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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard with Alberto Fernandez
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascended the Great Books Podcast, we are doing something fun and a bit different. I am joined by Alberto Fernandez, the Vice President of the Middle East Media Research Institute, to discuss the life and philosophy of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian. We'll discuss Howard's life, his philosophy, and one of his best stories, the Tower of the Elephant. We'll consider Howard's contrast of barbarism and civilization, his friendship with H.P. lovecraft, and whether there's an imprint of Nietzsche upon his writings. So join us today for an excellent conversation on Conan the Barbarian and the Tower of the Elephant. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father, and serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We're recording on a beautiful afternoon here at the Chancery. If you're new to Ascend, we are a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the great books. We have just finished a year with Homer reading both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and we'll be reading Hesiod's Theogony and Aeschylus's Oresteia next. For more information, check us out on x or Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters, and you can check us out on thegreatbookspodcast.com where we have written guides and other resources to help guide you through the great books. Today. Today we're doing something fun. Today we are discussing the author, Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian. We'll be looking at his life, his philosophy, and discussing one of his most famous works, the Tower of the Elephant. We have a wonderful guest today. We have Alberto Fernandez, who serves as the Vice President of the Middle East Media Research Institute. He is also doing work with EWTN on the Middle east and has several articles in the Lamp magazine. Alberto, how are you today?
- [02:09]
Alberto Fernandez
Great. I'm delighted to be on with you. I'm a big admirer of your work and I love the Odyssey and the Iliad. But.
- [02:19]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
You gravitate more towards the Odyssey than the Iliad.
- [02:22]
Alberto Fernandez
Yes, yes, I kind of do. I don't know, maybe because I'm a father, because I was an American diplomat for many years and I was not gone for 20 years, but I was away from my family sometimes.
- [02:36]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right. Do you have some empathy for Odysseus?
- [02:40]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [02:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I don't know. I. My secret understanding is basically I like whichever one I read last, whichever one I kind of worked through. I will say, with our year with Homer, I Greatly appreciated the Iliad this time because I read it in a small group with a group of men, including with the podcast. I think it really came alive, right. Reading the classics with friends, iron, sharpening iron, the text. It's like if you read a. If you read a text with three friends, it's like you've read it four times. You just, you see all these things. And I really enjoyed the camaraderie in the Iliad this year, particularly like also the, the comparison between Achilles and Hector that just really captured my attention.
- [03:20]
Alberto Fernandez
I love them both and I have the same reaction that you have. I. I actually read. Reread the Odyssey, the green Peter Green. Which green is it?
- [03:29]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Oh, yeah, green. Yeah.
- [03:32]
Alberto Fernandez
And I really enjoyed it. So that's the most recent one I read as well.
- [03:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's very good. Do you have a. Do you have like a favorite Homeric character or someone who stands out too?
- [03:43]
Alberto Fernandez
I mean, it would have to be Odysseus, as I said. I mean, in, in the, in the Iliad, there are, there are many, you know, that, that strike a chord, including Odysseus, by the way. So it's hard to pick one, though. They're all great, you know, and the translations are all fascinating. I enjoy them all. I have, I have the T.E. lawrence, T.E. shaw Odyssey as well, which is prose version, which is also fun to read.
- [04:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. Yeah. I think I. I'm still kind of caught up with Hector in my imagination. Like, just really appreciate him as a contrast. I really like Diomedes and Iliad. It's just hard not to like him when he kind of goes, you know, on his kind of zenith of rsa. It's really wonderful. Odysseus. I just don't know. I just, I mean, you know, when you read the Iliad, you know, we've talked about. You really are. Comparison. You're compare. Comparing Achilles and Hector. When you read the Odyssey, you're really comparing Odysseus to Odysseus. Just sometimes he's great, sometimes he's. It's just a big misstep. And I mean, he's. But he reminds me too of. I mean, not to be overly critical of him because he reminds me a lot of so many of the Old Testament characters that, you know, you root for, but then they just make profound mistakes. But Providence, you know, can still work through them.
- [05:05]
Alberto Fernandez
I think that's, that's exactly part of the attraction I have for Odysseus is he. He is so flawed. You know, he. He kind of, I mean, I hate to. I hate a lot of people do this, so I'm gonna do something I hate. I hate to compare him to modern man, you know, but that makes him seem a little more modern than the demigod Achilles. You know, in my mind, it somehow makes him seem like, oh, man, like, you're really stupid. Why did you do that?
- [05:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think, I think one thing, you know, sometimes in, like, modern literature, modern philosophy, we find ourselves to be very atomized from the agents. Like, we, we think we're, like, just very different. Like, I can't. There's nothing I'm going to learn from reading Homer, right? What, what was Homer have anything to teach me? Like, I'm a modern man. I have an iPhone, you know, X, Y and Z. And you only have to read, like, the first book of the Iliad to realize that nothing has changed with human nature. I mean, you look at these characters like Agamemnon or Odysseus or Achilles or Hector or even Patroclus, like, you realize, like, oh, yeah, I've. I've met people like this. I've met people who are imploded or make decisions that are contrary to their own interests. Like, I think the best way to show that human nature hasn't changed is actually just to get someone to read Homer and you, like, see how this, like, comes out. And then, yeah, you can have a lot of empathy with the characters. Yeah, very good. But today we're not discussing Homer. We are discussing Robert E. Howard, which might not be a name that a lot of people are familiar with. So can you kind of tee us up a bit? Like, who is Robert E. Howard and why should we read him?
- [06:37]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, Robert E. Howard was an American writer, a Texan, who lived between 1906 and 1936. He only lived to be 30 years old, and he's a young man going out on the frontier of the western frontier in Texas, a time of, you know, kind of when it was still a frontier place, a kind of cattle town, an oil boom town. A young boy who loved to read, loved to read adventure stories, loved poetry and had a gift for writing. And he had a gift, a God given gift, because, you know, he. He studied, you know, he went up to high school in small town Texas, Although I imagine small town Texas 100 years ago, they probably had, you know, much better education, maybe much better reading education than many of us today. But he had a thirst for reading adventure stories, for reading poetry, and he wanted to be a writer. And he became a writer, and he was, for for the time, extremely successful in the niche that he had. We can talk about kind of, you know, kind of things he accomplished as, as a writer. But you know, he, he, he both, he both wrote because he felt compelled to do so from a very young age. I mean we're talking like 11, 10, 12 years old, as I said, his first accepted story, his first published story when he was 18 years old in a legitimate, you know, publication. And he also wrote to live, you know, he lived from his writing and he had a lot, you know, he lived during the Great Depression. So he had a lot of, a lot of problems. He had a lot of family problems, a sickly mother that we can get into all of that stuff. But, but he was a guy who was always writing, looking for new, you know, markets to write his stuff. He would rewrite his stuff, resubmit it, try to publish a book. Only one book was published in his, in his lifetime or in the 1930s. But he is such a vivid writer, such a powerful writer that these very kind of modest beginning, I mean he wrote, all of his work was written in his teens or in his 20s. And yet they had a, a vividness and a power that they have survived and flourished. And you know, you talk a lot of people don't know Robert E. Howard, but actually a lot of people do know Robert E. Howard. And there's a whole kind of, you know, world of Robert E. Howard. And every year in Texas they have Howard days in his, the little town where he grew up, wasn't born there, wasn't born in Cross Plains, Texas. But he, you know, they celebrate it there. There's always kind of sub genre of his work and stuff like that. And I think today there's a kind of recognition that actually he was a writing talent. And you could say he was an adventure writer or a fantasy writer or horror writer or writer of westerns, a writer of comic westerns. But you know, what might have been. Who knows what would have happened if he had lived longer.
- [10:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No. Very good. I appreciate that setup. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about like what his writing is. So like my understanding is like a lot of these things is the early 1900s, they're getting published in these kind of like pulpit fiction magazines which if someone's not familiar, there's like Weird Tales would be like a famous one. This is, it's pulp because it's a cheap paper. It's like a wood pulpy paper. So it's like very heavy. And so they're publishing these, these weird tales if you will. And so he's writing, like you said, he's writing adventure stories. He's, he has all kinds of characters, which is something I think we have to discuss at some point. He has lots of different characters. My understanding is that he basically, maybe not in the beginning, but as his own style develops, he basically invents the entire sword and sorcery genre. So a lot of times when we think about fantasy, we think about like high fantasy, we think about Tolkien and the kind of these large epics. But there's also you know, a history of going back to this sword and sorcery where really your hero is just a guy with a sword. Right. It's a strong, it's a, it's a natural character. Usually they're not using magic, they're just a straightforward, a man with fortitude, raw strength that's going to overcome and overpower some kind of evil. And then like why it's sword and sorcery is because then that's all juxtaposed to some type of like dark arts and magic and weird things. And so you kind of see where maybe a character like Conan the Barbarian, right, would come out of this and that he kind of single handedly invented this genre.
- [11:33]
Alberto Fernandez
Kind of did. And I mean not precisely because obviously there are, there are antecedents before, you know, in saga and in legend and even in, in writers that were kind of roughly contemporary to Howard, people like er, Edison and people like that. But Howard's influence is huge. Some people have called it the hard boiled school of fantasy, you know, hard boiled school of sword and sorcery, to contrast it to high fantasy. Right. And, and yes, you know, he was a writer of the Popes and of course he's most identified with Weird Tales, which is, you know, the legendary Weird Tales magazine which had the three great figures of weird tales. Robert E. Howard, H.P. lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Howard was very influenced by another pulp magazine which was an adventure magazine which was called Adventure. In fact he wrote adventure stories, he wrote kind of non fantasy adventures and he tried to get into Adventure magazine and he was influenced by writers who wrote there, people like Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy and older figures too, like you know, Henry Ryder Haggard, pre pope era. But so in Conan and in Weird Tales he found a market. He was always looking for other markets, but he was, he was looking for markets that paid better because Weird Tales didn't always pay on time, they paid on publication. So they owed him money. When he died they still owed him like a thousand two thousand dollars, which is in the Great Depression, was a lot of money. But. But he's most identified with Weird Tales. And you're right, I mean, what he did is he kind of took the adventure story and kind of made it the fantasy adventure story with elements of horror, with elements of magic and like I said, not completely original from him, but he certainly deserves a lot of recognition as one of the great kind of fathers of this genre, which we, you know, today is much, much better known.
- [13:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
You know, you mentioned H.P. lovecraft, which is another phenomenal author. I really enjoy reading his short stories as well. Kind of very different, kind of like cosmic horror. But it's really interesting because when I was reading the Tower of the Elephant and we'll kind of get into that, there's an element in that, I was like, man, this sounds very Lovecraftian. And then I realized I looked up that they were actually friends, that Robert Howard and Lovecraft became friends. Is that correct?
- [14:13]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, Howard admired, you know, Howard is a younger person than, than Lovecraft and Howard admired Lovecraft and basically wrote a letter, I think letter to the editor of Weird Tales. He was already appearing in Weird Tales praising Lovecraft. And Lovecraft was this of course, maniacal letter writer, you know, kind of voluminous, six volume work, I have it back here of, of Lovecraft's letters. And so they became, you know, became pen pals. And you write long letters to each other which each would talk about what they knew. So Howard talking about Texas history and you know, barbarians and cowbo and Howard would talk about the Romans and horror and stuff like that. So, so Lovecraft was, I mean, Howard was influenced by Lovecraft. He was a very different writer but, but they had a, you know, a very good epistolary friendship. Sadly, they never met. And in fact there was a time when Lovecraft made it to New Orleans, Louisiana. Howard didn't have a lot of money. Howard once went to New Orleans, I think when he was a kid. But, but Howard didn't have the money to go meet Lovecraft in New Orleans, which would have been fascinating reality if they had met. And I think somebody should write a pastiche or a modern fantasy about them meeting in New Orleans and having adventures and fighting monsters and kind of stuff like that. It would be. Be fun to read. But yeah, they were, they were friends, you know, kind of indirect friends through what we like. You know, it's like Twitter friends today. Right? So they were friends through, through epistolary means.
- [16:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So you, are you a fan of Lovecraft as well?
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Alberto Fernandez
I Like Lovecraft. I like Lovecraft's work very much. I, I, I grew up reading both of them at about the same time in the 70s, you know, I'm kind of an old guy. And there, there was a boom, there was a love, there was a Howard boom, there was a lovecraft boom, late 60s and 70s, a kind of rediscovery of these writers who were, were long dead and had been out of print for a long time. And they both kind of happened at the same time as I picked them up, both up at the same time. And from my early teens is when I first read them. But I read them regularly, you know, every once in a while for fun or I'll read a Lovecraft story for Halloween or Russell Kirk for Halloween. And Howard always, you know, I dip into him. It's fascinating because there are a lot, even when I was a kid, there are a lot of people who wrote, who tried to write like Howard. So in the 70s, you know, you had Thongor of Lemuria or you had Brack the Barbarian, you had kind of rip offs or copies or, you know, riffs on Howard. And as a kid, I don't know about you, when you were a kid. When I was a kid, I read everything, right. I just would just like, just read all this stuff. Some of it was great, some of it was garbage. As time goes on, you would realize like, this guy is actually a really good writer. These other ones are kind of producing stuff like him are not as good. And so you kind of over time you, you appreciate Howard for the gifted writer that he was, the writer that could kind of write action, write violence. His descriptive powers were considerable.
- [17:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think one of the things that really impressed me about reading Howard, which I did not read him until graduate school. So I, I like a lot of people, and probably some people listening right now, my understanding of Conan the Barbarian was Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Yeah, like that's what it was. And the idea that there was like some actual writing behind this that'd be worth your time was, was not something that was on my radar. And so I was actually in graduate school at Ave Maria University when a professor like I was, I was just looking for something to read because, you know, one of the problems was that I had matured in my own Catholic faith. I was studying, I was getting a theology degree down there. I was reading St. Thomas Aquinas. And the problem I was having is that I realized everything I was used to reading was very vapid and it was ruining narratives for me because I just, the, the subplots and like how characters made decisions and I found it all just very flat. And so I was trying to find something new and so that one of the professors was like, oh, well, you should, you know, read Robert E. Howard. I'm like, what'd he write? Oh, Conan the Barbarian. And I was like, is this a joke? Like, why? No. What, why would I read this? And like, no, no, no, just trust me. Like, you know, and they explained, like, it's wonderful. This like barbarism and like vitalism and like it's, it's so contrary to like our modern sensibilities. Like, you're gonna love it. Like, okay, so I pick it up and like you said, the thing that stands out immediately is Howard's capacity to draw you into a story. I mean, he, yeah, you said like his descriptive powers. I mean, he just sucks you in and you're in the second paragraph and you're in, you're in the world. You're trying to figure out what it is. And he just writes very, very well. So even if the topics are somewhat simple, like, oh, would you read a story about, oh, it's a barbarian who's trying to steal a jewel? Well, that sounds, you know, highly intellectual, but actually like, the story is so good because he is such a good writer.
- [19:39]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, yeah, no, that's very true. And you know, he, he, he first, he wrote very fast and he, you know, he wrote to make, he wrote as a passion. He also wrote to make money. And most of his stuff he wrote, you know, to fit the market. So he, most of his stuff are short stories or novellas. You know, he, he wrote a few novels or a few things that approach novel length stuff. But most of his stuff had to be written within the constraints of the market that he was, he was working. It's actually ironic when you look back at a lot of his work getting rejected. Even Weird Tales would reject his stuff when, like the stuff they were rejecting today we say actually that's like a good story, why they reject it? You know, they were, they were kind of weird. They did the same thing with Lovecraft. They, they rejected some of Lovecraft's most famous and well, today, well regarded stories were rejected by Weird Tales.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's fascinating, by the way.
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Alberto Fernandez
Also published a lot of schlock. You know, I mean, today we think of Lovecraft, Howard Smith in Weird Tales, but most of the stuff they published was really lousy. And in fact, the most popular writer in Weird Tales was not them, not any of those three. Was Another guy who actually is interesting but is. Is far inferior of a writer compared to Howard or Lovecraft or even, I would say Clark Ashton Smith. It's a guy who was an undertaker and wrote kind of cult detective stories. A guy named C. Barry Quinn, who is fun to read, but much inferior to these other three.
- [21:19]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Anything else about, like, his childhood? Like, my understanding is, is that, you know, his. I don't think his mother and father got along. I think at one point they. They actually split up. His father, I think, was a physician. You know, I think minor. My surface level understanding is that both of them really kind of impacted him in different ways. I was reading something that he actually would accompany his father at times as a child. And so that he actually saw some of these, like oil rig injuries, like, you know, injuries done to violence, et cetera. Like he had exposure to that. Yeah, I think his mother is the one that gave him his love of writing. Correct?
- [21:53]
Alberto Fernandez
His mother encouraged his love of writing. His mother encouraged him his love of poetry. She would read poetry to him. You know, he was very influenced by his upbringing or his. The image that he had of his upbringing of kind of dark Irish background, you know, Scots Irish Protestant, not Catholic, Texan, but also deeply influenced by saga, by poetry, by legend, all of that and an omnivorous reader. You know, one story he tells how in the summer he would ride his horse and raid school libraries, breaking into them and taking books to read, you know, and later returning them. So very influenced by his mother. You know, his father was a doctor, a kind of country doctor who was always kind of on road. So he was attached to his mom and she encouraged him, you know, to kind of, kind of be artistic in that way. And. Yeah, that had a. A big influence on him. Yeah. And his father also. Yes, indeed. There's. In one of the letters, I think he says, talks about that, how, you know, he got to see wounds, deadly wounds and stuff like that from, you know, accompanying his father. And also Boomtown. Cross Plains was an oil boomtown. So you saw all kinds of riff raff and, you know, kind of sleazy life. And in fact, he says at some point Conan is a combination of. Of gunfighters, boxers, oil rig roughs, you know, tough guys near do wells that kind of just kind of mixed in his head and out of it came Conan the Barbarian. Of course, Conan being a. A name from both Irish and Brittany. You know, there were. There actually was a King Conan, Conan of Brittany, of Britannia, you know, 600 or a thousand years ago.
- [24:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
You know, that's Wonderful. Yeah, I, in the summers in high school, I worked in rig up yards in Oklahoma. And so we'd build oil rigs like we were going to drill right there, made sure they work and then disassemble them and send them out. So now that you make that connection, I just laugh because, you know, you think about the beginning of the Tower of the Elephant when he's just in this kind of like sleazy place and all these people now, those two are now connected in my head, and I find that to be hilarious. He. But he died young and he was a suicide. Right. My understanding is that he, his mother was ill and that, you know, after a certain point of hearing his mother's status, he. He walked out to his car and, and shot himself.
- [24:45]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, yeah, that's true. He was not, you know, he, he had, as far as I know, a kind of, kind of run of the mill religious upbringing, you know, kind of, I think Baptist, I believe I may be wrong, but kind of Southern Baptist kind of upbringing. But he was not a believer. He, you know, he read Nietzsche. He, you know, he read all kinds of stuff. He was a sponge in reading, but he was not a person with a spiritual life. And he had, he had his dark, you know, his dark valleys. He's had a kind of grim view of life. He was very attached to his dog as a boy. He was alone a lot. You know, he was with, with his mom, but he was actually alone a lot. Kind of wandering the countryside with his dog Patches and sad about his dog dying. They actually thought of killing himself when his dog died and influenced very much by his mother's death. He was not, you know, I think if things had gone a different way. He had a, a love affair that went bad with a young woman, a young teacher in, in town that did not go bad. He had the full weight of his mother's illness and even though for the Great Depression he made a good salary, he, you know, he had a kind of the weight of the bills of taking care of his mom as well. And so, you know, he was in a dark place in his life at that time. And he seems that he, you know, his father was afraid of that and he kind of. His father maybe hid his guns, but he got a gun from a friend, you know, it didn't tell him what it was for and, and he killed himself. A great tragedy because he was a, you know, a person with some real literary gifts, young guy. Who knows what would have happened? You know, he wrote us all of his stuff in his 20s. What would he have written in his 40s and 50s? Nobody knows.
- [26:58]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I agree. It's the same. Same kind of thing. Like, what if he would have been able to meet up with Lovecraft? Like, what, you know, what would have blossomed there? What could have come of that? No, I. Yeah.
- [27:06]
Alberto Fernandez
Or if he married. He, you know, if he found a good woman, married her, and he would still have that driven need to write and also driven need to put food on the table, but it would have been channeled. You know, women have a way of civilizing men, and so it's very tragic.
- [27:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. Be interested, too, to see how his own writing would mature with this. This kind of. We'll kind of get into, I think, some of his characteristics, but I'd be really interested to see how his writing would mature and develop under the context of fatherhood, like if he ended up having his own boys. Right. Because I think that's where a lot of his writings stand out to me is to read these writings to young men. Right. Because they are so much of overcoming hardships, of fortitude, of adventure. Right. Of being brave. You mentioned, however, Nietzsche. That's really fascinating because when I read Conan, I've always found it to have kind of a Nietzschean underpinning to it. And I'm actually surprised that Howard hasn't become more popular as of late with kind of the rise of this kind of like, popular Nietzscheism and like vitalism that's come up. Do you have any. Any thoughts on, like, how Nietzsche actually influenced his writing?
- [28:16]
Alberto Fernandez
You know, he was not a. A deep intellectual. He was a. Something which is, I think, very admirable. And in my view, I don't know about Europe, but very American or was very American, which is the bright young person. It's usually a boy who is a omnivorous reader who is kind of. He goes to school, whatever school is, you know, elementary, secondary school, but he learns from his reading, he learns from the library, he learns from the books that he reads. So in it, you know, Howard graduated from high school, but he's very much, I think, an autodidact. You know, he was smarter high school graduate, but he was smarter and better, you know, kind of better read than most of the people around him. And. But he was alone, you know, he was alone. In fact, the famous biography you know about him by that, the teacher, that young woman who was his strongest romantic relationship is called One who Walked Alone. And so, so. And you could talk about Conan as a kind of one who walks alone, although he becomes a King, you know, that does seem rather Nietzschean. Right. I have seen that. I think one of the kind of vitalist publications, I think Passages Press is reprinting some of the works of Robert E. Howard in a couple two volume work. So maybe there is some kind of connection. Although Howard to me is a very American figure. He's a very kind of Western figure. In fact, Lovecraft, when Howard died, he. Lovecraft wrote something like I would have loved to have seen. I think he would have written the great epic of the American Southwest. The idea being that he might have written a Conan of the West, a kind of cowboy Conan, you know, kind of frontiersman. And in fact, Howard, near the end of his life, wrote several kind of both horror stories and adventure stories that had a Western, you know, a western flavor about them. So he might have gone kind of regional. Some people speculate that he would have become a. A kind of Louis Lamour type of, of writing. You know, Hard to say.
- [30:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. So before we kind of get into more of Conan the Barbarian, he had other characters. Correct. So like how. What are some of the other like characters and facets that, that he explored outside of Conan?
- [31:01]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, his is the first one that he wrote about and it has different names because he kind of tended to take things. Sometimes he would rewrite them, submit them to a different. A different publication. One of his earliers, one earliest characters was a kind of tough American adventure in the exotic east, sometimes called El Borac or Francis X. Gordon or their variations of that. And something he wrote when he first as a kid and then later on he wrote kind of adult versions of it. He also wrote straight out medieval adventure works, which I think are among his very best work. I highly recommend. This book is called Lord of Samarkand and it's Howard's historical adventures. These are grim stories set in the east in the Middle Ages during the Crusades or in the Balkans in Eastern Europe. Kind of a lone crusader fighting hordes of Mongol warriors and stuff like that. Great stuff. This is not fantasy, this is just historical adventures. But the very well written stuff. This one is University of Nebraska Bison Press, has a very nice picture on the COVID But these stories are available in others of his books. So that's. So we have Francis S. Gordon kind of early 20th century adventure in the East. You have his medieval crusading stories, you have his boxing stories. He was a big aficionado of boxing. You have his western stories, you have his straight out horror stories, some of which are actually really good. Then another fantasy character, you could say his first fantasy character which directly influenced Conan is Call of Atlantis. You know, so he has all kind of Atlantean call books. In fact, the first Conan story is a rewritten Kull adventurer. He takes Kull and rewrites him in the first published Conan story, the Phoenix on the Sword, the first one to appear. And he has this Puritan adventure, kind of 16th century Puritan adventure also. Very good. I loved it when I was a kid. Solomon Cain, who fights evil mostly in Africa, but also in. In Europe as well. And highly recommend. His best Solomon Kane stories are actually very good. So you have a kind of, you know, smorgasbord, you know, of stuff. And then you have also. You have another kind of characters. He wrote. He wrote a bunch of. They're not to my taste, but they were very successful at the time of kind of comic westerns, A kind of like Paul Bunyan type characters of a kind of big fat Western ne'er do well, you know, Breckenridge, Elkins, Pike, Bears Field, who have kind of tall tale western tall tales. And those were actually very successful at his time. He actually had to, you know, churn a lot of them out and they paid well. But, you know, for. For living such a short life. It's actually. It's amazing the huge amount of work that he produced. And his very best, whether fantasy adventure, historical adventure, horror is really good. I mean, Stephen King was a big fan of one of Howard's horror stories. Pigeons from Hell is highly regarded by Stephen King. He considers it to be a really outstanding horror story. And. And it is, it's. It's quite shocking and impressive.
- [35:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Howard's. Howard's scope, like the breadth of his scope is really impressive of just like different characters that he can create and like. And also just like really fun characters. And we have the King of Atlantis, we have Conan the Barbarian. You've got. He has the other one too. Like, that's like the Romans are coming into Brad.
- [35:26]
Alberto Fernandez
Brad McMorn.
- [35:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah.
- [35:28]
Alberto Fernandez
Like, so the Earth, tremendous story. That's a great story.
- [35:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's like one of his most famous, I think, actually. Right.
- [35:35]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [35:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. And. And then you've got to love Solomon Cain. I mean, like this kind of like puritan hero that goes around like, you know, having an adventure and stomping out evil. I mean, these are. These are wonderful stories. They're stories that I think capture the imagination, particularly of like, the young masculine mind.
- [35:52]
Alberto Fernandez
Sure.
- [35:52]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So maybe not the play too many of my cards, but I'm just interested as we kind of Shift into Conan. Like, so someone finds out that you have this. Or. I think I had published something on a. Send the Great Books podcast on X about, like, you know, who enjoys Robert E. Howard. And you, like, showed off this phenomenal library that you have of him, right? Yeah, exactly. So if someone came up to you and said, you know, why. Why read Conan the Barbarian? Like, why this character? Like, what would you say?
- [36:16]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, I mean, if you like a good story, exciting adventure story, vivid, well written, they're not too long either. I mean, I like long, but, you know, he. For. For the reasons I mentioned, he didn't write long works. They're. They're really well written and enjoyable. They're fun to read. When I served, you know, I was an American diplomat. I served overseas. And my. We would get in the car to go somewhere. My boys, especially my eldest one, would give me something to read on the car. This is in the days before, you know, handheld things. And I would give him Robert E. Howard. You know, he'd read Conan or read Solomon Cain or whatever, and, you know, it's. It's boy's adventure, but it's actually more than that because it's well written and engaging, sometimes, you know, bloody, sometimes, you know, super violent. But there's a. There's a. There's only Howard. A lot of people say this because there's a lot of stuff these days. For example, you can buy Conan novels written by other people other than Howard, and the copyright holders allow that because there's only so much stuff that Robert E. Howard wrote, and he died a long time ago. But some. Some people. Some of the works are not so bad. Some of the pastiches, but a lot of fandom, what people say is only Howard can write. Howard, you know, he has. His voice was kind of. Kind of unique voice, poetic, violent, you know, grim, exciting. That's why you read it.
- [38:05]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think, too, it's not simply that he has the veneer of good writing, which he certainly does. Like I said, like, he can draw you into a story. He's incredibly descriptive. I think he paints characters very well, but personally, I think he has some philosophies that are underpinning his writings that he is quite good at not telling you, but showing you.
- [38:28]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [38:29]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And I want to point some of these out as we kind of work through the Tower of the Elephant. I've read. I can't remember when I got into this. I think one or two people picked me up Conan books, maybe from, like, used book sales or something, but they weren't Howard they were someone else. I read a couple of them, but they were always so flat. Yeah, it's like, oh, here's, here's a character and they're going to fight a giant monster. And you read it and it's just terribly, terribly flat.
- [38:53]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, most of them are garbage. The non Howard Conan's. A few are written by decent writers who, you know, write well and I have favorites among them, but they're all inferior to Howard.
- [39:13]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think one of the kind of, maybe the shift into the story because there's a few things about his writing I want to pull out, but I think maybe pull out examples from the Tower of the Elephant would be, would be better. So I think this is one of his best stories. Now, I have not read the whole corpus. I, you know, I would defer to your wisdom on this. But as someone who was new to Howard and kind of reading through this, you know, I really enjoyed some of like the God and the Bull, the Frost Giant's Daughter. Like some of these are just like really fun stories. But the Tower of the Elephant is the first one that I read that I was like, this is magnificent. Like, this is just good. Like my intellect, like my imagination is completely transported to somewhere else. I don't really know what's coming next. I've been totally sucked in to this story. I mean this, this is a story that made me love Conan.
- [39:59]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah. You know, it's the third published Conan story, but it's the first one of Congress Conan as a young man. In fact, Howard says in a letter in his Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, Volume 3, he says that Conan at the time of Tower of The elephant was 17 years old. That he was a 6 foot 1, 180 pound, 17 year old barbarian. It's like so it's the, it's the. Although it's the third story published, it's the first one of the young strapping ne'er do well adventure slash thief Conan of Samaria. And it's very compelling and you know, it's, the story is as I'm sure we'll discuss, it's a heist story and yet it's a lot more, more than a ice story, you know, so it's a fascinating, fascinating work with many layers, especially kind of the histories discussed and kind of the whole, you know, kind of space and aliens. I don't know how much we want to get into the whole story, but.
- [41:19]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think, I think we should work through the story. But you know, it has a lot of things going on but somehow flows well. I mean, that's what's amazing about it, right? I think it actually flows well. Yeah. So just maybe like a few preliminaries there. One is, you know, so it opens and he's, he's in this like seedy tavern setting which we've kind of described. And I think again, Howard's writing is excellent at kind of showing you what this is like. But one of the things I think that really stood out to me as I reread it and was something that stood out to me even the first time is Howard is very much painting a picture between the barbarian and the civilized man. So you get these like, you know, examples in which, you know, Conan will ask something that seems very straightforward. And he's a very black and white thinker and the civilized people, right, they look at him as a barbarian, you know, from the north wastes and things like this. And so, you know, this, it's the civilized people that lie. It's a civilized people that speak out of, you know, both sides of their mouth that laugh at him when he doesn't understand, you know, why he's being laughed at. I mean, what it, what is Howard doing in this comparison where the civilized people are acting that way and it's the barbarian who's the hero?
- [42:31]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, of course he's, I think he, I mean it's a little bit about himself or about his ambiance. This is a self taught, really smart, you know, well read Westerner. And I think he's talking about Texans and you know, highfalutin Easterners and dudes who think that they're better than ordinary people. And I think there's something of that also. He admired kind of, you know, he admired the idea of the warrior and, and you know, the, the Celtic warrior and all of that. But I think there's something of that, you know, of, of the Texan. Of course this is the story that includes that famous off quoted quote which is from this story, you know, Robert E. Howard quote. I'm looking at it down here, I wrote it down. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skull split. As a general thing.
- [43:40]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, as a wonderful line.
- [43:44]
Alberto Fernandez
And that's, that's a famous quote. But, but Howard did think that the kind of civilizations do. You know, there's another Conan story where I think includes the quote, the ultimate barbarism triumphs over civilization. And he had discussions with, with Lovecraft about this in his epistolary friendship that, you know, civilizations have a way of kind of deteriorating. Right. Of kind of becoming feet, of kind of imploding, of kind of feeding on themselves. And so he's kind of referring to that. That, you know, kind of, Conan is a barbarian, he's a savage, but he's kind of clean compared to this kind of den of iniquity in Zamora, which he finds himself in, which is kind of perverse and dirty and both physically dirty and kind of morally dirty as well.
- [44:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. I mean, civilized man is weak, right? I mean, that's the picture that you get, that civilized man is weak. He's a liar. I mean, one of the things that you. One of the things that you see with Conan is that. So in this, for instance, to use this story as the example, is he's just like, well, why does anyone just go steal the, you know, jewel of the elephant? Right. Why don't we just go steal it? And they respond. They laugh at him. But what they're laughing at is that they think he's too stupid to understand, like, the dangers, which, you know, I'm not saying that he understands the dangers fully, but the problem here then, is that they're afraid.
- [45:13]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [45:14]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right. And he hit. Their fear does not make sense to him.
- [45:18]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [45:18]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And so civilized man is.
- [45:20]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah. Because he feels that. He feels that a brave man, a strong man, you know, an adventurer, a warrior, a thief, whatever, he could find a way through no matter what. You know, he can conquer. Conan is a conqueror at the end. Right. So he kind of, you know, again, you know, I served in the Middle East a lot, and Middle Eastern people. This is a generalization, but Middle Eastern people, Arabs would say to. To me, they would say, one thing we love about Americans is that they're direct dogri. You know, they're not like us Easterners with our kind of, you know, indirect ways and kind of sneaky ways. And. I mean, this is a cliche, but. But you could kind of see that civil. The civilization that Howard portrays is kind of like that. You know, it's. It's. They're liars, right? They're corrupt. Whereas he's very direct and to the point, and he thinks that, you know, with his strength and his faith in his sword and his guile, that he can solve any problem.
- [46:32]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. You mentioned Lovecraft earlier. Because I. I had read something briefly that even Lovecraft actually had a lot of back and forth about the relationship between civilization and barbarism. Because in Howard, I mean, this is probably just like a general sketch, but in Howard, The Barbarian seems to be the one that is better. That's good, right? That there's this kind of like just raw power, this fortitude, like, let's overcome things, let's do this. But to the point that sometimes Conan doesn't even understand. It's not like he's like, you know, John Wayne said that, you know, bravery was, you know, saddling up. Even when you're afraid at certain points, I don't even think Conan's even afraid. I don't think he has like the. He doesn't even have like the. The intuition to be afraid of something. Whereas Lovecraft, you see, it's almost like the reverse where for Lovecraft, civilization brings like a certain order, instability, but then like, lurking underneath it is this barbarism, cosmic horror, like things we just don't understand. I thought that was really interesting to kind of juxtapose those two.
- [47:35]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah. You know, Lovecraft was pro Roman Empire. Howard was anti Roman Empire. Some of Lovecraft's stories, I mean, I don't want to denigrate Lovecraft. I think he's a great writer. But in some of them, the, you know, the, the hero faints from too much horror. Right. In Howard, the hero sometimes is. The hair stands up because of the terror that she's facing. But, but, but Solomon Cain or Conan or whoever goes forward and confronts it bravely and obviously usually wins.
- [48:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So what did. And maybe this is a segue a little bit into how Howard uses almost pre historical histories. There's some of this in Elephant of the Tower, where a Tower of the Elephant, where he kind of lists out at the end. He's listing out all these different things. So when he's. You say that he, you know, wasn't a fan of the Roman Empire, like, is he favoring then like these more obscure, like, pagan societies or what would be something that he gravitates towards?
- [48:43]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, I mean, he, he of course paints. This is. He's a kind of pioneer in this as well. He paints a. A history and he creates a whole history. There's a whole history of the Hyborian age, which is the age of Conan, which is a mishmash of ancient and classic history. Right. So he kind of creates this world. You know, he, as I said, you know, he was heavily influenced by historical adventure, Historical adventures, and he wrote historical adventures. But in his fantasy, what he does is he creates a, a fake or a fantasy historical world influenced by real history, by legend, by writers like Jack London. His whole idea of barbarian tribes drifting through the world the, you know, so he uses that to kind of create a mock history. So you see it in the Iborian age where Conan lives. There are civilizations which are similar to real civilization. So there's a civilization in Conan's world which is similar to ancient Egypt. Right. There's a civilization which is similar to Iran and medieval India, India of the Mogul Empire. There's. There's a. There's a country which obviously Conan eventually becomes king of, which is somewhat like medieval France, you know, so. So that's what he does. You know, he uses the kind of the. His knowledge and love of history, of world history, to create a kind of fake world building. He is a great world builder, something which we talk about in fantasy. Right. Whether Tolkien or whoever, that they're great world builders. Howard was a great world builder as well. Although his stories are short stories, mostly set in this imaginary world.
- [50:50]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I very much agree with that. I think the fact that he can set that world and suck you into it very quickly, like I said, is part of his gift, I think, too. I mean, tell me if you agree. So one thing to note here is that Conan's not necessarily like a hero, or at least not a hero like we think of him traditionally. So, like you said, this. This is a heist story. I mean, Conan's trying to steal something. So if you read it, you know, if you're reading it to your boys and stuff like, this kind of raises questions. And one of the things that I. To try and explain this to people, you know, what is Howard doing here? Is Conan. I mean, this is really Conan par excellence, I think. So Conan overhears, hey, here's this thing that cannot be stolen. And Conan's like, no, I can do that. No, I can overcome that. You know, it's almost like, you know, Conan shows up. I can't remember his story, but, you know, I think there's a part where Conan shows up and he. He basically steps up and sees that a war is going on. The two sides are fighting each other, and obviously he's going to join the fighting. So which side does he join? Well, he joins a side that's losing so that he can gain greater glory and overcome the difficulty of. Of switching it. I think that's. That's part of his character. And sometimes that's where I see the Nietzschean influence. Maybe that's a popular understanding of Nietzsche, where it's just. There's a part of the Conan stories that literally is just overcoming. I can do this, whatever it is. And sometimes the morality of it is set aside like I can have the inner strength, the raw power to overcome whatever this challenge is.
- [52:16]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, I agree. And of course, Conan is an adventurer and he's a fantasy version of. I actually wrote a piece in the European Conservative on Howard and Conan, I think a couple of years ago where I make this point. He's a fantasy version of actually something which really existed, which is of people from a more barbarian or more primitive civilization becoming mercenaries or soldiers in the armies of a kingdom or an empire. They kind of get involved in, you know, they work for the king or they become bandits or they become thieves or whatever. You know, people like, you know, Robert de Geese Card, the famous Norman adventurer who carved out a, you know, a kingdom in, in southern Italy or, you know, in the Muslim world, you know, you have people from. Who were slave soldiers, you know, like from the step, you know, Kipchaks and who become slave soldiers in Egypt and then overthrow the king and they become the sultan. And they're actually barbarians and they can't barely speak Arabic and they drink lots of booze. But they're, you know, they're warlords over Egypt and Syria. That's what Conan is. Conan likes to drink too. You know, there are times when he's deep in his cups. So he's a fantasy version of actually something which kind of really existed in history at times, which is a kind of the. The rude foreign adventure kind of pushing in. In the civilized society and, and making himself king or the power behind the throne, you know, with his own hands and with his own sword, you know.
- [54:13]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Very good. I like that. I like that. Historical antecedent. So I mean, kind of to push into the narrative, right? So he's in this tavern, he overhears this. Like we said, there's this kind of comparison, the Howard's painting for us between barbarism and the civilized man. Conan kills the individual, you know, ultimately and moves on. And he's got to go to the tower. He's going to go to the tower of the elephant. And so when we get this. And this is like this. The version I have is in certain parts, right. So this kind of pushes us into part two. I'm interested. Like what do you think of Prom, the God, Right, because he. Let me realign here because I think this seems to be just a very Howard esque divinity. And so it says of Conan, his gods were simple and understandable. Crom was their chief and he lived on a great mountain whence he sent forth dooms and death. It Was useless to call on Crom because he was a gloomy savage God and he hated weaklings. But he gave a man courage at birth and the will and might to kill his enemies, which in the Sumerian's mind was all any God should be expected to do.
- [55:22]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, Kind of Wotan or Odin kind of hide there. You know, you're. You're on your own. The gods have given you some strength and you have to fight for it. And that's it. Yeah, that's very much the way he paints it. And you know, I'm not an expert on the religions of barbarian or savage peoples, but it seems like that kind of rings true to a certain extent. You know, kind of very kind of elemental Gods, you know, they're not that interested in your personal fate. Your doom is your own. Right. You're on your own, guy. That's very much the way Howard paints that. Yeah.
- [56:09]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. What stands out to me of that passage too is that you have already been given everything that you need to overcome. Like whether you or not you choose to use your gifts, whether or not you choose to have the fortitude and the inner strength and the outer strength. Right. To actually overcome whatever death you're facing. That's your problem. I've already given you everything. So, yeah, Chrome just seems like a just wonderful barbarian God. So he goes, as we kind of push the narrative forward. So he goes to the tower of the elephant and he runs into someone. Right. So now we kind of get this story. Paris. Is that what we're going to call him?
- [56:47]
Alberto Fernandez
Media? Yes.
- [56:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And I think that this is another. I mean, maybe this is that sword and sorcery side. I mean, I'm interested to hear what you say because as they kind of adventure through the gardens and you see that like Conan didn't plan this. Conan's like, oh, yeah, there's that tower and no one can do it. Good night. Like, I'm off to go do it. Right. Taurus has been planning this for a long time. Conan has this raw strength, this kind of like beastial nature to him. I love how Howard is constantly referring him back to a panther. Right. He pads his. His muscles are rippling underneath his skin. You know, he's very, very strong, but he's incredibly light on his feet.
- [57:22]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah. Very different, by the way, that's very different than the popular image. A kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right. Kind of the muscle bound hero. The way Howard portrays him is. Excuse me, he's very strong, but quick on his feet. Pantherish is the word that is often used. You know, he's. He's fast, he's strong. I mean, the way I see him, he's more like, you know, more like a. More than. Like a tight end than offensive lineman, you know.
- [57:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. He's an incredibly athletic person. I mean, and Howard gives us little clues of that when he jumps over walls or lifts himself up or does these types of things. He not only does it with kind of a raw strength, but he does it, you know, almost, you know, well, cat like, right. Panther like, he just kind of slides in. Right. He has a strength. But Taurus, I think, gives another contrast that I'm kind of interested about, because, you know, again, Conan has these, like, these raw instincts, this power. He's very natural, right? Conan is very natural, right. He just has the sword and the excellence of the human spirit and the human body. Taurus, then, is techne. And like these dark arts and sorcery. And so it seems like Howard, once again, is giving us, you know, a contrast. And as we see, Taurus ultimately fails, you know, to penetrate into the tower. Right. He dies at top. So is there. Is there a juxtaposition here that Howard's kind of reading for us?
- [58:50]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, Taurus is the prince of thieves, right? So he's a guy who's accomplished all these great thieving feats. In fact, he mentions a couple of them are mentioned. Fascinating little bit. You know, it's like one line, right? On how he got a certain poison that they use, you know, a poison from the flower of the black lotus, how he got it. And then he mentions the rope that they use, the rope made from the tresses of dead women harvested at night and has it steeped in poisoned wine that makes them super hard. It's like one sentence, but incredibly evocative. So, by the way, there's a. You know, there are a couple. There's another. I think it's in Black Colossus. There's a. There's another master thief who's accomplished all these feats and comes to a bad end. So actually, Howard's written this more than once, but. But yeah, he's the kind of trope of. Kind of the clever master thief who's has all these wiles and stuff like that, but he does not come to a good end.
- [60:05]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What's interesting, too, is that it's not necessarily like. Not necessarily that Conan is more clever than this man, because, you know, Conan just kind of goes waltzing up into the room that that guy died in.
- [60:17]
Alberto Fernandez
As well, but several times he's More, much more capable. Taurus is described as kind of fat. He's fat with a big belly, but strong. You know, he's a strong guy, kind of a big, burly master thief. Whereas Howard is this kind of as a much faster, quick on his feet type of guy. That's what saves him, is, I would say, his athleticism, his speed and his strength. Saves him.
- [60:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, he has, he has an intuition. Right. I mean, that seems how Howard presents Conan is that, you know, he. It's not that he like figured out where the spider was, say, in the room. Right. It's not that he, he saw these things, but rather like, you know, his. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and he realizes that he has this, like, you know, he is. He's a panther. He's. He has this predatory instinct and so something tells him and so he leaps. So it's really, it's interesting because it's, it's still more bestial. It's like animalistic. So he has the raw strength and talent and agility to act. But then he has these intuitions and that seems to be what he. He deeply trusts. Which again, is a contrast between these characters that are maybe surviving or trying to survive on being more clever than anyone else.
- [61:33]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, yeah. It's his natural, you know, you could say his animal instincts as opposed to kind of the cleverness of the civilized person, perhaps.
- [61:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I really enjoyed him killing the spider. I don't really know why, but I just enjoyed, like, because I guess I think Howard. Yeah, he just painted it so well. So you just imagine like Conan, you know, caught in this web and the spider thinks he's got him, so he's missing himself across the room. And Conan just launches a treasure chest. And yet he writes really well about this thing just being cracked up against the wall and the ichor and the ooze, you know, coming out. It's a wonderful line. I mean, again, this is the thing, like, so if you read these, like, knockoffs of him, like the Barbarian killing a large spider comes off as like, very vapid and flat. But if you read Howard doing it and somehow it becomes alive and has depth to it.
- [62:23]
Alberto Fernandez
And again, that's barbarian killing a giant spider is how everything else is a knockoff.
- [62:31]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I like that. That's very good. So then probably the most, I mean, at least as a. When I was a first time reader of this, this is where the story just, it takes a turn and I loved it because you know what happens? He goes, he's going down. So they've gone to the tower. So now they're coming down. And they thought that they would escape a lot of the defenses by doing that. And so he comes into a new room and he sees what he thinks is, you know, a demon of the Elder World. And this is this creature. You know, I'll hold it up for those that are joining on YouTube because this edition has these wonderful, wonderful illustrations, right? So when I turned the page and saw this, I was like, what is happening? So here's this, like, creature, blind, with this huge elephant head and this somewhat, like, emaciated humanoid body that he originally thinks is some type of statue until it moves. And this is really where. I mean, even in my kind of notes, off to the side, before I realized they had a friendship, I wrote HP Lovecraft because this is a. He doesn't use cosmic horror. What's he say? Oh, it's a cosmic tragedy. The thing in front of him, this creature, he says, all. Suddenly, all fear, repulsion went from him to be replaced by a great pity. What this monster was, Conan could not know. But the evidences of its suffering were so terrible and pathetic that a strange, aching sadness came over the Sumerian. He knew not why. He only felt that he was looking upon a cosmic tragedy. And he shrank with shame, as if the guilt of the whole race were laid upon him.
- [64:06]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah. He's an alien being tortured by an evil wizard.
- [64:11]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. And it's such a fun. It's such a fun turn. But then. But even that when the. When the. What's this creature's name again?
- [64:18]
Alberto Fernandez
Yag Y. Yag Yagosha.
- [64:23]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, when he. Yeah, Yosha. Yeah, when he starts. When he starts describing, like, oh, no, are these. This is where it was very Lovecraftian. Because it's not just like, hey, here's this creature from another dimension. No, this is a creature that actually came from our, like, I guess, physical realm. Right. He flew through space. And this is where you kind of get that Lovecraftian, like, man is very small. Man actually doesn't know what's going on in reality. Right. There are things that man really has no idea about that if he even starts to scratch the surface. Like this creature like this, he can't comprehend what's actually happening in front of him. They're too great for his mental capacities. And so I just love that, you know, this. Been very easy to say, oh, this is just a demon that's conjured. Oh, it's this. But actually, no, this alien race that flew through space on these great wings.
- [65:15]
Alberto Fernandez
And Then have watched tens of years ago, because it's like it knew his ancestors. It knew Atlantis. It knew, like, these past civilizations. So it's a. It's not only an alien creature, it's a very old creature that's been on Earth a long time and kind of. That was worshiped as a God. You know, there's all this details about is it really interestingly written and described?
- [65:44]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It's really where you see, as we talked about earlier, like, you see Howard's love for this kind of like, prehistory history, if that makes sense. Right. Because, yeah, there's a long narrative where the creature is saying how they observed things, but they wouldn't interfere. And even the creature intuits what Conan thinks, because, remember, he calls him an elder demon. Like, he has to be some kind of creature. The yag or this elephant creature says, I am neither a God nor demon, but flesh and blood, like yourself, though the substance differ in part and form, be cast in different mold. So all of a sudden, it's like sword and sorcery, like, fantasy story. We get an alien.
- [66:25]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, an alien, maybe from another dimension as well. That's why, you know, it's not quite clear. Long living, you know, here and there, you know, it's not quite clear. You know, traveled through space, you know, kind of like dumbo. You know, a dumbo, but flying through space, but with this wisdom and magic and all this power.
- [66:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. So he. There's a. There's a wonderful line in. In which, you know, the creature is saying, how is it Yara? Yeah, how Yara. This. This kind of evil sorcerer has, you know, it tricked him, and then it's made somehow it's caused where he has to do his bidding. And so, like, it created the tower for him, it does these things for him. And every once in a while, he comes in and tortures him. But he hasn't given up all his secrets yet. But he had a wonderful line where he Sundays, and for 300 years, I have done his bidding from this marble couch, blackening my soul with cosmic sins and staining my wisdom with crimes, because I had no other choice. It's just one of those lines that I. That just stands out to you.
- [67:31]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, yeah.
- [67:32]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And it's interesting, too, that the creature then looks at Conan as a. The hand of fate.
- [67:37]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [67:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Which is. Which is fascinating because you have. Here's a creature that is so different from us, but then still makes an appeal that there is a fate. You go back to, like, you know, what we talked about earlier, like, The Homeric epics. Right. That there is a fate that's moving all things towards their end and gives an intelligibility to history and to reality. And so here's Conan. He is the hand of fate. It doesn't. Maybe again, a little turn. It doesn't. You think he's going to free the creature? You think he's going to team up with the creature to fight against Yara, and what he has to do is actually kill the creature to cut his heart out and squeeze his blood upon the actual elephant jewel.
- [68:16]
Alberto Fernandez
The creature feels his face and knows that Conan is. That he's a barbarian, but that he's clean. He's not one of these minions of the evil sorcerer, that he's kind of the. His. His deliverer has come to. To free him by killing him. Of course.
- [68:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. It's just wonderful because it really, when you read it, at least for, you know, for first time readers, and when I read it first time, you really have no idea where the story's going.
- [68:41]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [68:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What's happening? Like now he has to cut his heart out. He has to squeeze it, obviously. You know, there's this wonderful line where the jewel, you know, absorbs the blood he thought he'd run all over the table. And it's interesting too, because Howard tries to present Conan in this. His intuitions, like everything, everything starts functioning off his intuitions. Does he trust the creature? Why does he do these things? Does he obey the truth, what the creature told him to do? And yeah, it just kind of goes back to like there's some kind of primitive but very strong intuition that Conan the Barbarian has to do what needs to be done. And so we have. This is kind of funny ending in which, you know, he's told to go take the jewel in front of Yara. He wakes him up and, you know, Yara comes over and holds the jewel and then shrinks to this, like kind of comedic size to watch him running around and getting angry and then gets sucked into the jewel itself. And we're just kind of left, you know, to believe that now, now the roles have reversed. Right. That Yara will now be the prisoner of this elephant creature who now has kind of returned to its former strength.
- [69:51]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great ending.
- [69:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It is a great ending. And then they, you know, they run out. And this is one of those things too, where then, like, he doesn't even get anything. There's no. He doesn't go out with the jewel. He doesn't have anything.
- [70:03]
Alberto Fernandez
He just grab a ruby on my way out thanks.
- [70:06]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right.
- [70:07]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [70:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
There's like, there's not anything that he can actually even like, you know, take, you know, from these things. But no, it's a wonderful story. Anything else, like on the story from your perspective or anything kind of like the broadly introduced people to Howard that we haven't talked about?
- [70:21]
Alberto Fernandez
No, I think it's just, it's a great story. It's the young Conan. So he's, he's learning, but he has, he has these abilities. You know, he's, he's strong, he's smart, he's good. You know, he's not good. He's not a goody two shoes, but. And he's not, as we discussed earlier, he's not a hero, hero type. Sometimes he's a pirate, sometimes he's a bandit. But he has a certain, you know, moral core or has a kind of a warrior's code or a barbarian's code. You know that you see this, right? So he does this service. I mean, he, he doesn't have to do what, you know, this, this hurt alien wants. I don't think it can force him to do it. Coded agrees to do it. So I, I think it kind of shows the kind of person that he is.
- [71:18]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I like that. I like that a lot. What are, what would you recommend next, like, so for people who want to read more, maybe they enjoyed reading this story, like, what would you recommend for people to read next kind of in Conan or in Howard, overall?
- [71:33]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, Tower of the Elephant is one of my favorite stories. My favorite story is called the People of the Black Circle. And it's an eastern story, takes place in the kind of mythical east in Conan's bandit chieftain in that one also involves black magic and sorcery and all this stuff and good guys and bad guys also beautifully written, also with a very powerful beginning. But, you know, they're all good. All the, you know, get a, get a volume of the, you know, of the, I think Delray Press paperback ones are the most common ones they have these days. Yeah, those, they're three. That's the Conan stuff in three volumes. They're all good. Some Conan stories are good, some Conan stories are great. You know, you'll have your favorites. So I would say start with those. And I, as I said, I recommended others. There's this. I like his crusader stories. I like the Solomon Cain stories. Depends what you like. But there's, you know, his best is very good.
- [72:47]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I really appreciate that. Yeah. This makes me just want to go back and revisit them. I read a Lot of them over a summer. And read very quickly. You know, my boys, I've got four little boys running around my house right now. They're getting older, so I'm looking for things like this to kind of read to them and capture their imagination. Where can people find out more about, like, you and your work?
- [73:07]
Alberto Fernandez
Well, I don't know. Probably Twitter. You know, I, I, I work, you know, I, I spend a lot of my time on the Middle east, and so I write a lot about the Middle East. I, I'm vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, which is a think tank and reach research Institute in Washington, D.C. i'm also a contributor to the European Conservative, where I write about, including I wrote about Robert E. Howard. I write about kind of literary themes and books and politics as well. And I also write, as I said, for, I contribute to the EWTN empire. So that's EWTN television and the National Catholic Register and the Catholic News Agency. So probably the best place to find my material is if you follow me on Twitter. Although I often indulge in all kinds of nonsense and opinion and hot takes on stuff because, you know, I spend too much time on Twitter and I should spend more time writing and doing other things.
- [74:14]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But, yeah, I think that's, that's a, that's all of us. Yeah. At least come, come to Twitter. We think we're gonna do something productive and just follow us for all our hot takes on things. I like that.
- [74:21]
Alberto Fernandez
Yeah.
- [74:22]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. So very good. No, I really appreciate it. I appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing, you know, your love and interest of Robert E. Howard with us. I think you've sparked a lot of interest in this conversation. I'm excited to go back and kind of, like, revisit some of these stories. So thank you so much.
- [74:35]
Alberto Fernandez
Thank you, and God bless, and all the best.
- [74:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Thank you so much. All right, everyone, next week we are going to get started on reading kind of the Greek Poetics. We did A Year of Homer, and now we're going to read Hesiod's Theogony. And then we will get into Aeschylus, Oresteia. Check us out on x or thegreatbookspodcast.com to find out more information in our reading schedule. We'll see you guys next week. Thank you.
- [74:58]
Alberto Fernandez
Sa.