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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8348376" data-attributes="member: 42582">Also a fair bit of the sex and nudity seems to be intended for immediate gratification - eg the "ancient mysteries, and the exotic ways of pleasure" of Xuthal of the Dark! To elaborate, I think the reader (who is expected to be a heterosexual man) is expected to pretty straightforwardly imagine himself as Conan, in a position to enjoy those exotic ways!I think this also goes to [USER=7025997]@Blue Orange[/USER]'s remarks about the lack of irony. We could say more generally that REH's Conan isn't a character whose subtleties the reader is expected to engage with. He's a vehicle for the telling of the story, and for self-projection into the story where desired. Patrice Louinet talks a bit about this in relation to REH's own personality in his essay in the first volume of his three-volume collection of REH (The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian).</blockquote>