SMITH, Clark Ashton, The Dark
Eidolon and Other Fantasies, Penguin Classics/Penguin Group (USA) LLC., New
York, NY, USA, 2014.
Octavo; paperback; 370pp. Minor
wear. Near fine.
I had very high hopes for this
book after reading about it online. Sadly, it doesn’t quite live up to the
hype.
Clark Ashton Smith wrote
determinedly, if not compulsively, throughout his life and, like HPL, was
driven to it by the demands of needing to make an income in order to survive.
Unlike Lovecraft, Smith didn’t mince words about making a living: he not only
needed to support himself but also his two aged parents. Lovecraft, could
pretend that writing was his “gentleman’s pursuit”, his craft of idle moments, but Smith had three
mouths to feed and loans to service.
What makes Smith so interesting
is that his prolific output is so good. Sure, there are duds, but they are few
and far between. He started off writing poetry and achieved a fair degree of
fame for his work in this mode. Books were published and prizes were won. After
his “induction” into the Lovecraft circle, he turned to the type of stories
demanded by the pulps and by which he is better known to this day. Unlike
Lovecraft again, Smith wrote for a wider range of magazines and journals,
always looking to make a sale rather than beating a recalcitrant “Weird Tales”
editor into capitulation. As a result, Smith’s work is sometimes quite bawdy,
or conforms more directly to what we think of nowadays as science fiction. In
short, Smith had the weird down pat – like HPL – but he also had range.
Some of that diversity is
presented in this volume. Smith wrote his weird fiction in several collections:
best known is probably his Averoigne stories, set in a pre-Enlightment France
in a fictional province beset by the cruelty of the Church and the resurgence
of pagan and Mythos beliefs. There are also his Zothique tales, set in a time
long after the current era in a post-Utopian decadent future. There too, are
his Hyperborean stories set upon the ancient continents of Poseidonis,
Hyperborea and Lemuria, and there are tales which switch between these locales
and borrow from various milieu. The
online blurb concerning this book implied strongly that all the stories which
made up these various canons were included; sadly,
they aren’t.
William Dorman, the executor of
Smith’s estate, has chosen the content of this compendium and, while it does
cover all the various styles of Smith’s oeuvre,
it is limited. Of the Averoigne stories only “The Holiness of Azéderac” and “Mother
of Toads” are present, while the Zothique stories comprise the main bulk of
the short story section. This amounts to eighteen stories, which is nothing to
sneeze at; however, given that both “Ubbo
Sathla” and “The Treader of the Dust”
– both very good tales – are freely available at Project Gutenberg it begs the
question as to why they were included.
As well, “Mother of Toads” can be
found reprinted in the Dark Horse Book of
Witchcraft, so it’s hardly a rare treat. If the goal of this collection was
to simply display the best of Clark Ashton Smith, then perhaps there’s a
justification for the selection, because these are all fine stories; however,
if the goal was to bring back into print those gems of his work which rarely
get time in the spotlight, then the reader is poorly served. S.T. Joshi writes
the Introduction to this volume but it feels as if he’s doing his best with
what Dorman has given him.
The cherry-picking of tales from
the various Smith canons also serves to undermine the presentation. The
Hyperborean tales and the stories of Zothique, despite being set poles apart
chronologically, bear marked similarities. Both sets of stories are set in
fictional periods where technology is a distant dream and magic has (re)surged
into the present; at base, there is very little to differentiate the two
collections apart from some geography and famous names. Thrown fractionally
together as they are here, they blend into each other too much and lose their
distinctive flavour. The novice reader will perceive simply a random bunch of
pleasingly bland narratives, which – apart from what in this context appears to
be a sloppy re-using of proper names and throwaway concepts – are
enjoyable-enough fantasies without any particular bite. In short, they come off
like sci-fi/fantasy tofu: solid, but light and lacking piquancy.
About a quarter of the text is
devoted to Smith’s Prose Poems and Poetry. The Prose Poems continue the faux pas made with the story selection:
most of these, while pretty to read, say very little and feel unfinished, even pointless. Just as the
sense of completeness has been lost in the story canons, the ambient noise of
these pieces simply underscores that feeling. These are pretty word-pictures
without weight; there is the occasional witty observation and some stylish
description but not much else. In tandem with the selected stories they don’t
work.
Finally there’s the poetry.
Firstly, let me point out that poetry isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, although it is mine. By any standard, Smith’s poems
are polished but not special. None of them will ever find its way into a Norton
Anthology for example. These pieces are overly-dramatic (“Ode to the Abyss”, “The
Medusa of Despair”, “The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of
Evil”) and far too florid; they stand outside of the poetry tradition that
abided while he was writing them and are mannered on a style that was outdated
before he was even born. At best they are homage; at worst they are kitsch.
Best to just draw a veil across them...
It seems that the editors’ goals
in compiling this collection were unfocussed,
or driven by opposing needs: on one hand there is the necessity to present a
holistic view of Smith, covering all his manifold writing styles; on the other
hand, there’s the
possibility of bringing back into print the little-seen and rarely-reprinted
gems of his opus. To my mind, it
would have served the collection better to choose just one of these aims and to
run with it. The result, as it stands, is a bland and sometimes queasy
assemblage that will disappoint fans and which will leave newcomers scratching
their heads and wondering what the fuss is all about.
Individually, the stories here
are excellent; just search around before shelling out for this collection – you
can find much of this material elsewhere for less, or for free. The Prose Poems
might be inspirational as gaming resources; ignore the poetry - unless you
really want to read sonnets using the word “Cthulhu”. Clark Ashton Smith has
been poorly-served by his editors here, and that’s the sole reason I’m marking
the volume down.
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