Hello all!

I suppose I should introduce myself - I'm a UK based fan of the incomparable Clark Ashton Smith. I've come to him comparatively late, having been a HPL fan for over 20 years, but having overlooked just how great CAS was back in the day I was reading them initially!

Foolishly, I read CAS's "modern" stories rather than his fantasy tales back then (in an effort to absorb more mythos stuff) and missed out on possibly the greatest fantasy writer I've yet encountered

I've set to redress that foolishness in the last couple of years, and have just finished the superb Volume 5.

One thing that puzzles me about Nemesis of the unfinished, or rather the notes about the alternate version.

It is mentioned that the last page of the alternative version appears to be missing. Is this based on anything other than the fact the story ends where it ends? I only ask because to me, the line the story ends on seems to be the perfect ending - especially for a story about unfinished stories!

He is poised at his Remington, and it is up to the reader to ponder whether his "exorcism" will work or not.

So is there more to suggest he actually wrote an "endng" beyond this? A half torn page, or a dangling staple?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12 Dec 10 | 03:49PM by Leigh Shepherd.

Interesting theory. The Tms for the final version, believe to be incomplete, ends at the end of the page with a complete sentence, so what you suggest may well be the case. However, the TMs had to be assembled from a huge mass of unsorted papers, and it was not uncommon for Smith's mss to suffer having their pages dispersed in such a fashion. Also, Smith usually wrote in the date on which he completed a story, and this was not done on the surviving last page. It's entirely possible that the missing page will surface one day in some currently unknown (to me, at least) cache of papers in the possession of the family of some Smith friend, like the way than the missing pages for THE BLACK DIAMOND turned out to be in Dr. Farmer's possession.

Good to hear from you, Leigh. It's easy to understand why you are interested in this alternate version; it seems to me a more satisfying conclusion. We would certainly have used it if only it was complete. The following paragraphs are not only quintessential CAS, they create a fascinating and unforgettable image:


"In one of the dreams, he was Guillaume de la Coudraie, sitting in his tower with the time-fretted chart, stained with nameless corruption, unrolled before him. He was girt for the journey to the hidden tomb; his scrip was packed with such impediments of magic as he might require; and the arthame, the wizard sword of consecrated metal, potent for defense against demons and liches and phantoms, glittered unsheathed on the table close to his right hand. But still he lingered, pondering the chart, whose lines and drawings and letterings, inscribed in the blood of vipers, seemed to shift and change beneath his anxious scrutiny till the route they indicated was another than the one that he had longed yet feared to follow.
By this sign, La Coudraie knew that the powers he had sought to control were working against him. He was mocked by those whom he had dreamt to dominate. He trembled, and peered fearfully about his chamber, seeing now that other signs had begun to manifest themselves. Curious red and nacarat flames, in the form of reptilian salamanders, had sprung up from the unlit, cinder-choked brazier that the wizard used in his incantations. They seemed to lengthen and lean toward him in uncoiled menace, with heads whitening to intolerable brightness. Pallid vapors, flat as papery tongues, issued from the piled grimoires and swelled interminably, darkening and thickening to the semblance of malign genii whose eye-sockets seethed with lurid fire under night-black brows.
Lowering his gaze in terror, the necromancer saw that the changing lines and ciphers had been wholly erased from the chart before him. In their stead, on the blank surface, appeared the lineaments of a baleful and infernal visage. Though the livid eyelids were shut, the face was that of Alastor, demon of vengeance . . . . Slowly, dreadfully, it emerged from the flatness of the parchment, rearing on a python-like neck till it confronted La Coudraie on a level with his own face. Slowly, horribly, the eyes opened ....
La Porte awakened, or seemed to awaken, from his necromantic nightmare. At least, he was conscious of being back in his cabin, seated before the typewriter just as he had fallen asleep. The profound terror of the sorcerer La Coudraie still possessed him; nor, in the circumstances of his awakening, was there anything to mitigate the terror.
By the light of the oil-lamp, burning stilly beside his Remington, he found himself stating into the same Satanic face that had risen from the sorcerer's chart and had opened its basilisk eyes upon him in his dream. The face was mounted on the same scaled ophidian neck. Algae-green, with ashen mottlings, the neck thickened downward, seeming to issue from the blank sheet of paper, newly inserted, that curved back across the Remington's roller. Clear and rigid as icicles, twin shafts of light poured from the unpupilled eyes, transfixing his very marrow, filling the darkest cells of his brain with their searching, searing illumination.
Inch by tedious inch, like one half-paralyzed, he turned from the direct gaze of the apparition—only to confront the shapes and faces of Pandemonium. Like those that had sprung from the wizard's brazier, burning elementals rose amid the charred logs in his fireplace, breathing smoke and heat as they serpentined outward into the room. Endless vapory scrolls unfurled from between the leaves of his massed manuscripts, dilating into Powers and Dominations. Bloated incubi swam toward him on the air, levitating themselves pronely, quivering like obscene jellies, and lolling their fulsome vermilion tongues from taurine mouths.
Out of all these shapes, that seethed and fumed in perpetual agitation, there pulsed an insufferable horror that centered upon La Porte: a horror older than man, older than the world, deeper than the earth's caverns or the crypts of the brain."

I liked your theory that CAS intentionally left this tale unfinished, so I dug out my photocopy and examined the last page of the alternate version. I thought we might be on to something when I realized the page was in fact a few lines short. However, further examination showed no real consistency in the number of lines per page; anywhere from 27-31, with 29 being pretty much the average. And, as it turned out, the page in question had 29 lines.
It seems to me that the final page of the TMS being a full page rather than otherwise tends to support the incomplete theory; this and the fact that "Nemesis of the Unfinished" did not appear on Smith's own list of completed stories.
As Scott mentions, it's entirely possible the missing page (or pages) may turn up someday . . . we can only continue looking, and hoping.
-Ron

Thanks for the responses - that certainly gives me a better appreciation of why this story is listed as incomplete. It's interesting to see CAS himself had a list of completed stories - I'm presuming it doesn't mention either version of the story, or mentions it only as the earlier co-creation?

The evidence of the list and the practice of signing off a complete story certainly lends more weight to the idea that there is/was more to come.

Perhaps upon reaching this point, he might have downed Remington himself to consider where to take it and never could find a satisfactory resolution!

However it came to pass it's at least a happy coincidene that the story stops at such a neat point, and in some ways is potentially all the stronger for it. I'm also of the opinion this is a superior and certainly more evocative version of the story and I appreciate the effort put into the Nightshade volumes to include these bonuses.

One final question - does the TMS end

"His fingers began to seek the familiar keys...."

or

"His fingers began to seek the familiar keys." (with the .... added in the collection just to emphasise the fact it stops short of complete?)

The former would suggest the reader is perhaps intended to be left dangling, while the latter would add extra weight to the assumption of a missing page.

It ends just as in the book: "Trying to disregard his visitors, he stooped over the Remington and his fingers began to seek the familiar keys...."
Without quotes, of course. Definitely dangling!

I've been trying to locate my copy of Smith's own hand written list of completed stories with no success as yet. (I've just recently moved my work area into another room, this is just one of several items that seems to have been lost in the shuffle) The list I referenced earlier is in Donald Sidney-Fryer's bio/bibliography EMPEROR OF DREAMS [pgs. 181-182] and is based on Smith's listing of 112 titles. However, this list also includes Smith's unfinished novel THE INFERNAL STAR, as well as another story assumed to be unfinished, EVICTION BY NIGHT.
In STRANGE SHADOWS, Steve Behrends twice states that this version is lacking its final page, but does not elaborate on the matter.
So, for the time being I guess this matter will have to remain somewhat enigmatic.
-Ron

I'm making my way through The Last Hierglyph (which I love and has proved to be well worth the wait - thank you) and I've just read the 'Nemisis of the Unfinished' after reading these interesting posts. I find it very interesting that the second version is in itself unfinished and that there are two versions of the second half of the story, neatly mirroring the narrative of the completed version. While it does seem that the evidence is fairly persuasive that version 2 is indeed incomplete and that, presumably, they are indeed two very separate versions... however the way the story evolved into two versions and that one is incomplete is very aesthetically very satisfactory, even if its entirely accidental rather than deliberate post-modern (pre-post-modern maybe) on CAS' behalf. Or maybe it just suggests that post-modernism is so all pervasive today that it retrospectively rewrites reality to its own aesthetic whims...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 16 Dec 10 | 03:48PM by The English Assassin.

'Nemesis' really is a unique tale; the only case where Smith actually collaborated with someone (Don Carter, as mentioned in the notes) There is a definite autobiographical element to this story, (which although not unique, is certainly rare) And it seems to fit into both the finished and unfinished categories. The first draft that Carter and Smith collaborated on was finished. But the second version reads like pure Smith, as if he was unhappy with the results and tried to improve and elaborate the story later, on his own.

And now, a further question; did Smith leave this second version unfinished on purpose, or is the ending missing or destroyed?? I'm hoping for the latter, if only because I'd like to find out more about this strange demon emerging from the typewriter with the unpupilled, laser-beam eyes!
-Ron