1133 replies to this topic

[Strom]

Morgan Holmes is undertaking "a continuing series on L. Sprague DeCamp" over on the REHupa blog. Always a good read and worthwhile visit but something tells me that Mr. Holmes is fired up and his DeCamp blogs are going to be must read material.

REHupa - The DeCamp Controversy

[nomadic]

Morgan Holmes is undertaking "a continuing series on L. Sprague DeCamp" over on the REHupa blog. Always a good read and worthwhile visit but something tells me that Mr. Holmes is fired up and his DeCamp blogs are going to be must read material.

REHupa - The DeCamp Controversy

Facts are not controversial. Defending De Camp's record when the evidence is that he had so little respect for the author he's credited with actively promoting, as some insist on doing to this day, well, that's controversial.
Holmes is just nailing these points home so that -I hope- the 'legacy' issues can be put to rest once and for all.
I know some folks like to harken back to the good ol' Lancer days and De Camp's involvement. The problem is that the obvious problems with those books are often glossed over for the sake of nostalgia. I'm nostalgic too but reality is fine. Now that we're getting more of Robert Howard's unexpurgated work it's a good time to point out why the road those publications took was so long.

Rick

[amster]

"Lin Sprague de Carter"??? He certainly has a wicked tongue. He makes some of the purists on this board look like lightweights. Thanks for the link, Strom. This should be interesting.

[Strom]

Morgan Holmes is undertaking "a continuing series on L. Sprague DeCamp" over on the REHupa blog. Always a good read and worthwhile visit but something tells me that Mr. Holmes is fired up and his DeCamp blogs are going to be must read material.

REHupa - The DeCamp Controversy

Facts are not controversial. Defending De Camp's record when the evidence is that he had so little respect for the author he's credited with actively promoting, as some insist on doing to this day, well, that's controversial.
Holmes is just nailing these points home so that -I hope- the 'legacy' issues can be put to rest once and for all.
I know some folks like to harken back to the good ol' Lancer days and De Camp's involvement. The problem is that the obvious problems with those books are often glossed over for the sake of nostalgia. I'm nostalgic too but reality is fine. Now that we're getting more of Robert Howard's unexpurgated work it's a good time to point out why the road those publications took was so long.

Rick

Well, way to spoil the ending Rick. This is only Part 1 - you have to learn to savor the venom. Like amsterdamged posted - this is gonna be interesting. I never knew about the Oscar Friend quote - that's like a good trailer for a movie. Sets up the whole shebang.

[deuce]

I never knew about the Oscar Friend quote - that's like a good trailer for a movie. Sets up the whole shebang.

Thanks for the heads-up, Strom! I hadn't checked out the REHupa site in about 3wks, so this was news to me.

As for the "Friend quote", I first read it in Scotty Henderson's A Brief Publishing History of Gnome Press and the Conan Stories. It was an article published in The Man From Cross Plains volume put together by Dennis McHaney for Project Pride (I think copies are still available; my copy's signed ). Yeah, all this is JUST the beginning. Ol' Spraguie has yet to take all the reins of "Conantic" power into his grasp at this point in the tale.

Mr. Holmes is a good writer AND a fine scholar of REH/S&S. BTW, on this forum he's "docpod". He hasn't stopped by recently. Hopefully, that'll change.

[indestructibleman]

yes, very interesting stuff. being a relatively recent convert, i know next to nothing of the De Camp controversy. with just that one entry i'm starting to see why people dislike him.

[docpod]

I just put another installment in the De Camp Controversy at rehupa.com. I will be doing this every few days, adding a few little nuggets of information.

Morgan

[deuce]

I just put another installment in the De Camp Controversy at rehupa.com. I will be doing this every few days, adding a few little nuggets of information.

Morgan

Hey Morgan! Thanks for the update. The new installment was quite informative, as were the ancillary blogs about Oscar J. Friend.
Keep us posted.

[amster]

Its a shame that J.R.R. Tolkien, unlike Howard, didn't have LSdC's editorial genius to make his Hobbit stories "suitable for publication". Too bad. That Ring trilogy might have actually went somewhere. Silly rabbit.

[Mark Finn]

I sincerely hope that folks are reading Morgan's blog posts. A great many fans of de Camp tend to react and fight and proselytize without ANY knowledge of the facts behind his involvement with Conan and REH. Morgan is one of the guys who has spent a lot of time studying and researching these questions, and his findings (up until now confined to REHupa) have been invaluable.

When you see quotes from actual letters, things that de Camp directly said, and look at real numbers instead of discussing Frazetta paintings, it paints a very different picture. Anyone still wishing to argue after all of this comes to light is welcome to take the emotional, feel-good side of the Lancers. I won't ever dispute their success. But I've always felt that de Camp's cavalier (and constant) remarks about REH damaged his literary standing even as de Camp helped get and keep Conan in print (for reasons and motives that are left up to you folks after reading this series).

Stuff to chew on for this lazy Sunday...

[Taranaich]

Hey Mark!

Regarding Frazetta's Lancer pictures and covers in general (a bit o-t):

The only thing I think Dark Valley Destiny has over your Blood and Thunder is the cover art. While I love B&T's violent and appropriate cover (an illustration of The Devil in Iron, perhaps?) there's just something about Kelly's painting of REH standing in the primeval vista of Texas with the shadows of barbarians and monsters forming in a brooding thundercloud:



Your work + that painting = my ideal REH biography for the bookshelf. Then again, the cover art is just fluff in the end, it's the content that matters, and I don't think I'd even dignify deCamp with a second-hand sale for the cover, no matter how much I like it. Maybe if I find a hardcover in a second-hand store and just ask to buy the dust jacket...

Anyway, I feel compelled to comment on the great DeCamp saga. I was only properly introduced to Conan very late, 2000 in fact, with the Gollancz Conan Chronicles. I'm also quite young, and about 16 when I had my first taste of Robert E. Howard's Conan, though even this was slightly tainted since the Gollancz editions weren't 100% Howard, with Wright's and even some of DeCamp's editing still there. I guess it's no surprise that The Black Stranger, the "purest" of the stories in the collection, was my first favourite Conan story. Luckily I only had to wait a few years for the Del Rays, which were a revelation. I can understand people's attachment to the Lancers, as I'm still fond of the Gollancz volumes I originally read, even though the Del Rays are the ones I go back to for re-reading.

Reading up on DeCamp and his impact on Conan & REH is ultimately conflicting. It is nice to have REH popular and well respected among the circles that matter, and that he has been able to reach a wide audience, even in edited form. At the same time, I'm positive that Conan and REH would have survived to the present without De Camp's juggernaut, and even to an extent other proponents like Glenn Lord & Karl Edward Wagner: I truly believe REH is good enough that someone would have come by him, realized how good he was, and had his work survive to modern times in some form. Maybe as an anthology regular, maybe as something like the CPI of today, who knows. Good art can't be put down: it would take a concentrated effort to burn all the Weird Tales, manuscripts, letters and reviews that ever were to consign Robert Ervin Howard to the dust of lost history.

I guess older Howard readers have more cause for admiration/dislike for DeCamp than I do, but that may be because we're living in a veritable silver age of REH, where his pure work can reach its audience unhindered by legal and personal restraints. I just look back and wonder at the whole strange story of DeCamp, Conan and Howard.

[Mark Finn]

Thank you for the comments!

You know, as a new fan, you can come in to this free of any sentimental baggage, unlike most of us. If in your examination of things, you find de Camp poisonous, then there you go. Since everything you've bought has been moving forward, away from his influence, you are in good shape.

There are others, however, thanks TO the Millions of Lancers and Aces sold, who show up out of the blue and, having read all twelve of the "saga," proceed to talk like experts, spouting off facts and information and spreading theories that are twenty (or more!) years out of date, largely discredited, etc. That's why me, Rusty, Indy, Paul Herman, Larry, and a bunch of others routinely swing through and keep an eye out for stuff like that. We don't want casual browsers and new fans getting old or bad information about REH and his work. So much damage has been done to due to disinformation about REH that we're only now starting to repair it with more positive, more current, and a far more balanced assessment of the man and his writing.

I almost got into a fight with George Scithers at World Fantasy last year because he contradicted me on a panel about authors whose literary reputations precede them. Scithers is in his 70s and nowhere NEAR up to date on what's been going on in Howard studies for the past two decades. His knowledge of REH stops short about 1979, which is nothing. Less than nothing.

And this is the guy who was a huge part of Amra.

Anyway, it's in the setting straight the record that some folks will feel the need to defend de Camp. For many, he was a fatherly figure, kindly, courtly, gray-haired, super-intelligent, etc. and was always polite and gracious to the fans. A peach of a guy if you met him at a con or wrote him a fan letter. But there was another side to de Camp that was all business, and that's the side he never showed to the fans. Only the inner circle of Robert E. Howard fans were privy to the de Camp behind the mask, and even then, it was glimpses, not real looks. But there's more evidence that belies de Camp's public persona and perception of himself to the Conan fans.

I'm not trying to take away anyone's hero, here. But my fan-relationship with de Camp was always sketchy. See, I wasn't in a hurry to get to the sword fights. I wanted to know more about Robert E. Howard. And for years, the only guy who could tell me about him was de Camp. And even then, I just knew there was stuff he was leaving out, not telling me, or flat-out just plain getting wrong.

Anyway. I hope Morgan's series forces some of the more strident defenders to at least modify their stance on de Camp. Yes, he was quite the Conan promoter. There was a cost to that promotion, however.

[indestructibleman]

my first introduction to De Camp was in Asimov's autobiography. Asimov being a friend of his i had a purely positive impression of the man. really surprised me when i started to get into Howard fandom.

[deuce]

my first introduction to De Camp was in Asimov's autobiography. Asimov being a friend of his i had a purely positive impression of the man. really surprised me when i started to get into Howard fandom.

Hey I-man! From people whom I've met/corresponded with, LSdC appears to have been a very charming, erudite fellow (as Mark thoughtfully noted). Personally, I own a lot of his NON-Conan-related work. It appears that many so-called "fans" are "fans" simply of his "Conan" pastiches/editorship. This is blatant, nostalgic sentimentality at work, IMO. IF de Camp was SUCH a "great writer", why don't y'all read his NON-CONAN stuff (this is a "general question", indestructibleman, NOT aimed at you)? Also IMO, LSdC couldn't wrap his brain around the world-view of REH well enough to write a Conan pastiche worthy of the name. LSdC saw/felt things in a fundamentally different way than Howard. It doesn't matter how "smart" or "charming" he was, de Camp just couldn't write a Conan story (prime examples: Conan and the Spider God and Conan the Liberator).


BTW, I think that LSdC's "Hellenistic" historical adventure novels and his "Krishna" series novels (and his "Pusad" stuff) are all highly entertaining. I own complete sets .

[Fernando]

It doesn't matter how "smart" or "charming" he was, de Camp just couldn't write a Conan story (prime examples: Conan and the Spider God and Conan the Liberator).

I agree with you about CatSG and CtL. These and other LSDC's works on Conan were indeed very unfaithful to REH. However, the DeCamp's pastiches Hawks Over Shem, Black Tears, The Flame Knife and the Untitled Synopsis' development, titled The Hall of the Dead by LSDC, seem to be at least almost 100% faithful to REH's conception, IMO.

[deuce]

It doesn't matter how "smart" or "charming" he was, de Camp just couldn't write a Conan story (prime examples: Conan and the Spider God and Conan the Liberator).

I agree with you about CatSG and CtL. These and other LSDC's works on Conan were indeed very unfaithful to REH. However, the DeCamp's pastiches Hawks Over Shem, Black Tears, The Flame Knife and the Untitled Synopsis' development, titled The Hall of the Dead by LSDC, seem to be at least almost 100% faithful to REH's conception, IMO.

Most of those works you cited were based from "models" left by REH.

[Strom]

I just put another installment in the De Camp Controversy at rehupa.com. I will be doing this every few days, adding a few little nuggets of information.

Morgan

Let's spice up this lovefest debate:

Welcome Morgan - hope you stop by more often and share your thoughts. I'm enjoying your series so far and look forward to more. Since the main argument made in support of is DeCamp that he successfully marketed Howard to the masses with the Lancer/Sphere series - I don't think that can be debated (even Finn agrees DeCamp was successful in that endeavor) - is your series kind of a behind the scenes look at the motivation and business decisions involved with that success? I remember the movie The Wizard of Oz and the disappointment we all felt when the curtain is pulled back and the reality that the wizard is just an old man and not an all powerful being. Often the decisions made behind the scenes are not pretty and when revealed can be easily interpreted to meet any argument. If the final result is success - is it necessary to have DeCamp be the biggest Howard fan? In fact, I've never heard a Decamp supporter argue that DeCamp was the biggest fan. That almost seems to be a title that the scholars of today fight for in Howardom and would of liked to have had Decamp share, but is it necessary since one can not argue the success DeCamp had with the Lancer/Sphere books - just look at the impact Howard had on creators like Gygax, Moorcock and numerous others who read the Lancer books? I guess my question to spice up this debate is:

What other argument do the DeCamp supporters argue besides the immense impact DeCamp had in marketing Howard to the masses? I would be interested to know if that is the sole argument in this debate from their side.