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Selected Letters
Includes, among others, correspondence with George Sterling, H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, and August Derleth.
417 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2003
31 people want to read
About the author
Clark Ashton Smith
720 books997 followersClark Ashton Smith was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. It is for these stories, and his literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937, that he is mainly remembered today. With Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, also a friend and correspondent, Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales.
His writings are posted at his official website.
His writings are posted at his official website.
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August 31, 2014I've never been much of a fan of this writer's fiction (too much horror, too few interesting women), I found his letters interesting, sometimes sympathetic (the constant stresses due to the vagaries of publishing, some of whose humiliations are pretty much the same today, including long-delayed payments), and some mind-boggling in the alien minds sense. And some entertaining because of the period, and the personalities involved.
Some quotes:
But it really is a cardinal shame that editors are such a time-serving lot. I wish to Hades that some millionaire would endow a magazine for weird and arabesque literature, and have it edited regardless of anything but a genuine standard of literary merit. I have a notion that the results might be surprising--though I don't think it would ever rival the Post, or even the he-male adventure magazines, in circulation.
Of course I may be all wet. On the other hand, an anxiety to please the plebs, and offend as few as possible . . . can result in nothing but crap and mediocrity. I certainly think he could afford to run a few high-class tales, if only to keep up any literary reputation that the mag may have acquired. Connoisseurs, I feel morally certain, are not going to exult over the recent avalanche of tripe."
To August Derleth, Sept 28th, 1932.
And a year later, again to Derleth:
One Forrest J. Ackerman, writer of letters to magazines, has been assailing some of my Wonder Story contributions quite extensively, claiming that they are too weird and horrific and fantastic for the soberly realistic pages of that medium. The joke is, that he has lauded and taken seriously an even more outrageous, impossible yarn of mine, which was written as a burlesque!
He has a vehement attack on "Dweller in the Martian Depths" and ""The Light from Beyond" in the first issue of The Fantasy Fan; and sometimes ago I received a personal letter from him urging me to refrain from contributing this type of material to W.S.! Since the editor of The Fantasy Fan wanted me to answer the published attack, I have written a brief letter pointing out the inconsistencies and flaws of logic that A. has committed. some of these kids certainly take their science pretty seriously. Science and the State, it is plain, are going to be the principal Mumbo Jumbos of the near future.
That last line has a kind of creep ring to it, I think, considering the horrors about to be perpetrated in the name of various States. Forrest J. Ackerman was a famous fan, old when I met him in the seventies; he would have been in high school when Smith wrote this letter.
The Fantasy Fan was a new magazine, that lasted two years.
Finally, here's an interesting one to the same correspondent:
Later, I may do a brief article on The Philosophy of the Weird Tale. This will not touch on the aesthetics of weirdness, but will emphasize the implicative (though not didactic) bearing of the w.t. on human destiny, and, in particular, its relationship to man's spiritual evolution and his position in regard to the unknown and the infinite.
I shall frankly outline my own stand, which is that of one who keeps an open mind and is willing to admit that all things are possible, but accepts neither the dogmatism of material science nor that of any "revealed" religion or system of theosophy. I shall, too, point out that the only road to an understanding of the basic mysteries is through the possible development in man of those higher faculties of perception which mystics and adepts claim to develop.
There is no reason at all why powers transcending our present range of sense-perception may not be developed in the course of future evolution; and such powers may have been attained by individuals in the past. The point I want to make is, that a psychological interest in the weird, unknown and preternatural is not merely a "hangover" from the age of superstition, but is perhaps a sign-post on the road to man's future development
In writing to his friend H.P. Lovecraft, he plays word games, like signing his letters Kardash Ton. Like other collections of letters, there is little sign of a dramatic art. Our messy lives don't work that way, as we jink and stutter along, not knowing the future that the reader is already aware of, but even if one hasn't an affinity for the author's fiction, I think reading such collections is an excellent reminder that here was once a warm, living, breathing person whose imagination fired, and who struggled to make a place in the misty, shimmering mirage world of art and letters.
Some quotes:
But it really is a cardinal shame that editors are such a time-serving lot. I wish to Hades that some millionaire would endow a magazine for weird and arabesque literature, and have it edited regardless of anything but a genuine standard of literary merit. I have a notion that the results might be surprising--though I don't think it would ever rival the Post, or even the he-male adventure magazines, in circulation.
Of course I may be all wet. On the other hand, an anxiety to please the plebs, and offend as few as possible . . . can result in nothing but crap and mediocrity. I certainly think he could afford to run a few high-class tales, if only to keep up any literary reputation that the mag may have acquired. Connoisseurs, I feel morally certain, are not going to exult over the recent avalanche of tripe."
To August Derleth, Sept 28th, 1932.
And a year later, again to Derleth:
One Forrest J. Ackerman, writer of letters to magazines, has been assailing some of my Wonder Story contributions quite extensively, claiming that they are too weird and horrific and fantastic for the soberly realistic pages of that medium. The joke is, that he has lauded and taken seriously an even more outrageous, impossible yarn of mine, which was written as a burlesque!
He has a vehement attack on "Dweller in the Martian Depths" and ""The Light from Beyond" in the first issue of The Fantasy Fan; and sometimes ago I received a personal letter from him urging me to refrain from contributing this type of material to W.S.! Since the editor of The Fantasy Fan wanted me to answer the published attack, I have written a brief letter pointing out the inconsistencies and flaws of logic that A. has committed. some of these kids certainly take their science pretty seriously. Science and the State, it is plain, are going to be the principal Mumbo Jumbos of the near future.
That last line has a kind of creep ring to it, I think, considering the horrors about to be perpetrated in the name of various States. Forrest J. Ackerman was a famous fan, old when I met him in the seventies; he would have been in high school when Smith wrote this letter.
The Fantasy Fan was a new magazine, that lasted two years.
Finally, here's an interesting one to the same correspondent:
Later, I may do a brief article on The Philosophy of the Weird Tale. This will not touch on the aesthetics of weirdness, but will emphasize the implicative (though not didactic) bearing of the w.t. on human destiny, and, in particular, its relationship to man's spiritual evolution and his position in regard to the unknown and the infinite.
I shall frankly outline my own stand, which is that of one who keeps an open mind and is willing to admit that all things are possible, but accepts neither the dogmatism of material science nor that of any "revealed" religion or system of theosophy. I shall, too, point out that the only road to an understanding of the basic mysteries is through the possible development in man of those higher faculties of perception which mystics and adepts claim to develop.
There is no reason at all why powers transcending our present range of sense-perception may not be developed in the course of future evolution; and such powers may have been attained by individuals in the past. The point I want to make is, that a psychological interest in the weird, unknown and preternatural is not merely a "hangover" from the age of superstition, but is perhaps a sign-post on the road to man's future development
In writing to his friend H.P. Lovecraft, he plays word games, like signing his letters Kardash Ton. Like other collections of letters, there is little sign of a dramatic art. Our messy lives don't work that way, as we jink and stutter along, not knowing the future that the reader is already aware of, but even if one hasn't an affinity for the author's fiction, I think reading such collections is an excellent reminder that here was once a warm, living, breathing person whose imagination fired, and who struggled to make a place in the misty, shimmering mirage world of art and letters.
Displaying 1 of 1 review