Conan the Existantialist

Another essay on REH’s Barbarian, this one by a British comedian. Well, and a general appreciation for Howard’s work:

The Jacobean 1936 cowboy yarn The Vultures of Whapeton is, as John Clute points out in the introduction to Penguin’s Heroes In The Wind selection, “ostensibly a Western tale but… we are left with a sense of the profound entrapping starkness of the world … the tale systematically strips every character of any pretence that their ‘civilisation’ is anything but a sham.”

Its not as good as Joel’s but it’s another perspective— and one that tries to be fair.