On Reviewing, Critiquing, Analysing and So Forth

Mark Finn posted a most intriguing piece on the art of reviewing.  I'm glad I missed the kerfuffle on Good Reads, as it's exactly the sort of thing that would have me spluttering in disbelief and indignation, but Mark uses it as a background to an issue I'd been pondering:

When I was a book seller (for years and years) I was called upon to give my opinion about books on a daily basis. Now, this can be tricky. If I tell someone about a book that I hated, that I think sucked, and I say it's the greatest thing ever, then that's a lie. And if they buy that book based on my lie, and hate the book, then guess what? I've lost all of my credibility.

Over the years, I learned the value of tact. It's perfectly okay to say to someone asking about, say, Henry Miller, that "I'm not the best person to ask for a recommendation. I don't personally care for him. I think he's a little too gimmicky." If they asked for more, I'd tell them what made Miller's writing more of a blog trick than actual prose. But I'd always end with, "But that's just me. Other folks here love Miller and can tell you why he's great." I'm not putting down anyone who likes Miller. I'm just explaining why I don't. See how that works? Let me say this out loud, so there can be no misunderstanding: if you're not capable of doing that every time you hit a movie, or book, or record that you don't like, then you're not going to be an effective critic. You're just going to be another nameless, faceless voice in an already crowded Internet yelling "IT SUCKS" from the other side of the lake.

Take a moment to decide if you're a reviewer, or if you're just a reader. If you want to be a reviewer, then you've got to be brilliant. Or gifted. Or both. But if you just want to be a reader, and just want to be able to say what you think, without all of that other stuff getting in the way, then make the effort to say what you mean and mean what you say. Use your words. You're a reader. You of all people should know the value of written communication.

An issue I'd been wrestling with a bit: am I a reader, or a critic?  I've done a bit of both: I've offered my opinions on things without necessarily critiquing them, and I've also done breakdowns and analyses. But which of the two am I aiming for? In fact, why choose?

Mark Finn's gearing up: "Southwestern Discomfit" and Blood & Thunder 2.0

A couple of Mark Finn-related links I wanted to share.

First is something I find to be of tremendous importance: "Southwestern Discomfit," a response to Gary Romeo's "Southern Discomfort."  The interests of impartiality on the REHupa website have meant that the latter essay, despite a few considerable issues (which Mark discusses), is widely available to anyone who comes on the site. Unfortunately, the lack of any counterpoint to the essay means that some have taken this as the Party Line on REH and race, which is certainly not the case.

Bothered by this phenomenon in recent times, Mark decided to offer that counterpoint:

REHupa #173 was a watershed mailing, way back in February 2002, for a number of reasons. Significantly, it was the mailing that featured Gary Romeo's article, "Southern Discomfort." As I read the article, I immediately noticed that Gary, in constructing his argument, was so interested in trawling the bottom that he willfully overlooked so much better stuff closer to the surface.  It made me angry, and it made me instantly defensive.  What I wanted to do was first ask Gary: what was your point in writing the article? Who is the target audience for it? And then I wanted to take it apart, piece by piece in my next mailing.

But I didn't. I was new, and I didn't want to rock the boat, or make any enemies right away. So I held my tongue. Besides, I wondered, I had no idea what my fellow REHupans thought about any of this. Maybe they agreed with Gary.

As it turned out, they did not. In the subsequent mailings, several of the older and more experienced REHupa members took Gary to task, and took a number of calculated swings at his essay, his methodology, and even his intent. I felt a lot better about my involvement in REHupa, but I regretted never having a chance to tee off on the topic.

When the REHupa website started up, it was determined that more recent, more approachable articles could also be listed on the site, if any member so wanted. Gary was one of the few people who stepped up to the plate and actually handed out articles to post. Along with his other Pro-de Camp essays was "Southern Discomfort." I watched it go up, go live, and bit my tongue. After all, I thought, who was I to say that Gary could list all the rest of his articles, except that one? That's when I got the idea of first doing a counterpoint article, just to balance out Gary's essay, especially now that it was devoid of its context within the REHupa mailings and commentary structure. But at the time, I was working on what would become Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, and so, I thought, I had bigger fish to fry.

Now it's 2011. I've been a member in REHupa for nearly ten years now. And it's high time I took a whacking stick to "Southern Discomfort" publically. It has needed it for a long time, particularly since it's one of the most popular things accessed on the REHupa website. The number of links to it from external blogs, websites, and citations used to indicate that yes, Robert E. Howard was indeed a racist, because look, right here, this guy says so on the experts' website, are too numerous to count. That's the problem with Internet research: it's grab and go, and no effort is made to fact-check it.

Well, you may consider this the official fact-check. This article assumes that someone has already read "Southern Discomfort" and want to know more about whether or not Robert E. Howard was a racist or not.

I don't doubt that the issue of Howard and race is something that will be a subject of discussion for as long as Howard himself is, but the more approaches we have to the argument, the more fulfilling and satisfying those discussions may be.

The second piece of news is on the new edition of Mark's outstanding Blood & Thunder: The Life And Art of Robert E. Howard. He made a tantalizing mention that an announcement will be made on Monday, but to tide us over, he revealed the cover for B&T 2.0, courtesy of the indefatigably talented Keegan duo:

I liked the cover for B&T 1.0, but I like this a lot better. Why? Because it has Robert E. Howard on it! That's always good. Plus, while the previous cover had the requisite sanguinary & brontological elements, Conan hacking lumps out of a giant snake isn't representative of Howard's vast library - something Mark himself keenly notes frequently - so rather than pick one aspect of Howard's work, why not pick a quintessential image of Howard which tells you everything you need to know about the man in a single shot?  Better than the studio photo, certainly.

One of these is not like the other

The second part of Mark Finn's interview with Adventures Fantastic (the first part of which I swore I commented on, but apparently haven't) is up, and as ever, Mark has a lot of things to say.  Mostly in the manner of the Texan, natch.

However, the beginning of the interview just hammered something home to me:

Howard films…I have to tell you a quick story, an anecdote.  We managed to get ahold of a copy of Solomon Kane from a friend who taped a bootleg.  My wife Cathy was real excited to sit down and watch it.  We were five minutes in, and she said, "Was this Robert E. Howard right here?"

And I said, "No."

Then she said, "Okay."  And we watch a little bit more.  He goes through the things he goes through and he's killing people left and right, and she says, "This has got to be Howard."

And I said, "No, this isn't in any of the Solomon Kane stories."  

"Huh."

I said, "I'll tell you what.  I'll let you know when the Howard stuff shows up 'cause I'll probably get real excited about it."

She goes, "Great."

Thirty minutes go by.  She says, "He's met the family now.  Is this Howard?"

"No, this isn't Howard."

We get to about ten minutes before the end, and she says, "Honey, is there any Robert E. Howard in this?"

I said, "Well, the guy's name is Solomon Kane." 

She said, "Honey, that doesn't count."

The friend I went to the cinema with to see Solomon Kane didn't ask, but then, I'd been bleating about SK's divergences beforehand and told her that this was basically a made up story featuring a dude called Solomon Kane.  Come to think of it, I think I might do a Youtube video of Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Kull the Conqueror and Solomon Kane consisting *only* of the elements one can find in the original stories.  A bit like the purist edits for Jackson's Lord of the Rings, only they'd be about 10 minutes long.  Altogether.

This part spoke to me too:

You know, it's a little sad that the best one of the bunch is still the old "Pigeons From Hell" Thriller episode.  Boris Karloff's adaptation of "Pigeons From Hell" still stands out as following the storyline.  Which is such a novel approach.  Why didn't I think of that?  Why not just take something from the books?  How simple and how basic.  “No, no, no, you don't understand, Mark, we've got to rewrite Conan so that he's on a quest for vengeance.”  Oh, cause that hasn't been done to death.  Yeah, yeah, that makes prefect sense.  Yeah, why not, why not?  In fact, I got an idea.  Why don't you have a Vikings kill his family.  We've never seen that before in a film. 

It just makes me crazy that these guys in LA have…I don't think it's ignorance.  I think it's a willful self confidence there that feeds an ego that has to be the size of C’thulhu.  It's the only thing that makes sense.  If I come to them with a proposal set in a savage land in a distant time about a guy who walks into town out of the wilderness and through strength, cunning, guile, his own wits, he pulls himself up by his bootstraps to become the most famous rogue in town.  But because he's still new in town he hasn't counted on the forces of civilization rallying around him, and so the story ends when he's betrayed and has to leave town.  And they say, "What's the name of this piece?"  and I say, "Krogan the Mercenary".  They'd be like [snaps fingers], "Awesome, we'll run with it.  It'll be just like Walter Hill did in Last Man Standing.  Yeah.  We won't give him an origin.  No, it makes him mysterious.  Perfect!  I love it!" 

That should be the Conan movie.  That should be the Conan movie.  But no, noooo, let's give him a family.  Even though Robert E. Howard's stuff so seldom uses family for anything, much less a motif for vengeance.  Usually it's an excuse to move away.  

Inspired by Mark's post, I created a little bit of comparison between the fantasy films and television series which we've seen in the past decade.

The Harry Potter film series - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Lord of the Rings - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Chronicles of Narnia - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Bridge to Terabithia - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Golden Compass - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Stardust - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Hogfather - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

City of Ember - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Spiderwick Chronicles - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Coraline - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Twilight film series - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Conan the Barbarian - made up a story, characters, themes and settings that can't be found in the original literature. Bares no resemblance to any of the original author's actual stories.

A Game of Thrones - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Can you see anything unusual there?

*As James noted in the comments, calling some of these "recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories" might be over-generous on my part, but in comparison to Conan the Barbarian...

Well, we all knew this would happen.

As for love of Truth, it never occurred to me to doubt that you were motivated by a desire to establish truth. I supposed it was a fact that everybody took for granted, that the aim of every intelligent man was Truth. I knew it was your aim, and it did not occur to me to make the formal statement that my aims were similar. I did not suppose it was necessary.
- Robert E. Howard, letter to H.P. Lovecraft, January 1935

Mark Finn's New Manifesto was bound to rankle some folks, but the net had been unusually quiet.

But fear not, for James Nicoll has come to the rescue with a post called "By Crom, they seem thin-skinned." If you met some of us in person, you'd find that very little about a substantial subset of Howard fans can be called "thin." But I kid.

We get the usual sort of gems, like mistaking what the Manifesto was about (that apparently Mark is rallying against literary criticism when it's quite clear that he's rallying against bad literary criticism), a deCampista leaping to the Spraguester's defense (in the form of James Enge, who wrote a review of Almuric that utterly beggars belief in some respects), and the pop culture reference posing as gag (Leave Brit Robert Alone! please (sob)).

It's a shame most of the criticism of Mark's piece is essentially a misunderstanding of what it was all about.  As is clear in the article, Mark is not against new ideas on Howard's writing and their approach to sex, gender, race, class and whatnot.  What he is against is the silly nonsense based on absolutely no concrete foundations that somehow get touted as fact.  It isn't about being unable to cope with criticism of REH as a man and an author - it's about not putting up with inaccuracy and shoddy or non-existent research.

The New Manifesto is not just about defending REH from those meanies who throw silly insults his way, or come up with crazy ideas about his work: it's about establishing the truth.  Even if you don't know, like or care about Robert E. Howard and his work, surely one can sympathise with the desire to lift the obfuscating veil of rumour and groundless speculation to reveal the light of knowledge and truth?

But then, failing - or even refusing - to understand things is the hallmark of the deCampista.

There seems to be a conviction among modems that anything which seems to fall outside the narrow lines of their personal experience is impossible. They are like colorblind men who deny the existence of colors because they are unable to detect them. Like you, I prefer an open mind. I do not think that I have such a grasp on cosmic truth that a thing is necessarily false because I fail to understand the reason of it; I am willing to believe that things very possibly may exist outside my limited range of comprehension.
- Robert E. Howard, Letter to Clark Ashton Smith, 14th December, 1933

Triangulation: Roy Thomas, Blood & Thunder, and A Personal Note

There were two pretty big pieces of news this week.

First off, Roy Thomas is returning to Conan. While I have many, many problems with Thomas' myriad adaptations, there are a number of considerations which make me cut him some slack, in comparison to the likes of Busiek and Truman. For one, Thomas was wrestling with the Comics Code Authority, the draconian institution dedicated to making comics safe for tiddlypeeps, and as a result, perpetuating the "comics are for kids" fallacy. (No medium can be restricted to a demographic, people.) He also had the De Camp juggernaut to contend with, where he pretty much had to use De Camp's existing pastiches for many stories, including the maligned "The Hand of Nergal" and "The Treasure of Tranicos."