The Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales by Robert E. Howard (1925-36)
Robert E. Howard’s collective literary work is often overshadowed by his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian. As with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the success of a single creation can lead to subsequent material being overlooked or discounted. This can be a dilemma for many a popular author. Fortunately we live in an age where the back catalogue of many a writer is now freely available and lesser known work is re-evaluated. The publisher Wordsworth has recently compiled a collection of Howard’s short stories that squarely fall in to this category. Like his more popular work, the anthology The Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales focuses on the supernatural, the fantastic and baroque.
Robert E. Howard’s collective literary work is often overshadowed by his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian. As with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the success of a single creation can lead to subsequent material being overlooked or discounted. This can be a dilemma for many a popular author. Fortunately we live in an age where the back catalogue of many a writer is now freely available and lesser known work is re-evaluated. The publisher Wordsworth has recently compiled a collection of Howard’s short stories that squarely fall in to this category. Like his more popular work, the anthology The Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales focuses on the supernatural, the fantastic and baroque.
Howard’s literary style is accessible and very much in the idiom of the time. The men are virile and the women of exquisite beauty. This sets him aside from his contemporary, H.P. Lovecraft who shied away from such physical elements in his writing. However Howard shares that sense of the unearthly and the utterly alien, lurking beneath the everyday and the mundane. Like a good many of the great genre authors of the time, Howard conveys the sense that despite the modern world with its scientific and technological trappings, the ancient, arcane and inhuman is never far away. He also writes convincingly of the clash of cultures, as the colonial powers encroach into esoteric world of primeval Africa. There is a broad range of short stories in this collection.
“Wolfshead” tells of an 18th century soldier of fortune, haunted by the spirit of the werewolf he killed. Set in Eastern Africa in a private fiefdom, run on behalf of the Portuguese by a privateer, the story is interesting from both the fantastic and historical angles. “Sea Curse” tells of a more traditional tale of revenge and retribution. Again the nautical setting mixed with witchcraft, is very well researched and makes the story seem like a genuine sailor’s yarn; the sort told over a pint of ale in a lonely inn. In “The Hyena” we are confronted with a tale of New World meets old, as a young African rancher falls foul of a locally revered Witch Doctor or Fetish Man. It is a subtle story with a building sense of tension. You get a vivid mental picture of the enmity between the two central characters. Then for a change of direction, we have “The Skull” a thriller with a touch of the supernatural. This features East End opium dens, sinister crime lords with their fiendish knowledge of the occult, a flawed hero who fights for personal redemption and the love of an exotic, wronged woman. It is all very “traditional” yet the inclusion of the arcane plot elements makes it all the more enthralling.
It is essential that the reader be aware of the time period in which these stories were written. The prevailing social and political attitudes reflect the thinking of the time and should not be taken out of context. Anyone who has read the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (whom Howard bears similarities) will understand this point. Men were men, woman were placed on pedestals and venerated. Love is prosaic and very verbose. Foreigners are sinister and their culture ancient and abstract. Yet there is a sense of innocence in Howard’s work. Morality and grim determination often triumph over outlandish odds and plot devices. The tradition of the classic high adventure in literature is an obvious influence on the author. His writing is also not as bleak as his rivals, Lovecraft and Ashton Clarke. The Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales is recommended to genre fans and readers of classic pre-war American literature.
Mr. Tickle by Roger Hargreaves (1971)
Mr. Tickle was written in 1971 and if we wish to gain a greater understanding of this work, then we need to consider the political and historical landscape of the time, as so much of it is reflected in the subtleties of the text. This was the year that the UK changed its currency through decimalization. While Cambodia was ravaged by the Khmer Rouge, America opened Disney World as a shrine to capitalism and consumerism. These were turbulent times which saw the passing of old established world orders. The idea of whether the individual can have a meaningful impact upon the world during such an era is examined and stripped bare in Mr. Tickle, if one takes the time to find it.
Mr. Tickle was written in 1971 and if we wish to gain a greater understanding of this work, then we need to consider the political and historical landscape of the time, as so much of it is reflected in the subtleties of the text. This was the year that the UK changed its currency through decimalization. While Cambodia was ravaged by the Khmer Rouge, America opened Disney World as a shrine to capitalism and consumerism. These were turbulent times which saw the passing of old established world orders. The idea of whether the individual can have a meaningful impact upon the world during such an era is examined and stripped bare in Mr. Tickle, if one takes the time to find it.
Roger Hargreaves’ first work, Mr. Happy is regarded by many as his masterpiece. Mr. Tickle is something of a rarity amongst his body of work as it bucks the author’s previous style. The impact of excess or entrenched dogma, as seen in Mr. Greedy and Mr. Messy, are not explored in this story. Nor are the complex social ramifications of such monomanias dissected, as in those erudite cautionary tales, Mr. Nosey and Mr. Noisy. Mr. Tickle is a far more existential tale and easily the equal of Catcher in the Rye.
In many respects Mr. Tickle is an enigma, depicting a man free from the restraints of civilization. His pursuit of sensual enjoyment via the medium of tickling is both hedonistic and threatens the social order. For example he causes a postman to drop all his letters in a puddle, the tickling of a policeman ends in a traffic jam and his unbridled tactile stimulation of a Teacher leads to a rapid breakdown of classroom discipline. Yet it also demonstrates society’s inability to deal with anything outside of perceived social norms and customs. It is interesting to note that no sanction is taken against Mr. Tickle and the author cunningly infers that the protagonist actions ultimately liberate his “victims”, like a bizarre form of “Stockholm Syndrome”.
Does this make Mr. Tickle a terrorist? His weapons are laughter and his extraordinary long arms, yet they are as devastatingly effective to the establishment, as an AK-47 or a hand grenade. Though his principal targets wear uniforms, Mr. Tickle does not have the same goals as the contemporary revolutionary organisations such as the Red Brigade or the Baader-Meinhof Group. Hargreaves’ is not interested in over throwing the established order from without but seeking reform from within, by the removal of social conditioning. Freedom through “tickling” is used as a metaphor for existential self-realisation.
It should be noted that Mr. Tickle himself is not an unchecked force of nature. Indeed he is the embodiment of measured restraint and not tainted by the “shock and awe” excesses of the Robert McNamara generation. At the end of his day’s exploits he calmly reflects on events, in a sober and sanguine fashion from the comfort of his armchair. He extols the virtues of catharsis as an escape from restrictive social conventions and entrenched establishment dogma. He demonstrates that all humans need to embrace their desires to a degree and to deny them is to deny our very humanity. Cormac McCarthy takes two hundred and forty six pages to reach this conclusion, in his novel The Road. Hargreaves does it in thirty two.
Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson (1913)
William Hope Hodgson (November 15, 1877 – April 1918) was an English author with a penchant for baroque and arcane horror, fantasy and science fiction. His style and insight drew heavily on his own colourful experiences. The son of a Priest he ran away to sea at an early age and travelled widely. He was a keen amateur photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder and escapologist. He died in World War I at the age of 40. Although moderately successful during his lifetime it was not until after his death that his work, especially his short stories, received the acclaim they deserved. This was mainly due to posthumous publication of all the material regarding one Thomas Carnacki; investigator of the supernatural.
William Hope Hodgson (November 15, 1877 – April 1918) was an English author with a penchant for baroque and arcane horror, fantasy and science fiction. His style and insight drew heavily on his own colourful experiences. The son of a Priest he ran away to sea at an early age and travelled widely. He was a keen amateur photographer and achieved some renown as a body-builder and escapologist. He died in World War I at the age of 40. Although moderately successful during his lifetime it was not until after his death that his work, especially his short stories, received the acclaim they deserved. This was mainly due to posthumous publication of all the material regarding one Thomas Carnacki; investigator of the supernatural.
Hodgson’s work is in a similar vein to that of H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James and Ambrose Bierce. He frequently hints at the horrific and implies that there are ancient and powerful forces at work. These are of a magnitude beyond human comprehension. Hodgson writes with such conviction you get the impression that he may have personally experienced the occult, something I have often suspected of Dennis Wheatley. Writing at the turn of the 19th century, Hodgson mixes modern science along with contemporary technology with the occult and the esoteric; a style later utilised to great success by Nigel Kneale.
The Carnacki stories are a variation on the tradition fictional detective such as Sherlock Holmes. Carnacki lives in a bachelor flat in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The stories are told from a first-person perspective by Dodgson, one of Carnacki’s four friends, very much in the style of John Watson. However where Conan Doyle never made use of the supernatural except as a red herring, its a pivotal theme of the Carnacki stories. The character of Carnacki was loosely inspired in part by Dr. Hesselius, scientist with a supernatural perspective, who appeared in short stories by the Irish fantasy writer Sheridan Le Fanu.
Hodgson’s short stories follow an established framework; Carnacki intermittently sends invitations to four friends, asking them to come to dinner and hear his latest exploits. One of these, Dodgson, then recounts the evening entertainment to us the reader. Carnacki avoids discussion of the case until after dinner, then lights his pipe, settles into his favourite chair and recounts the tale to his audience. Each of Carnacki’s adventures takes the form of an investigation into an unusual haunting, which Carnacki has been engaged to not only investigate but end. He employs a variety of scientific methods in his investigations, as well as resorting to more traditional folk-lore. He often uses such technology as photography as well as his own bespoke scientific device, the electric pentacle. He is not dogmatic and always uses evidence to establish conclusions, so in some stories he determines the haunting is real, while in others it is staged or faked by a third party. This variety and the exposure of an occasional hoax make the stories suspenseful. After the tale is complete, Carnacki usually answers a few questions from his guests, then unceremoniously turns them out onto the embankment to return to their respective homes.
What makes the Carnacki stories work so well is the credible and disquieting world of the supernatural he touches upon. He frequently refers to a fictional ancient text known as the Sigsand Manuscript, which is a source of information about protecting oneself from external forces and influences. Carnacki refers to Aeiirii and Saiitii manifestations, the latter being more dangerous and capable of overcoming Carnacki’s protective devices. There are several rites and ceremonies, including the Saaamaaa Ritual, with its mysterious eight signs and “unknown last line”. These are only invoked in times of abject crisis, when not only the physical life but the very soul is in danger. Then the forces that govern the fabric of space and time intervene to restore balance. These references to esoteric fictional occult writings are very much like H. P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon.
If you like stories about the supernatural and traditional detective material, then Carnacki can provide a rather unique and interesting crossover. They offer an insight into the social and scientific attitudes of the Edwardian period; a time when scientific reason still struggled with entrenched religious dogma. They also serve as a great introduction to the works of William Hope Hodgson. His later novels are now considered to be milestones within the genre.