Danse Macabre   ::   Кинг Стивен

Howard, and I believe that Conan's creator would have responded to Herbert's work withimmediate enthusiasm, although the two men were opposites in many ways. Howard was big and broad shouldered; the face in those pictures which remain to us is expressionless with, we might think, undertones of either shyness or suspicion. James Herbert is of medium height, slim, quick to smile or frown, open and frank. Of course the biggest difference may be that Howard is dead and Herbert ain't, ha-ha.

Howard's best work-his stories of Conan the Barbarian-are in the mythic country of Cimmeria, far in a similarly mythic past inhabited by monsters and beautiful, sexy maidens in need of rescue. And Conan will be happy to effect said rescue . . . if the price is right. Herbert's work is set firmly in England's present, most commonly against the backdrop of London or the southern counties which surround it. Howard was brought up in rural circumstances ( he lived and died in a small sagebrush town called Cross Plains, Texas); Herbert was born in London's East End, the son of street traders, and his work reflects a checkered career as a rock and roll singer, artist, and ad executive.

It is in the elusive matter of style-a confusing word that may be most accurately defined as "plan or method of attack"-that Herbert strongly recalls the Howard that was. In his novels of horror- The Rats, The Fog, The Survivor, The Spear, The Lair , and The Dark -Herbert does not just write; as Robert E. Howard did, he puts on his combat boots and goes out to assault the reader with horror.

Let me also take a moment to point out one similarity that James Herbert and Ramsey Campbell do share, simply by virtue of their Englishness: they both write that clear, lucid, grammatical prose that only those educated in England seem able to produce. You'd think that the ability to write lucid prose would be the bottom line for any publishing novelist, but it is not so. If you don't believe me, go check out the paperback originals rack at your local bookstore. I promise you such a carnival of dangling participles, misplaced modifiers, and even lack of agreement between subject and verb that your hair may turn white. You would expect that proofreaders and copy editors would pick this sort of stuff up even if the writers of such embarrassing English do not, but many of them seem as illiterate as the writers they are trying to bail out.

Worse than the mechanical errors, many writers of fiction seem totally unable to explain simple operations or actions clearly enough for the reader to be able to see them in his or her mind's eye.