"and the tales of Clark Ashton Smith have endured intact in my memory as no other, and have called me back to re-read more often than any other for the sake of pleasure alone; almost as though a haunting."

Well put. That is the sole standard I use when deciding what (and where) books to keep in my collection. If I know that I must read it again at some point, it's on the main bookshelf (actually technically a "cupboard" from the late 19th century, with a brass curtain rod, but no one notices the difference). The rest goes in boxes, if not out the door. Smith is one of about 30 authors on that board, and will remain there. Why waste time with objects one won't use again?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 28 Jan 09 | 10:01PM by Radovarl.

S.T. Joshi seems to be broadening his horizons, these days. His latest work, for which he serves as editor, is a book entitled In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women.

Joshi deserves immense credit for his work on behalf of H. P. Lovecraft. Without Joshi, the only biography of Lovecraft we would have is L. Sprague de Camp's debacle. Joshi also at least makes clear (most of the time) the difference between facts and his own evaluative opinions.

Joshi's weaknesses are that he can be overly strident in the assertion of his opinions, and, perhaps because of his status as "independent scholar", and the concomitant lack of institutional support, research assistants, and the like, he can be sloppy, on occasion. Witness, for instance, his erroneous assertion in the Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature that most of Gustav Meyrinck's fiction was, at the time of writing, unavailable in English translation.

In the balance, the verdict on Joshi has to be favorable, I think, although I find him to be annoying at times, too.