Should I read the Flashman Novels?

[Where Boars Glow]

I've recently heard about George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series and was wondering whether or not I should read them. Can anybody of you who may have read them tell me about them without spoiling too much?

They are fun for sure.....although pretty darn racist if that offends your sensabilities. The title character is one of those love to hate him scoundrals and the style is very pulp. I enjoyed them but i would definately call it a niche market.

[Where Boars Glow]

They are fun for sure.....although pretty darn racist if that offends your sensabilities. The title character is one of those love to hate him scoundrals and the style is very pulp. I enjoyed them but i would definately call it a niche market.

Also Malcom Mcdowel did a pretty interesting movie take on the series.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

I don't think they're pulp at all. They are incredibly well-researched, for one thing, and so faithful to their setting that the first book was mistaken as genuine by some (admittedly gullible) professional historians upon release.

[Werthead]

Yeah, they're not pulp. That's a complete misuse of the term. They're also extremely well-researched. Racist? I think Flashman starts out as fairly racist, or at least imperialist, at the start of the first book but very quickly comes to admire and explore the cultures he encounters in greater depth.

[Mathis]

All the Flashman books are worth reading, but you should look for the ones featuring John Charity Spring. He's an Ovid quoting homicidal pirate and slaver who used to be a fellow at an Oxford College before behing exiled. He never got over it and is endlessly raging about his supposed enemies at Balliol. Its hilarious.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord is one of the weaker books but is worth getting for the scene where Flashman meets Spring in South Africa, after having him shanghied years earlier. Its among the funniest 3 pages of dialogue that I've ever read. Up there with Clevinger's military trial in Catch-22.

[Horselover Fat]

Now you've gone and done it, you've mentioned Catch 22 in a positive manner. Most of the board inexplicably hates Catch 22.

[The Marquis de Leech]

The fact that he's an arsehole *is* his chief redeeming quality.

Can a man who roasts fags, gets expelled for drunkenness, seduces his father's mistress, cheats at cricket, turns tail on his comrades, steals the glory of better men, sells one girlfriend into slavery, trades in opium, throws another girlfriend off a sled into the snow, serves aboard a slave trader, be all bad?

He also cheats at duels, takes time out from crucial missions behind enemy lines to shag prostitutes, and at one time rapes an Afghan serving girl (fortunately, the only rape he commits in the series. He prefers consensual).

[The Marquis de Leech]

Yeah, they're not pulp. That's a complete misuse of the term. They're also extremely well-researched. Racist? I think Flashman starts out as fairly racist, or at least imperialist, at the start of the first book but very quickly comes to admire and explore the cultures he encounters in greater depth.

Flashman is racist, but generally in the sense that he hates all races equally (he has nothing nice to say about the Scots, notwithstanding that his wife is Scottish). That said, Fraser himself considered himself very non-politically correct, and pro-Empire.

[Antonius Pius]

Flashman is racist, but generally in the sense that he hates all races equally (he has nothing nice to say about the Scots, notwithstanding that his wife is Scottish). That said, Fraser himself considered himself very non-politically correct, and pro-Empire.

Which reminds me, Flashman's father in law is Scottish, and the butt of lots of jokes (in Flashmans internal dialogue), and he cracked me up. I did have to read some of his lines out loud, because Scottish is a bit difficult sometimes (as new Man U player Kagawa can underline), but it was worth it.

[Hill]

Agree, love Flashman, hate Catch 22. So nice to meet some right-thinking people.

Would like Flashman to have met Sharpe and somehow managed to shank him.

[SeanF]

Yeah, they're not pulp. That's a complete misuse of the term. They're also extremely well-researched. Racist? I think Flashman starts out as fairly racist, or at least imperialist, at the start of the first book but very quickly comes to admire and explore the cultures he encounters in greater depth.

The books are extremely good historical fiction, as well as being very funny.

Flashman is thoroughly racially prejudiced. He invariably refers to other peoples as "niggers", "wogs" "wops" "chinks" etc. etc,, and particularly likes India because it's a land where the white man lords it over the black man.

But, he is an honest observer. So, he admires the fighting abilities of Sikhs, Afghans, Zulus, Apaches, rather than disparaging them. He is genuinely interested in foreign cultures, and is quite prepared to give respect to the political and military skills of the foreign leaders he encounters.

[Where Boars Glow]

Now you've gone and done it, you've mentioned Catch 22 in a positive manner. Most of the board inexplicably hates Catch 22.

Catch 22 is classic. Never speak otherwise

[Where Boars Glow]

Maybe that is a better way to phrase it. Very non politically correct. He often refers to people that aren't British as savages and worse.

[Hereward]

He often refers to people that aren't British as savages and worse.

And the problem is?

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

As an American, I find his racist comments towards other white Europeans to be very amusing. That's something we don't get a lot of here.

In general, although I agree that Flashy is extremely racist in a Victorian sense - that is, he believes all peoples to be near-equally far below the British aristocrat - I don't think he's otherwise particularly racist. He rarely treats anyone differently due to their race, and admires many qualities of the cultures he so adeptly blends into. He has a particular fondness for the Pashto and other Afghans and particular dislike for Scots and French.

Another point is that a book about a Victorian soldier who wasn't racist would be very strange. He's a man of his time.

[Werthead]

and at one time rapes an Afghan serving girl (fortunately, the only rape he commits in the series. He prefers consensual).

This is the most problematic aspect of the first book in the series. I think Fraser tries to lowball it by having the woman Flashman attacks to be one of the main villains of the first book (she wasn't a randomly-encountered female character), but that doesn't really help. I think Fraser thought it was an issue he had to get out of the way to explain why Flashman doesn't do it again later in the series (Flashman is disgusted with his own behaviour and vows never to do it again).

[Where Boars Glow]

And the problem is?

Well some Micks like me don't care for false British superiority :cool4:

[Hill]

As an American, I find his racist comments towards other white Europeans to be very amusing. That's something we don't get a lot of here.

In general, although I agree that Flashy is extremely racist in a Victorian sense - that is, he believes all peoples to be near-equally far below the British aristocrat - I don't think he's otherwise particularly racist. He rarely treats anyone differently due to their race, and admires many qualities of the cultures he so adeptly blends into. He has a particular fondness for the Pashto and other Afghans and particular dislike for Scots and French.

Another point is that a book about a Victorian soldier who wasn't racist would be very strange. He's a man of his time.

We're supposed to find him racist- he's generally an abhorent character. His mocking and denigration of other races is illustrative of him, not of them; it's amusing because he's such a sh%t, not because our views in any way align with his.

[MinDonner]

There's an equally interesting argument to be made about whether or not Flashman is sexist. Yeah, he's out to get as much tail as he possibly can, but at the same time the series is practically a Who's Who of powerful women of the 19th century (plus a varied assortment of fictional but historically-likely female characters), most of whom are out to make as much use of Flashy as he does of them, whether for political or mere carnal purposes. Knocks Bakker into a cocked hat, along with every other author who claims there's no room for female characters cos history is all about men.

[The Marquis de Leech]

This is the most problematic aspect of the first book in the series. I think Fraser tries to lowball it by having the woman Flashman attacks to be one of the main villains of the first book (she wasn't a randomly-encountered female character), but that doesn't really help. I think Fraser thought it was an issue he had to get out of the way to explain why Flashman doesn't do it again later in the series (Flashman is disgusted with his own behaviour and vows never to do it again).

I think Fraser realised he'd over-egged the pudding there: as vile as he is, Flashman generally steers clear of Moral Event Horizon sins. He never deliberately murders anyone, and Fraser has to make sure that Flashman is contrite about the rape (the reader can happily deal with a treacherous sleazy cad, but an unrepentant rapist is another story).