I was curious...

from reading CAS, what else have people here been led to read?

Myself, I've recently been motivated to look up Baudelaire's prose poems, and Donald Sidney-Fryer, but I was wondering who else has read what else?

Phillip

Lovecraft and Sterling are two authors I have come to learn more about as I have gotten closer to CAS' writing. I have not read much of either, however I plan on it in the future.

I've started reading Sterling as well. I keep forgetting to get a proper copy of The Thirst of Satan, since I was given a typescript of the book before it was published. I'm especially waiting for the chance to pick up the volume of the Smith/Sterling letters.

me

The Thirst of Satan is magnificent. Although I agree that, in the main, CAS surpassed his master, this volume reveals that Sterling's body of weird, imaginative, and cosmic verse is unique and extraordinary, indeed, and well worthy of preserving and savoring. There is a poignancy in Sterling's treatment of the theme of man's insignificance within the cosmos that is largely absent from CAS's work, one that (although I am more partial to CAS's perspective) provides an interesting counterpoint to the latter. In sum, I cannot recommend this volume highly enough. Given the uttely unjustified eclipse of Sterling's reputation, and the difficulty in locating any of his poetry, let alone a collection of his weird and cosmic verse, this is, I think, the most important book that Hippocampus Press has published to date, and, yes, that includes the CAS material.

I could have sworn that I set the italics tags correctly. Either I didn't, or something odd is happening around here! More likely my error, I'm sure. I do wish that this board would allow members to edit their posts, though. If there is a way to do so, then I don't see it.

I have read The Thirst of Satan, but not in a book, but a typescript format. I'm hoping to get the book when I can, through Gavin of course, as well as the annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, the latter for my Machen bibliography more than anything.

I agree that Sterling should be read, and that he is a welcome difference from CAS in his cosmic verse. "A Wine of Wizadry" is just brilliant, IMO, and worthy of wider exposure.

I hope that S. T. can find a publisher for the collected Sterling poems, as I, for one, eagerly await them.

me

Yes, I was touting The Thirst of Satan, in general, although, at this site, such a recommendation is unlikely to be necessary, I realize. My sole gripe with this book is that I've spotted a couple of typographical errors, which, in a book of poetry, is, to my mind, inexcusable. In poetry, even a misplaced or omitted comma can change the meaning of an entire work.

The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature is also well worth having. Minor quibbles about it include the somewhat cheap refusal on the part of the publishers to start new chapters on separate pages, and an astounding gaffe by Joshi: "Aside from The Golem almost none of his [Gustav Meyrink's] work has been translated into English". As a matter of fact, not only has almost all of Meyrink's supernatural fiction been translated into English, and had been long before the publication date of Joshi's edition, but most of it remains in print, as well. Nevertheless, The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature is an indispensable volume in its own right, as well as as an excellent--although, as I've indicated, not flawless--guide to researching the weird fiction that Lovecraft describes and analyzes.

I need The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature for, as I've said, the Machen references. Some point soon, I'll have to go back over the CAS material here, and extract the references -- I'm aiming at as many references as I can get, and as completely as is possible.

I understand regarding your need for the Machen references. My point is that, if the Meyrink bibliographical references are faulty, then it would be wise to approach the accuracy of the other references with caution, as well. I imagine that most, even all, of the rest are accurate, though, and that the error I discovered was an anomaly. One of the disadvantages of being an independent scholar is that one cannot hire graduate research assistants out of a university budget to hunt for references and to verify the accuraracy of bibliographical data.

I'm more interested in what the references are in the Annotated SHiL than what may be in the footnotes. Part of my process is listing as many editions of the bugger as I can, for completeness.

I understand about the lack of assistants to do basic research... until recently I concentrated on my own efforts, with assistance from S. T. Joshi & Adrian Eckersley, but at the moment I've a small team of Machen scholars adding entries.

I just wish I had more non-English-speaking assistants....

Well, instead of going the horror route I've been delving into early non- or pre-Tolkien fantasy.

Lord Dunsany is an obvious one - though his influence is really upon Lovecraft rather than CAS. However, his use of poetic language is as strong as CAS. He isn't, however, as decadent as CAS and is as likely to spin a straight-forward fairy tale as he his to tackle weirdness. A cool short-story collection is the Gollancz anthology Time and the Gods, available through Amazon.co.uk. It includes five previously published short story collections of fantasy and weirdness.

Mervin Peake's Gormenghast novels should hold the interest of a CAS fan. He's kind of like a decadent and depressive Charles Dickens on a heavy drug trip. The characters are amazing and the prose is dense and phantasmagorical - though I hear his style declines after the first two novels due to a chronic illness of the author.

I'm currently in the middle of E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroborous, which is quite a serious and weird book for all the fairy-tale trappings of imps, demons, witches, and pixies. There is a description of a summoning and sending within the first few chapters that is as good as anything written by the masters of the weird genre. The narrative reads more like some kind of medieval romance than anything else, but the author at no time looses control of his pen.

I found the recent anthology Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy to have some gems in it - especially A. Merritt's "The Woman of the Wood", which is classic weird stuff. Even if you only get it from your local library, it is worth hunting down just for that story. However there are other stories such as "The Griffin and the Minor Cannon" by Frank R. Stockton and "The Demon Pope" by Richard Garnett that are thoroughly enjoyable as well.

Finally, and more conventionally weird (if I can apply that oxymoron) is a Penguin collection of Algernon Blackwood's fiction Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories. There are some excellent stories here that stand side-by side with the best of CAS or Lovecraft. Blackwood is a master at creating a sinister landscape (in the same way that CAS did with "Genus Loci"). "The Wendigo" and "The Willows", both found in this collection, are superlative examples of this. I would consider this volume essential along with CAS, HPL, & Lord Dunsany.

If I may, what is the unifying factor between Dunsany, et al., and Clark Ashton Smith, that leads you to discuss them as authors you have been drawn to from him, rather than just authors you have happened to read after him?

For me, reading George Sterling after CAS, the link is the close personal connection between them led me to look for verse by Sterling, some of which I read on the internet. This I liked, hence I desired to read more, and this desire, partially fulfilled, since there is much more I want to read, has lead me to desire to read more authors. I now want to read Nora May French, and Lilith Lorraine, as an outgrowth of my reading of CAS, and, in part the continuation of reading to Sterling.

Phillip

Whereas I have written of this elsewhere, do not neglect
John McDonald - Ashton liked his work very much indeed.
Dr. Farmer

Quote:

However, [Dunsany's] use of poetic language is as strong as CAS.

A little tangential to the thread, but I absolutely cannot agree with this statement. Everyone's entitled to his own opinion, of course, but the styles are also so very different that I find the comparison to be misleading. Dunsany's style consists of quasi-Biblical cadences, and is quite unlike CAS's.

voleboy Wrote:
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> If I may, what is the unifying factor between
> Dunsany, et al., and Clark Ashton Smith, that
> leads you to discuss them as authors you have been
> drawn to from him, rather than just authors you
> have happened to read after him?

I see, it looks as though I took too broad of an approach to your original inquiry. Strict causality wasn't my concern, but rather to share the things I've found that are most resonant with what I like in CAS. Its a purely subjective approach. My apologies for being extraneous.

Kyberean Wrote:
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> A little tangential to the thread, but I
> absolutely cannot agree with this statement.
> Everyone's entitled to his own opinion, of course,
> but the styles are also so very different that I
> find the comparison to be misleading.

I wasn't comparing style, but rather quality within their respective styles. All to say that I've found Dunsany every bit as evocative of the weird and fantastic as I have found CAS.

Please excuse me if come across as uniformed, clumsy, or all-too-expected in my posts. I'm new here and part of the reason I have joined is to learn.