Part 40 (1/2)
He shi+fted his weight in his chair and grinned ”Well,Yeah It's a kind of history”
Then Bob said the book described very vividly our ”rotting civilization”
After Bob left, I sat down, unwrapped the book, and began to look at it very carefully I read the inscription again, trying to ift the ability to 358
guild decay and change thebirds of poetry as demonstrated by this volu Howard about this very peculiar present: ”Bob, why did you give me that book by Pierre Lous?”
He whirled and looked atfor my blood,” I said defensively ”I didn't read too much of it”
”Read itYou lead a sheltered life You don't knohat's going on in the world”
That irritated s like that,” I said hotly ”It see about them doesn't make the world a better place; it only makes you a silent partner”
”You're a silent partner, whether you like it or not” He was getting warins to decay and die, the only thing ratification of their body's desires They beco, their laws, their religion every aspect of their lives
”That's what I' fiction, because they only want true stories of o, I had a hard ti to have to work to catch up with the irl, sex will be in everything you see and hear It's the way it hen Ro on a yarn like that now a Conan yarn Listen tocivilization, the norh to satisfy the damned insatiable appetites of the courtesans and, finally, of all the people They turn to Lesbianisoing to call it ”The Red Flame of Passion”
The Red Flame of Passion was quite evidently the story that was to become Red Nails, but Hoasn't yet ready to commit his idea to paper A few months later, around late April or 359
May 1935, Howard had another conversation on the subject with Novalyne: Bob volunteered that he wasn't through writing Conan stories I was sorry about that, for I don't care h
Bob said he had an idea for a Conan yarn that was about to jell Hadn't got to the place where he was ready to write it All he'd done so far was make a few notes, put it aside to let it lie there in his subconsciousness till it was fully built up
”What's this one about?” I asked
”I think this tioriest yarns I've ever written I don't think you'd care for it”
”Not if it's gory” I looked at him a little puzzled ”What do you mean 'sexy stories'?”
”My God My Conan yarns are filled with sex”
I couldn't see that the Conan yarns Bob had brought me to read had any sex in them Gore, yes
sex, no
”You have sex in the Conan yarns?” I said unbelievingly
”hell, yes That's what he did drinking, whoring, fighting What else was there in life?”
Red Nails was still not to be written for another feeeks, though
One reason was Weird Tales' shaky financial situation On May 6, 1935, Horote to Farnsworth Wright: ”I always hate to write a letter like this, but dire necessity forces ent plea for money As you know it has been six months since The People of the Black Circle (the story the check for which is now due me) appeared in Weird Tales
Weird Tales owes ht hundred dollars for stories already published and supposed to be paid for on publication enough to pay all ain if I could receive it all at once Perhaps this is impossible I have no wish to be unreasonable; I know ti unreasonable in asking you to pay me a check each month until the accounts are squared Honestly, at the rate we're going now, I'll be an old ent”
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Howard's need forat an alar rate and the
It took yet another serious incident in Howard's life to an dating one of Howard's best friends, Truett Vinson, without telling him
Howard discovered this a feeeks later, just as he and Truett were about to take a trip together to New Mexico Vinson and Hoere gone a week, and we can only i those few days
The high-point of the visit was Lincoln, home of the fa this visit that Howard found the last elements he needed to write Red Nails: for all their pseudo-Aztec nain not in Lake Zuad, but in the little New Mexican town The following passage frothy one, but it is indispensable to understanding what Hoas trying to do in Red Nails
[Vinson and I] caaunt host of a blood-stained past Of Lincoln Walter noble Burns, author of The Saga of Billy the Kid has said: ”The village went to sleep at the close of Lincoln County war and has never awakened again If a railroad never comes to link it with the far-aorld, it may slumber on for a thousand years You will find Lincoln now just as it hen Murphy and McSween and Billy the Kid knew it The village is an anachronism, a sort of mummy town”
I can offer no better description A mummy town Nowhere have I ever come face to face with the past more vividly; nowhere has that past beco out of e, that has somehow survived
Lincoln is a haunted place; it is a dead town; yet it lives with a life that died fifty years ago
The descendants of old enee; yet I foundif the old feud were really dead, or if the eht be blown to flame by a careless breath
I have never felt anywhere the exact sensations Lincoln aroused inIf there is a haunted spot on this hemisphere, then Lincoln is haunted I felt that if I slept the night there, the ghosts of the slain would stalk throughskull There was a feel of skeletons in the earth underfoot
And that, I understand, is no flight of fancy Every now and then sohs up a human skull So many men died in Lincoln
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Lincoln is a haunted town yet it is notso many men died there that makes it haunted, to me I have visited many spots where death was dealt whole-sale
But none of these places ever affected ed with a definite horror as in Lincoln I think I knohy Burns, in his splendid book that narrates the feud, raphical, or perhaps I should say topographical effect on the inhabitants I think geography is the reason for the unusually savage and bloodthirsty ery that has ient study of the feud and the psychology behind it The valley in which Lincoln lies is isolated from the rest of the world Vast expanses of desert and mountains separate it from the rest of humanity deserts too barren to support human life The people in Lincoln lost touch with the world Isolated as they were, their own affairs, their relationshi+p with one another, took on an inificance out of proportion to their actual ether tooupon themselves, until they reached monstrous proportions and culminated in those bloody atrocities which startled even the tough West of that day Visualize that narrow valley, hidden away a the barren hills, isolated from the world, where its inhabitants inescapably dwelt side by side, hated and being hated, and at last killing and being killed In such restricted, isolated spots, hu on the iive them birth, until they reached a point that can hardly be conceived by dwellers in more fortunate spots It ith a horror I frankly confess that I visualized the reign of terror that stalked that blood-drenched valley; day and night was a tense waiting, waiting until the thunder of the sudden guns broke the tension for a moment and men died like flies and then silence followed, and the tension shut down again Noout at night and a huony, no one dared open the door and see who had fallen I visualized people caught together like rats, fighting in terror and agony and bloodshed; going about their work by day with a shuta bullet in the back; and at night lying shuddering behind locked doors, tre in expectation of the stealthy footstep, the hand on the bolt, the sudden blast of lead through the s Feuds in Texas were generally fought out in the open, over wide expanses of country But the nature of the Bonito Valley determined the nature of the feud narrow, concentrated, horrible I have heard of people going mad in isolated places; I believe the Lincoln County War was tinged withto Cross Plains, in late June 1935, Howard at last sat down to write the story which had been ger in his mind for so manyof sex in the Conan stories, the particularly strained situation between Novalyne, Vinson and hi health furnished the iround to the new Conan story, several prototypes also helped give form to the tale
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More than two years earlier, he had completed the Conan story Xuthal of the Dusk, which has justly been considered a precursor of sorts to Red Nails The arrival of Conan and a woman in a city cut off from the rest of the Hyborian world, in which they have to face an evil woman and decadent inhabitants, is the basic framework common to both stories Xuthal of the Dusk is a rather inferior Conan tale, probably because Hoas not yet an accoive it the treatment he felt it deserved The heroine was insipid and the story was clearly exploitative However, Howard commented to Clark Ashton Smith that ”it really isn't as exclusively devoted to sword-slashi+ng as the announce Howard's papers was also found a synopsis for a Steve Harrison detective story that bears strong similarities to the Conan tale The synopsis is undated, but was probably written only a few months before the Conan story: ”[T]here had been an old feud between the Wiltshaws and the Richardsons, of which the present sets were the last of each line Another family, the Barwells, had been mixed up in the feud until, harried by both Richardsons and Wiltshaws, the last of that line, a grione aith her infant son, thirty- five years before, swearing vengeance on both clansEventually [Harrison] discovered that Doctor Ellis was really Joe Barwell, who had returned and lived in the town ten years to consua the two Barwells of the Harrison synopsis into Tolkemec Another character in the Harrison synopsis, Esau, ”a tall, ganglingas a bull,” was a probable inspiration for Oliant, with an enormous sweep of breast and the shoulders of a bull,” with the Biblical association of Esau's na the connection to the hairy Olmec
Red Nails is the counterpart to Beyond the Black River With the latter, Horote his ultimate ”Barbarism versus Civilization” tale, with the conclusion that ”barbarism must always ultimately triumph” He also stated that ”Civilization is unnatural” Red Nails was the story in which he would expand on that theme In all the stories he had written on the subject, the decadent and decaying phase of his civilizations, kingdoms, countries, or cities was never allowed to be carried out in its entirety: once divided and thus weakened, the civilized people were systeates In Beyond the Black River, the Picts played that part; in The Gods of Bal-Sagoth, a 1930 tale whose construction is quite similar to that of Red Nails, the ”red people” carried out the destruction
Red Nails would be different in the sense that no tribe of barbarians would be lurking at the gates of Xuchotl For the first ti process, with its decadent and decaying phases, is carried out to its inevitable end Xuchotl is an ”unnatural” city, in the sense implied in Beyond the Black River To be civilized is to be entirely removed from nature and its forces This is the reason why the city is not only cut off from the rest of the Hyborian world and its barbarian tribes, it is also, and equally importantly, cut off from nature itself: Xuchotl is coht is artificial and so is the food: the Xutchotlans eat ”fruit which is not planted in soil, but obtains its nourishment out of the air”