry.

And despite the racy cover of the September 1934 Weird Tales, which serialized the novella, Yasmina, in typical Howardian fashion, manages to win without stooping to the exploitation of her own sexuality. Not even to gain the aid of the warrior Conan, turning up in a surprisingly non-Hyborian context.

Briefly, as Bunda Chand, king of Vendhya, lies dying, he reveals to his beloved sister, the Devi Yasmina, that he has been “ensorcelled by the wizards of the Himelians,” who are intent on imprisoning his soul in the body of a demon. The distraught Yasmina determines to free her brother’s soul. To do so, she travels incognito to the borders of Himelian territory, determined to find the famous Conan and force him to aid her in penetrating the wizards’ fastness.

The Devi finds the tables turned on her more than once in a typically twisty Howard plot, but she and Conan will eventually acknowledge each other as the best of enemies.

“. . . of all the Conan-girls, I have a special fondness for Yasmina,” writes the reviewer at http://www.pulpanddagger.com/conan/people.html/. “Somehow, Howard combines in her a perfect blending of imperious strength and fetching vulnerability that makes her stand out from all the rest.”

Conan thought so, too.

At the story’s end, he tells Yasmina, now queen of her own country, “‘I will collect your ransom in my own way, at my own time. . . And I will come with fifty thousand men to see that the scales are fair.’”

“She laughed, gathering her reins into her hands. ‘And I will meet you on the shores of the Jhumda with a hundred thousand!’”

Where did Howard (not to mention Conan) get this appreciation for strong women? In spite of the disapprobation heaped on Howard’s mother, Hester Ervin Howard, who added her surname to the name of her only son, I suspect he appreciated her strength, both as she and his father argued famously and as she endured an agonizing death from tuberculosis.

But not surprisingly, Howard never married. And although Conan sometimes appears about to take the plunge, I can’t remember one of his stories that ended with a wedding, either.

(Next Wednesday, Adventure classics looks at another Howard hero, Frances X. Gordon, aka El Borak. And of course, a heroine, in “Son of the White Wolf.”)

Adventure classics -- A doggone sense of humor

The Fightin’est Pair

by Robert E. Howard

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When contemplating the tragedies of Howard’s life and writing it’s all too easy to forget his roguish sense of humor. Or, despite the later fascination with Conan, that during Howard’s life one of his most successful characters was the boxing sailor Steve Costigan. Editor Rusty Burke, writing in “The Best of Robert E. Howard, vol. 1,” reports that twenty-one Costigan stories were published during Howard’s lifetime (twenty-two if including one in which the main character’s name was changed to Dennis Dorgan). By comparison, only seventeen Conan stories were published.

Howard himself was an amateur boxer who turned to the sport after a stint of bodybuilding exercises. Fans of the movie, “The Whole Wide World,” based on Novalyne Price Ellis’s memoir, will remember the scene in which Howard acted out a story by shadow boxing his way through Cross Plains, to the astonishment of his neighbors. It’s hard to believe he didn’t find their bewilderment amusing.

Another sometimes overlooked element in Howard’s nature was his love of animals. Despite the bloodshed in his writing, in life he was acutely sensitive to the pain of others, both human and animal. Howard’s father, writing nearly a decade after his son’s death, reported on the mutual devotion between him and his dog Patch (or Patches), a collie-foxhound mix, in a letter quoted by Patrice Louinet, writing at www.robert-e-howard.org/DwellingDarkValley.html/

In 1929, Howard wrote his first Steve Costigan story. And in the third of the Costigan stories, “The Fightin’est Pair,” (first published under the title “Breed of Battle”) the fighting sailor acquires a companion, his beloved white bulldog Mike. (Since the story refers to pit fighting by dogs, I’m guessing that what Howard had in mind was something closer to the American pit bull terrier whose picture illustrates this post than to an English bulldog.)

Costigan sounds like a man who’s taken a few too many punches to the head. But although he’s happy to fight for money, he’s not willing to hire his dog out. “I’ll tell you straight,” he said, “I think dog fightin’ for money is a dirty low-down game. . . (it) is just too dirty for me to fool with and I ain’t goin’ to get Mike into no such mess.”

Obviously, neither of the pair can get out of that opening without a fight.

(Next Friday: Riding into the sunset with one of Howard’s Western stories.)

Wordcraft -- Writing advice from a barbarian

In her memoir of Robert E. Howard, Novalyne Price Ellis details an amazing amount of writing advice from the creator of Conan. In honor of June’s annual Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas, the closest place to a home town for him, I’ve combed the memoir and selections of his letters and stories for continuing advice from the master. Answers to the interview questions are taken verbatim from Howard’s writings or conversations, as reported by Ms. Ellis, but not always in the context that was intended.

I understand you’re a writer, Mr. Howard.
Yeah, that’s right. I write for the pulps.

How did you get started?
At the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.

Given your unfamiliarity of the business, how did you choose writing as a profession?
I tried a lot of other jobs and I didn’t like ‘em. I worked on a farm and that was no good at all, but clerking in a store is about the worst job you can have. So I decided the only way I could get out of working for a living was to start writing.

Isn’t writing work?
Well, not by the sweat of your brow at any rate. You can stay at home. All you have to contend with is a typewriter and it just puts down what you want it to.

Was there something in your environment that encouraged you to be a writer?
It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments. I became a writer in spite of my environments. Understand, I am not criticizing those environments. They were good, solid and worthy. The fact that they were not conducive to literature and art is nothing in their disfavor. Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among whom one’s lot is cast.

I understand your first story appeared in a school publication. Did you enjoy school?
I hated school.

Why was that? You seem like someone who would have been a good student.
It wasn’t the work I minded. . . .What I hated was the confinement -- the clock- like regularity of everything; the regulation of my speech and actions; most of all the idea that someone considered himself or herself in authority over me, with the right to questions my actions and interfere with my thoughts.

What advice do you have for other writers?
I don’t usually give advice.

Perhaps you could at least tell us something about the way you write. For instance, when you start to write a story, do you start with a character or an idea for a plot?
(Appearing to relent) Mostly with a character, I suppose. I’ve got a character going now. . . That Conan’s the damnedest bastard I ever saw. He gets himself into all kinds of scrapes.

So, do you carry on a conversation with him, getting to know him?
I sure don’t try to give advice when he tells me all that junk. I just sit back and listen.

Speaking of listening, I’ve heard that some of your neighbors aren’t always happy about the noise when you read your stories aloud as you write. Has anyone ever complained to you?
I was out working on my car (and) while I was working, like a fool, I was talking, trying to figure out something about a yarn I was stuck on. I wasn’t talking too loud, but I got to a place where ol’ Conan was fighting, and I said, “Fool. Dog of hell. Die!” About that time, a timid little voice said, “Robert, is your mother home?”

What do you say when people ask how you come up with characters such as Conan?
(I) always say, “He’s a combination of a lot of people I have known.”. . . (But) to tell the truth, I don’t know how a man gets a character for a story, anymore than I know how he falls in love. . . I doubt any writer knows for sure where his characters come from.

At this point Howard looked pointedly at his watch and rose, impatient to return to his typewriter. But I hope to secure a promise of another interview for next Wednesday.

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(Quotations from One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis and Howard’s letters quoted in The Best of Robert E. Howard, vol. 1, published by DelRey Books.