Click to Subscribe
‘Costigan of the Sea Girl’
The Pit of the Serpent by Robert E. Howard
© 2018 James LaFond
JAN/5/18
Reading from pages 3-18 of Boxing Stories, 2005, University of Nebraska Press
Steve Costigan and the brutish company of sea tramps are the very opposite of their ship, the Sea Girl—as it should be. Their ports of call are places to seek their opposite and to compete with their peers. Irish goons proud to be the merchant marine sons and grandsons of the men who were war slaves to the nation that beat the Spanish at Manila Bay—aligned with romantic notions of honor, comically prey to confidence men, gangsters and all the thugs and thieves of waterfronts worldwide, Sailor Steve Costigan and his mates are an ad hoc Gaelic clan stranded in a half sissy future. In these tales I am reminded of stories told by his peer, who long outlived him, Louis L’Amour, who worked as a merchant mariner and was party to waterfront affrays, including knife fights, a pro boxer who wrote boxing stories of the same ilk as Howard.
Howard must have spoken to someone who led this tramp steamer life, because his setting creeps with shadowy truths. But where L’Amour wrote higher on the literary scale and had a more seasoned fighter’s downbeat view of combat mechanics, Howard maintained that furious amateur thirst for the exchange of blows, the elemental sense that keeps a Costigan forever at the trial horse level, unable to separate himself from the fight and reduce the art of combat to a biomechanical equation.
In this bluntly plotted yarn, Steve falls for a pretty “frail,” a high end Filipino hooker and stumbles drunkenly into a bet fight against a better boxer, arranged in a concrete pit where the locals had once fought snakes and cocks. This bare knuckle affair is realistically related by Howard, who knows the difference between a hook and a swing and also the difference between eating gloved punch and a bare-knuckle one. The difference between male and female—as it is in prize-fighting venues, where selection for brawn and arm-candy beauty, where there come together many Beauty and the Beast pairings—is striking, even by Howard’s standards. Gender disparity in The Pit of the Serpent is taken to a 9 in gender contrast, with the Conan tales being an 8 and the unfinished novel, Almuric, where the men and women are nearly two different species, a 10.
Like everything in Howard’s fiction, Steve’s situation devolved into a test of wills and no writer articulates will as a heroic upwelling of masculine affirmation better than Robert E. Howard.
A Well of Heroes
A Well of Heroes: Two:
Literary Impressions of the Prose and Verse of Robert E. Howard
‘Fliers, Black Wings and Holes’
blog
‘Ward of the State, Man of Bronze’
eBook
son of a lesser god
eBook
all-power-fighting
eBook
the combat space
eBook
honor among men
eBook
within leviathan’s craw
eBook
ranger?
eBook
beasts of aryas
eBook
the year the world took the z-pill
eBook
song of the secret gardener
eBook
advent america
eBook
predation
eBook
the greatest lie ever sold
eBook
logic of steel
eBook
songs of aryas
eBook
triumph
eBook
uncle satan
eBook
into leviathan’s maw
eBook
barbarism versus civilization
eBook
fiction anthology one
eBook
solo boxing
eBook
menthol rampage
eBook
the gods of boxing
eBook
masculine axis
eBook
hate
eBook
book of nightmares
eBook
z-pill forever
eBook
cracker-boy
eBook
fate
eBook
the first boxers
eBook
america the brutal
eBook
taboo you
eBook
logic of force
eBook
when you're food
eBook
your trojan whorse
eBook
under the god of things
eBook
dark, distant futures
eBook
the sunset saga complete
eBook
wife—
eBook
sons of aryas
eBook
let the world fend for itself
eBook
sorcerer!
eBook
thriving in bad places
eBook
orphan nation
eBook
broken dance
eBook
the greatest boxer
eBook
blue eyed daughter of zeus
eBook
winter of a fighting life
eBook
fanatic
eBook
time & cosmos
eBook
by the wine dark sea
eBook
the lesser angels of our nature
eBook
on the overton railroad
eBook
the fighting edge
eBook
night city
eBook
on combat
Shep     Jan 5, 2018

"Education of a Wandering Man" by LL'A is one of the most interesting books I have ever read.

Do you know any of the titles of his boxing stories?
James     Jan 5, 2018

His boxing stories are mostly in his short story collections, like Off the Mangrove Coast. The novel Lando has a great boxing theme.
Shep     Jan 7, 2018

I'm on it.
James     Jan 7, 2018

Sir, we need a masculine lexicon permitting the proper address of women.

The fate of Barbarism itself depends on it!
Shep     Jan 7, 2018

Possibilities:

When in Hyperborean mode, nothing other than "Wench" will do.

If a Costigan/Philip Marlowe mood arises, nothing beats "Dame" in the general and "Toots" in the specific. (The latter has to be delivered with Bogart's malocclusion accent.)

For those who place poon on a pedestal, I am told that "O pearl of great price" is a real crowd-pleaser.

And for the frail, small-souled bugman of the Current Year, the commissars have already mandated "Xe" and/or "Xir", depending on the breaks. (Not sure how either one of those is pronounced, and I don't wanna know.)
James     Jan 8, 2018

Thanks, Shep!

My nose split in half at "poon on a pedestal."
Shep     Jan 8, 2018

My physical jabs are only good for timing and measure, but my verbal ones pack the wallop of a thousand exploding suns!
  Add a new comment below:
Name
Email
Message