By Crom! Eons have crept by since last I ventured into the World of Fantasy, about which I feel very bad. To be honest, it was the sheer size of The Complete Chronicles of Conan lurking by my bedside that put me off. I took it on two separate holidays but couldn't bring myself to read it; it was exhausting me before I'd even begun.
Aching and sore, my arms might not be what they once were, but I'm kicking myself for putting Robert E Howard off for so long for such a silly reason. This is the least tiring reading I can imagine; no thought required, just great big dollops of melodrama, evil jungle beasties and treasure hidden in lost cities. Say Conan today and it (unfortunately) summons up the image of a loin-cloth clad governor of California, but Howard's muscle-bound barbarian, first published in Weird Tales magazine in 1932, is much more fun.
Of the stories I've read – and I've done my best, but no, I've not managed all of them – the Cimmerian has variously burgled a jewel-clad tower in which an elephant-headed being is imprisoned, escaped from/killed a monstrous demon, girl intact by his side (actually, this happens in more than one), saved kingdoms, killed dragons and man-eating plants, won a thousand fair maidens' hearts and slain hundreds of foes. My favourites were Red Nails and Queen of the Black Coast – perhaps unsurprisingly because they both have feisty female heroines as opposed to the fainting weaklings who are usually clinging to the barbarian's brawny arm with their untouched-by-the-fearsome-sun white hands.
Basically, these stories are pure pulp fiction, and all the more enjoyable for being unashamedly so. Rather than, as I've been doing, devouring several of them in one sitting, I think it would be better – less repetitive – to read them as they were originally published in Weird Tales; I can imagine them working brilliantly in regular instalments, garish art and all. They're the work of a young man, in his 20s – Howard committed suicide in 1936, at the age of 30 – and they clearly came tumbling from his pen at full speed. Stephen King is quoted on my edition, saying they "seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out".
For all that, though, there are elements that jar horribly today. Villains are usually dark-skinned; the darker the eviller. The more lily-white a woman's skin, the more prized she is. Howard might be a product of his time, but so am I, and it's impossible to read sentences such as "in this accursed city … where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds – who can tell who is a man, and who is a demon in disguise?" without cringing.
Howard's women, too, get me down. Conan is obviously written for boys, but why oh why are the ladies such wimps? Even the spirited Valeria in Red Nails – "as quick and ferocious as a tigress" – is popped on Conan's knee and caressed – against her will, but later, as "a chill crept through her veins", she will "unconsciously" lay her "white hand on her companion's muscular brown arm" for reassurance. And she's one of the good ones. Yasmela, white, supple (weirdly, they're often supple), beautiful and a princess, might loathe Conan's "raw brute strength and unashamed barbarism, yet something breathless and perilous inside her leaned toward him; the hidden primitive chord that lurks in every woman's soul was sounded and responded". God almighty. Later, she'll throw her white arms "convulsively about his mailed neck", and he'll fiercely crush her "slim white body".
I realise it might sound ridiculous to criticise the Conan stories for their attitude to women and race. What was I expecting, for heavens' sake? It's not that I'm averse to melodrama – far from it. I revelled in some of the stories' more preposterous excesses: who could resist Pelias the sorcerer, in The Scarlet Citadel, when he explains how he has been "kept alive, in shackles more grim than rusted iron", by his enemy? "He pent me in here with this devil flower whose seeds drifted down through the black cosmos from Yag the Accursed, and found fertile field only in the maggot-writhing corruption that seethes on the floor of hell." Pure, atmospheric, over-the-top evil joy.
As I said before, though, I can't put aside the stories' grating elements to lose myself entirely in their swashbuckling pleasures. MaxCairnduff said on my last blog that they are "among the best literature that fantasy has produced, and incredibly influential". I'll take the influential point no problems, but I'd love it if someone could explain why they're so highly rated. I'm wondering if it's because a lot of people (probably male) read Conan as teenagers and remember him with huge fondness, but would be surprised if they went back to the stories today. They're fun, but they're so simplistic – Jane Gaskell does the same ancient-world-peopled-by-barbarians-and-gods thing so much better in the Cija books.
Anyone read those, by the way? They might be utterly ludicrous too, but Gaskell writes better, thinks deeper and has a pinch of tongue-in-cheek to her. I read Gaskell when I was 14 – I swear she's still good today, though – and spent a couple of weeks saying "Oh gods" to myself, as Cija does, as I thought she was so cool. Any of you out there ever swear by Crom?
I think my next choice will be a female writer; the balance needs to be redressed a little. Death's Master by Tanith Lee, perhaps? As far as I can see, Lee is the only woman to have ever won a British Fantasy award, which is shocking. I'm open to suggestions, however – and I promise that this time around I'll be much quicker to get cracking.
