Crom Your Enthusiasm (4)

By: David Smay
August 6, 2015

Sword of Sorcery #2 (February 1973), featuring Denny O'Neil and Howard Chaykin's adaptation of Fritz Leiber's Thieves' House — Sword of Sorcery #2 (February 1973), featuring Denny O’Neil and Howard Chaykin’s adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s *Thieves’ House*

One of 25 installments in a series of posts analyzing and celebrating a few of our favorite fantasy novels from the Thirties (1934–1943). Enjoy!

THIEVES’ HOUSE | FRITZ LEIBER | 1943

In the novella Thieves’ House, first published in Unknown, Fritz Leiber established the city of Lankhmar (“that primal sink of iniquity”) as the most enticing supporting character in his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series. Stealing only from the best of Weird Tales, Leiber filched Clark Ashton Smith’s louche, lapidary style, lifted Lovecraft’s creepy dread, and ran off with Robert E. Howard’s bravado — to create something wholly his own.

Part of the pleasure of Thieves’ House comes from Leiber skipping past the plot elements that would define, say, a Conan story and getting right to the jibes, betrayal, and horror that interest him. Leiber delights in concussing Fafhrd several times for farcical effect, then interrupts Mouser’s cunning plan of putty-faced, skull-ventriloquizing jiggery-pokery with a sharp hairpin. As a teenager, Leiber toured with his parents’ Shakespeare company; you feel that training in his mix of high action and low humor, cynical wordplay and sumptuous language. Leiber leads us through a merry hell of the vengeful dead, duplicitous wenches, and all the death-traps the Thieves’ Guild can muster… then circles back to the Silver Eel, where so many Fafhrd and Mouser stories conclude with spiced wine and tavern girls. Also: Nobody writes better swordfights than Leiber, himself a master fencer.

Leiber’s sophistication and wit easily wring a grin out of a wry aside (“…the Street of Thinkers — called by theologians Atheist’s Avenue…”), not to mention Faf and the Mouser’s inexhaustible bantering, bickering, and philosophizing. He mixes sly bawdry with sharp satire, broad comedy with black humor. Whenever Game of Thrones pairs off an odd couple of characters who parry insults you’re seeing Leiber’s hand, and whenever you roll a 12-sided die you’re stepping into the No When of Leiber’s world, Nehwon. Gary Gygax, GRRM, and other Leiber fans will tell you that there’s no greater company than the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd.

PS: Read the comic-book version here.

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CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2015): Erik Davis on Jack Williamson’s DARKER THAN YOU THINK | Sara Ryan on T.H. White’s THE SWORD IN THE STONE | Mark Kingwell on C.S. Lewis’s OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET | David Smay on Fritz Leiber’s THIEVES’ HOUSE | Natalie Zutter on Robert E. Howard’s QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST | James Parker on J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT | Adrienne Crew on Dion Fortune’s THE SEA PRIESTESS | Gabriel Boyer on Clark Ashton Smith’s ZOTHIQUE stories | John Hilgart on H.P. Lovecraft’s THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD | Barbara Bogaev on William Sloane’s TO WALK THE NIGHT | Rob Wringham on Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN | Dan Fox on Hergé’s THE SEVEN CRYSTAL BALLS | Flourish Klink on C.S. Lewis’s PERELANDRA | Tor Aarestad on L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s THE ROARING TRUMPET | Anthony Miller on H.P. Lovecraft’s THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH | Suzanne Fischer on E.R. Eddison’s MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES | Molly Sauter on Herbert Read’s THE GREEN CHILD | Diana Leto on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s TARZAN AND THE LION MAN | Joshua Glenn on Robert E. Howard’s THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON | Andrew Hultkrans on H.P. Lovecraft’s AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS | Lynn Peril on Fritz Leiber’s CONJURE WIFE | Gordon Dahlquist on H.P. Lovecraft’s THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME | Adam McGovern on C.L. Moore’s JIREL OF JOIRY stories | Tom Nealon on Fritz Leiber’s TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE | John Holbo on Robert E. Howard’s CONAN MYTHOS.

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Crom Your Enthusiasm (4)

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