I have not updated my blog for some time (8 months). I thought I should so that visitors here know I am active. Below I have compiled some online content (less than a year old) that has featured me and/or my work.
YouTube: Fórum Conan o Bárbaro (Portuguese): Bate-Papo com Jason Ray Carney. "Jason Ray Carney, Ph.D. is a lecturer in popular literature and creative writing at Christopher Newport University; he is the author of the academic book, Weird Tales of Modernity: The Ephemerality of the Ordinary in the Stories of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and H.P. Lovecraft (McFarland 2019) and the sword and sorcery anthology, Rakefire and Other Stories (Pulp Hero Press 2020). He co-edits the academic journal, The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies and is the editor-in-chief of Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery. He is the area chair of the "Pulp Studies" section of the Popular Culture Association. He blogs at "spiraltower.blogspot.com".
YouTube: Goodman Games: The Best of Sword-and-Sorcery from The Bride of Cyclops Con Panel Discussion. "Now, as with any freewheeling conversation condensing the entire history of a literary sub-genre into two and a half hours, things may have gotten slightly tricky to follow for those of you playing along at home. Which is why the infinitely-just-and-keenly-perspicacious Skull has commanded that a reading list of all the books and stories mentioned in this discussion be compiled and offered for your edification. Furthermore, on pain of even-more-pain, our panelists have been induced to give their top three reading recommendations, based on whatever criteria they choose, out of the many tales brought up over the course of the evening."
Zoom Recording: Texas A&M: Commerce: Robert E. Howard Roundtable. An academic roundtable with 3-5 scholars responding to a pre-provided series of questions, then an open period of questions from "the floor."
SoundCloud: Appendix N Book Club: Episode 88: Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time" with special guest Jason Ray Carney. "Jason Ray Carney joins us to discuss Fritz Leiber's 'The Big Time,' urban modernism, Lovecraft's fear of the other, period slang, the time travel genre, deeply traumatized protagonists, Leiber's understanding of language, being the Black Svengali to one's Trilby, unity of time and space, Conan vs Fafhrd, chronomancy, and much more."
Apple Podcasts: Rogues in the House: S&S at the Gaming Table. "A new Rogue, Whetstone Editor Jason Ray Carney, joins Matt and Deane in the Gallery while Logan is on vacation. This time, they sit down to discuss what's hot in Sword and Sorcery at the Gaming Table!"
Article: Tales from the Magician's Skull: The Gothic Tradition in Sword and Sorcery. "Sometime around 1790, something intangible happened. Trying to settle on any single definitive event is like trying to determine exactly when a pot of water began boiling. It can’t be done. The most we can do is point to a few bubbles: Immanuel Kant boldly defended the scientific method with his Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781; Edward Cartwright invented the steam-powered loom in 1785; starving peasants marched on the Bastille in 1789, and four years later the revolution executed King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette; and don’t forget Edward Jenner discovered vaccination in 1796. To put it mildly, the 1780s and 90s was a wild time: superstition began to give way to science, agrarian mercantilism to industrialization, monarchism to constitutionalism, and quackery to medicine. In the words of the sociologist Max Weber, the world had become “disenchanted;” the middle-earth of angels and demons overseen by a God judging creation had become an absurd ball of clay peopled by not-quite-animals who groped awkwardly for survival."
Article: DMRBooks: 1932, The Year of Conan: Sword and Sorcery and Historical Pessimism. "Sword and sorcery is an allegorical architecture built on a haunted foundation: a very pessimistic vision of history that emerged in the interwar period, and specifically the years of anxious anticipation preceding World War II; in sword and sorcery, history is a violent, unceasing crucible accelerated by dark intelligences who have discarded their very humanity; from ziggurat to skyscraper, from cathedral to corporate campus, the tranquil peace of the common folk is always contingent, always finite, always subject to the divisive machinations of the terrible intelligences who fearfully and obsessively struggle to insulate themselves from the deforming processes of time, of becoming irrelevant, of aging, of being human."
Article: Black Gate: Bran Mak Morn: Social Justice Warrior. "Many consider “Worms of the Earth” one of Howard’s masterpieces, truly haunting and enigmatic, its impact lingering long after a reading, like a stagnant tobacco smell or a leathery flapping of shadowy wings. The story is also notable for its inclusion of allusions to H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, specifically the ancient Mesopotamian god “Dagon” and the sunken city of “R’lyeh,” home to dreaming Cthulhu. Undoubtedly, the story’s themes of racial degeneracy and the violent power of geologic time are steeped in Howard’s legendary 1930s correspondence with Lovecraft."
Article: Black Gate: How Sword and Sorcery Brings Us to Life. "Perhaps even more pressing is the question: why go to paradise, to Hyboria, to Newhon, when there is so much to fix here? And to writers: why write sword and sorcery? Why be Robert E. Howard when you could be George Orwell? “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art,’” writes Orwell in his famous essay defending political literature, “Why I Write.” Orwell continues, “I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention.” Alas, from a certain literal perspective, fantasy literature is a nest of lies. Why prefer the imaginative literature of the unreal to socially-engaged literature?"
Article: Pavilion Blog: Robert E. Howard, the German Presidential Election of 1932, and the "Level-headed Statesman. "In Howard’s understanding, "level-headed statesmen" were opposed by brutish and diabolical forces. Tired Victorians like Paul von Hindenberg, Woodrow Wilson, and Neville Chamberlain sought to stabilize the West against demons who grasped at the globe with their brutish fists."
Book Review: Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts: Review of Weird Tales of Modernity, by Timothy H. Evans. "Carney’s book is a valuable addition to the literature on its topic. It deserves a wide readership, and a prominent place in the scholarship of American fantastic literature in the early twentieth century."
Please get in touch if you would like to chat about anything! Jason
