We can talk morals and meanings but Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories excel because Howard could write. After learning of Howard’s suicide, Lovecraft lamented:
That such a genuine artist should perish while hundreds of insincere hacks continue to concoct spurious ghosts and vampires and space-ships and occult detectives is indeed a sorry piece of cosmic irony!
I should call it a tragedy but if one doesn’t believe in the ultimate meaning of the universe, then one must be content with irony. Regardless, Howard made his living as a popular writer in an age when fiction was a more widespread entertainment. Having taught himself to write without any formal education in the matter, he sold dozens of stories to magazines. At his best, Howard shimmers with barely contained energy. His prose is rich and elaborate but not without purpose. These are load-bearing words:
The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The pale bleak sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads, back-drawn in the death throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race.
What a wealth of information the passage conveys—much of it unstated. With a few careful sentences—though they may seem careless—Howard paints a picture of the aftermath of a Viking battle or, as it turns, something very similar to Vikings. Note how the final ornate sentence lets the reader identify the combatants as one people with one religion while still distinguishing the minor physical difference of hair color. Note the continuous hammer-blow descriptions of ice and snow, slaughter, blood and steel, set against the prayer of a warrior race. Here we can grasp both the natural environment of these people and something of their mindset. This battle is no rare thing.
But that’s all tone and setting. Let’s consider Howard’s narration:
Murilo had been mistaken when he assumed this arrest denoted discovery of Conan's planned escape. It was another matter; Athicus [the corrupt guard bribed to allow Conan’s escape] had become careless in his dealings with the underworld, and one of his past sins had caught up with him.
Another jailer took his place, a stolid, dependable creature whom no amount of bribery could have shaken from his duty. He was unimaginative, but he had an exalted idea of the importance of his job.
After Athicus had been marched away to be formally arraigned before a magistrate, this jailer made the rounds of the cell as a matter of routine. As he passed that of Conan, his sense of propriety was shocked and outraged to see the prisoner free of his chains and in the act of gnawing the last shreds of meat from a huge beefbone. The jailer was so upset that he made the mistake of entering the cell alone, without calling guards from the other parts of the prison. It was his first mistake in the line of duty, and his last. Conan brained him with the beef bone, took his poniard and his keys, and made a leisurely departure. As Murilo had said, only one guard was on duty there at night. The Cimmerian passed himself outside the walls by means of the keys he had taken and presently emerged into the outer air, as free as if Murilo's plan had been successful.
Here we have a lovely passage with a tragedy in miniature or perhaps a farce. The corrupt jailer finds himself caught up in his sins. Very likely, he ends up hanged or sent to labor in the mines. His replacement, the incorruptible jailer, suffers from pride. Seeing Conan unbound offends him and it costs him his life. It is true that each of the jailers is one-dimensional, they’re only bit characters, but the dimensions are clearly sketched out and it is these same dimensions of their personal character which determine their contrasting fates. Both of these are easily envisioned human flaws. It may seem convenient that the second guard enters Conan’s cell alone but he doesn’t know, as the reader does, that the barbarian is the most dangerous prisoner who ever sulked in that cell.
Let us consider a more in-depth characterization:
On one of the divans a man was reclining, looking toward the door. He laughed as he met the Cimmerian's startled glare.
This man was naked except for a loin-cloth and high-strapped sandals. He was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled at each slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every action and inflection.
…
Slightly taller than Conan, and much heavier, Baal-pteor loomed before him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching convulsively. Conan released the hilt of his imprisoned sword and fell silent, watching his enemy through slitted lids.
'Your head, Cimmerian!' taunted Baal-pteor. 'I shall take it with my bare hands, twisting it from your shoulders as the head of a fowl is twisted! Thus the sons of Kosala offer sacrifice to Yajur. Barbarian, you look upon a strangler of Yota-pong. I was chosen by the priests of Yajur in my infancy, and throughout childhood, boyhood and youth I trained in the art of slaying with the naked hands—for only thus are the sacrifices enacted. Yajur loves blood, and we waste not a drop from the victim's veins. When I was a child they gave me infants to throttle; when I was a boy I strangled young girls; as a youth, women, old men and young boys. Not until I reached my full manhood was I given a strong man to slay on the altar of Yota-pong.
'For years I offered the sacrifices to Yajur. Hundreds of necks have snapped between these fingers—' he worked them before the Cimmerian's angry eyes. 'Why I fled from Yota-pong to become Totrasmek's servant is no concern of yours. In a moment you will be beyond curiosity. The priests of Kosala, the stranglers of Yajur, are strong beyond the belief of men. And I was stronger than any. With my hands, barbarian, I shall break your neck!'
And like the stroke of twin cobras, the great hands closed on Conan's throat.
Howard challenges himself with a solitary character, a man and not a monster, who poses a physical threat to his indomitable barbarian. He is the only man in all the stories explicitly stated to be taller than Conan. The author could have relayed Baal-pteor’s history through narration, rather than speech, but, in that case, Conan would not be as aware of his peril as the reader. He would merely see a very strong man, not an iron-armed zealot who earns his bread by crushing throats. As a speech, Baal-pteor’s history also demonstrates his utter lack of remorse and sympathy. Because he boasts of his cruelty, we know he can’t be talked out of attacking with a plea for mercy. Finally, he is a performer. He kills for show in the splendid temple rituals of the east. It would be quite natural for such a man to boast before making his move.
As mentioned earlier, Howard supported himself through his writing. He didn’t have a lot of quibbles about his work being sacred. The first published Conan story, was recycled from an earlier unpublished tale concerning a different character. Likewise, when The Black Stranger failed to find a magazine, Howard wrote out all the Conan names and places—replacing them with an Irish pirate in an historical setting.
A number of the Conan stories are obvious rehashes of earlier tales, which isn’t to say that they copied from the same text with a few revisions but rather that they involve very similar plot elements. Both Iron Shadows in the Moon and The Devil in Iron revolve around supernatural horrors lurking on islands in the same inland sea. Both Xuthal of the Dusk and Red Nails feature enclosed, technologically advanced cities with languorous, dwindling civilizations. Iron Shadows in the Moon stands out as a solid adventure while The Devil in Iron probably ranks as the worst of the published Conan works. Critics claim that Red Nails comprises one of the best works, while they decry Xuthal as mediocre, and there’s something to most of their arguments but I wonder how much of their preference stems from the former tale highlighting a fearless warrior-woman while the latter depicts a much more ordinary and realistic dancing-girl rightly terrified for her life. However, we shouldn’t let the similarities paper over the differences in the rehashes. One is a city of degenerate dreamers, lost in a drugged mist, living in a world of phantoms and illusions, stalked and devoured by an unfathomable being which they lack even the thought of resisting. The other is a city of degenerate killers who delight in nothing save lust, murder and torture. Obviously, Conan’s helpless dancing-girl companion fits thematically into one city, while his bloodthirsty pirate woman companion complements the theme of the other.
Here I am praising Howard when I started the paragraph with the intent of critiquing his weaknesses.
His prose can fall short:
Conan was basically a direct-actionist. Such subtlety as he possessed had been acquired through contact with the more devious races.
A direct-actionist? We see what you mean but this is not the best narration. Can we go back to braining guards with beefbones? Fortunately, Howard is most often far better than this. Still, this is a lesson to all writers and editors never to ease up.