The Return of Conan

Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

-- Robert E. Howard, "The Phoenix on the Sword"

Conan the Barbarian in one of those iconic characters--like Sherlock Holmes or Dorothy Gale--that people think they know without bothering to read the actual stories they appeared in. After years of imitations, parodies, and cheesy movies, the popular imagination has reduced Conan to a brain-dead killing machine with all the personality and finesse of a sledgehammer. Thankfully, there's a slow but steady push going on to change that skewed view of one of fantasy's most arresting characters.

Conan was created by Robert E. Howard, a pulp writer born in 1906 in Cross Plains, Texas. Growing up only a few decades after the final closing of the frontier, he was surrounded by people who had known the west when it was truly wild and lawless.

In a letter to fellow writer, August Derleth, Howard wrote...

San Antonio is full of old timers – old law officers, trail drivers, cattlemen, buffalo hunters and pioneers. No better place for a man to go who wants to get first hand information about the frontier. The lady who owned the rooms I rented, for instance, was an old pioneer woman who had lived on a ranch in the very thick of the “wire-cutting war” of Brown County; and on the street back of her house lived an old gentleman who went up the Chisholm in the ‘80’s, trapped in the Rockies, helped hunt down Sitting Bull, and was a sheriff in the wild days of western Kansas. I wish I had time and money to spend about a year looking up all these old timers in the state and getting their stories.

Despite his sword-and-sorcery setting, Conan embodies the spirit of the cowboy more than the Medieval knight. Like any frontiersman, he's tough as nails, but also smart and endlessly resourceful. Through his adventures, Conan picks up several languages, along with knowledge of woodscraft, military tactics, and other skills a wandering swordsman and fortune hunter needs.

When Howard calls Conan as a barbarian, he doesn't mean he's stupid. Actually, "barbarian" is pretty high praise from Howard, who carried a vague distrust of civilization his whole life. A strong theme throughout his writing is how civilization makes men weak, petty, and cruel. Conan, on the other hand, doesn't obey any authority except his own moral code. He's a dangerous enemy, and just as loyal a friend. He can gain and loose a king's ransom with hardly a shrug. He drinks and feasts and chases more than his share of tavern wenches, but his passion is for life itself and for adventure. He'd never chose those pleasures of civilization over the chance to see what lies beyond the next mountain. That's what Howard means when he describes Conan as a barbarian.

And what did lie over that next mountain? Often, something very large with lots of tentacles. In a recent GLW post, Jesse Karp described Howard's world-building as "massively atmospheric," and his Conan stories are set in a "vanished age" after the sinking of Atlantis and before the dawn of recorded history. Strange relics, ancient before the coming of men, pulse with vile magic. Forgotten gods lurk just outside the firelight, searching to recapture their lost glory.

In "The Frost Giant's Daughter," one of my favorite Howard stories, Conan finds himself the only survivor of a border skirmish high in the icy north countries. As he walks away alone...

The Cimmerian stood upright, trailing his sword, a sudden sick weariness assailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like a knife, and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely apart. He turned away from the trampled expanse, where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked with red-bearded slayers in the embrace of death. A few steps he took, and the glare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave of blindness engulfed him, and he sank down into the snow, supporting himself on one mailed arm and seeking to shake the blindness out of his eyes as a lion might shake his mane.

A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight slowly cleared. He looked up; there was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not define--an unfamiliar tinge to the earth and sky. But he did not think long of this. Before him, swaying like a sapling in the wind, stood a woman. To his dazed eyes her body was like ivory, and, save for a light veil of gossamer, she was naked as the day. Her slender feet were whiter than the snow they spurned. She laughed down at the bewildered warrior with a laughter that was sweeter than the rippling of silvery fountains and poisonous with cruel mockery.

The beautiful creature goads Conan into chasing her, leading him deeper into the frozen wastes. Then...

Two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way. The scales of their mail were white with hoarfrost; their helmets and axes were covered with ice. Snow sprinkled their locks, in their beards were spikes of icicles, and their eyes were as cold as the lights that streamed above them.

"Brothers!" cried the girl, dancing between them. "Look who follows! I have brought you a man to slay! Take his heart, that we may lay it smoking on our father's board!"

Once again reminiscent of the frontier stories he grew up with, Howard presents a dangerous, untamed world where even the strongest man is barely more than an bug.

Conan's adventures were originally printed between 1932 and 1936 in Weird Tales. Howard dabbled in every genre the pulp magazines published--fantasy, horror, westerns, sports stories, and mysteries--but Conan quickly became his most popular character. Howard died tragically when he was 30. Soon after, the owners of his copyrights started making some questionable decisions concerning Conan and his other creations.

The market was glutted with new, ghostwritten Conan stories and novels. Even worse, other writers were allowed to "fix" Howard's original stories when they were gathered into paperback collections. And the less said about Arnold Schwarzenegger's muttering, meat-head take on Conan, the better. Once able to speak multiple languages, suddenly Conan could barely manage one. By the 90s, Conan had become a joke. The original stories--along with Howard's other work--fell out of print.

A few ardent fans kept the lamps lit, though. They maintained websites devoted to taking a serious look at both Howard's and other pulp writers' work. They kept enough interest alive that Del Rey finally republished the tales of Conan--restored to Howard's original vision of the character--in three illustrated volumes. They were popular enough for Del Rey to publish more of Howard's creations, including Kull, another fantasy hero considered a precursor to Conan, Solomon Kane, a Puritan who travels the world fighting demons, and Bran Mak Morn, the last Pictish king, fighting a doomed war against the Romans.

Dark Horse Comics published an Eisner-winning Conan series that finished its run last year. It was followed by a Kull mini-series and an upcoming mini-series featuring Thulsa Doom, an immortal sorcerer who's battled both Kull and Conan.

Also, there's a Conan MMORPG and another movie, directed by Marcus Nispel, slated to come out in 2010, which will hopefully be better than the two from the 80s. (And couldn't be much worse.)

And besides preserving Howard's work, many of the fans who grew up reading his work in the 60s and 70s became writers themselves. Historical novelist Scott Oden, who says his own writing is heavily influenced by Howard's, points out...

Howard's legacy to fantasy is as prominent as that of Tolkien. Together, the two created the modern genre: Tolkien with high fantasy and Howard with low fantasy, or sword-and-sorcery. The influence of his style of writing is evident in the pages of writers as diverse as George R. R. Martin, Joe Abercrombie, or Richard Morgan.

And through them, Conan lives on to capture the imaginations of another generation.

(I got a lot of help on this post from Rusty Burke, the editor of several collections of Howard's stories and letters, and Scott Oden. Thanks to both of them.)

Cross-posted on my blog.

77 Love Sonnets by Garrison Keillor

If you've seen A Prairie Home Companion on PBS, or the movie of the same name starring Meryl Streep, or if you listen to National Public Radio (NPR) either voluntarily or because your folks have it on in the car, you might have some idea who Garrison Keillor is. If you're a writer or a fan of reading, you might be interested in his daily broadcast/online column The Writer's Almanac, in which Keillor shares a poem a day (pretty much always by someone else), and information on writers or poets who were born, died, or otherwise did something of particular note on this particular day in history. He's also compiled a couple of poetry anthologies, (i.e., Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times), containing the work of a lot of poets, living and dead. But I digress.

Today's post, you see, is about a small pink book of poems entitled 77 Love Sonnets, now available in local bookstores (and online) pretty much everywhere. And these poems - all of them sonnets of one kind or another - are actually written by Keillor. I think that Keillor's note, found on the back of the slim volume, explains the contents well, and succinctly:

When I was 16, Helen Fleischman assigned me to memorize Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 29, 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state' for English class, and fifty years later, that poem is still in my head. Algebra got washed away, and geometry and most of biology, but those lines about the redemptive power of love in the face of shame are still here behind my eyeballs, more permanent than my own teeth. The sonnet is a durable good. These 77 of mine include sonnets of praise, some erotic, some lamentations, some street sonnets and a 12-sonnet cycle of months. If anything here offends, I beg your pardon. I come in peace, I depart in gratitude.

A sonnet is a particular form of poem. It consists of 14 lines. There are two exceedingly traditional forms - the Shakespearean sonnet and the Italianate or Petrarchan sonnet (which allows a bit more latitude in rhyme scheme). Both of those forms traditionally use something called iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line, organized into 5 iambic "feet" - taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM). Over time, however, increasing flexibility in rhyme schemes and meters crept in. That said, most sonnets continue to consist of 14 lines, some sort of rhyme scheme (even if slant rhyme or near rhyme is used), and the presence of something called a volta or "turn", usually found somewhere around the ninth line of a sonnet, but sometimes not appearing until the final two lines.

Here is an example of one of Keillor's less erotic poems about a couple in love:

A Couple on the Street
by Garrison Keillor

Apparently they are a scandalous pair,
Strolling the main drag, not quite hand in hand,
The tall young woman and the dazed old man.
And old ladies turn like wounded birds and stare
And shake their great red wattles and curse
And young women smirk at this ludicrous romance--
But see how tenderly his eyes seek hers
And their elbows brush-- and, defiant, they hold hands
And dare to gaze at each other. She is avid
To be loved and love leaps up from them
As music sprang from Mozart, and they can have it
All, Don Giovanni and the Requiem.
  "Fools!" the ladies cry. "It should not and cannot be!"
   And they are right. But O the sweetness and the courtesy.

This particular poem uses slant rhyme, and follows this rhyme scheme: ABBACDCDEFEFGG.

Here, from page 65 of the volume, is a Shakespearean sonnet (ABABCDCDEFEFGG)entitled "The Anger of Women":

The anger of women pervades the rooms
Like a cold snap, and you wait for the thaw
To open the window and air out the anger fumes,
And then a right hook KA-POW to the jaw!
And she says three jagged things about you
And then it's over. She bursts into tears,
The storm spent, the sky turns sky-blue.
But a man's heart can hurt for many years.
I have found the anger of women unbearable.
And when my goddesses have cursed the day
They met me and said those terrible
Things, I folded my tent and stole away.
   I yielded to their righteous dominion
   And went off in search of another opinion.

There are sonnets that are sexy and sonnets that are funny; sonnets that are a bit dour and some that are divine. The book is, above all, proof of the flexibility and continued vitality of the sonnet. And even though it's pink, and even though it's by some guy who your parents or grandparents like from the land of Public Broadcasting, this is one book that's worth a look. Take a look at the poem entitled "Obama", perhaps. Or at the series of twelve poems, each named after a different month of the year. Or, well, look at "Room 704" if you don't believe me:

The tennis players volley on the bright green court.
Slipping and sliding to and fro while up above
Them, spread naked on a bed in room 704,
A young woman sings the aria of burning love--
Her lover's head between her legs, her feet on his back,
And she is singing for pleasure, while outside
The streets are cleaned, construction is on track,
The buses come on time and people board and ride
And she lies, eyes closed, hands holding his, and moans
As he addresses her with all deliberate passion.
And the clerks sort the mail into the correct zones
And all the ATM machines have sufficient cash in.
   Good sir, don't stop. We each must do our duty.
   Some drive the bus and others drive the beauty.

Yes, I Said Iron Crotch

Just the word “Shaolin” invokes thoughts of mystery—monks practicing their fighting and meditative arts on the side of a mountain, esoteric practices that lead to “iron” body parts…With its title & subtitle, American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China, practically sells itself. Matthew Polly grew up as the kid who was picked on and tormented by bullies. He even had a list entitled Things That Are Wrong With Matt. While he dreamed of heading to China and studying with the monks of the Shaolin Temple (like on his favorite 1970s TV show, Kung Fu), it seemed like just a dream. While studying at Princeton, he realized he could make his dream a reality. He dropped out of school and got on a plane to China, determined to acquire a combination of martial arts prowess, spiritual enlightenment, and self-confidence.

Polly’s account of his 2-year stint in China is a fascinating read. If you come just for the martial arts, you won’t be disappointed—while it takes a while for him to be fully accepted by the Shaolin monks, he eventually represents them in tournaments and becomes the first American to be accepted as a disciple. There are amazing pictures of kung fu feats and descriptions of the training that can lead to having an iron stomach, fist, or yes, crotch. While these monks seem almost mythical, Polly gives us the reality of living in the Temple--personality quirks, routines, and the hard work that goes into making their kung fu look so effortless. Reading American Shaolin will also give you insight about what it’s like to live in China as it changes in the first part of this century. Many folks dismiss nonfiction when it comes to summer reading, but this is exactly the kind of summer book I like—one that transports me into a different place and describes both the big picture of life there and the day to day routine with detail, insight, and humor. Matthew Polly’s web site has more info on him, links to other articles he has written, The Iron Crotch blog, and some videos of the monks of Shaolin doing what they do best.

Fresh Lobster With a Side of Barbarian

Looking for a symbolic creature to take on as persona, one that will strike fear into the evil and corrupt? A bat or spider, perhaps? A shadow? How about a lobster? I went on and on about the pulps, comicdom’s gritty, hero-packed progenitors, a few months ago (here to be exact). I mentioned, among other things, Lobster Johnson, a character who originally appeared in the pages of Hellboy and, though he never actually existed in the time of the pulps (the 1920s-early 1940s), captures the spirit of that era and brand of adventure with more panache than anything since the originals.

The homage is expanded with Lobster Johnson: the Satan Factory (by Sniegoski), a paperback adventure in prose made to read like a yarn lifted right out of an ancient, dog-eared original. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I have not read the whole book yet (it hits the bookstore shelves July 22nd). However, there is a generous 30 page preview at the Dark Horse website, and I have read that and I was so excited I couldn't hold back. We see Dr. Jonas Chapel's fall into the world of crime and the supernatural, and a chapter with a James Bond-style pre-credits sequence as the Lobster engages in combat with a distinctly unpleasant gorilla (this guy fights gorillas quite a bit, actually). So the stage is set for a clash between the mysterious crime fighter and the doctor gone wrong. I've read a lot of pulps in my day and, with its dark and moody settings and fast-paced action, rings with authenticity like the echoing roar of a .45.

Speaking of pulp characters, you couldn’t find a more quintessential example of the breed than Conan the Barbarian. From Robert E. Howard’s original, massively atmospheric adventures to Frank Frazetta’s latter day visuals drenched in menace and masculinity, sword and sorcery owes the character as a great a debt as it does the hobbits and Elves of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The adventures were never better re-interpreted than in Marvel’s original 1970’s Conan series which, of late, have been collected by Dark Horse in their the Chronicles of Conan series. Take Volume 7 (by Thomas and Buscema) for example. It’s packed with double-crossing sorcerers, wicked sword fights, voluptuous, fiery female companions (perhaps the very archetype of these: Red Sonja) and most importantly, the grim-eyed, iron-thewed, barbarian anti-hero with the indomitable will. Best moment in a collection of nine issues filled with good moments: a toss up between Conan’s underwater battle with an ancient, tentacled monstrosity right out of Lovecraft (Howard’s good pen pal, as it happened) and Conan’s escape after being tied down nearly naked to be gnawed on by an army of rats. Whatever your taste in barbarian action, this is the ideal book to top off your foray into the frenzied, sinister world of pulp.

Surviving the Most Hostile Place on Earth

When I was in library school, I read a bunch of books for my juvenile and young adult literature classes. The one that impressed me the most was Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance, by Jennifer Armstrong. Starting in 1915, Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton and his crew were stranded south of the Antarctic Circle for more than a year. They had no ship and no way to contact the outside world. All 28 men survived.

Jennifer Armstrong does a wonderful job, describing Antarctica, a continent that supports glaciers up to two miles in depth. There are winds close to 200 miles per hour and the temperature can sink to 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

And she tells how the crew, including a stowaway, suffered, but persevered.

After their ship Endurance was crushed by the ice, "Shackleton announced his plan to the crew: they would march across the frozen sea with two of the three lifeboats to Paulet Island, 346 miles to the northwest. To the best of Shackleton's knowledge, there was a cache of stores in a hut on Paulet Island from a 1902 Swedish expedition. What they would do once they reached this destination was not specified: it was enough to have a goal... They would have to walk the whole way, hauling their gear and the two boats. The men knew they were doomed without the boats; eventually they would reach open water. They would need the boats, no matter how burdensome they were to drag over the ice...

"... there was much to get ready... While McNeish and McLeod began fitting the lifeboats onto sledges, the rest of the crew began sorting their equipment. The men were given a two-pound limit on personal gear, which allowed them to keep only the items that were essential for survival -- although the Boss did allow them to keep their diaries and their tobacco, and the doctors were allowed their medical supplies. In a dramatic gesture, Shackleton took his gold cigarette case and a handful of gold coins from his pocket and dropped them on the snow. Gold was useless for the task ahead...

"...the men hauling the Caird and the Docker (two large lifeboats) were sinking up to their knees in slush, and their boots were filling with seven pounds of freezing water with each step... in three days they covered only seven miles..."

The book is illustrated with pictures taken by the crew photographer. And Armstrong tells a little about what happened to the crew after they got back to England.

This is the most incredible adventure story imaginable. If you like it, you might also enjoy Marooned: The Strange but True Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe; and Revenge of the Whale: The True Story of the Whaleship Essex.

I'll post reviews, but I have to read them first!

Wednesday Comics

I realize that it’s unusual to post about a single issue of a comic book series, but when the series stands as clearly apart as this one does, I think it merits the attention. DC Comics has a love affair with experimental formats and with bridging the past with the present. Some of their experiments have worked wondrously (most notably the Morrison/Rucka/Waid/Johns/Giffen weekly comics joint 52), some have failed miserably (the 52 follow-up Countdown to Final Crisis), and some have died of attrition and neglect (the seldom-remembered Action Comics Weekly, published WAY back in the 80s).

Fortunately, the powers that be at DC still hope to reignite the passion and wonder that kids and former kids used to have when seeing their favorite comics characters in print. It is that spirit of yesteryear that fuels the publication of Wednesday Comics, and the series looks to be a phenomenal success.

A throwback to simpler times in every way, DC’s Wednesday Comics is published on full-sized, 14”x20” newsprint and features weekly installments of 15 famous (and not so famous) DC characters. Each character has his/her own creative team in charge of producing one full page of story per week for the full 12 week run of the series. While this limits the amount of story that can be told each week, it broadens the horizons for the artists, who are free to create large, flashy splash pages using a variety of layout techniques. The art, in spite of the low quality paper, is spectacular and will immediately remind older readers of mornings spent poring over the exploits of such characters as Prince Valiant and Dick Tracy in the Sunday funnies.

Since this is only the first issue, it remains to be seen which of the 15 serialized stories will rise above the others, but early favorites include Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred’s Metamorpho: The Element Man strip, Paul Pope’s Strange Adventures featuring pulp hero Adam Strange, and artist extraordinaire Kyle Baker’s Hawkman.

As is fitting for any DC publication, Superman and Batman each have a dedicated page (the latter nearly stealing the show with its noir-inspired artwork courtesy of Eduardo Risso), and well-known characters such as Wonder Woman, Supergirl, the Flash, the Teen Titans and Green Lantern also have their own features.

For readers who already love comics, this series is a must-read. For those who have limited exposure to comic books, Wednesday Comics’ short-burst storytelling style is the perfect way to introduce the DC pantheon of characters. DC’s Wednesday Comics pushes comics forwards by looking backwards.

Cross-posted on PastePotPete.com

Hey! You Got Photo Documentary In My Graphic Novel!

I don't know how to explain this. There are books you read that pry open a whole world you never knew existed. I mean, you've heard of places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, you've heard of small villages lying in remote regions, you know organizations like Doctors Without Borders exist and you know what they do, and you might even know (or remember) some recent history about the Soviet invasion and war with Afghanistan in the 1980s... but somehow it doesn't all add up to a single picture of that time, or place, or experience until a book comes along and drops you into the deep end and your fully immersed.

In 1989, a young French photographer named Didier Lefèvre is asked by the organization Médecins Sans Frontières to help them document their efforts to provide medical care to Afghans living near the war front who are without doctors or resources. It's a grueling journey requiring the group to sneak across the border of Pakistan illegally, to get to the farthest outposts where medical offices can be set up and, for Lefèvre, to make his way home safely on his own. Years later he recounts his stories to his friend, the illustrator Emannuel Guibert, and together the create a trilogy of books that document the experience. Those books, bound as one, are The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders.

As explained in the afterword, the concept was for Guibert to illustrate the story surrounding Lefèvre's photos, turning the enterprise in an unusual, and richly rewarding, hybrid of a photo travelogue and a graphic novel. The mix of graphic elements at times can feel like an artists scrapbook - along the lines of photojournalists Peter Beard and Dan Eldon - or sometimes require several pages of illustration that calls to mind (literally at one point) Tintin comics both in landscape and style. It's like a documentary with the narrative flow of fiction.


And it's about war. And people trying to do good against all odds. People and animals die with regularity. The absurdities of human experience abound. There are moments of terror and moments of humor and moments of great beauty. It is as much about the person behind the camera as much as the people being documented in front of it and shows that, if anything, a photojournalist's life isn't as glamorous as some might believe.

I felt this way when I read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis some years back. It wasn't that I didn't know something about Iran, it was all that I knew was through Western eyes and media. It had never occurred to me – nor could I imagine – what it would be like to grow up during the Iranian revolution of the late 70s and the overthrow of the Shaw. I had met many who had escaped Iran during that time, people uneasy with the coming reforms, and I knew their stories but not those of the ones who stayed. In The Photographer. Lefèvre and Guibert fill in some gaps about the Soviet conflict with Afghanistan in the same way, showing us what the Western (let's be fair, mainly American) world did not report. The borders were full of peasant villages, with Afghan troops on foot or with pack mule, facing Soviet helicopters and the last days of the big Soviet Cold War arsenal.

I seem to recall the American response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Olympics.

While The Photographer. doesn't necessarily add a great deal of information about the full nature of the conflict it does manage to put human faces on a small moment in the history of a part of the world still very much in our headlines. It's the sort of book that has to potential to open young minds and make them want to learn more about Afghanistan, about photojournalism, about Doctors Without Borders, and maybe why this part of the world continues to capture our attention.

Mentioned in this review:

The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
by Didier Lefèvre
illustrated by Emannuel Guibert
First Second Books 2009

Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon Books 2002

The Journey Is The Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon
edited by Kathy Eldon
Chronicle Books 1997

Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa
by Peter H. Beard
Alfred Knopf 2004

The Adventures of Tintin books
by Herge

The Book Fair for Boys is a HUGE success!!

I am thrilled to announce that to date we received 600 books for the boys in the LA County juvenile justice system. The response to the original Book Fair for Boys post has been huge - far greater than we anticipated - and will make a big difference in a lot of lives. So many books were sent to LA that InsideOut Writers is able to spread them over all three facilities where the boys are held, providing much greater access to the books. It will be easier for them to check them out, easier for them to find the books they want and easier in every possible way for them to read.

Think about that - we have made it possible for these boys to have books to read.

According to Eve, the point person at IOW, the most popular books are Harry Potter (some things just don't surprise me anymore), titles about war such as Andrew Mueller's I Wouldn't Start From Here and Jay Kopelman's From Baghdad Withe Love and books on the harsh truth of gang life such as Luis Rodriguez's Always Running. We will be running book reviews in the coming months on many of the books and I can't wait to see what the boys have to say.

For those of you who donated or spread the word, thank you so very much. Expect to hear from IOW in the near future as notes are being written to ever donor. And for future reference, we will be running a book fair in late November to again help this group of teenagers. Six hundred books is certainly a lot but for 2,500 boys it's just the tip of the iceberg. We have started to build a library and intend to continue the work.

An Apology and a Course Correction

I blame marketers. Marketers create a world, one that says that guys age 18-35 can think only about beer, explosions, expensive fast cars, and women with large boobs. And guys a bit younger (13-17) can think only about heavily caffeinated beverages,explosions, extreme sports, and, well, women with large boobs. Marketers create this reality, convincing the guys themselves and everyone around them of their particular interests, and then they treat it as if it's a reality that just occurs naturally. We don't really like it, they say, but that's just how it is.

Now, I've got nothing against any of those things. Not at all. I like caffeine as much as the next guy. I probably consume more caffeine than your average Red-Bull-addicted 15-year-old at the skate park (that's where you are, right? all the time? that's where the commercials say you are). But the reality--and I mean "real" reality, not the one invented by marketing companies--is far more complex and more subtle than that. There are, of course, many many more types of guys than are ever depicted by marketers. There are, for instance, guys who read books. If there weren't, I wouldn't be writing this right now, would I? And almost all those types of guys, but particularly the type who read books, can and do think differently about women than the marketers would have us believe.

What I want to say is I haven't given you, the GuysLitWire readers, the respect you deserve. I've imagined you too much the way they--the Madison Avenue types--have wanted me to imagine you. I've thought that guys wanted guy books and I figured guy books, particularly in fiction, included only stories about guys, stories that had guys, and never women or girls, as the main characters. So I've avoided recommending many good books that feature women or girls as the main characters, assuming, stupidly, that you wouldn't be interested. But of course you aren't Neanderthals.

I read somewhere that the reason Disney makes so many more "boy" movies than "girl" movies is that girls will go to see boy movies but boys won't go to see girl movies. "We don't like it. That's just the way it is," Disney executives say. But if you look at the girl movies that they make, it's no wonder guys aren't interested. They are nearly all about princesses. Even when the princesses are tough enough to disguise themselves as men and go into battle or ride alone into the dark woods to save dear old dad from a ten foot tall talking lion-bear hybrid thing and his army of tchotchkes, what the princesses really want is to put on a fancy dress and get married. It's not only guys who are put off by this. I'm sure there are plenty of girls who can't get into these movies either.

Fortunately, the world of literature is more varied than the world of Disney movies, and gives us many books with girls as the main characters, girls who are neither princesses nor fairies, nor, for that matter, the tormented little playthings of boy vampires. Here are some of those books, mostly fantasy and sci-fi, because that's what I know, but some non-fiction too, for good measure:

Sabriel, by Garth Nix--This is one of the coolest fantasy novels I've read in recent years. It's set in an alternative world where magic exists and is practiced, but only within a small area called the Old Kingdom. Outside of the Old Kingdom, things are pretty much as they are were here on Earth in the 1930s. All of the magic practiced in the old kingdom seems to have a bit of a dark edge to it and there are those who use magic to do the ultimate evil--raising and animating the dead. Sabriel's father's job is to guide these dead back to the land of the dead, where they belong. When her father is taken away to the land of the dead himself, Sabriel has to return from school to the Old Kingdom and take over the job without the proper training. Nix creates a strange and fully formed world with plenty of zombies, demons and ambulatory corpses, plus one seriously hard ass cat. Sabriel herself is thoughtful and cunning and tough. The novel is followed up by a two-part sequel: Lirael and Abhorsen. You can read my full review here.

His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass)by Phillip Pullman--Like Sabriel, this story is set in an alternate world, much like our own but different in important aspects. For one, people in this world have daemons, animal-like creatures which, while autonomous and separate, are linked to each person's soul. Lyra is an orphaned child who lives, with her daemon Pantalaimon, among academics at Oxford university. When she discovers who her father is and that he's experimenting with a substance called Dust which could allow him to open a gateway to another world, she finds herself in danger of being abducted by her father's enemies and escapes into a dazzlingly strange world full of witches, angels, and armored bears. A Google search will reveal how much has been written about these books. A number of organizations have recommended banning them. That should be reason enough to read them.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett--Tiffany Aching, it seems, would make a good witch, even though she comes from the Chalk, which isn't good land for growing witches. That's what a number of older and wiser witches seem to think, anyway, and they attempt to recruit her to their school. When her brother, Wendell, is abducted by an evil queen and carried off into Fairyland (which is quite a bit less pleasant than it sounds), she has no choice but to start her training early. Fortunately, she has the help of a host of tiny, badly-behaved blue men who amuse themselves by drinking heavily, stealing whatever they can, and picking fights with much larger creatures such as horses. These fellows need a lot of keeping in line, but are frightfully courageous and loyal. Tiffany is tough and as bull-headed as the Wee Free Men, but also considerate and generous. The book is one of the most hilarious I've ever read. Tiffany's story is continued in A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith. All of the books are part of the massive Discworld series, which will keep you reading for a long long time. From the Discworld series, I might also recommend Monstrous Regiment, about a girl who disguises herself as a man and joins the army (along with a troll, an "Igor," and a vampire) in order to find her brother who's been recruited but is far too sensitive to be a soldier. It's sort of like Mulan, only funnier and without the fancy dresses.

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle--Meg Murray has a lot of problems at school. She has braces, can't manage her hair and people think she's strange and even stupid. But that's not the worst problem. Her father has disappeared. When she's offered, by three strange women--Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs Who--a chance to set off on a journey to rescue her father, she takes it, bringing along her little brother, Charles Wallace, and her popular but wounded friend Calvin. They travel through space, time, and multiple dimensions and are eventually forced to confront true evil. This book is a classic and as such, many schools at one point decided to make it mandatory reading. I don't know if they still do. I hope not. Even if it is required, read it as if it weren't. (Don't let them mess up your life.) A Wrinkle in Time is much better to read all on your own, without being confronted by study questions or pop quizzes. A Wrinkle in Time kicks off a series called The Wrinkle in Time Quintet.

Swimming to Antarctica, by Lynn Cox--I've dabbled in athletics all my life. I was on age group and high school swim teams, track teams, cross country teams. I even did some bike racing as a kid. As an adult I run road races and the occasional triathlon. My butt has been decisively kicked by more women than I could possibly count. Still, while I knew there were lots of women who could beat me at pretty much any sport, I did not know, until I read Swimming to Antarctica, that there had ever been a woman who dominated a sport, who was better at her sport than any man in the world. By the time she was fifteen years old, Lynn Cox was. She held numerous world records in open water swimming and channel swimming. She could swim in water so cold it would literally kill a normal human being. Swimming to Antarctica is her story. It's told with grace and humility. It shows what a beautiful sport long distance swimming can be and confronts much of the sexism that a woman athlete of her caliber was forced to face. If you are a male athlete, whether you think you're the shit or not, you should read this book and be humbled.

A moveable feast: In the Heart of the Sea

A while back, I reviewed the newly-published Ray Bradbury screenplay for the 1956 film of Moby Dick here on Guys Lit Wire. The book Moby Dick is a recurring obsession; every few years I'll re-read it (yes, including the allegedly boring bits) and plow through stacks of critical commentary. This cycle of Ahabery was spurred by an interview I did with writer/comedian Mary Jo Pehl (Mystery Science Theater 3000), in which she spoke about Melville. In searching for new material, I discovered a book about the Essex, a ship sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, and the whalers' subsequent horrific ordeal. This event inspired Melville to write Moby Dick; he even met several of the survivors.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick, is based on two first-hand survivor accounts, one by first mate Owen Chase published shortly after the disaster, and one by cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, 19 at the time of the sinking. Nickerson's account did not surface until 1980, and having two distinct accounts to draw on helps Philbrick bring the characters and their struggles to vivid life.

It's not just a tale of a whale, it's a tale of a whole society, the Quaker-laced whaling fleet based on Nantucket Island. This brief, shining society, centered entirely on the deaths of whales half a world away, provided most of the oil needed to keep the world's lamps lit, and its machines greased. Philbrick doesn't apply modern morality to them, but instead shows us how their narrow world view caused the rise and fall of both the island itself, and the particular sailors from the Essex.

I won't sugarcoat it: there's cannibalism. But Philbrick does such a good job getting us into the heads of characters, their ultimate decision to eat what's available makes perfect, if ghastly, sense. He also provides context, using the results of a 1945 study on starvation at the University of Minnesota to explain the gradual physical and mental breakdowns.

This is neither a horror story, nor a "triumph of the human spirit" tale. Philbrick presents the story with a minimum of garnish, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. What is certain is that the fate of the Essex led directly to the composition of arguably the greatest American novel ever.

Read an interview with author Nathaniel Philbrick here.

Netflix a Discovery Channel documentary on the Essex here.

And finally, a cheery pop song about cannibalism: