Tuesday 8 June 2010

Vindication!

A while back, Jonathan Moeller posted something on romance novels as female wish-fulfillment.  It was an interesting thing, but then I read this passage:

“On the other hand, Conan of Cimmeria boinks a different wench every story, usually after rescuing her from the bloodstained altar a depraved centuries-old sorcerer. So, male wish fulfillment, I guess.”

I see this quite a lot, and given the sheer amount of horrible Conan novels and comics out there, I think there's a definite possibility that the "boink" ratio is considerably high.  What's disturbing is that not only detractors, but fans of Conan cite the old "gets the girl at the end of every story" idea. Nonetheless, I felt the need to defend Howard's original stories. 



Here's my response:

“Conan having sex with a new woman every story is an invention of the unimaginative dreck written by other authors. In the original Howard stories, nubile women only feature in about half of them (a sizeable number of tales don't feature women at all), and of that half, Conan only has sex with about a third of them. Sure, some might be implied as having a sexual relationship later in the story, but it's never stated with any certainty.”

I do this sort of thing occasionally, where I find a blog that's interesting, but might have some outdated/inaccurate view of Howard.  I prefer to enlighten and educate rather than berate and ridicule, and a lot of people are commendably open-minded.  Jonathan, to his credit, is one of them, but he went even further:

But! This prompted one Al Harron to appear in the comments (whom I believe to be the Al Harron of The Cimmerian blog) and argue that:

“Conan having sex with a new woman every story is an invention of the unimaginative dreck written by other authors. In the original Howard stories, nubile women only feature in about half of them (a sizeable number of tales don't feature women at all), and of that half, Conan only has sex with about a third of them. Sure, some might be implied as having a sexual relationship later in the story, but it's never stated with any certainty.”

So, just how often did Conan get the girl at the end of the story?

Fortunately, I have Robert E. Howard’s complete Conan collection readily at hand, and it was easy to determine just how often Conan did, in fact, get the girl. Howard wrote 21 completed Conan stories, and for the purposes of this post, I divided them into three broad categories:

-Stories Where Conan Beds The Girl. Self-explanatory.

-Stories Where Conan Doesn’t Bed The Girl, But Probably Does After The Story Ends. In these stories, Conan doesn’t bed the girl, but it’s strongly implied that he does so in the very near future. Like in “The Hour of the Dragon”, when he promises to make the slave girl Zenobia his queen when he returns to the throne of Aquilonia.

-Stories Where Conan Gets No Romantic Action Whatsoever. Again, self-explanatory.

The stories broke down this way:

Stories Where Conan Gets No Romantic Action Whatsoever:
-The Phoenix on the Sword
-The Scarlet Citadel
-The Tower of the Elephant
-Rogues in the House
-A Witch Shall Be Born
-Beyond the Black River
-The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
-The Frost-Giant’s Daughter
-The God in the Bowl
-The Vale of Lost Women
-The Black Stranger


Stories Where Conan Got The Girl:
-Black Colossus
-Queen of the Black Coast


Stories Where Conan Didn’t Get the Girl, But Probably Did Later:
-Pool of the Black One
-Iron Shadows in the Moon
-The Devil in Iron
-The People of the Black Circle
-Jewels of Gwahlur
-The Hour of the Dragon
-Red Nails
-Xuthal of the Dusk


Mr. Harron has a valid point. While Conan was hardly an abstemious fellow, (while held prisoner in "The Scarlet Citadel", he grimly contemplates the fate that awaits his concubines at the hands of the wicked sorcerer Tsotha-lanti) he only actually got the girl at the end of the story twice, out of 21 stories. Which is interesting because the cliché of sword & sorcery is of the muscle-bound hero tumbling a different wench at the end of every story. (In fact, I’ve written quite a bit for the “Sword & Sorceress” anthology, which was started as a reaction against that cliché.) But as the numbers show, for Conan, at least, that simply was not the case.

This suggests, I believe, that Robert E. Howard was a better writer than many of his followers. 

Man, that's cool.  I can't believe someone's calling me "Mr. Harron."

Now, I could argue with some of Jonathan's points - for instance, I don't think Conan did have sex with Yasmina after "The People of the Black Circle" regardless of their romantic interlude, he technically didn't get Bêlit at the end of "Queen of the Black Coast" and I think the relationship with the punk in "Rogues in the House" is fairly sexual - but I feel immensely vindicated at being taken seriously, so I don't intend to beleaguer the point.

The important thing is somebody took the time to research Howard's work, and came away with a different, more accurate opinion of him, which is all I ask.  Hopefully Jon will go on to explore the other 95% of Howard's stories.

5 comments:

  1. Bravo. Baby steps.But all of it will be lost when Mo-nan comes out next year. For the conceptions will be made by people that don't read anything other than comic books, if that. But it is nice to be taken seriously and not grouped with the millions of internet fanboys.Keep the wall strong brother.

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  2. the covers of The savage sword of Conan, and stories of writers in this comic like Michael Fleisher or Chuck Dixon contribute to that stereotype... and those are the best of the pack think in Larry Yakata or Larry Hama...
    Francisco...

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  3. I feel the need to defend Conan (in its entirety) even further.

    the statement of "romance novels as female wish-fulfillment" and then comparing Conan as a similar ilk made me laugh my ass off.

    Um - Have you ever read a womens romance novel???
    For Conan to be comparable to that genre he would not only have to "get the girl in the end" but as soon as 30 pages in, then a couple of times in between, and in GREAT detail!

    Dear Men,

    Women's romance literature is NOT wish fulfillment. Its Porn.
    Sorry if that sullies your lilly white idea about the opposite sex.
    But its true.
    Now I should also say that some romance books really make you wait for the money shot - but there are also a good amount of them that just hit the ground running with baby making.
    And yes - they have a story, and a heavy emphasis on emotional reasonings/ connections with the act - and so is still pretty vanilla and soft core.
    But still.

    Read one.
    I bet you $5 you will blush.
    (maybe don't read one that belongs to a female relative - it may be too traumatic)

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  4. Well Tommy, that's why getting something to fill the void left by The Cimmerian - be it by the other Howard blogs increasing their web presence, or more blogs arise - is so important. Us Howard fans have to take the fight to them.

    Too right, Francisco. Even Frazetta didn't put a girl on every Conan cover.

    Erin, my thoughts exactly. That's why I never buy Mills & Boon novels for my gran: I know exactly what they are!

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  5. But-but porn IS wish-fulfillment!

    I found Julian Krentz's articles defending Romance as the only "true" women's genre to be some of the most hilarious works of academia I've ever read, expecially when we actually had to read one of her Romance novellas for my comp lit class in popular fiction. I hadn't read Romance before, but the real thing was actually far worst than I expected.

    "Crushed her hand gently" indeed!

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