The working concept behind this serialized review of Almuric is based purely on a hunch that Howard was pouring himself more directly into this work than others. Almuric is his longest work written in the first person, which was in no way his normal style. It may be that this was simply in keeping with convention, adopting the narrative form adhered to by Edgar Rice Burroughs, among others, when composing interplanetary novels. Whatever Howard’s motivation for the first person narrative, and based on my first impression upon reading it, as a juvenile, I have a sense—perhaps a mere conceit or an unexamined intuition based on my own work as a novelist as well as my reluctance to write fiction in the first person—that such a look at Almuric may help this reader get closer to Howard the writer.
An author who writes varied forms of fiction in a way that hold’s the reader’s attention is not wholly himself as he writes; sometimes he’s more, sometimes less, but never exactly as he is in the everyday. This is an aspect of art overtaking the artist, the mystical place in the writing mind. I have a feeling—and that is all it is—that in the case of this novel, we have “more” rather than “less” of Howard the mystic.
Continuing along in the footsteps of a youth of the 1970s examining Almuric at the Walden’s bookstore at the Washington, Pennsylvania Mall, and beginning to read it before making it to the register, I will next be examining the back cover—which was admittedly not Howard’s creation. On that book back is the odd name of the protagonist that—unlike other Howard heroes—does not appear on the front cover, but on the back.
Esau Cairn, the name of the character that failed to impress a litany of publishers with its marketability, a name which seems to hang in the mouth oddly, is the reader’s first clue as to the subtext of the inspirational flight of savage fancy that is Almuric.
Almuric Editions
The book cover of the big man in the loincloth wrestling with winged demons descending from some distant haunt, which graced the cover of the Berkley illustrated mass market paperback edition, that sold me immediately as a teenage reader, may be viewed via the link below.
link › howardworks.com/almuricy.htm
Other editions may be accessed via the link below.
The edition I am working from for this series of reviews is the 1969 edition, by Ace, which states that Ace had copyrighted it in 1964, and that it had been previously published in serial form in 1939 by Weird Tales.
The edition is available via the link below.
The terrible audio version by a female robot may be experienced at the link below.
Speaking of hairy monument, you really need to write a good wikipedia entry for yourself. It's very, VERY important, if you had one, google would display text from it along the results when searching for James LaFond. It's your font cover to the internet essentially. Maybe look up a few other authors on Wikipedia and take their entries as a template/starting point.
I wanted to try and write something myself, but it would be counter productive, if a respected author and word smith had his entry written, nay, cobbled together, by someone with zero formal English education (humble brag).
Reminds me of this stand up routine by Brian Regan
Can you imagine being bilingual ? Or even knowing anybody that was? I'm not even unilingual... must see:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zVRVA3mun3Q