Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> Hespire, to start with CAS vs. Dunsany:
>
> 1.I want to thank ED folk for your hospitality in
> that you have made me welcome even though precious
> little of what I've written has been about CAS,
> and it's probably been evident that he is not one
> of my favorite authors. Any time you think I
> should pitch my tent somewhere else on that
> account, let me know.

Not accepted.

You *have* to stay Dale.
>
> 2.Several years ago I set myself to read a fair
> bit of CAS and posted comments online, either here
> or at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Chronicles
> Forums. Guided by J. D. Worthington, I read
> enough of his stories to realize that there was
> more to his fiction than I tended to think. I'd
> have to look to see if I could find the remarks I
> posted. My sense is that Dunsany seems to make a
> point of the insubstantiality of his little tales
> where CAS doesn't.
>
> By the way, I think that habit of Dunsany's gets
> things off on the wrong foot with me any more. I
> mean, Dunsany calls various stories of his
> "dreamer's tales." But when you are dreaming, do
> your dreams seem evanescent, as it were shiny soap
> bubbles? I don't think they do, and I've actually
> had a practice -- kept in only a desultory fashion
> -- of writing down my more interesting dreams. I
> see I haven't added to the document since last
> December!
>
> So, anyway, we eventually realize that Dunsany's
> "dreamer's tales" work within an existing literary
> convention of his time, in which an artistic-type
> person, perhaps after supposedly smoking
> "Hasheesh," has a dream of some vaguely Oriental
> setting very different from his humdrum London
> residence.
>
> This type of story might be an attenuated
> descendant of a rather powerful book, Thomas de
> Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
> I recommend the old Penguin Classics edition with
> the dragon on the cover if you can get hold of it.
> De Quincey's dreams are not various Dunsanian.
>
> Oh, by the way, here's a note jotted 18 April 1982
> that records an actual dream of mine -- about
> Dunsany. Perhaps others have dreamed of authors
> whom they have read.
>
> ----Just awoke (alarm clock) from a dream about
> Lord Dunsany. He was a lovable old man. Had a deep
> voice. He was very old but apparently was a friend
> of the family... maybe he was family? ...I was
> just beginning to tell him that his writing had
> given me a lot of pleasure for years ... when he
> pulled out a sort of wallet and took out some sort
> of and showed it to me and reminded me that I
> owed him 7.03 -- for a bus ticket (?) to
> "Pasadena" I had as a kid bought, I think. So Dad
> (I think) and I chuckled and I took out some
> money, first paying him 4 cents ("interest") then
> going into the paper money -- I had pounds,
> dollars, and roubles all mixed together. Then I
> woke up.----
>
> I wouldn't be able now to say whether I'd been
> reading anything by Dunsany lately, but I'd read
> Mark Amory's biography of Dunsany about a month
> previously.------
>
> And, fellow EDers, I have actually dreamed about
> Lovecraft once. Here are the notes:
>
> -----11 Oct. 2020: waking about 4:03 a.m.: I
> dreamed that H. P. Lovecraft had borrowed, by
> mail, a book from the collection of the Oregon
> Historical Society about a sea captain…. Now, I
> found the book on a shelf of a library, perhaps
> the Ashland public library, with an Oregon
> collection, and in it, sure enough, was a slip
> with Lovecraft’s name, address (I think
> Providence was abbreviated as Pice), and the
> date(s) he had borrowed it, perhaps in the early
> 1930s. I think Chautauqua (probably not spelled
> correctly), Ashland, was stamped in the book.
> “Chautauqua” isn’t a Lovecraftian entity but
> a word referring to a late 19th-early 20th-century
> adult education movement. In the dream it seems I
> got, as it were, a vision of the former location
> of the library from which the book that Lovecraft
> had borrowed had been mailed, which had an element
> of Ashland’s Lithia Park and perhaps of the
> massive Foellinger Auditorium on the University of
> Illinois-Urbana campus. I think it did seem, in
> the dream, that the book’s present location was
> less grand than its former one, but perhaps they
> were the same. I waited for many hours to type up
> this record from the notes I scribbled when I
> woke.-----
>
> It was a pleasant dream.
>
> 3.CAS seems to me more interesting than Dunsany
> biographically as regards Smith's location. I
> used to live not all that far from Auburn,
> California, when I lived in southern Oregon. And
> it's kind of intriguing to think of Smith writing
> while living in this small former Gold Rush (?)
> town. Dunsany seems to have been something of an
> aristocratic idler. I'm not interested in that
> Abbey Theatre business although I keep meaning to
> read more of Yeats's early poetry at least. It
> seems like Smith must have coped with some
> interesting factors.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Thanks, Sawfish! Pleasant dreams in timely wise to all.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> Thanks, Sawfish! Pleasant dreams in timely wise
> to all.


:^)

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> I do wonder if The Charwoman's Shadow might
> not still please me, too;

OOh yes! I dare say you might bet your house, car, and entire Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Coleridge collections on that! ;D It tells of the Golden Age, or its somber setting, in Andalusia.

Some of Dunsany I like very much; the Jorkens stories (despite HPL's criticisms of them) I find enjoyable and re-readable. And I liked several of the stories in A Dreamer's Tales. I'm glad I finally got the chance to read "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth", which some consider the first example of (modern) Sword and Sorcery. I haven't finished the book yet because my niece dipped into it during a seaside vacation retreat, was entranced by Dunsany's writing, and forthwith borrowed it (with my blessing, of course!) Also, it was the original hardcover edition (I think) which added to the glamour; she being a devotee of early twentieth century culture (actually, 1920's jazz-age culture, but you can imagine a copy of the book residing on an art-deco end table from that era).

Where Dunsany loses me is with his Pegana tales. Several times I have tried to begin The Complete Pegana only to founder several stories (vignettes, entries) in. What's wrong with me? Pegana is obviously a foundation stone of modern fantasy; why can't I get into it? Maybe the subject matter is just too rarified for me.

Ken, others here might correct me if I'm in error here, but my impression is that not that many people really have been or are entranced by Dunsany's overtly mythological writing. They like his mock-legendary stories (like that "Fortress" one you mentioned) more. Even when I liked Dunsany a lot more than I do now, I wasn't captivated by that little book (The Gods of Pegana?) that Lin Carter reprinted in its entirety in one of his Dunsany editions for Ballantine.

Knygatin, I will set aside The Charwoman's Shadow someplace where it will catch my eye, but I don't expect to open it soon.

I have little time right now, but I agree that Pegana isn't so captivating. Maybe it's the lack of rich descriptions, maybe it's the irony which outweighs the sense of otherworldly horror/beauty that was so over-represented in HPL's praise (I don't mind irony in itself, I just wasn't expecting so much of it here), or maybe they were just so short and so airy that they couldn't stick to my mind.

This sentiment doesn't seem so uncommon. CAS wasn't a fan of Pegana, and even HPL's dream-like fantasy tales have more weight and sincerity to them.

Lovecraft thought Dunsany achieved his greatest height in the collection A Dreamer's Tales. And he found some of the charm was lost with The Book of Wonder, because it had too much detached irony and not fully believing in its own fantasy. When Lovecraft grew older he also admitted loosing interest in Dunsany's stories, finding their dreamy ethereal yearnings best suited for reading when one is younger. I would say early 20s is the perfect age.

I don't believe Lovecraft ever read or mentioned any of the Jorkens tales. Those were written by an older Dunsany during the latter half of his life.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> When Lovecraft grew older he also admitted loosing
> interest in Dunsany's stories, finding their
> dreamy ethereal yearnings best suited for reading
> when one is younger. I would say early 20s is the
> perfect age.
>
>

To fully enjoy Dunsany's early fantasies at older age, I think one really has to detach oneself from all adult mundane anxieties. And that is rather difficult to do.

Knygatin Wrote:

MUCH SNIPPED...

>
> I don't believe Lovecraft ever read or mentioned
> any of the Jorkens tales. Those were written by an
> older Dunsany during the latter half of his life.


Again, if you want to spend a few days chuckling to yourself over these witty barroom anecdotes, I can recommend them without reservation.

And there are well over 100 of them, as I recall.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Thanks Sawfish. There must be something special about the Jorkens tales, because you have mentioned them quite often out of the ocean of other books you have read. I have set aside a future special shelf in my mind now for Jorkens.

I do have a couple of files, "Our Distant Cousins" and "The Slugly Beast", but have not had time to read them yet. There is a vast hoard of other newly discovered (dead) authors crowding in upon me. Like a zombie holocaust. ;)

*herd*

OK, herd, but hoard worked in this context and horde would've worked too!

*horde* Darn it! That was the word I wanted from the start!!

Ok, yes hoard works too, since I really am hoarding all these authors. It is greed. I doubt I will even have time to read them all.

Herding together a personal library of books gathered from various sources into one great hoard makes sense as preparation for surviving the cultural zombie horde descending upon us.

I'll have to try that argument with my wife the next time I get a Look about my acquiring so many books.