Re: HP Lovecraft Vs Clark Ashton Smith
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 3 August, 2020 09:32AM
This will be more of an open question to the group, and it departs also, somewhat.
Below:
Knygatin Wrote:
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> Knygatin Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > Smith did not seem
> > to value a sense of cultural belonging where
> > he lived ...; he was poor, mostly wore rags,
> ...
>
> I would like to modify that. Smith was able to
> dress up when called for, even in necktie. But was
> generally much more bohemian in style than
> Lovecraft. Lovecraft always dressed like a
> gentleman. Smith was eccentric, with big shirt
> collars spread widely over the shoulders of his
> jacket, looking almost like a mediaeval
> character.
I come to the enjoyment of literature from the consumption of the works, alone, and if I read enough of any given author's work, I form up a sort of judgement on that body of work, and make any connections to other authors with whom I'm familiar--past, present, future--as they relate to the author under consideration.
Occasionally I may read *about* an author (Hemingway) or may read some correspondence, although I do very little of this.
Occasionally I may read scholarly explorations--if any exist--but since I'm reading to please myself, I don't place much importance in such commentary.
So my speculation about CAS's personal outlook, his life habits, his career trajectory are necessarily limited by the preceding explanation. I'd seen far too much of this as an English Lit undergrad.
With CAS, I read bits and pieces published that are about him, and have read a very few of his letters. For quite a while now I've felt that he had early success as an emerging young bohemian under the wing of Sterling in the early 20th C Pacific coast aesthetes' movement.
So he had a ready-made audience of appreciative and sophisticated readers of his poetry--since I get the impression that he thought of himself as a poet, first and foremost, and at that early stage, perhaps exclusively.
For reasons of which I'm unaware, this seemed to dry up early on, and at that point, with Sterling dead, and with no new sponsor, and possibly the disintegration of the bohemian circle of which he was a part, CAS was on his own to make a living.
I suspect that this was not as he had supposed his career would evolve. It probably seemed to the young CAS a huge and unaccountable set-back--arbitrary and threatening.
From this point he was forced by necessity into more commercial writing, and he augmented this with manual labor. He got married later in life, perhaps to find a sort of workmate to share the task of a modest survival. And essentially he died in this state: a marginal struggler who had a body of serious poetry that was, like most poetry written in the 20th C, of no commercial importance, and a significant amount of commercial prose into which his considerable poetic vocabulary, and an instinctive narrative skill, leaked. This combination produced some outstanding pulp content that rewarded the readers of popular escapist fiction with unexpected quality.
I think he, as a person, adapted fairly well to this early on (he seemed to not have had any great life expectancies as he was growing up) and basically just plowed along, writing pulp stories for a very modest living. Like newswriting, the necessity of producing work on a regular basis meant that his commercial output was of varied quality. Speaking to that, I first discovered his work in about 1969/70, in the Ballentine Zothique volume, and my readings are mostly limited to that series. These were selected and arranged by Lin Carter, and I now realize that these stories are probably among his strongest, most artistically viable stories. I've intermittently broken outside this subset of his work, but for the most part have been disappointed. It was during these forays that I formed the opinion that a lot of his commercial work was a simply uninspired effort to get a paycheck. I do not see this in Lovecraft's body of work nearly as much: there is no real variation in quality, but there is vast variation in themes and motifs that he explores, and this accounts for the varied appeal of some of his works.
Since these are only my opinions, I would welcome any thoughts/comments. It will help me to refine my view of CAS, and concomitantly, Lovecraft.
>
> I assume these differences in appearance is
> reflected in their different writing styles,
> although I can not define just how. Lovecraft was
> more methodical?, and mechanical? (although there
> is nothing intellectually mediocre or stiff about
> his writing), while Smith was more loose? No, I
> wouldn't say that either. And I don't think either
> one was ultimately better writer than the other.
> But one thing is for sure, Lovecraft would never
> have started a story similarly with an exclamation
> like this:
>
> "'Why, you big ninny! I could never marry you,'
> declared the demoiselle Dorothée, only daughter
> of the Sieur des Flèches. Her lips pouted at
> Anselme like two ripe berries. Her voice was honey
> — but honey filled with bee-stings. ..."
>
> --Clark Ashton Smith: "The Enchantress of Sylaire"
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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