The new Spring 2021 edition of the journal Modern Age: a Conservative Review offers two free and public articles…
* “The Dark Virtues of Robert E. Howard”.
Of the Howard article the editor states…
If all you know about Conan comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger, you should definitely read Birzer’s piece. You’ll see how Howard’s nihilistic philosophy and experiences in early 1900s Texas influenced his ideas about: religion; sexuality; modernity; masculinity; big business; decadence.
In the same issue…
* “The Western Canon”, reviewing the Library of America’s new The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 50s.
Does it matter that such fiction is finely typeset on bible-paper with sewn-in satin bookmarks and clasped in firm leathery boards? Rather than in warm-smelling woodpulp paperbacks, with garish six-gun covers and gummy discount-store stickers? The latest Journal of American Culture (March 2021) might seem to have an answer that question with the essay “From Pulps to Paperbacks: The Role of Medium in the Development of Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction”. This is currently online for free.
Sadly this essay does not turn out to be an elegant Guy Davenport-like consideration of the subtle psychological impacts of the actual mediums involved. I mean in terms of the madeleine-like tactility, the olfactory qualities, the surrounding-matter, the ads, the font and its size, the memory of the point-of-purchase and suchlike. That essay remains to be written. But the fannish reader who can make it beyond the introduction (“the genre reached full maturity in the works of Michael Moorcock”) is treated to a usefully brisk historical overview covering the role of editors, fans and publishers from the 1930s to the 1980s.