Masturbating to Frank Frazetta Paintings Is Still Not A Philosophy

I added something to this blog which lists what the most-read posts are. Apparently you're most interested in me criticising John Norman, author of the Gor books. I am nothing if not populist.

OK, so the thing with John Norman is that he insists - in real life, not just in the his books - that male ownership of women is the natural order of things. He also heavily implies that criticism of his books is a conspiracy to suppress this truth.

The Gor books are about someone who can only dominate women once they go to another planet. It's not about someone who convinces modern women that they're wrong. In fact it's not even about someone who convinces the women of Gor. Once the main character gets to Gor male dominance has already been established, in the distant past.

And even then (from memory) you get women rebelling against it.

So the books don't give the impression that John Norman thinks male dominance is natural. They give the impression that he wishes it was natural, but thinks that it isn't. So much so that his character has to literally leave the planet to find it, and even then finds it constantly under threat.

The Author of the Gor Books' Greatest Fan: The Author of the Gor Books

Reader seaofstarsrpg commented with a link to another interview with John Norman. It's here.

Apparently I was wrong to declare that the Gor series is a ripoff of the John Carter of Mars series but with bondage instead of adventures. John Norman (real name John Lange) says that "pretty clearly, the three major influences on my work are Homer, Freud, and Nietzsche. Interestingly, however obvious this influence might be, few, if any, critics, commentators, or such, have called attention to it." Presumably the critics haven't read Freud's influential work Masturbating to Frank Frazetta Paintings Is Too A Philosophy.

He's barely even heard of John Carter, despite what I, Wikipedia and the interviewer all say. "I can remember Tarzan books by Burroughs, but I do not think I knew about his various science-fiction works until many years later." Anyway, they're not that similar. In the John Carter series the title character travels to the primitive, low-gravity planet of Mars, whereas in the Gor books the main character has a completely different name. Edgar Rice Burroughs originally used the pen name 'Norman Bean'. 'John Norman' is a pen-name which...isn't completely the same.

He's a master-craftsman of language. Take this for example: "As the family legend has it, when my father's company slashed its employee list, he was the last fellow retained, namely, the cut-off started with the next fellow. For example, if there were one hundred on the list, and half were released, and we were counting up from the bottom, he would have been number fifty-one." Barely twice as long as it needs to be.

John, sometimes geniuses are misunderstood in their time, they are called stupid and deluded, and their ideas are dismissed. But this also happens to people who are stupid and deluded.

The Author of the Gor Books Is Apparently an Awful, Awful Person

Some people might know about the Gor series. These are a series of...what are meant to be science fiction novels. But they're really more like pornography. Imagine the John Carter of Mars series if Edgar Rice Burroughs wasn't that interested in adventures but was super interested in tying up women.

As far as I'm concerned, whatever lifts your luggage. Having fantasies about tying up women doesn't make you a rapist, or even sexist, any more than playing Halo makes you a serial killer.

However the author, John Norman, seems to think he's some kind of persecuted philosopher. Everyone should read the interview here. It's quite amazing. It's like a twelve year old's idea of what a clever grown-up sounds like. The interviewer completely fawns over him as well.