better understanding CAS's limitations...
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 1 May, 2021 12:16PM
I've been an avid fan of CAS since I first discovered his writings in 1970, with the Ballantine Zothique collection. I then read each subsequent collection by Ballantine (as prepared by Carter).
With very few exceptions I liked *all* of what I read.
Then, joining this forum in about 2004, and subsequently participating, on and off, thereafter, but especially within the last 3 or so years, I came to perceive an undercurrent among some sophisticated readers that the open-ended praise that some of the participants here have written for CAS was somewhat misplaced, or even over-done.
So for a while I did not understand *why* they thought this; maybe just being conversationally contrarian--who knows?
But then I was gradually exposed to more of CAS's prose stuff than I'd ever been aware of, mainly thru references in the posts. I'd go to the "Short Stories" section of this forum and read some of these stories. Some were quite rewarding, but the majority of the new ones I read left a sort of underlying negative impression. These stories were unlike those in the Ballantine collections in terms of effective narrative "magic": that extra stuff that makes "The Coming of the White Worm" special was definitely lacking.
Then, recalling that some of the later collections contained stories that were not part of the themed collections, like Zothique, I recalled that I was encountering hints of the same decline in quality that I was seeing in some of the stories here on ED.
So, in a nutshell, the recent story introduced to me here a short time ago, "Treader of the Dust", contain within it elements I liked, a lot, and elements that were mediocre. The parts I liked had that "magic", and the other parts were none too good, in my opinion.
And here's exactly what it was...
The story starts with a short prologue taken from "The Testaments of Carnamagos"--a putative ancient source of knowledge, apparently. This immediately took me away, with that narrative magic. Then the story goes into what I'd call a very standard and cliched supernatural story that many writers do as well as, or better.
Then toward the end there's a section that starts:
"Though Quachil Uttaus cometh-but rarely,..."
which is again from the testaments, apparently, and WHAMO!--this is again magic. It's used as a denouement, but it's far, far more compelling, or at least atmospheric, than the other "normal" sections.
So that's it in a nutshell: CAS is remarkable when he's in full archaic diction mode (think "The Testament of Athammaus") but when not in that mode, he's so-so.
This then makes him a fairly narrow niche writer.
As always, my opinions only. Any comments/thoughts/opinions are welcomed.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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