Re: Book idea
Posted by:
wilum pugmire (IP Logged)
Date: 16 August, 2011 11:08AM
One of my collaborators and I have started working on such a book, of poetry & tales, and I am beginning to think the task too great and nigh impossible, in that the essential uniqueness that makes Clark Ashton Smith such a fascinating writer is difficult to capture. It has been some years since I have read the CAS-influnc'd anthology publish'd by Chaosium, but I remember not being impress'd. I've just submitted our first wee tale "influenced by Smith" to S. T. for some future volume of BLACK WINGS, & his silence on the story is foreboding and, I think, a signal of failure. Another friend who recently read ye tale said that it does not capture the flavor of Smith's works. Yet I find this project too intriguing and captivating to give it up, & so I may be writing a book that I will then shelve away and will not see print until my time of happy death. The great thing about writing such a book, or any writing that tries to express fondness for the works of Clark Ashton Smith, is that it returns you to CAS, and we now have five excellent volumes of his collected fantasies and three beautiful volumes of his collected poetry. I was sorry that ye prose-poems were not collected with the verse, but they will be reprinted in a future Clark Ashton Smith title from Centipede Press. And the essays here at this forum are, in many cases, really excellent and thought-provoking. The trick of writing homage to a writer is to try and be certain that your work is more than mere pastiche. Authentic pastiche, of either CAS or HPL, is not really possible, because they alone could write the wonders that they put down with pen to paper.
"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.