Riddle of Steel
11/07/21 • 66 min
This episode, Reuben gets an aneurysm reading Robert E Howard's first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," and asks Crom to grant revenge on Matt for inflicting this pulp trash on him. We also watch one of Matt's favourite films, Conan the Barbarian (1982), directed by the incomparable John Milius and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his breakout role.
Come for Matt's Arnold impression! Stay for the conversation.
We range across sword and sorcery, libertarianism, too many adverbs, the barbarian fantasy archetype, lost worlds, the appeal of pulp fiction, camp, bathos, and more.
This episode, Reuben gets an aneurysm reading Robert E Howard's first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," and asks Crom to grant revenge on Matt for inflicting this pulp trash on him. We also watch one of Matt's favourite films, Conan the Barbarian (1982), directed by the incomparable John Milius and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his breakout role.
Come for Matt's Arnold impression! Stay for the conversation.
We range across sword and sorcery, libertarianism, too many adverbs, the barbarian fantasy archetype, lost worlds, the appeal of pulp fiction, camp, bathos, and more.
Previous Episode
Brave Blue World feat. Telepathy Party
This episode, we're joined by John (aka Telepathy Party on Twitter), to wax lyrical about our favourite literary fantasist, John Crowley. While we didn't have enough time to read his big, magical magnum opus, Little, Big, we chose to read one of Crowley's novellas, In Blue, a haunting, ambivalent piece of dystopian fiction.
We gush about Crowley's virtuosic sentences and weird obsessions, while touching on RL Stine's Goosebumps books, fantasy and science fiction, how crap Neil Gaiman is, what makes In Blue such an unnerving dystopia in comparison to Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, as well as gnosticism, nihilism, and meaninglessness.
We round off the episode with an actual Telepathy Party! John offers his knowledge of the tarot to give Rio a reading. Energies combine and vibe and Rio absorbs the mystical wisdom of the cards, learns how he might shape his destiny.
Next Episode
Confessions of a Masc4Masc feat. Paul Dalla Rosa
This week, Rio and Matt are joined by writer, Paul Dalla Rosa (https://twitter.com/pauldallarosa) to talk about Yukio Mishima's coming of age novel, Confessions of a Mask, and Paul Schrader's magisterial cinematic adaptation of Mishima's life and work, Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters.
Discussion ranges over masculinity, misogyny, homosexuality, autobiographical fiction vs autofiction, and more.
Subscribe to Paul's fantastic writer interview series on Substack here: https://pauldallarosa.substack.com/
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