BARRY HERE: I don’t agree with everything that’s said in this essay but it’s definitely worth a read. I’m a longtime lover of sword & sorcery and Robert E. Howard’s contributions but this is an interesting take on the genre and Howard’s place in it.
While I don’t quite buy John Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces theory, I do think that there are certain basic frameworks that stories can (but never must) follow, and which can yield a nigh-infinite variety of different permutations of the same basic ideas whilst leaving room for the author’s own themes and personality to […]
via Offutt’s First Effort As Editor — The Thoughts and Fancies of a Fake Geek Boy