Tolkien liked Howard??

[Mike]

I found this interesting blurb by L. Sprague de Camp:

"We sat in the garage for a couple of hours, smoking pipes, drinking beer, and talking about a variety of things. Practically anything in English literature, from Beowulf down, Tolkien had read and could talk intelligently about. He indicated that he 'rather liked' Howard's Conan stories"

???

Objections:
1. Wierd Tales was never released in the UK, therefore I don't see how Tolkien could ever have read one of these stories in the first place--or whether an Oxford professor would ever get caught dead with a copy of "Wierd Tales"--the pulpiest of pulp fiction.
2. It seems totally unlike the good professor to have ever read Conan and liked it. Violent, brutal, and yes, sexual. Tolkien had voiced his distaste for the fantasy style of his time. While "Hour of the Dragon" aka "Conan the Conqueror" was released in the UK as a novel, I highly doubt Tolkien would have ever picked it up.

Does anyone know if Mr. de Camp's statement has any merit?

[Alcuin]

I don’t see any mention of it in Letters or Carter’s biography of Tolkien. I’ve never heard this before; but that does not mean that someone could not have sent him a copy of a Conan novel, particularly in the 1960s or early 1970s, when they were ubiquitous “dime” novels in bookracks even outside bookstores. I bought my first paperback copy of the 3 volumes of Lord of the Rings in the summer of 1973, right before Tolkien died. There were Conan books in the racks nearby. (I believe I do recall that I purchased them for $1.25 apiece or some such in a K-Mart; a similarly priced copy in 2006 would run for $5.62)

So even though it isn’t mentioned, I don’t think there is anything that would have prevented his having seen and read one of the novels. They were certainly available. But I have never heard this before, and I cannot find any mention of it in the obvious places.

Maybe someone else has some information one way or another?

[Mikey C]

We've been discussing this over at conan.com (http://www.conan.com/invboard/index.php?showtopic=4374&hl=tolkien), and I rather hoped somewhere here would have some information on it.

It certainly is possible that Tolkien may have read some Howard - although its hard to imagine him wandering around Oxford clutching copies of Weird Tales (apparently it was available in England, but those wonderfully lurid Margaret Brundage covers would have raised a few eyebrows, to put it mildly), a few Howard tales were anthologised during Tolkien's lifetime.

However, scepticism runs high in Howard fandom, largely due to the unreliability of L Sprague de Camp as a witness. Dark Valley Destiny, his psychobabble-laden REH biography, is a notorious source of disinformation, so doubt is also cast on the Tolkien claim (made, I believe, in a 1979 tome entitled Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers).To my mind, it's not impossible that Tolkien may have found one or two Howard pieces to his liking, although he would no doubt have found REH's approach to "secondary creation" to be sloppy and would have disliked the moral tone (or lack of it!) of the Conan tales distasteful.

If anyone can find any evidence, it would be nice to learn that Tolkien had read and appreciated Howard's work; they stand together as the two "founding fathers" of 20th Century heroic fantasy.

[Eledhwen]

If anyone can find any evidence, it would be nice to learn that Tolkien had read and appreciated Howard's work; they stand together as the two "founding fathers" of 20th Century heroic fantasy.If there was any evidence out there, then you can rest assured that it would have fallen into the hands of Howard publishers/fans, who would have fallen over backwards to ensure that the news be made as public as possible. For instance, J K Rowling stated once that she had "absolutely adored" a book called 'The Little White Horse' as a child. This endorsement is now plastered across the front cover.

[Barliman Butterbur]

I found this interesting blurb by L. Sprague de Camp:

"We sat in the garage for a couple of hours, smoking pipes, drinking beer, and talking about a variety of things. Practically anything in English literature, from Beowulf down, Tolkien had read and could talk intelligently about. He indicated that he 'rather liked' Howard's Conan stories"
Does anyone know if Mr. de Camp's statement has any merit?

This may shed some light:

========================

Tolkien's reception in the USA was more whole-hearted. Independently of Tolkien, a popular style of heroic fantasy had developed, entitled "Sword-and-sorcery," usually written by science-fiction authors as recreation from stories of space-ships and aliens. Barbarians, sorcerers, seductive princesses, and treasure hoards were common features of yarns set amid a mix of fantasy cultures and periods, from Viking saga to the Arabian Nights. So, although Tolkien saw himself in a literary tradition running from the Volsung Saga and Celtic legend through Rider Haggard, William Morris, Dunsany, and Eddison, there was another "pulp" tradition from legend, Haggard, Dunsany, E.R. Burroughs, Cabell, H.E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, Fritz Leiber and L. Sprague de Camp. Typical of this American style is an anti-heroic, tongue-in-cheek attitude to great deeds which invites the reader to bridge the gulf between "real life" and fantasy: Tolkien does employ this anachronistic approach in The Hobbit, in the person of Bilbo and in the authorial comments, but in The Lord of the Rings this self-consciousness disappears, replaced by a pervading down-to-earth quality in the four hobbits' response to the heroic world, to accustom readers to heroic attitudes and archaic language, without inviting ridicule.

A Best-Seller Twice

After hardback publication of The Lord of the Rings, American SF fans put the word out that Tolkien was an essential read. Paperback reprints of the Conan stories popularised sword-and-sorcery in SF bookshops, and the market was prepared for paperback Tolkien, but there were more obstacles in the way. Tolkien disliked paperback editions and wanted to revise the text. In 1965 Ace Books forced his hand by publishing a legal but unauthorised paperback, with cover illustrations and blurb to appeal to fans of SF and fantasy, and The Lord of the Rings became a best-seller twice over: selling well in the Ace edition, and then as a controversial book when the story of the author's disapproval broke, and an authorised, revised edition came out months later. At last young people could afford to buy Tolkien for themselves: in England a one-volume paperback appeared in 1968.

Source: http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/jessica_jrrt.html

Barley

[Mikey C]

I've just found this (http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/dmiller/000333.htm). Proof positive that Tolkien at least owned a Conan story (given to him by L. Sprague de Camp, surprise, surprise...) although we still don't know whether he actually even read, let alone enjoyed it.

This anthology mainly contained tales by American writers of the Weird Tales genre, including Howard's "Shadows in the Moonlight". However, is it significant that the only one Tolkien picked to comment on (albeit negatively) was by Lord Dunsany, the sole writer from the British Isles. Did he even bother to read the rest? (Please, someone with $3000 to spare, buy this book and tell us where the spine is bent!)

If there was any evidence out there, then you can rest assured that it would have fallen into the hands of Howard publishers/fans, who would have fallen over backwards to ensure that the news be made as public as possible.

This is a very good point - especially as L. Sprague de Camp was the in control of Conan Properties Inc, which he set up basically to profit from Howard's works (in a way which still has many fans fuming (http://www.barbariankeep.com/issues.html)). If he could have squeezed a written quote out of Tolkien, I am sure we would all know it be heart by now.

I think I'm ready to conclude that the whole thing is just the result of either Tolkien's politeness, or LSdC's wishful thinking - more likely the latter.

[Mike]

A little correction to a mistake I made:

The "Hour of the Dragon" never did get released in the UK, the company folded and the story ended up being published in "Weird Tales". I recently got a version of "hour of the Dragon", put out by Karl Edward Wagner, that has the unedited text and a whole lot of commentary on what happened.

Okay, to continue:

If there was any evidence out there, then you can rest assured that it would have fallen into the hands of Howard publishers/fans, who would have fallen over backwards to ensure that the news be made as public as possible. For instance, J K Rowling stated once that she had "absolutely adored" a book called 'The Little White Horse' as a child. This endorsement is now plastered across the front cover.Don't know about the fans--I think the series stands on its own and doesn't need any endorsements. But I know that newer REH collections released usually have a quote by Stephen King about Howard's writing "releasing sparks."

However, scepticism runs high in Howard fandom, largely due to the unreliability of L Sprague de Camp as a witness. Dark Valley Destiny, his psychobabble-laden REH biography, is a notorious source of disinformation, so doubt is also cast on the Tolkien claimL Sprague de Camp consistently gets a bad rap among Howard fans--an for good reason--but I do find that when he wasn't meddling with Conan, his original stories were actually quite good. He seemed to have been doing just fine on his own--don't see why he needed to cash in on stories that were at their popular height in the 1930s. (If there's one thing deCamp did, it was bring REH and Conan to a wider audience, even if in a highly distorted form).

Hey, Mikey C., what did YOU think of L. Sprague's original story additions to the Conan Saga? I generally find they are enjoyable, but only when written in tandem with Lin Carter. The stories he wrote on his own are, generally, quite flat when it came to Conan--I don't think he could channel the character (usually his heroes were intellectual and inventive, not strong-willed barbarians). Lin Carter, at least, had a better grasp of the genre, no matter how silly he made it.

've just found this (http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/dmiller/000333.htm). Proof positive that Tolkien at least owned a Conan story (given to him by L. Sprague de Camp, surprise, surprise...) although we still don't know whether he actually even read, let alone enjoyed it.Now THAT is interesting. Even though I didn't find "Iron Shadows in the Moonlight" quite as good as Howard's other Conan stories (it WAS better than "The Vale of Lost Women").

Well, if Tolkien liked Howard, or at least read him, and it was proven...God help us about the speculation of how Howard's Conan influenced Tolkien's Boromir...

[Mikey C]

Hey, Mikey C., what did YOU think of L. Sprague's original story additions to the Conan Saga?
The honest truth is that I haven't read them for years, so I can't really give a fair judgment. I think LSdC did treat Howard's work with disrespect in the way he handled Conan, but at the same time this is the way I first encountered the stories and I look back on the old Sphere paperbacks I had with affection.

Basically, I had read LotR a couple of times and was looking for more of the same. Lin Carter was a kind of avuncular guide to the world of fantasy through his introductions to paperback reissues and anthologies such as The Young Magicians. I'm pretty sure it was in one of those that I first encountered Howard. LSdC's attempt to string the Conan tales together into some kind of continuous epic, although counter to REH's modus operandi, was appealing to someone coming fresh from Middle Earth. But I do remember the tales being of variable quality.

It was a couple of years ago when I started to collect the new 3 volume unadulterated Del Rey edition of Conan that I really started to appreciate REH again. I would heartily recommend these books to anyone interested in reading Howard for the first time - they complete the task which Karl Edward Wagner set out to do, but was unable to complete.