D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

[Clint_L]

Again, I think people should read these things for themselves and make their own determinations. This is probably going to be my last point on this line of discussion as I really don't want to engage in other 20 page debate about whether Howard or Lovecraft were racist.

You shouldn't have to. It's like arguing that the earth is round. I have a deep affection for many elements of the works of both authors, but denying their SUPER OBVIOUS racism and misogyny, yes, even by the low standards of their day, doesn't merit serious debate - it's extremely well documented, and not just in the content of their work.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

what does Conan offer that other, less racist sword and sorcery , doesn't.

I think this is a valid question, and it's just going to be that it is the origin-point for a lot of tropes/ideas for Sword and Sorcery, and maybe has a vibe that some other S&S doesn't have.

You'd probably be better off with say, Leiber in most cases though you'll be dealing with other problematic elements and depictions there also. Or you could go to adaptions of Conan which manage to evade the problematic elements, like the Mike Mignola comic books, which totally nail the vibe and ideas.

Whereas with Lovecraft you can make a more genuine case that his wild take on existential horror has many imitators, but most of them aren't really as powerful as his stuff was. Also I note a number of PoC writers have said they do find his work inspiring and the racism a bit easier to get past than some other writers (which I think does connect to the sheer insanity of it, and the fact that it's directed at all non-WASPs, as it predates modern notions of whiteness), and quite a number of writers have fairly successfully "reclaimed" it, as it were (indeed I'd say some of those efforts "get" the Mythos better than some older ones which kind of lapse into pulp-hero-adjacent stuff).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm genuinely confused as to why you're saying "whether" here - they both were, there's no debate to be had. The only question is surely to what degree they were. With REH I'd say "probably slightly less than most white Americans of his era" and with Lovecraft I'd say "so insanely racist he's literally calling Scottish people subhuman, let alone other non-WASPs"). Sorry not trying to be difficult, it just made ??? appear above my head, as it were!

Because that is usually what the topic becomes in twenty page flame wars. It is usually people debating whether they were racist, and if so, how racist were they. Were their works racist and, if so, how racist were their works. I think Lovecraft was an old fashioned Yankee England Racist. I think Howard had racist views. I don't think either were the worst examples from their era, but they certainly had views that we would call racist today. But I also think both of them had evolving views and that it is a mistake to read this into everything they wrote

Agree. Also agree that REH's letters show more racism (but also weirdly opposition to "too much" racism*, I seem to recall him telling Lovecraft to cool it at one point!) than most of his actual work.

And to be clear my point wasn't to litigate this. I think we'd need to sit down and sift through countless letters to get a clear image. I am reading letters from Lovecraft to two women he knew and the book is hundreds of pages (and just one of many books of letters that exist). The picture I am getting is a of a very complicated person and I don't know how I would map out fully his views on race against Howards.

What's funny with Lovecraft's racism for me is that when I read the books at like 13/14 in the 1990s, it was literally incomprehensible. Like I thought he was talking about actual non-human-but-humanlike beings, not just being incredibly, radioactively racist about human beings. It wasn't until I got to the story with an Irish or Scottish guy who was being portrayed as subhuman that I finally got that this was just racism of a type and on a scale I'd never previously encountered. And it remained so bonkers and totally outdated (I think even in his era it was outdated) that it was somehow almost less offensive than some more pernicious/insidious and modern racist ideas in other, much more recent, books.

This type of racism almost doesn't even exist anymore, but we had remnants of it when I grew up in the Boston area. It is sharply different from teh racism I encountered on the west coast (which was a lot times more intense, and oriented more around broad racial groups). Lovecraft is concerned with stuff that comes out of racialist science and ideas about breeding and bloodlines. If you are are English or Nordic, he sees you as inferior. And he is weirdly nerdy about it (I think him being a bit of a promo-geek, really amplifies a lot of his ideas in a strange way). Plus he was neurotic as hell. I think it is so specific it can be kind of hard to take seriously at times. This is what the term Yankee really refers to in New England, originally, someone who could trace their heritage to English settlers. If you were part of a subsequent wave of immigration, which most of us were by the time I was a kid, then you were not part of that elite. Again, it was mostly faded by that point. But I still remember seeing it, and my grandfather had plenty of stories about it.

* = I mean this is a classic genre of letter from the 1930s, Nietzsche's editor, who literally supported a political party called the Anti-Semites (by themselves!) and whose platform was pure anti-Semitism, thought Hitler was a bit too anti-Semitic for her liking.

This is one of the reasons why I mentioned downplaying racism to build up Howard or Lovecraft as more racist for their times. Yes there were people who didn't go along with this stuff and how actively fought against it, but we are talking about a period in time that produced the Holocaust. So we shouldn't minimize the racism that was circulating in circles that reached even the highest office in the US, at this time. Some of the worst racism of that era was coming out of science and academia and that gave it a lot of mainstream creditability

 

[TiQuinn]

I think this is a valid question, and it's just going to be that it is the origin-point for a lot of tropes/ideas for Sword and Sorcery, and maybe has a vibe that some other S&S doesn't have.

You'd probably be better off with say, Leiber in most cases though you'll be dealing with other problematic elements and depictions there also. Or you could go to adaptions of Conan which manage to evade the problematic elements, like the Mike Mignola comic books, which totally nail the vibe and ideas.

Whereas with Lovecraft you can make a more genuine case that his wild take on existential horror has many imitators, but most of them aren't really as powerful as his stuff was. Also I note a number of PoC writers have said they do find his work inspiring and the racism a bit easier to get past than some other writers (which I think does connect to the sheer insanity of it, and the fact that it's directed at all non-WASPs, as it predates modern notions of whiteness), and quite a number of writers have fairly successfully "reclaimed" it, as it were (indeed I'd say some of those efforts "get" the Mythos better than some older ones which kind of lapse into pulp-hero-adjacent stuff).

I've read a good amount of Lovecraft, and to this day, I still can't make it through the Rats in the Walls because of the damn cat's name.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You shouldn't have to. It's like arguing that the earth is round. I have a deep affection for many elements of the works of both authors, but denying their SUPER OBVIOUS racism and misogyny, yes, even by the low standards of their day, doesn't merit serious debate - it's extremely well documented, and not just in the content of their work.

My point was more about reading it and determining for themselves what to make of it (i.e. is it racist, if so how much, how much that impacts their enjoyment of the work, etc). I wasn't trying to say it isn't obvious in places

I do think by the standards of the standards of their time is a whole other topic. And I do think here people really minimize how widespread and oppressive racism was when they want to make an argument that lovecraft or howard were out of line with their peers. Lovecraft certainly had a weird New England form of racism that is bizarre to us now, but this is a time when black people were being denied basic human rights in the US, when lynching were happening and when antisemitism was everywhere. I get that it wasn't everyone. But someone like Lovecraft could write the way he did in his letters because these kinds of views were not that unusual.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm assuming (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here) you have the privilege to view it at a purely academic level and you relate to Conan vs say the Kushites or Stygiansm...but for someone who is on the other side of that equation... what does Conan offer that other, less racist sword and sorcery , doesn't.

That's the question I at least have to ask if I suggest his literature to my gaming group (an african-american, afro-latino and mixed group of players)... and i don't think, it was all the rage back then, is going to fly when there is so much other fantasy literature to choose from.

I don't think this is especially important in reading how racist an old book is, but there is a lot of anti-semitic tropes in both and my father's side of the family is Jewish (I grew up celebrating Jewish and Christian Holidays). As I said as well, Lovecraft is particularly hostile to Italians, and that is the other side of my family.

 

[Mannahnin]

I don't think this is especially important in reading how racist an old book is, but there is a lot of anti-semitic tropes in both and my father's side of the family is Jewish (I grew up celebrating Jewish and Christian Holidays). As I said as well, Lovecraft is particularly hostile to Italians, and that is the other side of my family.

This is non-responsive to his question, which was about Conan.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think Lovecraft was an old fashioned Yankee England Racist.

Honestly I find there's a weird gnawing paranoiac angle to a lot of Lovecraft's racism that connects to his existential fears re: the nature of the universe and that even by the standards of his day seems very strange.

I think it is so specific it can be kind of hard to take seriously at times.

Yeah definitely. I couldn't even comprehend it when I first came across it, it was so wack and specific.

This is one of the reasons why I mentioned downplaying racism to build up Howard or Lovecraft as more racist for their times. Yes there were people who didn't go along with this stuff and how actively fought against it, but we are talking about a period in time that produced the Holocaust. So we shouldn't minimize the racism that was circulating in circles that reached even the highest office in the US, at this time. Some of the worst racism of that era was coming out of science and academia and that gave it a lot of mainstream creditability

I think one thing that doesn't always come across from that era too is that because a lot of racism was so mainstream, people were very picky about their racism! Like, they'd believe a bunch of horrendously racist and obviously untrue nonsense, but think that some other horrendous racist thing about the same group was obviously false and only dumb people believed that, and would get into arguments about it in the letters sections of newspapers and stuff (not having online forums to do so, I guess!).

I've read a good amount of Lovecraft, and to this day, I still can't make it through the Rats in the Walls because of the damn cat's name.

Yeah the version I read thankfully had the updated 1950s text where it was "Black Tom" and not... what it originally was. So instead the "Oh wow that's so racist" pet name for me was the dog in The Dambusters (very similar to the cat), a film kids my age and older were repeatedly exposed to as children in the UK.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ed is not a writer

Quoted for truth.

 

[TiQuinn]

Honestly I find there's a weird gnawing paranoiac angle to a lot of Lovecraft's racism that connects to his existential fears re: the nature of the universe and that even by the standards of his day seems very strange.

Brown University Library The Racial Imaginaries of H. P. Lovecraft

I read this a while back and I think to your point, this was a guy who was deeply preoccupied with race to the point that it was central to his writing and thinking. There was little incidental about Lovecraft's racism, even though people defending him like to fall back on supposed standards of the time.