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[This article was originally published on my blog in May 2018. I was planning on reviewing all of the works in The Second Book of Robert E. Howard ('REH'), edited by Glenn Lord, but never got to finish them. Perhaps one day I will.]
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This is another of those trunk stories unearthed and published well after REH's death. Lin Carter published an edited version of it in 1967's King Kull, but Glenn Lord published the unedited version in The Second Book of Robert E. Howard. It's this unedited version that I am writing about.
This is a very strange story, unlike REH's usual gung-ho, action filled adventures. It is very metaphysical. Lord suggests this is the reason it never found a home during REH's life, and I can see why. It is more of a series of thoughts about the nature of the universe dressed up in fantasy guise. In a way, it's like one of the poems that I've already reviewed.
It starts with the unnamed narrator, who we later find out is Kull, waking up in a strange unplace outside of normal space and time. He is confused about who and where he is, and searches for some type of reality, not even remembering what 'light' is, but knowing that it is important to him.
He could not understand and a fantastic thought came to him – a feeling that he was locked inside his own skull. p.87
As I've already pointed out, there is this sense of being trapped in your own skull in REH's other works. Look at my posting on Monster from the Id, and how REH was reaching into his own mind and unearthing the poisonous creatures in there as part of his Art. This story is like a view from inside his skull while REH unearthed the creatures.
Kull's confusion about his awakening reminds me of nothing so much as the start of Philip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go, where the explorer Richard Francis Burton wakes in the resurrection chamber on Riverworld. In that story, Burton is surrounded by bodies floating in space, but there is the same sense of being out of place, outside the normal universe. Farmer was a pulp author, too, just working later than REH.
When Kull finally gets somewhere, it is to see stars around him.
High above him, even with his eyes, and below him, flashed and blazed great stars in a majestic glittering cosmic ocean. p.88
That's very Olaf Stapledon and 1930s pulp – vast cosmic distances filled with huge glowing orbs. Now, this story wasn't published until well after REH's death, so there is no way that this directly influenced writers like Farmer and Stapledon, but the imagery is very similar. There was obviously something in the air in the 1930s. Maybe it had to do with the growth of photographic astronomy, and the images of galaxies being seen in magazines, that these authors latched onto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon
Kull meets a strange indistinct figure who tells him that he has passed through the Door, maybe the Door into the afterlife, but that he isn't dead yet. They talk about the nature of life and death, and the stranger tells Kull that there are universes within universes, and that 'size and space and time are relative and do not really exist.' They watch as a universe of stars grows old and is replaced by new stars, with planets and life rising and dying. It's all pretty psychedelic.
Then Kull reawakens in the real world, having been struck by an assassin – it has all been a near death experience – and has a final short conversation with his friend Brule the Pict who has just saved his life.
"I cannot understand – but just before I was struck down I heard the gong sounding the hour, and it was still sounding when I came to myself.
Brule, there is no such thing as time nor space; for I have traveled the longest journey of my life, and have lived countless millions of years during the striking of the gong." p.92-93
What's interesting about this story is that it starts with Kull in the mystic realm straight away, rather than in the fictional world of the story, Valusia. Imagine if C. S. Lewis started The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in Narnia, and then worked his way back to Earth.
We don't see the stroke which renders Kull unconscious, and Kull doesn't have time to respond. When he comes back to his physical body, his friend Brule has already killed the assassin. It's very much unlike your traditional pulp story, but REH made it work.
There is a very distinct division between that mystic realm and the real world. In the mystic realm, Kull talks to a strange figure who would not fit into the real world – the figure is an archetype, not a character, something closer to a Mentor, for he educates Kull before disappearing. When Kull comes back to the real world, he talks to his friend Brule, someone who would not fit into the mystic realm: a character with his own attributes which prevent him from being just an archetype. So, the story reverses itself: mystic realm + mystic Mentor -> normal realm + earthly friend. In both realms, Kull's life has been changed by someone else: an archetypal Mentor who teaches him something mystical and a friend who saves his life. It is an interesting inverted mirror.
The mysterious Mentor that Kull talks to is mysterious in appearance not just in conversation.
The shape moved nearer and he saw that it was a man, apparently a very ancient man, though the features were indistinct and illusive in the faint light. p.88
If that isn't a precursor of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, from Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series, I don't know what is. These are the magician patrons of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser respectively. Ningauble and Sheelba aren't quite mentors, but they come close; they are more like annoying patrons.
Link to Wikipedia page on Ningauble and Sheelba
In The Striking of the Gong, the cryptic figure that Kull meets in the otherworldy realm is a nearly pure archetype of the Mentor. There are no Mr Miyagi 'wax on, wax off' moments, no 'If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine' death scenes. He reveals the nature of the world to Kull, and nothing else, but that's a pretty powerful sort of mentoring. Kull undergoes a spiritual awakening, an example of the archetype of the Journey, where the "main character takes a journey, which may be physical or emotional, to understand his or her personality, and the nature of the world."
https://literarydevices.net/archetype/
This isn't the only story where REH is writing about the underlying nature of reality. Black Canaan is all about revealing the true horrific nature of both the real world and the psychological world: black magic and forbidden sexual yearnings. The Striking of the Gong, though, foregrounds the nature of the world the most; it is completely upfront. It is not hidden within the plot. The revelation of the nature of the world IS the plot. In that way, it's closer to the works of H. P. Lovecraft than REH's more straight adventure stories, and it's one that I enjoyed very much.
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