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Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: The English Assassin (IP Logged)
Date: 9 February, 2013 07:37AM
Draugen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think this is a really good line up.
>
> I'm a bit suprised not to see The Abominations of
> Yondo, however. I seem to remember that it was
> after reading that story that I wanted to hunt
> down everything he had written. Maybe its just me,
> but I think its a good piece to get people
> hooked.
>
> I also think a Voyage to Sfanomoë is a favourite
> of mine thats missing. It's the combination of
> reclusive brothers, Poseidonis, touch of sci fi,
> floral weirdness and cosmic fatalism :-)
>
> Either way, congratulations on getting the go
> ahead for this.

I concur with you on both of these tales - especially Yondo. Is it not possible to squeeze this in somewhere?

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: Martinus (IP Logged)
Date: 14 April, 2013 03:22AM
Scott Connors posted the following in the FB group for CAs a couple of hours ago:

Quote:
Scott
Here are the final contents of THE DARK EIDOLON AND OTHER FANTASIES by Clark Ashton Smith, as edited by S. T. Joshi, which was handed in to Penguin Modern Classics this week:
Short Stories: Sadastor; The Tale of Satampra Zeiros; The Last Incantation; The Epiphany of Death; The Devotee of Evil; The Uncharted Isle; The Face by the River; The City of the Singing Flame; The Holiness of Azédarac; The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis; The Demon of the Flower; Ubbo-Sathla; The Double Shadow; The Maze of the Enchanter; Genius Loci; The Dark Eidolon; The Weaver in the Vault; The Death of Malygris; Xeethra; The Last Hieroglyph; The Treader of the Dust; Mother of Toads; Phoenix.

Prose Poems: The Image of Bronze and the Image of Iron; The Memnons of the Night; The Demon, the Angel, and Beauty; The Corpse and the Skeleton; A Dream of Lethe; From the Crypts of Memory; Ennui; The Litany of the Seven Kisses; In Cocaigne; The Caravan; The Flower-Devil; The Shadows; The Passing of Aphrodite; To the Daemon; The Abomination of Desolation; The Mirror in the Hall of Ebony; The Touch-Stone; The Muse of Hyperborea.

Poetry: Sonnet on Oblivion; The Last Night; Ode to the Abyss; A Dream of Beauty; The Star-Treader; Retrospect and Forecast; Nero; To the Daemon Sublimity; Averted Malefice; A Dead City; The Eldritch Dark; Shadow of Nightmare; To the Darkness; Satan Unrepentant; The Ghoul; Desire of Vastness; The Medusa of Despair; The Refuge of Beauty; The Harlot of the World; Memnon at Midnight; Love Malevolent; The Crucifixion of Eros; The Tears of Lilith; A Vision of Lucifer; Requiescat in Pace; The Motes; Flamingoes; The Incubus of Time; A Psalm to the Best Beloved;
The Witch with Eyes of Amber; We Shall Meet; The Wingless Archangels; On Re-reading Baudelaire; The Last Oblivion; Loss;
To George Sterling: A Valediction; Anterior Life; Hymn to Beauty;
The Remorse of the Dead; Exorcism; Lichens; Nyctalops; The Nightmare Tarn; Revenant; Outlanders; Song of the Necromancer;
To Howard Phillips Lovecraft; Bacchante; Madrigal of Memory; The Old Water-Wheel; Town Lights; The Hill of Dionysus; Omniety; If Winter Remain; Amithaine; Seer of the Cycles; Cycles.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: Avoosl Wuthoqquan (IP Logged)
Date: 14 April, 2013 06:40AM
Is there any information available regarding Joshi's editorial policy? In particular, I am curious as to whether it was his ambition to do a representative collection, or one that contains CAS's best work. From the table of contents kindly provided above, it is clear that Joshi's choice of stories does not even remotely approach my own idea of a "Best of". That would be approximated more closely by The Emperor of Dreams, the 2002 Fantasy Masterworks edition, which is the best single-volume introduction to CAS's prose that I know of (not that I pretend to be an expert).

In addition, I feel that not using 'The Abominations of Yondo' to open the book is a real shame. A golden opportunity to 'proselytize' and win CAS some new readers was missed there, as the story is very short and one of his best. Bear in mind that nowadays lots of genre fiction is purchased in ebook form and it's the first pages of a book that serve as a taster. A little more savvy and cunning on the part of the editor (and the publisher) would have been welcome here. CAS deserves to be read more, and there are no doubt many readers out there who would appreciate his work.

(Autobiographical note: I am -- forgive me -- not really into either HPL or REH; it was a computer game called NetHack that brought me into the CAS fold, by quoting "Yondo".)

Joshi continues to be one of those people whose hard work and gigantic erudition I respect and appreciate, but whose notions, motivations and standards will always remain somewhat incomprehensible to me. There are other people prominent in cult-author cliques that I feel somewhat the same about, e.g. Brian Boyd (in the Nabokov world) or Paul Rhoads (in Jack Vance's circle): their knowledge is not in question, but their ideas often baffle me.

No disrespect is intended by the above, incidentally. On the one or two occasions that I contacted Rhoads, he was more than civil to me, and I have no personal experience with the other two. Still, all of them exert considerable influence on the reception and perception of authors I care about, so my feelings can be quite strong in case of intellectual incompatibility.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 14 Apr 13 | 06:42AM by Avoosl Wuthoqquan.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: Jojo Lapin X (IP Logged)
Date: 14 April, 2013 08:15AM
I suggest we ignore Paul Rhoads's existence; I wish you had not mentioned him.

About Joshi: This is the man, of course, who left "The Great God Pan," the author's most famous story, out of his Penguin Machen collection.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: calonlan (IP Logged)
Date: 14 April, 2013 09:25AM
Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I suggest we ignore Paul Rhoads's existence; I
> wish you had not mentioned him.
>
> About Joshi: This is the man, of course, who left
> "The Great God Pan," the author's most famous
> story, out of his Penguin Machen collection.

I too, am baffled by Mr. Joshi - I do not know from whence his vaunted "erudition" arises; have spoken to the man once by phone - I am baffled by this "reputation" as a CAS scholar - I, who knew Clark extremely well, believe he, too, would be mystified - certainly as regards the earlier posts on "Yondo" - but then, I must also admit that I have read almost nothing that he has written other than the comments (unsought by me) in the introduction to my edited works of Juvenile writings - in which he errs regarding the comparison of quality between the two early novels.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: walrus (IP Logged)
Date: 14 April, 2013 01:10PM
calonlan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I too, am baffled by Mr. Joshi - I do not know from whence his vaunted "erudition" arises; have
> spoken to the man once by phone - I am baffled by this "reputation" as a CAS scholar

Joshi is not exactly a CAS scholar, I see that in his latest blog entry he writes that "I readily acknowledge that Scott [Connors] knows more about CAS’s life and work than I do" (and earlier on "Scott Connors [...] has forgotten more about Smith than I ever knew"), so I think it's safe to say that he would not claim to be an authority on Smith specifically. But because of the other collections he has edited for Penguin earlier, he got them do one for CAS, no small feat.

As for representativeness, for what it's worth, Joshi's blog has this remark: "I like to think it presents the totality of CAS’s work to pretty good advantage." I'm glad that "The Last Incantation" got in.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: The English Assassin (IP Logged)
Date: 15 April, 2013 03:14AM
Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> About Joshi: This is the man, of course, who left
> "The Great God Pan," the author's most famous
> story, out of his Penguin Machen collection.

This is frankly an insane omission!!! Even if he doesn't personally like it (which in itself makes me question his judgement), it is still vital to any Machen collection... It just reeks of a desperate attempt to show off how 'original' he is, rather than any great respect or understanding of the author...

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: wilum pugmire (IP Logged)
Date: 15 April, 2013 11:15PM
Sunand was instructed by Penguin to not include "The Great God Pan." His Machen collection is outstanding.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: phillipAellis (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 12:41AM
I can vouch for the excellence of Joshi's Machen collection. It didn't need to reprint "The Great God Pan" to be representative of Machen at his best, and TGGP is readily available in a wide selection of editions in print and, for those seeking out of print material, in those editions as well.

One point that must be made is that he has had to temper his selections with the editorial requirements of the publisher, as do all anthologists to some degree. Further, it's easy to sit and criticise an anthologist when one hasn't had the need nor the experience, and cheap editorialising and sniping on the part of some speaks more for their lack of character as readers as it does for the character of the anthologists as editors.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: Chipougne (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 01:41AM
Thank you Wilum and Phillip for granting us a welcome break from this dismayingly monotonous Joshi-bashing.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: wilum pugmire (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 02:07AM
I just get tired of criticism that is founded on ignorance. S. T. was totally devoted to getting CAS into a Penguin edition, and it is a minor miracle that he did so. But rather than shew gratitude for this, people post insults and criticisms that reveal their stupidity and bigotry. A forum devoted to Clark Ashton Smith should be above such petty stupidity. I believe that it takes a degree of intelligence to admire CAS as we do, not a smugness of feeling intellectually superior, but a devotion to great Literature that seems, more and more, a rare thing in this neoteric age.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: Jojo Lapin X (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 04:41AM
wilum pugmire Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sunand was instructed by Penguin to not include
> "The Great God Pan."

It is obvious that they did not insist that it should be in there. But why would they insist that it should be left out? It seems a bit implausible, frankly.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: wilum pugmire (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 07:04AM
I do not know their reasoning--why did the editors at The Library of America insist that Peter Straub not use a story by Karl Edward Wagner in AMERICAN FANTASTIC TALES, who can understand such reasoning?--but that is the fact of the matter, and it seeming implausible does not alter the facts. I cannot understand it, nor can I understand why they then had a cover shewing--ye Great God Pan. Inexplicable.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 16 Apr 13 | 07:05AM by wilum pugmire.

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: phillipAellis (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 07:11AM
It doesn't seem implausible at all. It's a commonplace, almost a cliche, to represent Machen with TGGP as if that's all there is. As a Machenist, I know there's far more to Machen than just that, and to include a piece so readily available elsewhere takes away space better used for other, more representative items.

It must be remembered that TGGP is the most reprinted item by Machen, so much so that there are many Machenists among my acquaintances who won't even bother to keep up with the number of appearances. Especially since it's now in the public domain in a number of countries, having been first published in the Nineteenth Century (Australia is one of them).

Re: CAS in Penguin Modern CLassics
Posted by: Jojo Lapin X (IP Logged)
Date: 16 April, 2013 08:36AM
I do not think the Penguin volumes are primarily aimed at readers who are already very familiar with the authors in question.

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