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Author: Bob Byrne

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

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The-Book-of-Lost-Tales-2-smallI was a voracious reader of fantasy in my teens and early twenties. Moorcock, Tolkien, Lieber, Kurtz, Feist, Eddings, Brooks, Donaldson, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, Thieves World, Heroes in Hell; I devoured series fantasy. And later I would delve into McKiernan, Cook, Howard, Jordan and others.

Now, in the past decade, I’ve made a couple of attempts to re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but given up each time (I can say the same thing about Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series). I like the stories and the events, but parts of them just read so sloooow. I’ve not run into that problem with Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, or Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books. But I’m still a huge Tolkien fan, even though I don’t sit down and read through him any more.

I’m in a rather small minority that prefers The Silmarillion to his two better-known works. And that’s because I’m completely sold on Tolkien as a world builder and storyteller. That’s why he’s still a favorite.

From the story of the Silmarils up to the start of the Third Age, Tolkien set the standard for world building and epic history. I enjoy the vast creations of Robert Jordan, Steven Erickson, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings and many more, but Tolkien was unsurpassed.

One of my first Dungeons and Dragons characters was an elf named Gil Galad, wielding his spear, Aeglos. Fingolfin, the Sons of Feanor, Hurin, Turin, Melkor, Ancalagon, and Glaurung: The Silmarillion is just chock full of heroes, villains, lands, kingdoms and events.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

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REHWesterns_Cover
Intro by James Reasoner…

After Paul Bishop’s excellent post on REH’s boxing stories turned my initial post on hard boiled private eyes into the start of a series, the next topic I knew I wanted to cover was westerns. And James Reasoner was the only person I considered to write it. Historical fiction, noir and westerns: he’s excellent in all of those areas. 1914’s Robert E. Howard Days 2014 Featured Attendee is one of the best western writers alive. Let’s hit the trail!

When Robert E. Howard was growing up in Cross Plains in the 1920s, it was entirely possible that some of the older men in town might have gone on cattle drives in their youth, as the great trails from Texas to the railheads in Kansas opened up after the Civil War and changed the focus of the Lone Star State’s economy. Whether a young Bob Howard ever listened to these old cowboys spin yarns about those days, we don’t know, but he certainly might have.

J. Marvin Hunter’s classic book Trail Drivers of Texas appeared in 1927, and this volume might well have caught Howard’s interest, too, although we have no record of him ever reading it.

What we do know, however, is that Howard wrote several Western stories in which the trail towns which served as destination points for those great herds of Longhorns play an important part, beginning with “Gunman’s Debt”, which went unpublished during Howard’s lifetime but is one of his best Westerns. It’s set in the small Kansas settlement of San Juan, and although Howard tells us that the rails and the trail herds haven’t reached it yet, it’s clear that they’re on the way. San Juan is new and raw and more than a little squalid:

Three saloons, one of which included a dance hall and another a gambling dive, stables, a jail, a store or so, a double row of unpainted board houses, a livery stable, corrals, that made up the village men now called San Juan.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

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PonsWolfe_NarcissusSolar Pons has already made several appearances here in The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. And previously, I wrote that Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe is my favorite detective series of them all. So naturally, I found a way to link them together into one post. Barely.

Now, August Derleth was a born-and-raised Wisconsin boy, enamored with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the great Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t much different than an awful lot of American youths in the nineteen twenties.

Except, the enterprising Derleth wrote to the author and asked if there would be any more stories. Doyle, not the friendliest person in regards to his meal ticket, did have the courtesy to send back a reply in the Fall of 1928,  saying that he was finished with Holmes.

Not discouraged at all, the nineteen year-old University of Wisconsin student made a note on his calendar, ‘In re: Sherlock Holmes’, as a reminder to write a story in imitation of Doyle’s creation. The date is lost in the mists of time, but August Derleth did in fact sit down and produce “The Adventure of the Black Narcissus” in one afternoon, starring Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker.

It appeared in the February, 1929 edition of Dragnet and Derleth would produce over seventy more tales before passing away in 1973. British author Basil Copper added over two-dozen more Pons stories with the blessing of Derleth’s Estate.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Rob Roehm – Tragic Things

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Rob Roehm – Tragic Things

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REHTragic_HowardPlaqueWe’ve had over a dozen posts in our ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series here at Black Gate, but we haven’t had a single post yet about Howard himself. Oops. Rob Roehm, Featured Attendee at the 2014 REH Days and Director of Publications for the REH Foundation, fixes that hole for us. As you can see from the first paragraph, the story of Robert E. Howard’s aunts and uncles is a sad one. Take it away, Rob!

In his February 27, 1944 letter to E. Hoffmann Price, Dr. Isaac M. Howard briefly describes the state of the Howard family: “Mr. Price, the most tragic things have come to me: 2 bros., 3 sisters all dead, one sister was burned to death, one bro. killed, his body mangled beyond description by a railroad train. My wife died after a terrible lingering sickness, my only child going at the same time, leaving me alone of my father’s family.”

While fans of the doctor’s son, Robert E. Howard, are aware of the June 1936 events that deprived Dr. Howard of his immediate family, the fate of his brothers and sisters is also interesting, and is indeed full of “tragic things.”

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons & The Dorak Affair

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons & The Dorak Affair

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Dorak_BookOne of my favorite Solar Pons stories by August Derleth is “The Adventure of the Golden Bracelet.” If you’ve read that one, you know that an archeologist discovered a fabulous treasure horde at a mysterious woman’s house, made rubbings of the pieces, then found himself embroiled in a scandal when the items turned out to be stolen and no trace of the woman could be found. Pons figures things out and it’s quite a tale.

Derleth didn’t spin this tale out of whole cloth. It relied heavily on The Dorak Affair. James Mellaart was a well-known archeologist with some great successes in Turkey. Riding on a train in Turkey, a woman came in and sat across from him.

She wore a bracelet like the ones found at Troy. She gave her name as Anna Papastrati and said she had many more like it at home. Mellaart accepted her offer to go see them.

She revealed a large collection of artifacts, which she said came from tombs her family uncovered in the village of Dorak. The elated Mellaart was convinced he had proof regarding the Yortans, Troy’s sea-faring neighbors.

He spent three days and nights at her house (certainly bold for the married man), making sketches of the collection. She promised to send him photographs he showed her of the tombs. The photos never came, but after a time, Mellaart did receive a letter from her, saying he could use his sketches in an article.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: David Hardy on El Borak – The First and Last REH Hero

Discovering Robert E. Howard: David Hardy on El Borak – The First and Last REH Hero

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ElBorak_EarlyToday, our ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series talks about my favorite REH stories: those featuring El Borak. David Hardy wrote the introduction to the Robert E. Howard Foundation’s The Early Adventures of El Borak and he also contributed what is essentially the afterward to Del Rey’s El Borak and Other Desert Adventures.  There’s no one better suited to expound on Francis Xavier Gordon, so enough blathering from me. Let’s check out ‘The Swift.’

Francis Xavier Gordon, known from Stamboul to the China Sea as “El Borak”-the Swift-is perhaps the first of Robert E. Howard’s characters, and the last. El Borak is one of those distinctive characters that could only come from the fertile imagination of REH. He is a Texas gunslinger from El Paso, an adventurer, who has cast his lot in the deserts and mountains of Arabia and Afghanistan. There’s a little bit of John Wesley Hardin in his makeup, a bit of Lawrence of Arabia, and just a touch of Genghis Khan.

Howard described the origin of Gordon and other characters to Alvin Earl Perry: “The first character I ever created was Francis Xavier Gordon, El Borak, the hero of “The Daughter of Erlik Khan” (Top Notch), etc. I don’t remember his genesis. He came to life in my mind when I was about ten years old.”

That would put El Borak’s origins about 1915, the year Rafael Sabatini’s pirate novel The Sea Hawk appeared. The titular Sea Hawk is an Englishman who joins the corsairs of the Barbary Coast. There is also a supporting character named El Borak. Howard also noted that Bran Mak Morn, hero of “Worms of the Earth,” bore a resemblance to El Borak.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What to Write About?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What to Write About?

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The itsy-bitsy spider, went up the water spout...
The itsy-bitsy spider, went up the water spout…

For the past 76 Monday mornings, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has appeared here at Black Gate. I’ve written a couple other posts, but this column is why they keep me around. Well, that and I work for free.

Most of my posts involve (a little or a lot of) re-reading. Which means that more often than I would like, what I want to post on a particular Monday isn’t ready to go. For example, I’ve read ten books and watched one tv pilot for a post on Erle Stanley Gardner’s ‘Cool and Lam’ private eye books (fantastic stuff). And I still need to read more.

And I’ve listened to at least six dozen radio shows for posts on Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Fat Man and Box 13: with more listening to go. So, for this week’s post, I thought I’d talk about some of the subjects that I have started digging into, but which I’m not ready to tackle yet:

Sherlock Holmes A to Z – A post that’s going to include at least one recommended author, movie or book title for every letter of the alphabet (this is a fun one).

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

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RonHoward_GunSheldon Reynolds, an American producer, went to England looking for an actor to cast as Holmes in a new television series. Alan Wheatley had appeared in six televised plays (filmed live) for the BBC in 1951. Reynolds had much broader horizons. He found Ronald Howard, son of the famous English actor Leslie Howard. It was the senior Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get to reprise his role of Duke Mantee when the successful play was turned into a film. It was Bogart’s first success on screen and helped launch his career. Howard was killed during World War II when the Nazis shot down his commercial plane over the Bay of Biscay.

Ronald Howard sold his house and took his family to France in early 1954. The entire series was to be shot there to save on costs. Reynolds had used this approach before, filming the American series Foreign Intrigue, in Stockholm for reasons of economy.  This time he would be an American producer, with a British Sherlock Holmes, shooting a television show in France.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Pigeons From Hell From Lovecraft by Don Herron

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Pigeons From Hell From Lovecraft by Don Herron

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Herron_DarkBarbarianBefore the Cumberbunnies took over and flooded the internet with “I heart Sherlock” memes, the term ‘Sherlockian’ referred to those who studied (and often wrote about) Arthur Conan Doyle’s sixty stories of Sherlock Holmes. Some  of it was dead serious, some was tongue in cheek and much was in between. Monsignor Ronald Knox’s 1921 “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” is the cornerstone of Holmes studies.

With that, I tell you that that Don Herron is THE Ronald Knox of Robert E. Howard. “Conan vs. Conantics” and the ensuing “The Dark Barbarian” showed that Howard could be analyzed and treated as literature. As well as something to stir up debate! If you haven’t read the over-600 page essay collection, “The Dark Barbarian That Towers Over All,” you need to pony up $4.99 and get the kindle version now.

And with that, Herron, who is also a noted expert on Dashiell Hammett (this man knows good writing) is going to treat you to a little Howardiana regarding REH’s most chilling horror story, “Pigeons From Hell.”

Recently I did a reread on H. P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle and had a Hey, Wait a Minute moment. . .

Deep into his follow-up book to A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos, John D. Haefele had asked me to look the poems over. Haefele is surveying Lovecraft’s Great Tales — not just the top achievements, but how the fiction developed as it went along, leading to the break-out stories — not just Lovecraft’s own writing, but how his discoveries of authors such as Robert W. Chambers and Arthur Machen and the ongoing cross-influences of his fellow pulpsters such as Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard display in the ongoing saga that would become known as the Cthulhu Mythos.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ramblings on REH

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ramblings on REH

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Ramblings_KullAxeIn a way, Robert E. Howard’s career is similar to that of Dashiell Hammett. Both men had huge impacts on their genres (Howard wrote many styles, but he’s best known for his sword and sorcery tales). Both were early practitioners in said genres. Both men wrote excellent stories for about a decade. And both men ended their careers on their own.

Hammett, who seemed more interested in a dissolute lifestyle than in writing, effectively walked away from his typewriter. He wrote his last novel in 1934 (The Thin Man) but produced literally nothing for the remaining twenty-five years of his life. He could have gone back to writing the hard-boiled stories that made his career, but he voluntarily ended his writing life.

In 1936, Howard’s mother was failing in a coma. He walked outside to his car, pulled out a gun and killed himself. His writing career was more effectively finished than Hammett’s would be.

Both were supremely skilled writers who chose to deprive the world of their talent and left decades of stories unwritten. But there was a key difference between the two. From the beginning, Hammett was acclaimed and recognized as the leader in his field. Though Carroll John Daly came first (barely), there is no comparison between the two in critical view.

Howard was not critically lauded. His first Conan tale, “The Phoenix on the Sword” (a rewriting of the Kull story, “By This Axe I Rule!”), appeared in Weird Tales in December of 1932. The next two Conan tales were outright rejected!

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