I'm in the mood for some old school heroic fantasy, a bit of adventure and decidedly strenuous striving. I have my Homer on hand, The Odyssey and The Iliad, but I am looking for some lighter fare as well. An appetizer before settling in for the feast, as it were. This book with Jeffrey Jones' striking artwork just caught my attention. That's a heroic cover. Jeffrey Jones, like Frank Frazetta of course, is a master of such imagery.
Now, Lin Carter was a writer I liked a fair amount in my teens, a writer I came to know first from the Conan pastiches he produced with L. Sprague de Camp, but Carter is also a writer who seemed a bit thin, a bit disappointing, in the long run. He wrote many heroic fantasies by combining Robert E. Howard's barbarian muscle with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian space operas--and I recall gobbling up the Thongor, the Jondar, and the Green Star series, among others -- but I rarely returned to these books after I graduated from high school, in contrast to both Burroughs and especially Howard.
Robert E. Howard's original Conan stories (and his historical stories in general) are the real deal, and I've been dipping into those tales for this heroic craving too. By "real deal," I mean that Howard wrote solid, gripping stories with more complex characterization and story mechanics than you'd expect from either the Hollywood or the comic book versions of the mighty Cimmerian. If you want some writerly lessons on how to move in a narrative or how to step into the action with economy and ease, just look at "Red Nails," "Wolves Beyond the Border," or "A Witch Shall Be Born." You have to find the original Conan tales by Howard himself, not by the imitators, however respectful they were. I'm not claiming that Howard deserves the Nobel or the Pulitzer, but I am claiming craftsmanship of a high order in service to telling tales of adventure.
And, after all, that's what Homer was doing at the beginning of Western literature and culture. I've probably written already on how Homer's work in The Odyssey demonstrates a mastery of narrative structure and effects that have never been surpassed. (So much for the idea of "progress"; "the past is the present, isn't it, and the future too," one of O'Neill's characters claims, and he's correct.) Not, by the way, that I am equating Howard with Homer. Not at all. I am putting the two artists together in a way that I find useful.
Now, Lin Carter's Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus: I am in the mood for action, adventure, a strong hero, and pirates. Who doesn't want a tale with pirates while taking a break from working on a sunny Sunday afternoon? Here's hoping the tale proves engaging enough.
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Thank you, Jeffrey Jones, for all those paperback covers that I have loved and daydreamed about all those years ago. Thank you, Frank Frazetta, also.
I used to haunt the used bookstores for those covers, buying the books almost without considering the stories within. I'd study those images and daydream my own tales: time well-spent. If Carter's prose and pacing of Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus doesn't quite hold my attention, I'll close the book and let Jones' art spark my imagination to work the wonder instead.
Or, I'll just pick up The Iliad and begin the feast.
