/lit/ - Literature

>>11538890
They're really entertaining and basically invented the pulp fantasy genre. Howard is a better prose writer than most of the people who came after them, so they're enjoyable to read. Not necessarily deep, but that's not the point. As diversions go you could do a lot worse.

I'm going to say something that is probably complete bullshit, but whatever.

In the past, it was really, really easy to find a wife and marry her, if you were a man. Whether upper class or lower class, king or peasant, you stood a very, very good chance of marrying. What did this mean? It meant guaranteed pussy. It meant men didn't need to hunt and strive for pussy, they could just go home to it every day. And when the basic sexual needs of a man are automatically, unthinkingly met, he suddenly has a lot of time and energy that he doesn't need to devote to the task of getting pussy.

What does a man do with this time and energy? Some of them fritter it away, true. However, many of them spent their time learning and studying and competing and generally bettering themselves. Men strike me as horny creatures by nature, easily led by the promise of sex. But if the sex is automatic, then suddenly that's a huge thing men don't need to worry about any more, and, with so much time and energy free, more of them are able to advance.

Now, the counter-argument to this is that many truly great men of history did without pussy. Aquinas, Nietzsche, Proust, etc., all of them didn't have any need to have sex. But I think the ability to function without questing after pussy is the hallmark of the truly great, the nearly superhuman. Those men are truly amazing. But they're also very rare.

The rest of us? We need pussy. And nowadays it's no longer automatic. So, just as in the days of hunting and gathering, men need to waste huge amounts of time and energy securing sex. And this takes away from the time that could be used to read and learn and better themselves.

Like I said, this is probably bullshit.

Can we have a Conan thread without being told to go to the general? I fucking love Conan. I think Robert E. Howard is the king of the pulp writers, and his stories are genuinely well-written.

>>8428610
Well, Howard at least is writing about a big strapping nihilistic fellow who goes around with a sword and kills Lovecraft-style monsters, while also romancing naked women and harassing meddlesome sorcerers.