"The Diamond in the Tang Where the Quillons Meet": A Sword and Sorcery Response to Holmes, Trueheart, and Davis

Drawing by Jessica K. Robinson

Fritz Leiber  (1910-1992) is one of the great stars of the sword and sorcery constellation along with Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Lin Carter, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and many more. Moreover, Leiber can be regarded as forging the term for the kind of heroic fantasy his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales helped to epitomize. Leiber did so in a few letters to fanzines, Ancalagon and Amra in 1961. Here is an except from a widely-cited letter to Amra (April 6th, 1961):

I feel more certain than ever that this field should be called the sword-and-sorcery story. This accurately describes the points of culture-level and supernatural element and also immediately distinguishes it from the cloak-and-sword (historical adventure) story-- and (quite incidentally) from the cloak-and-dagger (international espionage) story too!

Leiber brings "culture-level," "supernatural element," and specifically distinguishes S&S fiction from "historical adventure" and "international espionage."

These caveats are worth analyzing closely.

"Culture-level." Most S&S takes place in a pre-modern, pre-gunpowder, pre-industrial world, although there are exceptions (e.g. several will argue that Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane's stories are S&S despite Kane's use of firearms).

"Supernatural element." Most S&S pits protagonists against the supernatural. Black-robed sorcerers, eldritch tentacle-demons, sexy vampire-witches, giant slavering apes, gore-mouthed cyclops, etc.: these are not the good guys. They are dangerous, irredeemable, killable-without-any-guilt enemies. Moreover, the protagonists ploy their death art against them, and the sword dance that ensues is a key spectacle of the genre.

Many will cite the distinctive ontological status of the supernatural in S&S unreal worlds as fundamentally transgressive to sharply distinguish S&S from epic fantasy or high fantasy. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, there are good wizards, good elves, good tree monsters, even good... Gollums. In S&S, however, by and large, the supernatural is an abomination that must be beheaded, split in twain, garroted, skewered, introduced to the pointy end of a blade in other ways, and so forth.

Some literary genealogy: S&S's relationship to the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft needs to be addressed Doing so might begin to explain the distinctively irredeemable nature of the supernatural in S&S.

If we accept that Robert E. Howard, with his Kull stories, created S&S, then we should be ready to acknowledge that at this time Howard was under the literary influence of H.P. Lovecraft. Their voluminous correspondence is available in a fine edition by Hippocampus Press. Also, Howard was not just publishing in but also reading (and enjoying) Weird Tales and contributing to the Lovecraft circle's inside-joke pseudo-bibliographies and unreal mythologies.

A key element of Lovecraft's philosophical outlook was his materialism, atheism, and scientific view of the world, which conditioned him to view the supernatural idiosyncratically as the "most terrible conception of the human brain." He described it in this way: "a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space." The supernatural, for Lovecraft, is bad news (to say the least).

This idea is clearly contra to other fantasists like Tolkien, whose Catholic faith reconciled him to the supernatural. Lovecraft's anti-supernaturalism, however, is a powerful aesthetic resource, one that Howard drew from as he created S&S.

Lovecraftian anti-supernaturalism clearly influences the way the supernatural manifests in Robert E. Howard's S&S. Arguably, it ramifies in the later evolution of the genre.

The thematics of this famous literary enterprise--the meaninglessness of humanity as it is juxtaposed against the vast cosmos, the unfathomable indifference and occasional hostility of outer spaces, the paranoid idea that all is not as it seems and that there are watchers waiting, lurking--these were part of the gloriously fecund muck that vomited out our beloved S&S.

Moving on.

Sword and sorcery is not (necessarily) historical fiction. Still assuming Howard created S&S, we must also acknowledge his love of history and of writing historical fiction, and how this affinity influenced the shape S&S took.

It is firmly established that Howard's S&S tales, specifically the Conan stories, allowed the commercially-minded writer to scratch his historical fiction itch without having to do tons of research and so arrest his literary production. A legacy of that is that historical verisimilitude and actual historical facts aren't a sufficient defining characteristic of S&S. Sure, some S&S can be set in an actual historical epoch rather than a secondary fantasy world with funny names, but a defining characteristic of S&S is its lack of a need for historical verisimilitude.

Finally, espionage fiction. This confuses me. I am not sure why Leiber makes this distinction. James Bond novels and international espionage fiction in general don't seem to have much in common with S&S other than its emphasis on the literary archetype of the high status competent male. So, Leiber's distinction seems gratuitous here. I could be wrong.

Winnowed to its essential elements, Leiber's definition of S&S is pretty dang specific: S&S is set in a premodern world, the supernatural must be present, historical accuracy isn't a concern, and it is not espionage fiction.

Is this a sufficient definition? It doesn't seem to be for a lot of people. For example, Morgan Holmes, Jared Trueheart, and Daniel J. Davis think that S&S is fundamentally a genre about masculine prowess.

They insist that S&S is male-centric and that its masculinist elements are the key to its appeal to readers. Sword and sorcery has balls, they insist hysterically.

To an extent, one might understand where they are coming from. Look at the heaps of creased-spined paperback S&S published in the 1960s and 70s, and you will find lots of evidence to confirm their view. Specifically, look at the covers of those beautiful novels. What will you see?

Frazetta. And several other artists emulating and paying homage to Frazetta's genius. Accordingly, assuming Robert E. Howard created S&S, you can look at the original issues of Weird Tales that published the first S&S yarns and you will see the beautiful (and scantily clad) women of Margaret Brundage squirming in the arms of a barely-recognizable Conan.

If you judged S&S by its covers, then you would assume that it is fundamentally a genre of the alpha male, fighting and killing evil, and taking as a prize the sexy damsel.

We learned this in kindergarten: never judge a book by its cover.

Is that all S&S is? Or, is such a characterization an insulting simplification of a highly artistic genre of imaginative literature that actually contains surprising philosophical depths?

I think Holmes, Trueheart, and Davis are wrong to anti-intellectualize S&S. Sword and sorcery is more than alpha male fantasy. Consider Conan's famous answer to Bêlit's question, "What do you believe?" The usually taciturn, grim, alpha male responds with a monologue that raises my hackles every time I read it:

He shrugged his shoulders. 'I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.'

Fundamentally, S&S is about the human condition, our ephemeral bodies, our finitude, and our existential struggles in a cruel and often hostile world; and, more importantly, it grants readers symbolic agency, even power, in that struggle.

It’s strange and confusing that Holmes, Trueheart, and Davis insist on the exclusivity of a gender framework. This is what S&S about, when it is the best:

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

"Time and chance happeneth to them all," booms the cosmos. Conan's antiphonal confession: "I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

From the myopic, gender-exclusive lens of Holmes, Trueheart, and Davis, Conan's profound answer to the riddle of our tragic vulnerability to the violence of time is uninteresting, a distraction in the narrative thrust of a story speeding toward tits, glazed abs, rocking beds, and death dealing, a minor blip before the sword dance begins and, to quote Davis, the dubious scopophiliac pleasure of watching as "Conan gets hot and heavy with Belit."

Holmes, Trueheart, and Davis are wrong to dig in on this one.

Conan's response is not a distraction.

Conan's response is the diamond set into the center of the tang where the quillons meet in the sword of the genre.

A Response to Morgan Holmes and Jared Trueheart: Sword and Sorcery and the Inconsequentiality of Gender

Recently Morgan Holmes, a sword and sorcery expert, was interviewed by masculinity writer, Jared Trueheart, about the genre of sword and sorcery and its relevance to male readers. It was an interesting interview. Having written for the Robert E. Howard United Press Association since 1992 and several other Howard and genre-fiction related topics, Holmes is a fountain of knowledge.

With respect, though, Trueheart's focus on the gender dynamics of sword and sorcery is too narrow. Gender dynamics are an important facet of S&S, of course, but there is much more about the genre.

The High Status Competent Male as Archetype

Asked by Trueheart to discuss the unique appeal of sword and sorcery to male readers, Holmes states, "There is a magnetism of the alpha male rising in an adverse situation and prevailing." This isn't a distinctively sword and sorcery quality. There are several genres that focus on competent and high status men, and Holmes brings up a few: espionage fiction (James Bond), adventure (Allan Quartermain), detective fiction (Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade), wilderness survival (Beauty Smith), modernist novel (Jake Barnes), and several more genres and writers. Arguably, there is nothing distinctively S&S about fiction that treats the archetype of the high status competent male.

The high status and competent male is an archetypical protagonist that is deployed in many genres. A lot of sword and sorcery is linked to that archetype, of course, and the Conan the Cimmerian stories are a great example. Nevertheless, there are lots of examples of sword and sorcery where the high status competent male is not essential.

Consider Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories. If--and only if--one excuses Fafhrd's clownishness and ignores some of the difficulties that he clumsily gets himself into, one might argue that this lummox is a "man's man," a high status and competent male; but Leiber doesn't goes out of his way to emphasize Fafhrd's high status and/or his competence. The same goes for his companion, the Gray Mouser, who is physically diminutive, sneaky, and not very masculine, hardly a man's man.

Jack Vance's Dying Earth series comes to mind, specifically The Eyes of the Overworld. Cugel the Clever is one of the most memorable sword and sorcery protagonists there is and he is anything but traditionally masculine. He's an amusing twerp, a kind of harlequin figure. Although Cugel's taste for voluptuous women is insatiable, he is a fashion and food connoisseur, avoids physical altercations, and spends the novel waffling between sweat-streaked panic and bombastic overconfidence.

One also recalls the Albino Emperor, Elric of Melniboné, Thrall of Arioch, who is sickly, effeminate, anxiety ridden, not in control of his emotions, even hysterical at times.

And there are more examples...

The "high status competent male" is powerful archetype. There is no doubt that, as fantasy, this archetype resonates with adolescent boys and men, myself included. However, when sword and sorcery is analyzed with a wide enough angle, the archetype is not a defining characteristic of the genre. There are several examples of S&S that have no truck with the archetype, so universalizing claims that S&S is a form of masculine writing are questionable. A weaker claim is called for: lots of S&S fiction is masculine in nature.

S&S Criticism: Gender Myopia and the Gothic

Defining sword and sorcery is infamously difficult. Several folks tried to do so at a Sword and Sorcery Panel at Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas.

Holmes published an apropos (and excellent) essay in the academic anthology, The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror, that might help. The essay is titled, "Gothic to Cosmic: Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction in Weird Tales" and it explores the origins of sword and sorcery. In this essay, Holmes makes a compelling argument: "Historical adventure, gothic fiction, and planetary romance all came together to form the sub-genre." What is so compelling about this is Holme's appropriate inclusion of "gothic fiction." Why?

There are several parallels between the controversies surrounding gothic fiction and sword and sorcery. Like sword and sorcery, gothic fiction--at least at its historical origin point--seemed distinguished by a gender dynamic, i.e. a protagonist of a specific gender (female) and a gendered group of readers (women). Gothic fiction, originating in the pseudo-medievalist works of Horace Walpole, Anne Radcliffe, and M.G. Lewis, always featured a terrorized female protagonist, a middle-class virginal woman who finds herself incarcerated in a castle, a maze, a labyrinth, and who is then harried by supernatural threats that are holdovers of a medieval past. Consider The Castle of Otranto (1764), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), The Monk (1796): all of these quintessential gothic novels feature labyrinths, supernatural occurrences, and medieval imagery, and a central terrorized female.

One might plausibly argue that the gender dynamics of gothic fiction are what make it distinctive. One could even speculate about why more women seemed to read gothic novels in the late 18th and early 19th century by examining its unique appeal to the female reader of the time. But by focusing too narrowly on the gender dimensions of gothic literature, one misses that it is concerned with far more than gender.

The gothic novel of the late 18th century, this central influence on sword and sorcery, is a symptom of the revolutionary changes happening in 18th century western Europe: the French revolution, the end of absolutism as a viable form of government, the blooming of industrial production, the decline of the power of the church, and more. The gothic is centrally concerned with the supernatural, with aesthetically violating the natural, the ordinary, and the real. If one focused too long on its gender dynamics, one wouldn't see its broader philosophical and historical significance.

Sword and Sorcery and the Violence of Time 

As regards sword and sorcery: I do not think the gender dynamics of the genre are unimportant. For example, in Holmes' S&S essay, he analyzes C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories and observes, "Many of Moore's stories have a suggestion of sexuality to them, and they could be considered feminine sword and sorcery." While the concept of "feminine" and "masculine" sword and sorcery is interesting, the central theme of sword and sorcery has less to do with gender and more to do with being human, with being a finite and vulnerable body subject to the ferocity of time: aging, violence, and the constraints of society and tradition.

The sword and sorcery hero or heroine--whether he be a high status competent male with bulging pecs or she be a rebellious spitfire with bulging boobs--is distinctive less for his or her gender and more for his or her unique enlightened stance toward a world that is changing rapidly: as ephemeral forms, the sword and sorcery hero and heroine stands stubbornly against the yawning vastness of cosmic, deforming time. They are animated by the understanding that life is brief, that the body weakens, and that the grains fall from cup to cup.

Conan, Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser, Jirel of Joiry, Cugel the Clever, Elric of Melniboné: they are all poised on the precipice of radical change--a dying earth, a cosmic struggle, a decaying empire, the retreat of a frontier; indeed, these S&S heroes are united less because of their gender, their status, and even their competence and more by their heroic disregard of social convention, their indifference to status hierarchies, their love of life, and their enlightened understanding of time and the irresistible threat it poses. Despite their context of radical change, they flourish, even glory, in their finitude and ephemerality as we readers, subject to time ourselves, cradle and dogear their acid-rich, paperback worlds.

Discussing aging boxers with August Derleth in 1933, Robert E. Howard, the creator of sword and sorcery, wrote this, which, by analogy, captures a central theme of sword and sorcery, a genre acutely concerned with the tragic passage of time, the way form inevitably and irresistibly decays into formlessness:

"It makes me feel like an old man to watch fighters I knew in their prime, get slapped around by kids. A fighter’s life is short at best, no time to waste, no time to rest; the spot-light shifts, the clock ticks fast, all youth becomes old age at last. Same way with writers, too, some of them."

Gender aside, sword and sorcery dramatizes our gender-neutral, all-too-human fight against (and inevitable defeat by) time.

That notwithstanding, here is something Holmes said in Trueheart's interview that I completely agree with:

"I think men benefit reading period. There is good entertainment with writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Jack London, Ian Fleming, and the better sword and sorcery fiction. Contrary to popular conception, sword and sorcery has both the mental and the physical. Conan and the Continental Op [a protagonist created by Dashiell Hammett, popular in pulp fiction magazines, the proto-typical hard-edged detective] are both manipulating situations in addition to the action that we normally associate with the fiction. The very first Conan story opens with him working on a map of an area the Hyborians know nothing about. Conan learns various languages and has listened to philosophers.

"Both the mental and the physical." Indeed.