Dealing with contextless, inflammatory claims of Howard's racism

So in the end, Robert E. Howard was a racist. When my kids are old enough, I will not recommend his fiction to them. I'll also explain how Howard was so racist he would have thought of my sons as less than human. I'll then suggest they read Howard's fiction and history to discover for themselves how racist the man was.

From "Robert E. Howard was a racist. Deal with it," by Jason Sanford. Read the rest here (at your own risk).

And once you're done reading, hop on over to Al Harron's bit of cyberspace, The Blog that Time Forgot, and read his well thought-out response. Nice work, Al.

Like Harron, I also find Sanford's post highly unfair. Yes, Howard was racist by our modern, 21st century standards. "The Vale of Lost Women" was not his finest hour. Yet not only was Howard's racism no more than average for his place and time (1920s and 30's Texas), but he grew progressively less racist over the course of his writing career. How does one reconcile these words from a Howard poem with someone who is, as Stanford proclaims, an irredeemable racist?

That I lived to a straight and simple creed
The whole of my worldly span,
And white or black or yellow,
I dealt Foursquare with my fellow man.

Lest we forget, Howard was a very young man (18 years old) when his writing career began. The mainstream stories in which Howard's racism is most prevalent and troubling are his early Solomon Kane tales; by the later Kane stories Howard had largely changed his tune. He was maturing not only as a writer, but as a human being. Alas, he was dead by 30. We'll never know what enlightened attitudes toward race he may have held into middle and old age, but it's clear what trajectory his beliefs were taking.

But even more than the broad brush Sanford uses to inaccurately paint Howard, I'm more concerned with his casual references to tossing aside literature that doesn't meet with his 21st century standards of decency:

This cultural "passing on" is where Howard's writings embrace true failure. Despite what Howard's defenders may wish, we do not read his stories as if we were back in the 1930s. We read them through the eyes of our 21st century beliefs. Not only was his racism disturbing to some of his contemporaries, it is equally disturbing to modern readers. Because of this, many people don't believe Howard's stories are worth passing on to others.

I find it hard to believe that a reasonably intelligent reader cannot place works into the context of the times and culture in which they were written. Books should be evaluated on their own terms, regardless of the author's beliefs. Jack London was a racist, as was H.P. Lovecraft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Joseph Conrad. Are we supposed to toss The Scarlet Letter and The Heart of Darkness by the wayside, then? Are these not worth passing on to later generations?

Extending Sanford's argument to an even greater height of absurdity: Sir Thomas Malory was a scoundrel. One biography declared him a thief, bandit, kidnapper, and rapist, and it's believed that he started Le Morte d'Arthur while he was in prison. Do the sordid details of its author's life render it any less a work of art? (Now that I'm on the subject, Le Morte d'Arthur is also thoroughly medieval and emphasizes the importance of Christianity as a moral code for lawless knights. Since many find religion and the medieval mindset repellant, that's three strikes. Please place all copies into the nearest incinerator).

Sanford does perform some equivocating in his post; he says that not all of Howard's writings should be discarded, and he's rather complementary of most of his Conan material. Unfortunately, this point is lost amidst his screaming bold-emphasized declaration that "the bastard was a racist!"

To sum up:

That Robert E. Howard was racist by our own 21st century standards is a reasonable argument and a basis for measured criticism.

That Howard's racism informs and mars all his works, and to therefore conclude that they be placed in the dustbin of history, is shortsighted and dangerous (or at the least, certainly troubling) thinking.

Addendum*

Not only is Sanford's essay a shoddy piece of work, but now he's apparently deleting critical comments about it left on his blog. I posted two pieces of evidence directly contradicting his thesis that Howard's racism was excessive and abnormal for his place and time, and I took them from the two official biographies of REH (one of which, Blood and Thunder, Sanford supposedly read). They are as follows:

If a racist, Robert Howard was, by the standards of his time and place, a comparatively mild one.

--Dark Valley Destiny, L. Sprague de Camp

It is incredibly naive to throw a twenty-first-century value judgment onto people who were living a hundred years ago. For every instance of racism found in Howard's work, a compelling counterargument can be found elsewhere.

--Blood and Thunder, Mark Finn

The two biographies of Robert E. Howard vs. Jason Sanford--I think we know where the truth lies, here.

Finding Deliverance in a dearth of heroic fantasy

I lay with the flashlight still in one hand, and tried to shape the day. The river ran through it, but before we got back into the current other things were possible. What I thought about mainly was that I was in a place where none—or almost none—of my daily ways of living my life would work; there was not habit I could call on. Is this freedom? I wondered.

–James Dickey, Deliverance

So you’ve read yourself out of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, closed the cover on the latest Bernard Cornwell and Joe Abercrombie, and you’re looking for something new in heroic fiction. But you can’t seem to find what you’re looking for. Rather than slumming around in the dregs of the genre or reaching for The Sword of Shannara (with apologies to fans of Terry Brooks), my suggestion is to take a look at modern realistic adventure fiction and non-fiction.

I read heroic fiction for the action, the adventure, the storytelling, and the sense of palpable danger that real life (typically) doesn’t provide. Likewise, I find that works like The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf by Jack London, Alive by Piers Paul Read, and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer satisfy the same primal needs as the stories of an Edgar Rice Burroughs or David Gemmell. The best modern adventure fiction/non-fiction stories are bedfellows with heroic fiction: While they may not contain magic or monstrous beasts, they allow us to experience savagery and survival in the wild and walk the line of life and death.

My favorite work in this genre is Deliverance by James Dickey, and it’s to this book that I’d like to devote the remainder of this post.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website .

B-slapping a random Epic Pooh/Moorcock supporter

Typically I stay away from engaging in debate on sites like Youtube, knowing the caliber of response I'm likely to get. But in this case I just couldn't resist (I'm Rutgerhauer 666, still waiting for a response in the comments section that won't be coming any time soon).

Someone asked me once why I've taken up the crusade against Epic Pooh and other anti-Tolkien essays. "Why would you waste your time on something 30 years old?" The reason is simple: People still believe this crap. Epic Pooh has been cited approvingly by the likes of China Mieville and used as a basis of misguided criticism of Tolkien. And it still is today. But because Michael Moorcock wrote it, it must be true, right?

In fact, Epic Pooh is a shallow, surface-level ad hominem attack on a far more subtle and complex work than its detractors realize. It's a political screed and fails to engage the text of The Lord of the Rings or any of Tolkien's works on a meaningful level.

It comes down to this: You can choose to believe the unfounded opinion of essays like Epic Pooh, or you can examine the facts in Tolkien's stories. When I see it held up as evidence of Tolkien's faults on Youtube or Amazon.com or elsewhere--or when I'm feeling the need to blow off some steam in a futile and meaningless crusade for truth--I'm going to set the facts straight.

The Lord of the Rings ignores death and forces a happy ending upon us? Really, Michael?

(Note that Moorcock doesn't actually discuss Epic Pooh in this clip, it just comes up in the comments section).

In the grip of “The Northern Thing:” My top 10 northern inspired stories

Let us die in the doing of deeds for his sake;
let fright itself run afraid from our shouts;
let weapons measure the warrior’s worth.
Though life is lost, one thing will outlive us:memory sinks not beneath the mould.
Till the Weird of the World stands unforgotten,high under heaven, the hero’s name.

–from Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, Poul Anderson


If I had to choose a favorite sub-genre of fantasy literature it would be those writings showing the clear influence of ancient Northern mythology. Fantasy critic Lin Carter once described a group of writers including the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, Poul Anderson, and William Morris as being possessed by “The Northern Thing”; I too am firmly in that Icelandic grip of iron. There’s just something about tales of pagan heroes possessed of grim northern courage, set against a backdrop of bleak fjords and smoldering mountain peaks and gray lowering skies, that make me want to hop on the nearest dragon-headed longship and go a-viking.

Following in no particular order are my top 10 favorite northern stories. These are stories inspired by northern myth (the Prose and Poetic Eddas), legend (the Icelandic Sagas), or history (the Danish invasions of England), and sometimes all three at once.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Cameron wants Avatar to compete with Tolkien and Star Wars? Pfft.

From The Los Angeles Times:

Cameron admires the universes created by George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry and the man who now has the two highest-grossing films of all-time (Cameron's "Titanic" from 1997 still floats there at No. 2 worldwide with $1.8 billion) openly admits that he aspires to compete with his own cosmic aspirations.

"You've got to compete head on with these other epic works of fantasy and fiction, the Tolkiens and the ‘Star Wars' and the ‘Star Treks,'" Cameron said. "People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere else. Like Pandora."

I saw Avatar in the theatres in 3D and enjoyed it. It was a nice diversion and a fun couple hours of time spent.

But a half-hour after I left the theatre I never gave Avatar another thought, nor do I feel the need to ever re-watch it. Why? It's all spectacle and no story. Its plot was paper-thin and predictable. Turn it sideways and it disappears.

I give Cameron credit for creating a world on screen that looks real, but let's be honest--Avatar wowed because of the technology used to create it. Middle-earth existed solely in its readers' imaginations for 50 years (longer if you count The Hobbit) before it hit the screens, and shows no signs of slowing down. Star Wars' special effects are now 30 years out of date, but it remains a favorite because of its storyline, memorable characters, and mythic components.

Does anyone really believe Avatar will have the same staying power? The minute someone else develops a better Pandora using more advanced CGI I predict it will be relegated to a cinematic footnote. You don't create "a persistent alternate reality" on looks alone. Ironically, fantasy fans do "want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time." If there was any rich detail other than visual to be had in Avatar I must have missed it.

Finally, Cameron sells works like Star Wars and Star Trek and the world of Middle-earth terribly short by insinuating that their primary appeal is escape from reality. I would argue that Middle-earth is a reflection of our own reality, and while it can be read for escape's sake, it's also a mirror in which attentive readers can reflect upon matters of faith and the creator, life and death, sacrifice, and pity and mercy. What does Avatar have? Environmentalism? Tolkien even did that better than Avatar. It's Dances with Wolves with aliens, folks.

Rant over.

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge, a review

As the summer begins to draw to a close and the cooling night air brings with it thoughts of fall and of Halloween, inevitably I’m stricken with the horror itch. So this past weekend I fed my cravings and read Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge, a horror author with whom I had yet to be acquainted.

I picked up Dark Harvest a while back based on some glowing cover blurbs, including the fact that it won a Bram Stoker Award for best long horror fiction of 2006. When I closed the cover after two brief sessions—at 170 pages Dark Harvest is more novella than novel—I was left with mixed sensations. There was some very good stuff in Dark Harvest, but other parts of the work fell flat, at least for me.

Dark Harvest takes place in an unnamed western town and concerns the events of a single Halloween night in 1963. For as long as anyone can remember the town has followed a strange, bloodthirsty ritual—every boy between the ages of sixteen and nineteen gets locked up for five straight days heading up to Halloween. The group is then turned loose on the streets with a cache of wicked weapons, including baseball bats, knives, and steel pipes. Their mission is to hunt down and kill the Halloween Boy, a pumpkin-headed monster from legend. The “winner” who claims the kill gets to leave the town's stifling confines. No one else is permitted to leave the town, ever.

But on this night in 1963, 16-year-old Pete McCormick discovers that all is not what it seems. The game is rigged. He vows to buck the tradition.

So on to what I liked and didn’t like. And warning, this review will contain some spoilers.

The bad
Dark Harvest had the feeling of a good short story padded out to novel length. It’s a great concept that would have been superb in 40 or 50 pages, but doesn’t quite work as a full-fledged novel.

For example, there’s no backstory or reason given why this strange ritual exists. Stephen King’s Children of the Corn did this sort of thing far better, and in fewer pages. And not only are we never given a reason for the existence of nor the ramifications of said bloody ritual, but we’re also never told how such an insulated town could exist. Seriously, no one is ever permitted to leave this town, ever, except for one lucky boy each year? And we’re supposed to believe this could happen, even in an isolated Midwestern town in 1963? I bought the scenario of Children of the Corn (in which every adult in town was slaughtered, and the only ones left were children indoctrinated into the cult of the corn god). I just couldn’t buy the events of Dark Harvest.

I also had a few problems with the narration. Partridge inserts the second person (“you”) voice into the text, but not consistently, and when he does it took me out of the flow of the novel. For example, “You” (the reader) are one of the bodies buried in the cornfield. If by “you” he means that I am one of the boys unable to escape conformity and small town existence and small worries, yes, I suppose, that could be me. But it comes across as “you, the reader, were one of the boys taken out into a cornfield and shot.” Really, I was?

More regrettably, the characters in Dark Harvest do not feel three dimensional. The teenage boy who was the October Boy to me seemed no different than McCormick, for example. Again, another 100 pages of character and plot development would have made Dark Harvest into a superb novel rather than a padded-out short story.

The good
So why do I still recommend Dark Harvest (with the above reservations)? For one thing the writing is sharp, concise, and strong. Partridge works with brevity and skill and a relentless energy that makes reading the novel a pleasure and a breeze.

For all its failings of believability, Dark Harvest works as a coming of age story. It’s a tale about how becoming an adult is more than just the passing of some arbitrary age (say, 21 or 25). Adults at some point must break from teenage groupthink, take a stand, question authority, and do right by their children by setting a good example (sadly, many of them don’t). Dark Harvest is also archetypal and borderline allegorical and this element also worked in its favor. For example, the long black road out of town is life, and leads to a barrier called The Line. The Line is difficult to cross. Most people never try to cross the Line, and the few that do are pursued at every turn by peers and authority figures that want to knock them down a peg.

Although it’s sharply critical of small-town conformity, Dark Harvest is also an elegy to childhood and lost innocence. My favorite scene is when the October Boy returns to his abandoned home and engages in a silent reverie while staring at his kitchen table. The past is gone and there are no second chances to reclaim a lost childhood, or speak words to loved ones that should have been said:

Jim’s misshapen fingers scrape across the rough-hewn table. It’s not a good table. It sits kind of cockeyed, and dinner peas escaping a child’s fork have been known to roll off the side like ships sailing off the edge of a flat earth. That’s why nobody bothered to steal the thing when the house was abandoned, and Jim’s glad of that. Because this is the table where he sat with his mother and father and little brother as the days faded to evenings for years and years and years. And this is the table where he thought many things, and a few of them made the trip from brain to mouth and found the ears of those other people who shared the table, but many of them didn’t. For one reason or another, many of his thoughts never left him at all.

In short, if you turn off your critical thinking and read it as a dark fable, Dark Harvest works. If you don’t dwell on the why or how of the ritual of the Halloween Boy and embrace your love of the mayhem and wildness of the dark side of Halloween you’ll be rewarded. And your appetite for fall will be whetted.

Tolkien feature on the BBC, circa 1968

I came across a great video feature on Tolkien circa 1968, courtesy of the BBC. I've never seen most of this footage. Tolkien walking through his old haunts and talking about his books is priceless. Enjoy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml.

With that, I'll be signing off for a short vacation, returning Wednesday or so.