tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1801849569478735724.post7689463734213354105..comments2020-12-29T07:59:42.897-08:00Comments on Phantasmic Blog: The Cassidy ConundrumPranksterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00676528953675160889noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1801849569478735724.post-88228776565647680142011-04-17T14:51:01.864-07:002011-04-17T14:51:01.864-07:00I think you're downplaying Farnsworth Wright&#...I think you're downplaying Farnsworth Wright's role in shaping Conan--let's not forget that he rejected certain stories and accepted others, which is a big part of why Kull, a more intellectual series, didn't take off the way Conan did. I see Wright as pushing Howard towards writing more "bastardly" heroes (as Howard himself put it) because that was what he thought would sell. At any rate, editors definitely play a big role in a story, one that's frequently unacknowledged.<br /><br />You're right that Conan frequently acts heroically; my issue is that of "author fiat", in which the writer of a story uses his power to shape things in a way that favours certain characters. Obviously every story does this to a certain degree, but at its extreme this is what leads to the infamous "Mary Sue" of fan fiction, in which the author basically inserts themselves into the story and turns it into a vehicle for making themselves look cool and/or living out their fantasies. And yes, Conan has a whiff of the Mary Sue about him. That's not fundamentally bad--the stories are good, and there's nothing inherently wrong with creating a character that everyone wants to be. I love Batman and James Bond as much as the next guy. But I think really good fiction has an obligation to test itself, morally--to put the heroes in situations where they're forced to make choices that are more complex than "how do I escape this deathtrap?" Most of the Conan stories skirt this issue; Conan does indeed bravely risk his life for his people, and does what he can to be a wise ruler, so I'll give him props there, but it's not actually that hard to write "'I'll go kick ass for my people!', said Conan, and then proceeded to kick ass for his people." <br /><br />The reason I bring up the "did he ever kill a good guy and take his stuff?" question is that if we're expected to accept Conan as a moral paragon--I don't think Howard wants us to, but those seem to be the terms on which Grin accepts him--then we're brought up short against Conan's tendency to steal, murder, and whore his way across Hyborea. And Howard tends to slant things Conan's way by making sure the people he robs and murders are bastards who have it coming--monsters, evil sorcerors, or just abusive aristocrats or rich people. This lets him have his cake and eat it too--Conan's an admirable hero, AND he gets away with doing whatever he feels like. Again, Howard's writing hints at greater nuance than that, but Grin seems to want to ignore that and hold up Conan as an old-fashioned hero, while condemning modern fantasy with characters who are, frankly, more well-behaved. This, to me, makes no sense.Pranksterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00676528953675160889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1801849569478735724.post-8145439410318784022011-04-17T14:35:11.956-07:002011-04-17T14:35:11.956-07:00Hi, Taranaich. Sorry I'm responding so late--I...Hi, Taranaich. Sorry I'm responding so late--I don't check my blog for comments very often. <br /><br />It seems to me the problem with Grin's essay is that he picks and chooses what makes for a "hero" as it serves his greater point about the EEEEEEEEEVILS of secular humanism and how it's invading the fantasy genre. I haven't read most of the books Grin references, but further down in the comments Grin contemptuously attacks the Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones books, which I HAVE read, and claiming that they're devoid of heroism is just absurd, especially when you're holding up Conan as an example of heroism. Ned Stark or Jon Snow are far more heroic, to my mind, than Conan, even if Conan could lick them in a fight, and even though Conan tends to succeed and the ASoIaF characters tend to fail. These are separate issues from how "heroic" they are (as is Grin's dislike of "scatological" realism), but Grin nevertheless claims that they somehow celebrate moral bankruptcy. There's a difference between portraying the tragic failure of the good and actively celebrating it, though. <br /><br />Likewise, given Abercrombie's eleoquent defense of his own books, which I link to above, it's pretty clear that Grin is cherry-picking and goalpost-moving with great abandon. This is the problem I have with Big Hollywood on the whole--they do this ALL THE TIME. They start with a premise and force the facts to fit.Pranksterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00676528953675160889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1801849569478735724.post-43608281511531753902011-04-07T15:28:45.758-07:002011-04-07T15:28:45.758-07:00Conan does what he wants, and the universe—the one...<i>Conan does what he wants, and the universe—the one crafted by Howard and Farnsworth Wright and, later, divers other hands—obliges by making sure his interests coincide with the greater good. </i><br /><br />Not necessarily: in more than a few Conan stories, Conan is an outlaw, and predates on honest working folk and settlements. Howard did a good job in keeping his most heinous stuff off-stage - the sacking of settlements, piracy, massacres, what have you - so the reader isn't totally alienated by his savagery. Nonetheless, whenever Howard cast Conan as a bandit, pirate, thief or assassin, he didn't sugar-coat it by making him out to be some sort of Robin Hood: he portrayed Conan as just the sort of ruthless, dangerous, merciless man one had to be in order to survive in such an occupation.<br /><br /><i>I haven’t read any of the later, non-Howard Conan stories, but I’d be really interested to know if there are any examples of, for instance, Conan robbing and killing a good sorcerer</i><br /><br />While Conan was a believer in the freedom of religious expression:<br /><br />"But Conan’s was the broad tolerance of the barbarian, and he had refused to persecute the followers of Asura or to allow the people to do so on no better evidence than was presented against them, rumors and accusations that could not be proven. “If they are black magicians,” he had said, “how will they suffer you to harry them? If they are not, there is no evil in them. Crom’s devils! Let men worship what gods they will.”"<br /> - The Hour of the Dragon<br /><br />In his "Conan the Throat-Slitter" days, I think he'd kill anyone for a price. He certainly didn't seem to have any problems killing Nabonidus in "Rogues in the House," even though he didn't know he was an evil sorcerer.<br /><br /><i>letting an elder demon run amok because he’s not personally affected by it</i><br /><br />"I'm not going out of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn't step out of my path to let one go by."<br /> - "Beyond the Black River"<br /><br />Even a barbarian has limits, I guess.<br /><br /><i>or in any other way confronted with a moral choice that pits his self-interest against other people’s welfare.</i><br /><br />In "The Servants of Bit-Yakin," Conan must choose between saving a dancing girl he isn't particularly enamoured with - she'd actually been driving him insane with her yammering - or priceless gems of untold value, both of which are slipping towards a precipice. Conan doesn't even hesitate, and saves the girl.<br /><br />In "Beyond the Black River," Conan risks his life to save a group of settlers from the Picts: no treasure for a reward, no babe to score, just Conan doing the right thing.<br /><br />In "The Black Stranger," Conan's even willing to help men he actively hates, because leaving them in the hands of the Picts would be unforgivable. At the end of that story, Conan gives the treasure he managed to pilfer - enough to buy a noble estate in a civilized country - to an impoverished woman and her ward, with no promise of carnal exchange, or any recompense at all, merely because he "knows what it's like to be penniless in a Hyborian land."<br /><br />The above examples are from the original Howard stories (Farnsworth Wright had nothing to do with creating the Conan stories: just editing them by softening curses at most, altering spelling and grammar at the least). It's true that Conan's no knight in shining armour, but neither is he the scum of the earth.<br /><br />(Hope you don't mind the three comments, but Blogger only allows for so many characters)Taranaichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02176999342965850175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1801849569478735724.post-25427972646772735292011-04-07T15:28:05.373-07:002011-04-07T15:28:05.373-07:00Well, that’s not quite true—later, King Conan acts...<i>Well, that’s not quite true—later, King Conan acts a number of times to save his own kingdom. But even there, you get the sense that he’s doing it not because he actually cares about his people’s welfare, but because fighting off threats is the kind of thing a king does if he wants to keep his kingdom. And even then, we’re pretty clearly shown how kingship has beaten Conan down and interfered with his life as a “natural man” and free spirit.</i><br /><br />No, there's definitely more to it than that.<br /><br />"He cursed himself for his refusal of their offer, even while his stubborn manhood revolted at the thought, and he knew that were he taken forth and given another chance, his reply would be the same. He would not sell his subjects to the butcher. And yet it had been with no thought of any one’s gain but his own that he had seized the kingdom originally. Thus subtly does the instinct of sovereign responsibility enter even a red-handed plunderer sometimes."<br /> - The Hour of the Dragon<br /><br />"Again Conan shook his head. “Let others dream imperial dreams. I but wish to hold what is mine. I have no desire to rule an empire welded together by blood and fire. It’s one thing to seize a throne with the aid of its subjects and rule them with their consent. It’s another to subjugate a foreign realm and rule it by fear. I don’t wish to be another Valerius. No, Trocero, I’ll rule all Aquilonia and no more, or I’ll rule nothing.”"<br /> - The Hour of the Dragon<br /><br />Conan clearly cares about the welfare of his people, to the point where he instinctively rejects an offer to become a vassal to a sorcerer with imperial designs. Indeed, Conan undergoes something of a crisis later in the book, where the lure of the sea, and freedom from the constraints of kingship, beckon to him, but he rejects them, for his people need him:<br /><br />Conan felt the old tug of the professional fighting-man, to turn his horse and plunge into the fighting, the pillaging and the looting as in the days of old. Why should he toil to regain the rule of a people which had already forgotten him? – why chase a will-o’-the-wisp, why pursue a crown that was lost for ever? Why should he not seek forgetfulness, lose himself in the red tides of war and rapine that had engulfed him so often before? Could he not, indeed, carve out another kingdom for himself? The world was entering an age of iron, an age of war and imperialistic ambition; some strong man might well rise above the ruins of nations as a supreme conqueror. Why should it not be himself? So his familiar devil whispered in his ear, and the phantoms of his lawless and bloody past crowded upon him. But he did not turn aside; he rode onward, following a quest that grew dimmer and dimmer as he advanced, until sometimes it seemed that he pursued a dream that never was. <br /> - The Hour of the DragonTaranaichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02176999342965850175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1801849569478735724.post-16298632334637556982011-04-07T15:27:23.105-07:002011-04-07T15:27:23.105-07:00I've already said my piece on Leo's articl...I've already said my piece on Leo's article at length on my blog, but suffice to say, I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the point he's trying to make about heroism and nobility, but his actively confrontational manner is bound to get hackles up. Leo isn't talking about some black-and-white division between "all noble and heroic protagonists" and "shades of grey," he's talking about fantasies where there is no heroism to speak of, and if there is, it's either quickly killed off, or utterly undermined. Of COURSE it's patently absurd that, if he was indeed talking about "the supposed lack of virtuous true heroes, and the fact that fantasy had apparently given way to subversive narratives in which the protagonists weren’t all that heroic" and then uses a character described by the author as "the Damnedest Bastard There Ever Was" as an example, but he wasn't doing that. He was bemoaning the utter lack of heroism in selected works of fantasy, not the pollutions of black and white morality with shades of grey.<br /><br />Nonetheless, I'll say that Conan is indeed a hero, but in the original sense of the word - the way that Achilles, Herakles, Beowulf, and the morally ambiguous heroes of ancient mythology are heroes. The idea of a hero being a paragon of virtue who represents the best morality in humanity is a very modern phenomenon: back in the day, what made someone a hero is incredible feats of bravery, ingenuity, cunning, strength, endurance, skill, intelligence, and other such fields. Ancient heroes did these things, but they could also be petty, selfish, brutish and violent. Conan is thus most definitely a hero in that sense of the word.<br /><br />Conan's acts of heroism in the modern sense are definitely there, though.Taranaichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02176999342965850175noreply@blogger.com