Dec 2014 Group Read Discussion

[Ashe]

Ahoy, everyone. Our first group read will be for the Robert E. Howard classic, "The Horror From The Mound." You can find the story in the listed collection, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, or just google it and pick the site you find most comfortable to read it from (the first site should be Project Gutenberg).

Remember to use the spoilers tag to discuss the story until everyone has had a chance to read it.

Happy reading!

[Edward]

Nice!

[Quentin]

I read these before but it's been several years so I will try to reread it, this is a busy month though o.O I do think Howard did some great horror stories though, he's probably underrated in that aspect since he's more well known for adventure. I really always thought his Solomon Kane stories were cooler than the Conan stories, but I love both.

[Justin]

Just purchased it for .99 lol. It's really short so I'll read it one night this week. Thanks Ashe

[Ashe]

I like how close "adventure" and "horror" can run together. Which would be why I'm writing the book I am haha. I need to get the Solomon Kane collection and I'll pretty much have all of Howard's work.

Also, I think, considering how busy December is, we'll just go ahead and go for a single read this go round and discuss it. Come January, we can do Helldorado, since it got second place. Unless everyone wants to try and read it too.

[Felipe Soares]

While it was a fun short read, I was a bit dissapointed by the monster reveal.

Spoilers Below
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(view spoiler)[During most of the story I was expecting some sort of cosmic horror to burst out of the tomb, or some other creepy monster from pre-historic times. But in the end it was... A vampire. To be fair they weren't that common in horror literature by the time Howard wrote this, but I was a bit dissapointed by the choice of monster after the build-up.

And it was a single vampire that managed to kill an unprepared man before being wrestled around by a single texan. (hide spoiler)]

[Ashe]

For anyone curious, the spoiler tag can be referenced by clicking the "some html is ok" link. Try to use that since it hides the content.

[Clare]

I will try to fit this in, although the preview to me looks a little more horror than I usually like.

[Ashe]

There is definitely a lot of horror stuff in Weird Westerns. I will say, as far as this story goes, it's very pulp since it's from one of the kings of pulp fiction. You might find it rather tame compared to other things you've seen. If you get around to reading it, definitely sound off.

[Clare]

Ashe, there is definitely a lot of horror kind of stuff in real life, especially right now. Just watch the news. No, what spooks me the most, is like where I saw mentioned the word "Voodoo", which creeps me out, as the supernatural, for me is nothing to mess with. Strange things have happened in my life, both good and bad, and this unseen behind the scenes kind of stuff bothers me more than watching Jason and Micheal Myers movies, as it can really happen. That's all I was referring to, although as a kid, I used to gobble up books by the dozen in a week. Perhaps I read too many strange things then, which has determined my preferences now.

[Ashe]

I gotcha.

[Gwyn]

It's pretty tame Clare. No voodoo etc in this particular tale, it's a pretty straight up monster story :) That's a bit of a spoiler, sorry, I'll hide the rest ;)

(view spoiler)[ I enjoyed the voice of this story, it's different from what you often see with weird westerns. You definitely get the feel that REH is an adventure/horror writer telling a western story, as opposed to a western writer telling a horror story (if that makes sense). It had a great creepy factor, though I was a little let down by the monster reveal myself. I guess I was hoping for some ancient demon too haha. Over all it was a fun read. It was actually my first REH story (as far as I remember), so was a good introduction. I'll have to pick up some of his other work :)

One thing about the story, it got me thinking about a mysterious formation not far from here known as the Mima Mounds.


They've been excavated and seem to contain only dirt...or do they?? ;) (hide spoiler)]

[Gwyn]

Felipe wrote: "While it was a fun short read, I was a bit dissapointed by the monster reveal.

Spoilers Below
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(view spoiler)[ actually it seems like vampires were fairly common by the 1930s when this was written. In looking up the story I ran into some info on the pulp mag it was originally published in. That issue was pretty much an all vampire special, and REH actually got some flack for Horror from the Mound because it contained “no less than four flagrant breaches of accepted vampire tradition”. Which goes to show that there was already an "accepted vampire tradition" at the time. I'm not sure who is quoted there, but if they were up in arms about this story, they probably are crapping their pants in the grave regarding Twilight lol

I'm not sure what those "flagrant breaches" might be though. The setting is likely one, but not sure about the other three. Any thoughts? :) (hide spoiler)]

[Mark]

Reading it now!

[Mark]

There's nothing quite like reading a Robert E. Howard story. Love his characterizations and that does not disappoint here. He captures his characters in a way few outside a much longer winded Stephen King can. Good pacing, great descriptions, fine action. Not at the level of Howard's Conan stories, but then what is?

[Eric]

@Liz...I'm not 100% sure what the flagrant breaches were, but I actually do have some thoughts.
(view spoiler)[This story came out in 1932 after Dracula was a huge hit on stage and screen. I believe that cemented the idea of vampire stories as heavily Gothic, atmospheric horror...shadowy castles, pale women in nightclothes, and the exotic foreign nobleman...all with a heavy dose of psycho-sexual subtext. Horror From the Mound gives us instead the wilds of West Texas, a sweaty farmer desperate enough to turn grave robber, no damsels, in distress or otherwise, and then there's the vampire. He is a foreign nobleman, but he ain't sexy. He's not even human and, in typical Howard style, you feel viscerally that this thing is a monster...mouldering clothes, black talons, the stink of the grave on him. I don't have anything against the "accepted vampire tradition", but I like to see different takes. This was definitely a different take. (hide spoiler)]

[Ashe]

Some thoughts on your points, Eric.
(view spoiler)[I love the "stink of the grave" aspect. It was one of the things I liked best in Salem's Lot. The comparison to Dracula gets apples and oranges to me, as far as presentation goes. Dracula stayed active, he fed just enough to keep going until he was on his way to London and got back up to peak. In Mound, the thing had been buried, with no blood, so of course it's gonna come out and be more monstrous. And that's good. Dynamic styles for vampires is important. (hide spoiler)]

[Eric]

I wasn't comparing the story directly to Dracula, just pointing out that Dracula (at least the Bela Lugosi version) was huge at the time this story came out. They're both vampires, but definitely apples and oranges after that fact. Which of course is why it worked for me--nice to see a different take. Joe Lansdale wrote a similar short story in Dead Man's Hand featuring his Reverend Jebediah where the thing is even more monstrous. He dedicated it to REH.

[Ashe]

Didn't mean to say you were, was just voicing what popped up in my head. That story, so far, is the only one I've really liked in the anthology.

[Eric]

Well, Lansdale can be a hard act to follow!

As far as Dracula and Horror From the Mound, the interesting thing to me is that it's pretty clearly a choice to be different. The man could do Gothic if he wanted to. I think Black Canaan and Pigeons From Hell could be considered Gothic. So I don't think he 'messed up' the tradition, for Howard it seems natural to throw a 'Gothic' vampire into West Texas.

[Ashe]

The thing I like most about Gothic is that it fits anywhere. If you know how to use it, you can make a little desert town gothic. I've done that before, a few years ago, for a workshop on deviantart. So, someone like Howard, of course he could do it.

As for "messing up traditions," I mean, Dracula pretty much codified vampires for modern audiences and then Nosferatu added "death by sunlight" as a further weakness (though, for my money, I ignore that in favor of "weakened during the day," sans Drac's noontime power hour). There's so many variations on the mythology throughout cultures that, really, the only way to mess it up was the sparkling from Twilight. And I'm not even saying that to make fun of Twilight, I don't like it but the jokes are a dead horse that's 12 feet under at this point. Mostly, I just feel like if you're gonna have a diamond-skinned, sparkly monster, you need to give it a better masquerade ability than "lives in perpetual overcast."

[Ashe]

Not a big turn out for the first group read but we had some good discussion. I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. We'll set up another group read in the future.

[[deleted user]]

Well I'm very late to the group read but I do have some thoughts on it.




Spoilers below
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Let me start by saying I am a big fan of Howard's writing but aside from his big collections of his most well known characters (Conan, Solomon Kane and others) I've never had the chance to delve into his individual works or writings in other genres. So I was glad we picked this.

It is not quite what I expected but I found it an enjoyable read nonetheless. I was hoping for a little more Spaghetti Western style gunfighting and the like, but what we got was a rural Texas creepy yarn, something Howard no doubt was at home with.
I was ok with the monster reveal being a vampire. As others have pointed out vampire fiction was popular at the time period (the earliest works being Varney the Vampire from England well before Dracula appeared) and it is not the first time Howard has dealt with vampires in his fiction (see Solomon Kane; a few of the stories involve a Puritan warrior fighting vampires in darkest Africa in the 1600s!), nor is it the first time his hero fought evil in a rolling, tussling, punch-em-up style only to be victorious (again, Kane). But do I think he could have come up with a better critter as the reveal? Yep. As a contemporary and working friend of H.P. Lovecraft, even going so far as to contribute a bit to the Cthulhu Mythos, he could have come up with something more terrifying or surreal than a by comparison bog standard vampire. But then again as a working writer during the Depression, he had to go with what was popular to get published.

I did appreciate his attempts at historical accuracy to lend verisimilitude (the conquest of southwestern North America by the Spanish in the 1500s/1600s) to the fiction; it was a neat touch and a good lesson for budding fiction writers. But again vampires at a time when no real life person would have known what they were (demons and witches they would have believed in, but stories of the walking dead would have been received with nothing but skepticism).

To finish, it's not Howard at his best. It seems like a throwaway work; for all we know it was, and Howard knowingly wrote it just to get a steady paycheck or at the behest of his publication editors. But it's fun, it's short and it is at least passionate and true to form for the man and his writing style. I'm glad we took a look at it.

[Ashe]

All good points. I'd have to look at the publishing history of the story to know if it was a throwaway/paycheck story but yeah, even if it was, it let him keep writing and giving us other great work.

[Justin]

I purchased the book in the beginning of December, got caught up with the Holidays and never got around to it. Finally tried reading it earlier this week and my kindle for pc froze on every page and had to restart and it was only with that book lol.
Yeah, so seing at it was an issue with the book and not wanting to putter I deleted the book from my Kindle. So much for that! I will definitely try to read the next group read whatever it will be on time and hopefully it won't gimme any issues.