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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9604866"><p>No it doesn't. Someone might read Howard and simply have a more charitable view of the text and of Howard than you, they might read it and think the particular problematic things in Conan you are identifying are not as worth getting worked up about (a lot of which are more to do with crude use of language to describe different racial groups: sometimes obvious, sometimes not), etc. It is entirely possible to read someone like Lovecraft, reject all of the views on race he espoused, and just see it as a product of its time. And there are still ongoing debates about this stuff even now (you can find for example defenses of Lovecraft by S.T. Joshi: and he has written numerous books on Lovecraft and published many of his letters, many of which contain exactly the sorts of things we are discussing). There are all kinds of different possible takes that have nothing to do with agreeing with whatever set of ideas you feel are behind the writing. And this is complicated by the fact that people say things they don't believe all the time. And people use irony, and hyperbole. So even when things seem pretty clear, you can have different interpretation. The letters from Howard, I think those reflect real views he held. However if someone told me they thought Howard was trying to project a certain persona in them or come off as being more tough to whoever he was communicating with, I could at least understand how someone might reach that kind of conclusion, and I wouldn't just assume them reacting differently means they agree with what Howard said. I wouldn't agree with that persons' assessment but I also wouldn't feel the need to dismiss that persons as the things Howard was talking about</p></blockquote><p></p>

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