The Conquering Sword Of Conan (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
It's disappointing the way modern critics often fail to address issues of race as they are presented in books from earlier time periods. Sure, when writing of Howard and Lovecraft (or even Twain and Poe) critics will not fail to repeat some notion that their racism is 'an unfortunate artifact of that time and culture'--but that is not the same as actually meeting the issue of race head on and dealing with what it means in a text.The way an author approaches race is an integral part of their worldview, of the philosophies they explore and the ideas they present. But, it is also an issue that continues to be contentious, and critics rightly fear the harsh response that often comes when we open up that Pandoran box. So instead, we excuse it, or condemn it (it amounts to the same thing), as if by merely pointing it out we can diffuse it, absolve ourselves of actually doing the dirty work of unpacking it: 'I acknowledge that the author was Racist, and that it was Bad--so having got that out of the way, let's move on to my real analysis ...'But critics cannot be allowed to let themselves off so easily--we much be brave, and push on. In talking about Howard's racism, it's not with the notion that I should defend him , or repair him--or least meaningfully, condemn him--but that, in order to understand Howard, it is necessary to understand how he conceptualized race, how he used it, and what it means to his stories.As ever, with Howard (not only with his presentation of race, but also sexuality and politics) the surface tends to be grim, resembling familiar forms of prejudice: dark-skinned, menacing foreigners, scanty-clad maidens to be rescued, all problems solvable by a combination of fascist force and Nietzschean will--but beneath that, there is always more subtlety, more awareness, and more irony than Howard tends to get credit for.In this collection, the racist hypocrisy is actually laid bare in a single narrative moment: “The Picts were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never spoke of them as such.”This is not race as some inescapable, god-given aspect of identity, an inherent piece of the human soul, but as self-identity, self-creation, an act undertaken by men to separate themselves from one another. Conan himself makes the same separation, both in his own words: “... we can’t have the cursed devils making so free with white men’s heads”and in the view of others: “These barbarians live by their own particular code of honor, and Conan would never desert men of his own complection to be slaughtered by people of another race. He’ll help us against the Picts, even though he plans to murder us himself ...”Yet again and again, Conan’s own cultural background is equated with that of the Picts: he is a barbarian, like them, a wild creature born in the wilderness. The events of Beyond the Black River show Pictish lands being colonized, the natives driven out and replaced by Aquilonian farms and forts--until finally, civilization pushes too far, and the Picts unite and fight back. The Picts are then compared to Conan’s people, the Cimmerians, who also eventually rose up and attacked the Aquilonian fort built in their own lands, destroying all the settlers--a battle where a young Conan fought against the White invaders.So Conan shares a great deal with the Picts: he is wild like them, not tame like the Aquilonians, and yet he goes to great lengths to differentiate himself from them--using the tool of race to ally himself not with his fellow barbarians, but with ‘civilized men’--while at the same time scorning the softness and ineptitude of the city-born.Though built in the same mold of ‘Mighty Whitey’ characters like Natty Bummpo or Tarzan--the White man who is both better at woodcraft than the natives and able to outsmart the civilized men--Conan is actually born to it, actually a tribesman who has ‘lifted himself up’. It is unfortunate that Howard does not do more to explore what is clearly a deep internal conflict for Conan, trapped between these worlds, competent in both, and yet unsure of his own racial and cultural loyalties.The resolution of the story does provide a kind of resolution, and one which should surprise no fan of Howard's--in his work, it is always barbarism that wins, because barbarism is the more pure, the more natural state of man. For Conan, as much as the trappings of civilization might tempt him, as much as he lives off of it as a scavenger, as a predator, the civilizing influence is always tainted, always stagnating, rotting away at the core, unable to sustain itself against animal man.It might seem an odd tack to take, for a modern White writer in post-Colonial America--in many ways, civilization had already won, and won big--but that's precisely the point, and Howard's portrayal of this romantic, somewhat tragic figure of the noble primitive adds another wrinkle altogether to his portrayal of race.By the time of these later tales, Howard was having trouble keeping himself interested in Conan stories. This tended to happen with all his characters as he went on: he would gradually find himself more interested in supporting characters, or in the politics of the world, or just in telling a different kind of story altogether. Hence, these stories mark a deliberate change on Howard’s part. In his own words, he’d ‘abandoned the exotic settings of lost cities, decaying civilizations, golden domes, marble palaces, silk-clad dancing girls, etc., and thrown my story against a background of rivers, log cabins, frontier outposts, buckskin-clad settlers, and painted tribesmen’.In short, he was trying to write stories of the American frontier, with the Picts and Cimmerians as the native tribes, and the Aquilonians and Zingarans as then English and Spanish, respectively. Of course, choosing the painted Picts is natural, since they were the rebellious natives whom the Romans pushed out, clearing the forests for lumber and building farms and forts in their place. There is certainly a place for such stories in the ancient world, but unfortunately, Howard’s attempts don’t draw on those earlier portrayals--they are too modern, too American, and the character and world of Conan seem to be a bit lost in this fresh setting.The ancient empires, strange magics, cosmic horrors, crumbling temples, immortal priests, sensuous ports, and Atlantean curses of Ashton Smith are left behind, as are the stoic Norse sagas which mark Conan's origins--and along with them, the majority of the tone and depth of Hyboria also dissipates, until we’re left with Howardian versions of Hawthorn’s Leatherstocking tales or Sabatini's Captain Blood, inexplicably featuring Conan at their center--well, perhaps not inexplicably: after all, Howard knew that Conan stories would sell.Indeed, The Black Stranger is actually written along the lines of a Gothic novel--a disgraced count in exile on a desolate island with his beautiful niece, a roguish courtier-turned-pirate after a lost treasure, a deadly and unseasonable storm, and that shadowy threat that looms over all in the stranger, himself. Conan himself barely shows up through the first half of the story--and when he does, he's dressed in full 17th Century pirate regalia. Perhaps sensing the ill fit, Howard later changed out Conan for a different lead character and updated the setting.These stories are considered some of Howard's best by some critics, as the essays included in the Del Rey edition demonstrate, and they certainly do have some things going for them. As he enters his thirties, Howard's prose becomes tighter, his vocabulary both more varied and more specific--no longer do we see the same crutch words and repetitions that marked the earlier tales. But also gone is the tone and vibrance which set the Conan stories apart.The actual structure of the stories also leaves something to be desired--they are somewhat piecemeal and meandering, the conflicts often solved by convenient interruptions, and with a general lack of interesting set pieces and stand-out scenes. In quite a few instances, characters act in ways that make little sense in context--in the last story, for example, Conan and others keep switching sides in the middle of combat.That isn't to say that this new, crisp style of prose couldn't have worked for Howard, were he just writing pirate tales and frontier stories, but adding the additional layers of ancient Hyborea and Conan stretch them too thin, setting them tonally at odds with themselves. Certainly, there is much more of Howard the American in them--the stories are more personal to his experiences, but mixing them with the Conan mythos does them no favors.Beyond that, the wild Picts, a 'White race who are not called White' become just another example of over-romanticized natives, that White-guilt urge to go 'back to nature', while at the same time painting the natives as both less and more than human, both pitied and put on a pedestal, but never actually considered as more than an image, a grand symbol for the spiritual enrichment of Whiteness.The sexual politics are likewise troubled: though Valeria is in some ways a refreshing figure--she is actually competent, actually seeks her own equality, is skilled with a sword--in other ways she’s more constrained than many of the other female figures in Conan stories. Simply being strong of arm and having masculine traits does not make a female figure a strong character--and beyond that, it takes for granted that the only way to add strength to a female character is by making her more like a man.What is missing in the romances of these stories is the woman’s point-of-view which made earlier Howard stories intriguing: that we got to see those women from the inside. They may have been constrained socially, they may not have been physically powerful, but they still chose to act out despite this--what made them strong was the fact that they were willing to question their society and to oppose it. What attracts them to Conan is that he is outside civilization, he is not simply another man who leers over them, controls them, and treats them as objects. He is interested in them in a more mutual way.Unfortunately, with Valeria and dancing-girl Zabibi, we instead get only Conan’s point of view, and he leers and gropes after them unpleasantly as they try to avoid his advances--he even agrees to help Zabibi in exchange for sexual favors, thereby fulfilling the cliche which Howard earlier subverted in ‘The Vale of the Lost Women’ (though given the conclusion, it’s hinted that he never intended to collect on the bargain, and that it was likely just a ploy on his part to put her off guard). These later stories are less subversive and more cliche--the sort of thing you’d expect from a piece of unremarkable sword & sorcery.It seems that, much like Leiber, the later, personal experiments Howard made with his best-known series were much less effective than his early outings. Perhaps it has something to do with the freshness, the wildness of an early writer being a better match for the rollicking adventures of Sword & Sorcery. With time comes polish and ponderousness, which do not match well with the genre, and even in the few examples where Howard does return to the earlier themes, the presentation is lacking--it just feels like old ground retread.I guess that, for me, the earliest Conan stories are the best--perhaps because, like Conan himself, Howard was still finding his way, still discovering new places, still capable of surprising himself, of being delighted merely to be on the road, weapon in hand, unsure of what might be found over the next hill.My Suggested Readings in Fantasy
And, with the third and final installment of the complete, unadulterated Robert E. Howard Conan stories, we have the final piece of proof, should any more be needed, that this is how anyone and everyone interested in reading Conan should do so.I could leave this review right there but reading these books lead to research and contemplation, which leads to the following…Speaking to the “coauthored” Conan stories and the dozens of pastiches, I present a fine article by Dashiell Hammett Tour leader, Don Herron:http://www.donherron.com/?page_id=1539Written all the way back in 1977, this article does the right thing by running L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter through the ringer for being both mediocre writers and heartless butchers. ‘Nuff said.I had this idea, when I first started picking up these three Conan volumes, that I would re-read ALL of the Conan novels and stoies in the chronology as laid out by William Gray:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_Ch...Even throwing out the four books that contradict events of Conan’s early life as detailed by Howard himself (Conan Of Venarium, Conan The Bold and the novelizations of the films Conan The Barbarian and Conan The Destroyer), this would have involved purchasing some sixty books, most of which I have read before and reading them. Reading sixty Conan novels. Even spread out over a year or two and reading other sorts of things in between, I don’t think that’s healthy. Having read the unedited Howard versions, I’m certain the de Camp and Carter abominations featured in the Lancer/Ace series would have both cracked me up and pissed me off. I remember enjoying all of them and the Robert Jordan, etc. pastiches as a kid, but I was a kid. I was ten or twelve or fourteen as I read and re-read these books. I was unable to think critically about the quality of what I was reading past whether or not it was interesting enough for me to keep reading.I’m disappointed that Howard didn’t write more Conan stories, but I don’t think I need more Conan stories enough to read every damned one of them in existence. I may as well finish my collection of the original Marvel Conan comic, get all the issues of Savage Sword Of Conan, get all the new comics, watch all the cartoons, re-watch the movies… you see where I’m going with this. It’s just not worth my time. And it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders!I do already have some of the pastiches, however. I may just go ahead and read what I have to spite myself.Robert E. Howard was a RACIST. Sure, he was one of many, many, many bigots of his time, but he was, without a doubt, racist. So it goes. I suppose we have to accept that a significant number of authors of the early 20th century were confused, misguided and ignorant when it came to issues of “race” and I suppose anyone setting out to read popular fiction from the 20’s or 30’s (or 40’s or 50’s or 60’s or 70’s) is going to have to expect the possibility of writing shaped by the racism of the author.Let’s talk about artists. Gregory Manchess paints very well. His paintings in this volume are wonderfully executed. However, they fail almost completely to capture the character Howard created. I think this stems from the use of models in creating images, which I feel I can safely assume Manchess is guilty of. “Wait,” you say. “Artists have used models in drawing, painting and sculpting for hundreds of years.” Yes. True. So what? It may improve the artist’s chances of correctly rendering lighting, anatomy, etc. but it doesn’t necessarily make a good painting. Frank Frazetta, arguably the artist most successful at creating images of Conan, brought a sense of action, movement and life into his paintings. What he rarely did was use models. Boris Vallejo, a fine painter in his own right, used models for many of his paintings and there is none of the explosive, action packed feeling of Frazetta’s paintings in Vallejo’s work. Manchess’ cover painting of Conan fighting a Pict is easily the best piece of art in The Conquering Sword Of Conan and it’s about the only one in which Conan looks like Conan. If you’re going to use models, you can’t just get your buddies or hire some local agency models. If you do this, your paintings will look like you did this. Always.I do love Manchess’ oil painting technique, however. These paintings are, at least, pretty.But wait, there’s more…Manchess said in his forward that he “never knew Conan” and, in acknowledging that the “words with which [Howard] chose to describe certain passages were themselves descriptive and visual,” admits he was sent “running for the dictionary.”Let’s examine the dictionary thing first. Maybe I’m being a horrible snob but, really? This is what sent you running for a dictionary? Yes, okay, I am being an *sshole. I see it now. But I don’t care. If English were a fourth or fifth language for Manchess, I would understand the dictionary thing. As it is… I am at a loss.Then, having spent some time with a dictionary (not his, I would have to assume), Manchess, like Mark Schultz, is guilty of not painting what Howard wrote. Y’know, chainmail in the story, no chainmail in the painting, stuff like that. Maybe I’m being horribly anal but it seems so, so, so very simple. The worst is his portrayal of Olmec in Red Nails as clean shaven when Howard’s text clearly makes several references to Olmec’s enormous beard. Oops.To the more important point, the one massive failure of Del Rey in these Conan volumes was to not find artists for whom the idea of illustrating a collection of Howard’s unadulterated Conan stories was not akin to the ultimate dream of their life coming true. Del Rey should have bent over backwards to find artists who had been drawing and painting Conan since they were children. Manchess is talented but he was not familiar with the character he was chosen to illustrate, therefore he was not even remotely qualified to illustrate this character. I’m sure there are those who would argue this but they would be wrong. Would Peter Jackson have been qualified to make them Hobbit movies if he had never read The Lord Of The Rings? No, absolutely not.I know I have been super picky about the art in all three Del Rey Conan volumes but I won’t apologize for it. Frazetta. Buscema.Conan has been diluted from Howard’s original vision, watered down, cleansed, manipulated, simplified and exploited. As much as I liked the Schwarzenegger films at the time, they’re pretty bad. The 2011 film was vile. Those films are not of what I might call “Howard Quality,” nor are the Conan stories and novels of those who are not Robert E. Howard. That’s just the way it is. Regardless of my low opinion of the art in these three Del Rey volumes, they are truly the best and, in my opinion, only way to read Conan. I am forever grateful to Del Rey and those involved for making this project a reality.
What do You think about The Conquering Sword Of Conan (2005)?
Although chronologically speaking Conan was followed by Bran Mak Morn amd countless other persona who had dared to challenge and defy destiny as presented to them by shrouded dark characters, he was the ultimate fantastic hero who depicted everything we may desire from the protagonist in a pulp-style fantasy (different from Tolkienisque and Lewisian writings). He was the final expression of brute strength, savage passions, and yet, a strange code of honour. This last book containing Conanical writings of Robert E Howard finishes a saga and keeps us gasping for more of the original. Long live Conan.
—Riju Ganguly
"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind," the borderer said, staring somberly at the Cimmerian. "Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph."-Robert E. Howard, "Beyond the Black River"I started this last volume with trepidation, since my experiences with Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber had taught me to expect a decline over the course of the writer's oeuvre culminating in either mediocrity or active disgust on my part, but my expectations were not met at all. They were completely inverted, actually--The Conquering Sword of Conan is absolutely the best of the three Conan collections I've read so far.There's only a few stories here, and two of them are on the same subject, but each of those stories is great. My favorite is probably Beyond the Black River, which I know I've read before somewhere, probably in one of the many edited Conan collections floating around out there, but only vaguely remembered it. I've been looking forward to "that story with the Picts" since I first started reading this collection, and it definitely held up to the image I had in my memories. There's a section in the end of the book where one of the essays talks about Howard's turn towards drawing from his Texan surroundings to make materials for stories, and that's definitely evident in "Beyond the Black River." When I was reading the story, I kept thinking that Howard's Picts are pretty much the textbook settler picture of Native Americans, with the eagle feathers and the painted faces and the savage rites and the murdering everyone for no reason. The area past the Black River is the American West transplanted to the Hyborian Age, with forests instead of plains and distant uncaring feudal lords instead of a distant uncaring central government. The main difference is that while in America the drama was a foregone conclusion and the Native American way of life was ultimately doomed, in the Hyborian Age the fact that barbarism is superior to civilization (see opening quote) is what dooms the Aquilonian attempt at colonization.It does seem a little ridiculous that all these barbarian tribes can coexist next to advanced nations based on what happens in our own world's history in those situations, but with the authorial conceits of the Conan stories, it wouldn't happen any other way. I guess it's just another aspect of how European culture has never gotten over the fall of Rome.Oh, and random fun fact: just like how Vampire's Followers of Set are based on Howard's version of the deity, Werewolf's Black Spiral Dancers are based on Howard's version of the Picts.This is also the book that has Red Nails, which I've heard a lot about from various places but never read until now. I can see why people like it so much. I personally loved the use of a dinosaur as a dragon--though admittedly, I liked the draft where the dragon herds had come ranging up from the south when the climate changed rather than the published version where they were extinct but raised through black necromancy to guard Xuchotl--and the way that Xuchotl is a city that's also a single contiguous building. That's not a particularly common trope in fiction, but it's one I'm quite fond of. Maybe because I sunburn so easily."Red Nails" is also the story where we finally get a female character that can fight as well as Conan can. That's not to say that earlier stories have women who are just scenery--for one thing, several of those stories take place from the woman's point of view instead of Conan's, which complicates the subject/objectification discussion--but in "Red Nails," Valeria takes a much more active role in the action than previously. It's still written by a man born in 1906, so the story swerves between treating Valeria as a warrior worthy of respect for her combat prowess or a beautiful woman who's going through some kind of silly phase, but it at least represents a kind of progress. It makes me wonder what else we would have seen in further Conan stories if Howard had lived.The essays at the end also make a good point about "Red Nails"--it's the ultimate example of Howard's view of civilization. The inhabitants of Xuchotl live in a single structure without ever stepping outside or seeing the naked sky. Their food comes from fruits that feed on the air, and they have no connection with the world at all. In the end, the fall into horrific decadence and war amongst each other over minor slights, commit hideous tortures that take even Conan aback, and eventually kill themselves in an orgy of self-destruction. Civilization here is literally unnatural in its total separation from nature.The other three stories, "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," "The Black Stranger" (the other story involving the Picts), and "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula" didn't stand out quite so much in my mind, but that's not to say they're bad stories. Well, "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula" isn't much to write home about honestly, but it's not bad enough to drag down my appreciation of the rest of the book. However, “The Black Stranger” is another story that maps really well to American history on the frontier, though this time to early settlements on the East Coast before the colonies had become more than islands of European civilization surrounded by, to them, alien and hostile powers.That's not to say there's nothing wrong with The Conquerering Sword of Conan. Howard's racial politics, already pretty uncomfortable in the previous stories, get worse here. Previously, while Howard lumped everyone south of Stygia in as "a black," he tended to make distinctions between the other countries in a more Victorian sense, the way people would write about "the Irish race" or "the German race" and talk about their essentially characteristics. In these stories, pretty much everyone gets divided into white, brown, or black, with scarcely a mention made of nationality. And of course, Conan saves people just because they're white and obviously he can't leave a white person behind to be killed by black people and blech. Sure, you can make an argument that Howard is a product of his time, but it falls down because it's not this bad in previous Conan stories. If there's a reason not to read this book, it's that one.Also, part of the reason I liked the book so much is because of the various drafts and story ideas that are placed at the end of the book. Some of them are for stories that appear in the book, like "Red Nails," but there's also one called Wolves Beyond the Border that was never published during Howard's lifetime. There's a first draft and a second draft, and the first draft is very rough. It definitely didn't feel like any of the other Howard stories I read, but the second draft was a lot more polished and had a lot more of the...uh, Howardian language I'm used to, with the the square-cutting of manes and the mightying of thews and the dashing of brains and so on.That's glib, yeah, but the main reason I found this so encouraging is that, like a lot of people on the internet, I have a mostly-finished novel sitting on my hard drive and I often find it hard to work on writing more of it instead of spending an endless amount of time editing what I already have. Reading novels and then looking at what I've written is almost enough to make me just rip the whole thing up, and it's really encouraging to get another reminder that good writing is made, not born. It almost never springs forth fully-formed from the writer's brow, but has to be coaxed and molded over time and through draft after draft until it reaches its final form.It's not really clear that we would have ever gotten another Conan story, since Howard hadn't written one in almost a year before he died and had written about how his thoughts were turning more towards Westerns instead. If "Red Nails" had been the last one, though, it would have been a fitting ending to the barbarian's stories, and going out like that I'm not surprised that Conan has been so popular to write about in the decades since then. As the ending of the book puts it:Conan the Cimmerian, however, is still with us. In spite of some difficult years, he has managed to survive, and shows no signs of weakness.The barbarian's longevity wouldn't have surprised Howard.The barbarian must always ultimately triumph.And indeed, he has.Previous review: The Bloody Crown of Conan.
—Brian
Here's Conan in all his gloriously unedited best written by the originator Robert E. Howard. Not only do you get the final volume of Howard's Conan compilation, but contained within are "Beyond the Black River", "The Black Stranger, and "Red Nails", which many claim are the three best Conan pieces written by Howard. I'll vouch for "Red Nails" because of the strong characters. There's no doe eyed female goggling over Conan or overblown villain just pure purpose set to pen. Conan is the ultimate action character who truly knows how to live in the moment. So kick back and let the warrior in you live through the conquering sword of Conan.
—David Sellers
