As they say,Scott, better to be attacked than ignored.

A quickie response: I would recommend Fritz's
(he was a friend of mine, so I take the liberty
to call him by his first name :) ) World Fantasy Award
winning novel "Our Lady Of Darkness." I mention this
work to you, partly, because the plot, somewhat,
involves Clark Ashton Smith by actual name and others,
friends of his, thinly veiled in their characters'
names, i.e. Donald Sidney-Fryer.

The novel is still fairly cheaply available. Enjoy!

I couldn't log in the the Forum until today, so this is a belated reply.

Tobias wrote:

> just my last 5 cents concerning Tolkien; his intention for the LotR cycle was to create a new myth for England

No. When he started writing in 1916 his "Book of Lost Tales" that was his intention--it had long receded from his mind and can't really be applied to The Lord of the Rings. (The Book of Lost Tales evolved in the 1920s and 30s into The Silmarillion, and most of the connections with Anglo-Saxon England were eventually dropped).

> and when I saw this striking similarity between Mordor/Germany

This is all in the eye of the beholder--what Tolkien called "applicability". He intended no such connections.

> and also his simple black/white cosmos

This is a superficial reading--in the details Tolkien was a very subtle. I'd suggest anyone have a look at either of Tom Shippey's books (THe Road to Middle-earth, or Tolkien: Author of the Century) to get a better grasp at what he was up to.

> I didn't want to waste my time on reading it

That's your choice, but it really isn't fair to make such an uninformed blanket dismissal of him as a writer.

Doug

I believe that Moorcock, while a decent enough writer, is a little cracked: he talks Dunsany up, he talks him down, he talks Leiber up, then down.

I can't remember ever seeing Moorcock talking either Dunsany or Leiber down. He usually mentions Dunsany as an important influence on his own writing.

Moorcock ("Wizardry and Wild Romance"); "Dunsany I find slight but inoffensive". In a different section he parodies Dunsany's prose, likening it to the soporific rhythm of a steam train, concluding "The sort of prose most often identified with 'high' fantasy is the prose of the nursery-room. It is a lullaby; it is meant to soothe and console..."

In the same volume he's very complimentary about Smith "an almost playful relish for the exotic, a carelessness of spirit ... Smith's stories lack the neurotic drone of writers like Lovecraft, and contain a great deal of ordinary humour... Smith was able to combine rapid action with his descriptions... his landscapes contributing to his story's dynamic."

MM's consistently down on Tolkien and Lovecraft for reasons which are, I believe, at least partly political. His views on other writers (particularly R.E. Howard) do tend to oscillate wildly, so it wouldn't surprise me if he has contradicted himself on Dunsany. I don't personally see it as a sign of being "cracked"; in life things move on and perspectives change. Moorcock's mind just doesn't stay still - you can see that in his own fiction.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10 Mar 08 | 07:28AM by Mikey_C.

O_O! I must have missed that -- or repressed it. On the other hand, he also writes that Dunsany's "prose and his invention is often witty, paradoxical".
And Leiber is referred to as "one of America's leading fantasts".

Moorcock has said that he intends to stop writing; I hope that he changes his mind. His fiction is always supremely readable, even whe he's at his worst (on the other hand, I haven't read everything, so I may not have seen his worst yet!).

Ken K. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, blaming Tolkien for the 'unhealthy' cult of
> LOTR is a bit unfair--it makes him sound like L.
> Ron Hubbard.
>
> In comparing writers, let's not forget that CAS
> had essentially finished the bulk of his fiction
> before Leiber started his professional career.
> Leiber is a very different type of writer than
> CAS--he seems to be much more engaged with this
> world and the people inhabiting it, whereas CAS
> prefers the wholly alien and outre. This is a
> gross oversimplification, to be sure, but
> still...how many memorable characters can you
> recall from his stories?

There is the rascal Satampra Zeiros, the deliciously vile Namirrha, the innocent victim Xeethra, Morghi the priest who hunts Eibon and Nushain the astrologer. Overall, not very many and certainly nothing like Leiber's adventuring duo, but Smith does have a few memorable characters.

Point taken, Shadowcat.

I should also have pointed out in my post that I don't think Smith is a lesser writer because he is less interested in delineating characters in detail. I think this was an conscious artistic choice which he made to evoke a certain response in the reader. He was often trying for a sense of ironic distance in his stories, and too much emphasis on emotion and psychology would have interfered with the desired effect.

And I agree 110% with you. Smith took a totally different approach to telling a story and I enjoy both writers but I believe Smith was the better artisan. The vocabulary and imagination are hard to top.