The Pleasures of Purple Prose
I can’t believe I never picked up any Conan stories when I was younger. After I read The Lord of the Rings, heroic fantasy was my bread and butter, the water I drank, the air I breathed. But as much as I enjoy the stories now, I wonder if I would have gotten as much out of them when I was a teen.
As a teen, I would have enjoyed the adventure and the violence in the stories. Conan isn’t stupid, and while he is cunning in how he applies force, part of the fun in these tales is knowing that Conan will always have to use his prodigious strength to fight his way out of whatever jam he finds himself in.
As an adult, I like the adventure and the violence, but I also find myself marveling at Robert E. Howard’s style, his adept way with adjectives, his versatility with verbs, his nuanced use of nouns. His prose can be flowery, but the intent is always clear, the vigor always rippling across the page like waves blown before a hurricane (to borrow a Howardian metaphor).
I don’t know many authors who could get away with such a baroque style today. Howard published the Conan story “Red Nails” in the magazine Weird Tales in 1936. In the age before television, words were given more weight, respected more: at least, that is my sense of things. Whether a writer in that era tended toward verbosity (a la F. Scott Fitzgerald) or toward minimalism (a la Hemingway), the writers expected their readers to mine as much value as possible from every word put to paper.
In this excerpt from “Red Nails,” the intrepid wanderer Conan and the beautiful pirate Valeria have been cornered on a tall rocky outcropping by a dinosaur-like dragon. In a cunning attempt to defeat the creature, Conan fashions a spear from some tree branches and his poniard, coats the blade with the juice of a poison fruit, and then leans over the edge to taunt the beast into attacking.
The thrill of watching Conan use both brain and brawn to overcome this first obstacle in the story is entertaining enough, but what would otherwise be a fairly pedestrian scene—Conan fashions a spear, taunts the dragon, stabs it—becomes almost lyrical in Howard’s hands. Phrases like “profane education,” “incessant yapping,” “more constitutionally silent animals,” “bestial bosoms,” “mastodonic brute,” vociferous pigmy,” and “primeval silence” add a color and vibrance that makes the images and our emotional associations with them fairly leap off the page—so what if said color is perhaps a dark purple?
The Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf, the Ring Cycle, et. al.: these tales have set the standard for ornate, colorful phrasings. Howard was writing for pulp magazines, it is true, but he was also writing in a grand tradition of larger-than-life heroes, monsters, villains, women, and adventures with all of them. His larger-than-life language is certainly not only appropriate, but necessary to convey the full grandeur of a hero like Conan.
As a teen, I would have enjoyed the adventure and the violence in the stories. Conan isn’t stupid, and while he is cunning in how he applies force, part of the fun in these tales is knowing that Conan will always have to use his prodigious strength to fight his way out of whatever jam he finds himself in.
As an adult, I like the adventure and the violence, but I also find myself marveling at Robert E. Howard’s style, his adept way with adjectives, his versatility with verbs, his nuanced use of nouns. His prose can be flowery, but the intent is always clear, the vigor always rippling across the page like waves blown before a hurricane (to borrow a Howardian metaphor).
I don’t know many authors who could get away with such a baroque style today. Howard published the Conan story “Red Nails” in the magazine Weird Tales in 1936. In the age before television, words were given more weight, respected more: at least, that is my sense of things. Whether a writer in that era tended toward verbosity (a la F. Scott Fitzgerald) or toward minimalism (a la Hemingway), the writers expected their readers to mine as much value as possible from every word put to paper.
In this excerpt from “Red Nails,” the intrepid wanderer Conan and the beautiful pirate Valeria have been cornered on a tall rocky outcropping by a dinosaur-like dragon. In a cunning attempt to defeat the creature, Conan fashions a spear from some tree branches and his poniard, coats the blade with the juice of a poison fruit, and then leans over the edge to taunt the beast into attacking.
There was more of it, some of it couched in elegance that made Valeria stare, in spite of her profane education among the seafarers. And it had its effect on the monster. Just as the incessant yapping of a dog worries and enrages more constitutionally silent animals, so the clamorous voice of a man rouses fear in some bestial bosoms and insane rage in others. Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic brute reared up on its mighty hind legs and elongated its neck and body in a furious effort to reach this vociferous pigmy whose clamor was disturbing the primeval silence of its ancient realm.Conan spears the dragon in the mouth, and thus facilitates his escape with Valeria.
The thrill of watching Conan use both brain and brawn to overcome this first obstacle in the story is entertaining enough, but what would otherwise be a fairly pedestrian scene—Conan fashions a spear, taunts the dragon, stabs it—becomes almost lyrical in Howard’s hands. Phrases like “profane education,” “incessant yapping,” “more constitutionally silent animals,” “bestial bosoms,” “mastodonic brute,” vociferous pigmy,” and “primeval silence” add a color and vibrance that makes the images and our emotional associations with them fairly leap off the page—so what if said color is perhaps a dark purple?
The Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf, the Ring Cycle, et. al.: these tales have set the standard for ornate, colorful phrasings. Howard was writing for pulp magazines, it is true, but he was also writing in a grand tradition of larger-than-life heroes, monsters, villains, women, and adventures with all of them. His larger-than-life language is certainly not only appropriate, but necessary to convey the full grandeur of a hero like Conan.
posted by Christopher at 8:21 PM
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