Musings on Fritz Leiber

Here's an excellent video brought to my attention by Bravd_n_Weasel:

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A little ways in to the video, I spotted this sitting on the shelf behind him:

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I immediatley recognized it, because I have one just like it! Mine looks just as beat-up as the one in the picture (Fritz's looked brand new). I bought it used about a decade ago. It's the compact version of the Oxford dictionary, and I didn't quite understand what that meant until it came in. See, it was originally publisheed in many thick volumes, like an encyclopdia, but to fit all the material into these two volumes, they reduced the size of the print down to near-microscopic. The little drawer on top is to hold a magnifying glass, and in fact that's where I got my glass from in order to read the ultra-fine print in the Witches of the Mind book. Weird how these things connect up.

I bought that particular dictionary when I was reading Gene Wolfe's New Sun books. He uses a lot of archaic words, and I was advised to get ahold of a really good older dictionary that has many of those kinds of words in it, because it enhances the reading experience when you look up the meanings of the words. It also helps immensely with older books like The Odyssey or similar things. There was no magnifying glass in mine when I bought it, so I got a modern one with LED lights and it fits in there perfectly.

I now feel like this is a precious link directly to Fritz, and who knows, possibly the very volumes he once owned? Ok, probably not, but it's just within the realm of possibility...​

I've been reading my way into Robert Graves' The White Goddess. This is vaguely Leiber-related, since Leiber's second phase was inspired by Graves. The White Goddess is Graves' name for The Muse, worshiped under many names (The Great Mother, mother of gods in many religions, perhaps represented as witches at times, and also manifesting as the Anima—Jung's name for her). I'm not sure if this is right, but I feel like it's connected to Machen's tales The White People and The Great God Pan, in which women and girls have a close connection to ancient forces of myth and magic that irrupt into reality while the men are scientists or logical thinkers trying to see evertyhing in a logical materialist way. The difference being that Graves is himself a poet, and is writing about the actual phenomenon itself, non-fictionally, whereas the Weird authors placed their works in the realm of fiction, while still understanding they were commenting on very real ideas in symbolic ways. She is the poetic spirit, an irrational uncontrollable and overwhelming force that can overtake us, especially those of a more sensitive nature—the poets and artists and the women. Graves opposes two strains of history/human nature—the material/scientific/logical versus the irrational/emotional/poetic. His overriding idea is that way back in prehistoric times there were matriarchal societies, dedicated to the worship of The White Goddess (under various names and forms), and that somehow, through some trickery and treachery, evil men overthrew these societies and replaced goddess-worship with patriarchal systems. Yes, that idea apparently originated with him.

I'm not sure exactly when he was writing (need to check up on that), but my own suspicion is that he's sensing something very real, but misplacing it into the physical realm of history rather than where it belongs—in the psyche. I think he's intuiting in many regards the same things Jung did, only Jung understood that the irrational, feminine, matriarchal forces are not something social and historical, but psychological.

Essentially the White Goddess is the unconscious, or something within it (the Anima I would say), and the aggressive, logical, scientific and highly materialistic lineage that arose and replaced it as our ruling principle is the conscious mind—logic, reason, science etc.​

Graves is an incredible writer. The book is written in prose (at least so far—it seems to be the kind of work that took over its writer and inspired him, and that roams freely through various forms as it goes), but every line has a powerful poetic feel to it. He has many theories, and though he literally believe the Muse, the White Goddess, is supreme over all that he and anyone does (anyone sensitive to her urgings, and sometimes even those who aren't), he tends to historicize everything, to see Biblical and mythological symbolism as representing masses of human societies. He believes that most if not all of the figures in the Bible represent tribes or civilizations, rather than individuals or some aspect of the developing psyche of humanity. For instance Goliath was a gigantic tribe, and David was a much smaller and still growing one that was able to defeat it. That's a good theory, especially to a materialistic person, and I believe there may be some level of truth to it, at times at least, but I'm more convinced that the things coming to us from a pre-literate period, especially the ones considered sacred, mythical, or religious, are about the gradual development of the conscious mind as it rose from the original unconscious state (Jung's theory). That happend as we developed languages and learned to use the apparatus of the neocortex, which separates us from the rest of the beasts. As I've written about elsewhere on the blog, you can trace that movement in the devlopment of philosophy from the pre-socratic, when they argues about which of the four classical elements the world is chiefly made of (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire), through the classical period when it shifted to logic and reason and the gods fell out of it entirely except occasional mentions that were probably just reflexive concessions to tradition (like the way even a complete atheist today might invoke a holy name when they stub their toe).

Oh, for anyone interested who hasn't been around long, my thoughts on mythology and how it relates to psychology (Jungian prinicipally) can be found here:

• Studies and Thoughts on Mythology

And on the two strains of literature that I call the Narrative and the Poetic here:

• Narrative and Poetic form

Both of those links are about the division/cooperation between the conscious and unconscious minds. Really just about everything I write is. The Yin/Yang is a symbol of it, so is the feminine and the masculine, so is the poetic and the narrative, so are the worlds of the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the material, etc. It's the primary split we live within and always have, that we see in many forms. These are all ways of trying to understand it, to grapple with it.

I keep wanting to collect my posts on the symbolism of Christianity and religion into a series, but that's gonna take some doing.

Bright Torches, Big City

Ok, back to Fritz. Another way he gets his own lived experience into his stories is through his descriptions of Lankhmar (the city). It's half based on his hometown of NYC, and half on his historical understanding (thoroughly researched) of Rome. In something I ran across recently, I don't remember exactly where, I learned that he based specific streets and neighborhoods in Lankhmar on areas he knew in New York. He also includes. what he knows about human behavior—the politicians are sleazy and underhanded, the bankers are mobsters, most of the temples are corrupt cults, the haves and the have-nots hate each other. I wish I could find a page online wih his speech Fafhrd and Me on it, there's so much great info in that—he said that fantasy must be fed and watered with the stuff of reality, or it comes off feeling shallow and flimsy.

I was once again searching for Fafhrd and Me (fruitlessly), but instead I found this article. In many ways it's a very good writeup, but with a few really egregious errors. First, he knows the twain are based on Leiber and Harry Fischer, but he gets them reversed—he thinks Leiber was the Mouser. And a couple of other problems (that was the biggest one)—but that's largely unimportant. He writes about why when he first read them he didn't like the writing (he wasn't ready for it yet). But he tackled it years later, when he he had lost his early snobbishness and broadened his horizons, and realized the very wordiness and stylistic flourishes he despised earlier are exactly what he loves now. He says he believes when the stories were written people had more time to read and longer attention spans (he's right). But he also gives some really good details about why he loves the stories, because of very specific things in very specific scenes that stick with you long after you've read them (I'm guessing forever—check in with me in a few years).

One of the things he talks about is what he calls the dual structure used throughout. I was very curious what he meant by this, but I'll let him explain it—he does a great job. I remember the title of one of Leiber's columns or essays in the book I just ordered (hasn't come in yet) was about a dual structure in fantasy—I wonder if it's the same thing? I guess I'll find out. Anyway, with no further skinamaroo, here's the link:

• Dual Structures in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories and Robin Wayne Bailey’s Swords Against The Shadowland

Personally I'm not a fan of the Robin Wayne Bailey books. He was chosen to take over writing the adventures of the twain after Leiber's death.

Well damn! You can read almost the entire first book for free on Google Books:

• Swords and Deviltry @ Google Books

It cuts off somewhere in Ill-Met in Lankhmar, the third short story, but it includes the complete first two stories, which are The Snow Women (Fafhrd's origin story) and The Unholy Grail (the Mouser's). Ill-Met is the story of how they—well—met. Personally these are not among my favortie stories about the twain, but I mean, it's Leiber, so it's damn good.

Le me see if any of the other books are available on Google.

• Swords in the Mist @ Google Books

The third book. Preview includes The Cloud of Hate and the beginning of Lean Times in Lankhmar. The second book, Swords Against Death, doesn't seem to be available with a preview.

• Swords against Wizardry @ Google Books

Almost the entire fourth book, Swords against Wizardry. Goes some ways into The Lords of Quarmall (one I don't care much for), which is the story Harry Fischer wrote most of the beginning of (I believe Leiber sort of spruced it up a little here and there to enhance his friend's occasionally weak writing).

Includes Stardock, the mountain-climbing story I wrote about recently and one of my favorites. I also like In the Witch's Tent, the first one in the book and a lead-in to Stardock. That one includes an image I'll never forget, that lives as a sort of animated gif in my head forever. I won't say what it is in case anyone wants to read it. Well, I'll just say it's what Fafhrd does so they can escape the trap. This was one of the connecting stories (I believe) that Lieber wrote to fill in the gaps between already-written ones and flesh out a more complete narrative arc. A very short sweet story—I just read it in about fifteen minutes (maybe less). And the descriptions of the witch and her tent are quite possibly the best descriptions I've ever run across, of anything anywhere. Pitch perfect.

Lol—I just noticed, at the end of the third paragraph, a reference to Harlan Ellison.

• The Swords of Lankhmar @ Google Books

This one is the fifth book, and the only novel. The Mouser is shrunken down to rat-size and must wear a rat costume, as he goes down into the bowels of a gigantic rat-metropolis underneath Lankhmar, a sort of twisted travesty of the upper city of men, where the rats walk on their hind legs and speak a sort of squeaky pidgin-Lankhmarese. Strange, surreal, and delightful.

• Swords and Ice magic @ Google Books

The sixth book. This is the book Leiber wrote after the paperback series was published, it came out in—I think the early 80's? Surprised the hell out of me! I assumed he was long dead, and suddenly here's a new book by him! The twain are older in this—grizzled and life-worn, just like their creators were IRL, and like I am now.

• The Knight and Knave of Swords @ Google Books

The seventh and final book, written in the 80s. In some ways I like these last two books the best, but there are stories scattered throughought the entire series that I absolutely love.

Here are my attempts at Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser paintings:

SpearpointAdjusted by Darkmatters, on Flickr


DubbleTrubble by Darkmatters, on Flickr
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These two were my first digital paintings. I had just got a tablet and Photoshop and decided to try to learn it. I worked on both of them for seven months. I had hardly even tried to draw landscapes before, which is why they're so strange here. And color was kicking my ass. They're basically brown paintings. It's a stage most beginners go through.

TheGreyMouserDefinitiveEdition5.0.2-LG by Darkmatters, on Flickr


faf-study5.7 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


DoubleFafhrd Axe by Darkmatters, on Flickr
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A big part of what I've been doing is trying to learn anatomy, which is why there are so many shirtless Fafhrds. Plus I wasn't ready to try complicated clothes yet. That Mouser portrait took me FOREVER! Even though I painted one buckle-strap and copied it over and over for his tunic-front. I mean FOR-EVAR! One step at a time.

Guardians@Lankhmar5.9 by Darkmatters, on Flickr​

Most of them are generic images, all are really unfinished, a couple are just figure studies, and the last one is an illustration for The Temple of Hate (one of the readable stories in the previous post). I hadn't become good enough at digital painting to know how to finish a picture yet. And I really need to do drapery studies to learn how to paint cloth.

Here are some pencil sketches from the 90's. Mostly Mouser:

99-mousersketch02 by Darkmatters, on Flickr​

99-mousersketch03 by Darkmatters, on Flickr​

99-mousersketch01 by Darkmatters, on Flickr​

2000-Fafstudies by Darkmatters, on Flickr​

I hadn't yet figured out how to draw Faf, I was trying to decide how big and brawny to make him. After trying Scott Steiner (pro wrestler) I eventually settled on Anthony Keidis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the basic model for him—face, hair, and body type.

009 015 2019 Dwngs-1 by Darkmatters, on Flickr​

Here's a drawing of Keidis' face with a crappy Fafhrd face attempt next to it. I had drawn the Fafhrd attempt first and got disgusted with how crappy and generic it looked, and then found a pic of Keidis and copied it to figure out the shapes of his face. I never did make Faf look just like Keidis, I found a similar but unique shape somewhat based on his. It's the same with drawing/painting as with writing characters and places and situations—base them on the known, but make changes. Draw from life.

009 020 2019 Dwngs-1.4 by Darkmatters, on Flickr
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And finally I figured out the Fafhrd face. Hair needs work though.

For anyone who already read the second-to-last post above (where I listed most of the Google Books links), I've been fleshing that post out significantly and added a few more links. Might be worth looking at again. Also added more images to the last post.

Working my way now up Stardock. Which means I'm reading it.

Stardock is the Great Mother, in both of her aspects as life-giver and life-taker. She is the great spirit of the Earth itself, perhaps of the Universe. The White Goddess.

She's described quite literally as a woman, with a skirt of snow covering her lower section, two flowing tresses of snow blowing out beside her head, and a rim near the top like the brim of a hat. And something glints like a pair of great eyes in her face as the twain stand contemplating her before attempting to conquer her. Or rather to survive her methinks. Perhaps to court her. I think they must make their advances exactly right, with no missed steps or clumsy handholds, or death will be the price.

She is that which, to an adventurer, beckons irresistably to be conquered, and yet is all but unconquerable. The puzzle that must be solved, that has killed every suitor thus far, or driven them away humiliated and shamed, and that stands, a proud queen and virgin still. A sort of Sphinx.

In the video at the top of this page Lieber said, addressing some unseen audience, that he believes

an adventurer, according to the stories like Conan etc, is a man who travels around on quests, seeking gold and jewels and strange near-uattainable objects of incalculable value, driven by wanderlust, and who beds as many women as possible.​

That got a nice laugh from the crowd. Like most of what he says or writes, it has at least two elements—it's funny, and yet it's true. There's usually wit and wisdom in his utterings. He then said that the reason they seek gems and gold is mostly to present it to the women as part of the courtship ritual.

With Stardock, both pursuits are combined into one. That's some nice economy of storytelling my friends. Oh, and I neglected to say, there's also a legend of many great jewels waiting at the top, in the crown of Stardock's pretty hat, for he who wins that vantage point.

Here's a resolution for myself.

In going through and finding those pics, I realized I spent a decade learning to paint, and am nowhere near pro level. Maybe another decade would do it? And now I'm writing, been at it for four years already. Do I want to be doing studies for the next six years?

No.

How long then?

And it hit me. As soon as I finish this deep dive into Leiber and the study into writing emotion. Then I shut down the U of Me, stop the studies, and start writing like a sonofabitch. My hard deadline is by April. The final semester ends at Spring Break baby! The Leiber studies are my graduation piece. Of course, I said that during the Breaking Bad studies, and I thought it while I was doing Buffy. She taught me a hell of a lot, but this one had to happen. It's my Stardock.

If I discover any more weak areas (like I did emotion), I'll fill them in, but quickly. No more leisurely loafing.

Back to the final semester.

There's a deep charm to Leiber and his work. I think that's a huge part of his appeal. It's a storyteller thing. Whether he's speaking or writing, as so many have said, his personality comes through, and he's a real charmer. Warm, witty, affectionate, and capable of somehow (often by means I can't fathom) injecting that charm ino every aspect of his writing. His characters, the interactions between characters, his descriptions, the landscapes and the situations. Somehow it all comes across in a deeply charming way. I suspect he gets a lot of that from Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote. When I was reading the early parts of that I felt like it was a masterclass in where Leiber got a lof of his panache from. It's more from Shakespeare he gets his tricksy way with words, and perhaps Tolkein (did they begin their careers around the same time?), Plus of course he's vastly more widely-read than I am, I don't know how many other great influences he's had from the classics. He was extremely well-versed in them. Oh, undoubtedly Melville. Mayhap Oscar Wilde. Poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Percy Bysshe Shelley... on and on I'm sure.

I often feel, when reading certain of the stories, like he's just had a megadose of either The Bard or Cervantes, or maybe Dante or Homer, and has let it come bubbling up into his own work. I think that was pretty apparent with In The Witch's Tent, but I think it's even stronger in a few others—usually the really brief connecting-pieces he created for the Ace paperback collection. Though sometimes he might give way to that temptation in a longer story. It's been a long time since I've read him, aside from a few beginnings just since starting this thread (and the entirety of In the Witch's Tent). And of course his delightful wordplay is a huge part of his charm. He's playing games (literally word games), and he's an absolute master, so he makes it feel effortless and fun. Usually if someone writes in an archaic fashion, they're all serious and ponderous with it—it often weighs a story down and is associated with heavy formality rather than the loose, airy, delightful repartee and fanciful wordplay he's capable of.

I wanted to insert this into the beginning, but the sentences are so tight I can't, without breaking the flow. So it goes here instead. His stories are written so they often sound like a storyteller relating a tale verbally. You can imagine his voice (especially if you've heard it, that deep resonant rumble). In fact his writing seems to almost invoke a live storytelling style. I think that also goes toward the charm of it. It's like—do you remember the beginning of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (the movie)? I'll see if I can drop a link to it. It's told orally by a snowman, vocied by Burl Ives, a great singer/storyteller of the old-school tradition.

Spoiler: Rudolph

Couldn't find just the beginning, but here's the whole movie. Try not to get caught up and just watch the whole thing. Unfortunately they digitally re-worked it and screwed up the visuals—everything is too crisp and bright. They call it HDR. It's digital and it makes everything super crisp and bright, so that must be good right? Sure, if you have no artistic sensibilities or eyes.

The repartee between Fafrhd and the Mouser is brilliant

It may be one of the main sources of the fabled charm. Often they're in disagreement (almost always), but generally not in a harsh or angry way. They have an easy camaraderie born of long familiarity (actually they had it from the moment they met, though that was far from the first story written). They seem to bring out the best in each other, even when arguing. They have a certain witty courtliness, as if noble-born, though one is a barbarian (who's fascinated with civilization and the ways of the sun-drenched southern cities) and the other an alley-dwelling slum-rasied theif. As characters they both seem to partake in Leiber's own love of witty wordplay. So do many if not all of the characters.That probably stems largely from Shakespeare (though also many other early writers of similar ilk). Even the street urchins and slovenly poor in Shakespeare speak with wit and in delightful fashion, though he could definiteluy capture the differences in the tongues of people from various regions and societal levels. There was a high-energy charm in the way they all spoke.

More influences to add as they occur—Alexandre Dumas (who I sometimes lovingly refer to as Alexander Dumbass, in a Red Foreman voice) who wrote The Three Musketeers, Dickens, and—who wrote the Hunchback? Yeah, that dude too. All stylists known for a high level of witty wordplay and charm (or something close. Don't quote me on this, it's just occurring to me on the fly). Many of them English.

I just thought of Tarrantino in relation to this, though he does it a bit differently. All his characters definitely speak in heightened, emotionally powerful form, recognizable instantly as coming from Tarrantino himself (though he doesn't talk like that in interviews, like, you know what I mean, right? Nervous high-energy laughter). But in his case all the characters have the same voice. At least in some regards, there's almost an interchageability between them (not totally, but close). I'm not sure to what extent Leiber's characters all have their own voice. I'd have to pay attention while reading. I do know Fafhrd and the Mouser are easily identifiable by their mannerisms alone. Fafhrd is very stoic and usually non-judgemental, until something offends his barbarian sensibilities (which doesn't happen often), when he bursts into action usually. But the Mouser is cruel, smirking, and nasty underneath, and often so it shows on the surface. He makes nasty faces and swaggers exaggeratedly while taunting his prey. He often does that to his women (girls usually—when he encounters a real woman on Rime Isle he's met his match and perhaps a bit more).

Yeah, actually I'm pretty sure you can tell them apart by unattributed dialogue alone. Fafhrd uses smaller, more functional words. Simple diction. Very utilitarian and matter-of-fact. That suits his personality. The Mouser is a manipulator and will use every trick to gain the upper hand. He feels superior to everyone, which is often his downfall—he's a cat after all, opposed to Fafhrd's wolf. And, like a cat, when he's humiliated, it shows in his embarrassed body language. The Mouser likes to try to humiliate his opponent (though never Fafhrd. That's the one person who always has enough of his respect that he won't pull his tricks on him).