Yes, I wonder if A. Merritt was the ruling king of romantic fantasy. And other top writers, such as Burroughs, Lovecraft, Smith, Vance, Tolkien, have to settle as princes, standing at the side and below Merritt's inaccessible throne.

I base this assumption not on rational thought, and not from an analysis of Merritt's technical proficiencies compared to the others. But on my hunches, intangible hunches. Merritt seemed to have the most dreaming and essentially romantic imagination of all fantasists. Without cynical planning of the intellect. He seemed to be completely abandoned to fantasy, having turned his soul and body over. He had the kernel of fantasy in his hand. Therefore he may have been the greatest. Others have had more original, technically developed ideas, but to some extent used a rational calculating intellect and cynical planning to reach that level. He did not. He WAS his imagination. And, at the height of his creativity, wrote it down in a purified, uncorrupted, faery trance, tuned in to its very most inner and subtle qualities.

So, in all fairness, perhaps it should have been Merritt who have a rabid following, whose works are famous, and inevitably are turned into movies and merchandize? Why is it not so? Perhaps because of the natural stupidity of mankind, their coarse mentality, and inability to see the forest for all the trees, their inability to appreciate genuine qualities.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> Yes, I wonder if A. Merritt was the ruling king of
> romantic fantasy. And other top writers, such as
> Burroughs, Lovecraft, Smith, Vance, Tolkien, have
> to settle as princes, standing at the side and
> below Merritt's inaccessible throne.
>
> I base this assumption not on rational thought,
> and not from an analysis of Merritt's technical
> proficiencies compared to the others. But on my
> hunches, intangible hunches. Merritt seemed to
> have the most dreaming and essentially romantic
> imagination of all fantasists. Without cynical
> planning of the intellect. He seemed to be
> completely abandoned to fantasy, having turned his
> soul and body over. He had the kernel of fantasy
> in his hand. Therefore he may have been the
> greatest. Others have had more original,
> technically developed ideas, but to some extent
> used a rational calculating intellect and cynical
> planning to reach that level. He did not. He WAS
> his imagination. And, at the height of his
> creativity, wrote it down in a purified,
> uncorrupted, faery trance, tuned in to its very
> most inner and subtle qualities.
>
> So, in all fairness, perhaps it should have been
> Merritt who have a rabid following, whose works
> are famous, and inevitably are turned into movies
> and merchandize? Why is it not so? Perhaps because
> of the natural stupidity of mankind, their coarse
> mentality, and inability to see the forest for all
> the trees, their inability to appreciate genuine
> qualities.

That would be one possible explanation.

Another possible explanation that springs readily to mind is that he was not as good at conveying these ideas with the clarity and artistry that some of the others achieved, and hence developed a smaller following.

A third explanation involves the Illuminati, and the fine hand of the Pope, as he sits on his throne in The Vatican; this is the explanation that I favor, personally.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Sawfish Wrote:
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>
> Another possible explanation that springs readily
> to mind is that he was not as good at conveying
> these ideas with the clarity and artistry that
> some of the others achieved, and hence developed a
> smaller following.

Yes, that is a sad factor. Some of his prose could be better, or more distilled. Again, this was what I meant by people's inability to see the forest for all the trees.


> A third explanation involves the Illuminati, and
> the fine hand of the Pope, as he sits on his
> throne in The Vatican; this is the explanation
> that I favor, personally.

Hmm, this sounds a bit ..., I don't know what. Off topic perhaps. If you would care to elaborate more on what you mean in the general Super thread, I am willing to contemplate it.

.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 16 Oct 20 | 04:26PM by Knygatin.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> ... Some of his prose could
> be better, or more distilled.

But on the other hand, the book versions of some of the novels he is famous for were heavily cut. At least The Metal Monster and The Face in the Abyss/The Snake Mother were, I don't know about the others. Which made them choppy and much inferior to the original texts, to an extent even incomprehensible.

I am trying to find a quote by Brian Stableford about The Face In the Abyss, in which he said that the book version is awful and lacking, while the original magazine version is a very fine work. I couldn't agree more. Merritt needed the prose to flesh out his atmospheric ideas; but apparently the editors thought not.

I really only know Abraham Merritt for two works - The Dragon Glass which features in The Young Magicians (an anthology already mentioned here) and which is a pulp classic, imo. The second work is Burn Witch Burn which I never read but which formed the basis for a favourite film of mine - The Devil Doll, also a classic of its kind.

I have read only his short stories (almost all of them) and though I enjoyed most of them I do not think thery are any better than what Mr. Merritt‘s colleagues of the genre (Hodgson, Blackwood, Lovecraft, Machen, Doyle, Smith, Howard and many others) wrote. Some years ago I started to read "The Face In The Abyss" but never finished the book; it did not appealed to me too much. Nevertheless, one of these days I am going to read (at last) "The Metal Monster" I have been reading so many good reviews about over the years.

Minicthulhu Wrote:
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> Nevertheless, one of these days I am going to read
> (at last) "The Metal Monster" I have been reading
> so many good reviews about over the years.

Good luck with that. And as always, try avoid having pre-expectations.

In a long reading life, I've read Dwellers in the Mirage, The Ship of Ishtar, "The Woman of the Wood," his bit of "The Challenge from Beyond," and "Through the Dragon Glass" (yep, in The Young Magicians) at least, and perhaps one or both versions of The Moon Pool. I wouldn't mind reading or rereading something by him, but he has never been one of my indispensables. I've preferred Rider Haggard for adventure fiction.

Cathbad Wrote:
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> Burn Witch Burn which I never read but which
> formed the basis for a favourite film of mine -
> The Devil Doll, also a classic of its kind.

I have seen that film, but don't remember much from it other than it being quite creepy and having some fine settings. The miniature aspect is similar to the film Dr. Cyclops. Dr. Cyclops is a film I enjoy foremost for its lush colours.

I have not read Burn Witch Burn! either (nor its sequel Creep Shadow!), from his later period. And I have not read Seven Footprints to Satan. I have focused on the books that have clear fantasy settings.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> I've preferred Rider Haggard for adventure fiction.

I have not read H. Rider Haggard. But I will try to set aside time to read She and The People of the Mist.

I have never heard of H. Rider Haggard. Did he write any short horror or weird fiction?

It is easy, by way of rational argument, to say that other fantasy writers are better than Merritt. And smash him down. But my suggestion that he may be the greatest, rests on more subtle reasons, that go beyond literature, and which it is very difficult for me to put my finger on. It concerns the particular quality of Merritt's soul and attitude and the wholesome purity of his dreamy rich imagination. Perhaps someone else has been better able to describe it in words.

Here are a few quotes from Brian Stableford's essay about A. Merritt in St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers (which can be borrowed from archive.org):

"[...] "The Moon Pool" (1918), a definite study of the teasing allure of the exotic. In the novel-length sequel he explains what lay beyond the magic doorway described in the story. Although the plot of the novel is pure pulp cliché the lush setting is crowded with the gaudy imagery which was to become Merritt's hallmark."

"The book version of The Face In the Abyss combines abridged versions of two novellas, [...] "The Face In the Abyss" (1923) and "The Snake Mother" (1930). The book version is highly unsatisfactory, the impact of the earlier story being entirely lost (as, to some extent, the impact of "The Moon Pool" was when it was combined with its sequel). The original serials, however, display some of Merritt's finest work, deploying science-fictional imagery [...] without losing any of the emotional impact o Merritt's passion for the exotic. Here the passion is fully revealed, in quasi-allegorical fashion, as a critique of the awful mundanity of human nature, ruled by the twin principles of Greed and Folly."

"It is easy enough to make fun of Merritt's idiosyncratic prose style, but there was a purpose and a philosophy behind it; like Clark Ashton Smith, Merritt used exotic language in order to convey a sense of the alien, to make every effort possible to distance the reader from mundanity. Merritt is by no means the only fantasy writer to have attempted to make escapism both a vocation and an artform, but he did so with an intensity which few others could match, and it is not surprising that readers who can attune themselves to his strategies still think of him as the best of all such writers."

So is excellence in fantasy to be understood as outstanding performance in a particular variety of escapism? I’d like a little more on that.