Re: Starting "The Hashish Eater"
Posted by:
Dale Nelson (IP Logged)
Date: 22 April, 2021 08:50PM
Sawfish, I have a "Hashish Eater" anecdote that might amuse you and other ED folk.
I bought Lin Carter's anthology New Worlds for Old as a 17-year-old, and didn't care for "The Hashish-Eater" and Sterling's "Wine of Wizardry" contained therein.
And I wrote to Carter (probably having seen his home address in an issue of the fanzine Amra, but maybe c/o his publisher) -- and told him so.
Carter replied (20 Jan. 1972): Both the poems by Sterling and by Smith are rich, exotic, superb phantasmagoria of gorgeous imagery. If you found them dull and unreadable, well, maybe fantasy is really not your field...there is always Agatha Christie for readers like you to fall back on." [signed] Lin Carter
I wasn't devastated. Actually I thought it was exciting to hear back from a pro, and one whose stationery had a Frazetta sketch design at that.
I wrote back and seem to have stood my ground. Carter replied (4 Feb. 1972), "My Agatha Christie crack, perhaps unkind and even uncalled for, was spurred by my impatience with a so-called fantasy buff unable or unwilling to appreciate two of the most celebrated poems in fantasy literature.
"But, yes, I do indeed think most fantasy connoisseurs agree with my own taste, and those who can miss the intoxicating gorgeousness in the HASHISH EATER and WINE OF WIZARDRY cannot seriously be considered connoisseurs of the genre."
I'm grinning as I type this. It was, again, a kick to hear from the editor of the Ballantine fantasy series.