A Problem of Pastiche

Jury duty is over. Thankfully. I didn’t get called for a jury. In fact, I did nothing for three days but sit around on my butt and read. I love reading but even I was getting a little stir-crazy by the end. I’m free today, though, so time to catch up on a little blogging.

I read quite a few good pieces while sitting around and will review some of them here in time. I’ve reviewed most on Goodreads already. But I read one yesterday that was not so good. I’m going to talk about it a bit here because of the writing lessons it provides, but not give the name because I know who the author is, though it’s not someone I correspond with or anything. I also believe the author genuinely loves the Conan character and is enthusiastic, even if he didn’t get down on the page what he was probably hoping for.

Anyway, so here I am reading a Conan pastiche that I got free from Amazon for the kindle. It picks up where the original Arnold movie left off, which is OK. The first pages aren’t too bad. I’m starting to settle in, when the problems begin. First, Conan and his companion stumble upon the tale’s evildoers. They are cave dwellers mostly, degenerate, etc. That would be fine but they are described as “gnomes.”  I know that “gnomes” have undergone a lot of changes over time but I’m afraid I had a problem seeing them as anything more than garden gnomes from then on. Although the description of them was of something pretty nasty, it was a bit of a problem for me. I could have handled that.

Second, the anachronisms began, and this was quite a bit more of a problem. Conan is supposed to live in the Hyborian Age, far in the past before recorded history. Yet, the author used terms like “mania,” “electrified,” “bronco,” and, worst of all, “cop-out.”  At one point Conan yells “Happy Holidays” to his foes. Sarcastically, I think. These terms really destroyed any sense of realism for me in the tale. The writer is supposed to strive to become invisible behind the flow of the prose, but when you throw in phrases like “cop-out” in a story like this, you are putting the writer front and center.

Fiction is a very carefully crafted lie. As soon as you see through the veil, anything else that is remotely a problem starts to jump out at you. The whole “house of cards” rapidly comes tumbling down. If it hadn’t been for the anachronisms, I might not have noticed other issues with the prose so clearly, most notably the overuse of alliteration, particularly with “G’s,” and the weird use of terms. The author obviously had a pretty large vocabulary but frequently seemed to slightly misuse terms. One example I remember is the phrase “relentless tunnels.”  Endless tunnels maybe. But I couldn’t follow “relentless tunnels.”

Another issue for me was that the character was not anywhere close to the Robert E. Howard character. This Conan was a pure selfless hero, with none of the nuances that Howard brought to the character. In this way, the character didn’t even match the Arnold-portrayed Conan from the movies. This was not a particular problem with the writing. Had the character been called something else it might have worked just fine.

How about you? Do anachronisms bother you? Do you notice phrases like “relentless tunnels?” How do you feel about alliteration?

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How Not to Write a Pastiche

Back in the 80s and 90s Tor published a lot of pastiches featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan. Many authors, including Robert Jordan, wrote some of these books. Most were not very good. Here's my review of one of those books, with some asides on problems with the story and characterization that may help the writers among us think about our own works in progress.

Sean A. Moore, Conan the Hunter, Published by Tor. 1994. 245 pages.

This was Moore's first book and I haven't read anything else by him. I do think he showed promise but none of us will get to see it developed since he died in a car crash in 1998 at age 33. This book's strengths included fast pacing and generally pretty good descriptions of physical combat. The book also got better toward the end, and I found myself turning the pages to see what would happen next. That’s a step forward compared to other pastiches I've read.

There were, however, a number of problems that made the book less than a standout. First, Conan the Hunter failed to capture the flavor of Robert E. Howard. Anyone who has read REH's Conan would never be fooled into thinking that Moore's Conan is the same character. In fact, Conan in this story was only one of several central characters, and there were times when he didn't even seem the major one. Had the book been called "Gorum the Hunter" I probably would have enjoyed it more, but when you do something called "Conan" it seems to me that you try to stay true to the character as Howard created it. This was the weakest part of Moore's book. In fact, in several places the author seemed to draw Conan as little more than an ineffectual buffoon. For example, on page 13, a city guardsman, admittedly described as very strong, grabs Conan by the wrist--and snaps it just like that. It appears Conan needs a few calcium tablets in his diet.

On page 54, Conan is trapped in a sewer when he is attacked by a tentacled monster (from the cover drawing by Ken Kelly). Conan leaps into the air to avoid the creature, misjudges the tunnel’s height, and cracks his skull against the ceiling hard enough to bring down rocks and dirt. This stuns Conan long enough for the creature to get hold of him. By the way, it also sets off an avalanche of dirt that opens the sewer to the outside (described as 80 or 90 feet above.) This dirt, described as "tons," buries the creature.

On page 60 Conan becomes a total buffoon. He tries to sneak up on a gardener to steal his clothes to get inside a palace, but he screws this up and ends up on his face in the dirt with the gardener yelling for the guards. He then knocks the gardener down, but as he stands up the gardener's horse bolts and the cart it is pulling hits Conan's shoulder,
knocking his sword out of his hand. In reaching for his sword, Conan sticks his foot into a loop of the harness; the horse bolts again, and Conan is dragged unceremoniously along behind. When Conan finally gets free of the horse, he stands up and the gardener walks up and knocks him out with one punch. Just who is this gardener? Mike Tyson?

In yet another place, page 92, Conan takes a swing at a guard and ends up punching his fist into the other fellow's armor. Now true, Howard did not show Conan as infallible or as never making mistakes, but all this just seems a little too much for me. As I said, this might have been fine, or even appropriate, for "Gorum," but it just didn't fit "Conan."

What else? Well, despite the fact that Conan's wrist could be broken simply by being grabbed by another fellow, his head certainly seemed to be hard enough. On page 94, a man who is apparently incredibly strong hits Conan upside the head with a direct, sidearm blow from a heavy mace. Conan is merely stunned! Does that seem reasonable to you?

My overall evaluation is that Conan the Hunter was readable, and even enjoyable at some level, but that its attempt at a pastiche of Howard was unsuccessful. The main problems were with the characterization of Conan, and with the occasional lapse in internal logic. This book should have been published as a non-Conan book and should have had the more egregious errors edited out or toned down. I mean, did anyone along the production line for this book even stop to imagine what would happen to a human skull when impacted by a mace traveling at full speed?