Monday 22 November 2010

Handling Howard with "Kid Gloves"

I confidently predict that certain people in the wacky world of Robert E Howard fandom will have a fit when they read Richard Lupoff's introduction.
  - Jojo Lapin X
I have no doubt about that whatsoever, and by this time one would think they could just let the matter rest. There is a point at which these continual leaps to Howard's defense cease doing Howard any good and merely suggest to the world that this is an author who must always be treated with kid gloves, a notion Howard himself would most likely have found ridiculous.
  - jimrockhill2001
You should've seen the original version!
 - Scott Connors

From The Eldritch Dark Forums.  The Eldritch Dark is a fantastic resource for Clark Ashton Smith stories, poems, biographies, criticisms and links, and I heartily recommend it.  You can even brave the Forums if you like: they're at least as protective of Smith as Howard fans are of their favourite author.




This seems to come up a lot recently, and it's starting to irritate me more than a shrimp.  In recent weeks, I've been taking people to task for inaccuracies in relation to Howard, but I also notice that certain quarters are critical of this.  For those who think I'm accentuating the negative, or just becoming tiresomely repetitive, I apologise, though I think I'd been positive enough in recent weeks.  However, every time there's a controversy in regards to Howard, there's always someone who thinks Howard fans are taking things "a little too far," or that we're actually hurting Howard in our attempts to defend him, or his work.

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

This isn't about treating Howard as some sort of divine, infallible, untouchable God of Literature, or that he's some sort of poor little guy who has to be protected from the Big Bad Critics.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not really about Howard at all - it's about truth.  It's about something being said that is not so, and challenging it.  When someone brings up the old Oedipal, Fattish, Closet-Homosexual, Paranoid, Psychopathic, Delusional, Maladjusted-to-the-point-of-Psychosis Howard, it isn't just an attack on Howard, it's an attack on truth.  It's allowing misconception, myth, and outright invention to override real investigation and history.  It's no better than perpetuating the old nonsense that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, or that Columbus' voyage was embarked upon to prove the world was round to an incredulous flat-earth population of Europe.  Saying Howard boarded up his windows at night while praying for dawn isn't just painting Howard as a delusional nutcase - it's making a mockery of history and biography.  It's allowing supposition, rumour, scuttlebutt and fiction to take the place of investigative research.

That's why it ticks me off.  I'm fine with people not liking Howard.  I'm disappointed, but fiction is subjective, and there's no author in history whom everyone universally adores.  But I'm not going to lambast someone just because they prefer Fafhrd to Conan, or Jirel to Dark Agnes, or even if they plain old don't like Howard.  They're allowed to have an opinion.  They're not, however, allowed to make stuff up, or to rely on debunked, out-of-date "facts."

What is so hard about this to understand?  It isn't all or nothing.  You can allow certain types of criticism without having to put up with other types.  There is middle ground between defending an author against unfair, biased, and inaccurate criticism, and squealing histrionically the moment someone says your favourite author sucks, or daring to say that another author is better.  If Lupoff just says Smith was a better wordsmith than Howard, or that his stories were more imaginative, or that his style was superior - I'm not to going to argue.  I might even agree!  I love Clark Ashton Smith's work.  "The Empire of the Necromancers" is one of my ten Desert Island Short Stories.  Heck, even if he outright says he doesn't like Howard, I'll just shrug and think "eh, his loss."  However, if Lupoff brings up The Old Myths, or plain Makes Stuff Up, then I'm going to argue.  Not just for Howard's sake - for truth's sake.  For people to think Howard fans are being unreasonable for the unspeakable crime of wanting people to get facts straight is anathema to me.  I'd argue against this as strongly as I'd argue against anyone who says Tolkien was racist.

All I can say is, if a new Robert E. Howard volume comes out, and the introduction accuses Clark Ashton Smith of being a paranoid, agorophobic, demon-worshipping, bisexual ephebophile - or come up with any old nonsense that's easily disproven by a modicum of research - then the fine chaps over at the Eldritch Dark had better haud their wheesht.

After all, we can't treat an author with kid gloves, can we?

10 comments:

  1. Well, you know if people would just check their facts and sort out myth from history before they go blogging their mouths off then you wouldn't have to be calling bullshit all the time. Then they turn around and call you a knee-jerk reactionary whiner. How unfair is that?

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  2. I applaud your motives, but sensationalism, prurience, and willful ignorance are formidable windmills at which to tilt. Perhaps you should start with poverty and hunger as preliminary exercises.

    ;)

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  3. I know your pain, believe me.

    I do, thanks James.

    Well, you know if people would just check their facts and sort out myth from history before they go blogging their mouths off then you wouldn't have to be calling bullshit all the time. Then they turn around and call you a knee-jerk reactionary whiner. How unfair is that?

    I agree. Just a bit of fact-checking is all I ask.

    I applaud your motives, but sensationalism, prurience, and willful ignorance are formidable windmills at which to tilt. Perhaps you should start with poverty and hunger as preliminary exercises.

    If I understand you, you are suggesting I get worked up about important things like the poor and needy?

    I regularly raise money for charitable causes, and helped in practical ways too: sending food, clothes, toys etc. I have all my life. I think I'm allowed to charge at a few windmills now and again.

    *doffs helm, raises lance, whistles to Pancho*

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  4. If I understand you, you are suggesting I get worked up about important things like the poor and needy?

    No, not at all. Screw the poor and needy. ;) I'm just saying that although I'm there with you in spirit, the defense of truth from philistines and ignoramuses is a monumental task along the same lines as eradicating any other pervasive ill endemic to mass culture.

    No snark intended.

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  5. so long as those who are factually correct are not allowed to dispense with those who are willfully factually incorrect.. we will always be at loggerheads..

    unfortunately its usually those who are factually incorrect who dispense with those who attempt to inform them of how incorrect they are..

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  6. In other words, Stupidity should be painful for the one espousing the stupidity, not the audience which the stupidity is being vocalized at.

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  7. I'm just saying that although I'm there with you in spirit, the defense of truth from philistines and ignoramuses is a monumental task along the same lines as eradicating any other pervasive ill endemic to mass culture.

    No snark intended.


    Oh, I see. Well I think you're right. However, I don't see the struggle as insurmountable: I liken it to dropping money in a charity box. Sure, it might not end world hunger, but it'll do something. Better to do that than nothing, I guess.

    so long as those who are factually correct are not allowed to dispense with those who are willfully factually incorrect.. we will always be at loggerheads..

    unfortunately its usually those who are factually incorrect who dispense with those who attempt to inform them of how incorrect they are..

    In other words, Stupidity should be painful for the one espousing the stupidity, not the audience which the stupidity is being vocalized at.


    Such is life, eh?

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  8. although you, I'm refering to Howard fandom, have the reason you should be a bit comprensive, for instance, until one year or so, I think it was the beginning of 2010 that I start to follow blogs like the cimmerian or yours I didn't know about the de Camp controversy, Dark valley destiny and I though the oedipal, the psycopath was more or less real, and I have been reading Howard for a lot of time
    it's all about information
    Francisco

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  9. Exactly, Francisco. If people have a problem with Howard, then I at least hope their problems are reasonable, be it opinions, or based on fact. If they can't get over the racial and sexual elements of the more egregious stories, then I can't really blame them: if they can't get into Howard's style, I can't begrudge them.

    I just hope that if they're making a decision on Howard, it's on the level.

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