A comment to yesterday's post reminded me of a longstanding mystery: the influence, if any, of the works of Clark Ashton Smith on those of Jack Vance. Purely on the basis of subject matter and style, I'd long assumed that Vance's tales of The Dying Earth had been influenced by Smith's own tales of Zothique. I eventually read something – I cannot recall precisely where – that addressed the matter, claiming that Vance had not in fact read Smith and, therefore, any resemblance between the two mordantly witty writers was purely coincidental.
The aforementioned comment, however, spurred me to look into the question once again. In doing so, I discovered a new piece of information, new to me at any rate. The May 2005 issue of Cosmopolis reprints an old interview with Jack Vance from September 1981. The interview is fascinating for a number of reasons, but it's what Vance has to say about Clark Ashton Smith (and H.P. Lovecraft) that is of most immediate interest. The relevant section begins with the interviewer, Charles Platt, referencing Smith:
I mention that Don Herron, a critic who contributed to a symposium on Vance, deduced that Vance had been heavily influenced by the work of Clark Ashton Smith.
"That's true. Can't help it; Smith is one of the people I read when I was a kid. But it only influenced The Dying Earth.
"I was one of those precocious, highly intelligent kids, old beyond my years. I had lots of brothers and sisters, but I was isolated from them in a certain kind of way. I just read and read and read. One of the things I read was the old Weird Tales pulp magazine, which published Clark Ashton Smith. He was one of the generative geniuses of fantasy. The others, Lovecraft, for instance, were ridiculous. Lovecraft couldn't write his way out of a wet paper sack. Smith is a little clumsy at times, but at least his prose is always readable.
"When I wrote my first fantasies, I was no longer aware of Smith – it had sunk so far into my subconscious. But when it was pointed out to me, I could very readily see the influence."
Leaving aside Vance's, I think, unfairly harsh assessment of Lovecraft, I find it strangely vindicating to see him admit to the influence of Smith on his own work. That's not something I'd ever seen acknowledged previously, though, as it now appears, Don Herron correctly surmised it more than four decades ago. Regardless, a longstanding mystery over I'd puzzled for years has been resolved.
Ah, thanks! I've had the same issue where quotes from him do not mention CAS as one of his literary inspirations, most recently reminded while listening to an audio book of the Songs of the Dying Earth. I tried to write it off as both of them absorbing some of influence from Dunsany, but it always seemed a bit more than that.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Nice little gem of info. As to Lovecraft... his prose tends to be over some kind of top, although I did enjoy reading his works years ago.
ReplyDeleteThat series of Charles Platt interviews are pretty good. There are a couple of collections. Apparently Platt himself isn't beloved by some SFF writers but he really captured a lot of them at an interesting point in history. I remember reading a good interview with Fritz Leiber.
ReplyDeleteI *think* Robert Silverberg pointed out the CAS influence as well in his introduction to Dying Earth? Will have to check it out.
ReplyDeleteCAS, and I love CAS, you can tell, reading his writing, that it is an antique literature. His prose, his themes, in many of his works feel like 1930. If I remember right - Lovecraft, too, can feel a bit dated: although less so and for different reasons - to the point where (and its been a long time: I need to re read Lovecraft to reinforce or refute the opinion) he seems a bit more timeless, but you still get a bit of novelty out of the period diction.
ReplyDeleteR. E. Howard and Poul Anderson, though? They might as well be in the room with you right now breathing their yarns hot into your face. Great influences, all!
heh, everyone says HPL can't write, but they all like the cosmic horror.
ReplyDeleteif you are gonna steal, at least acknowledge where ya stole it
A lot of the "akshully, Lovecraft couldn't even write!" stuff is based on his earlier work, which was indeed awkward in places. For some reason, with Lovecraft people tend to break the rule of assessing a writer based on his best work and condemn him on his worst.
Deleteagreed. also, I wish I could fail like that. 85 years after his death, he is on peoples T-shirts for his writing.
DeleteI think it's possible to thread the needle and acknowledge HPL's vast influence on modern horror, to enjoy his stories, and to also realize that he was not a particularly strong writer who often lapsed into self-parody.
ReplyDeletesure, just like every other writer.
DeleteI don't understand that comment at all. Are you saying that all writers are not particularly strong writers who lapse into self parody?
Deletepretty much. see Stephen King. Hey look! another story about a drunk writer who has a great wife who takes care of him who discovers something bad.
DeleteHe had some good early books, especially when he had more contact with normal humans., but it feels like his last, I dunno 20 books are all about alcoholic writers with amazing wives.
so yeah. if everyone has a book in them, maybe they only have ONE book in them.
I would agree with Vance's assessment of Lovecraft. When Smith used obscure words, it felt like they were very carefully chosen to convey a sense of antiquity. When Lovecraft used them, it felt like he was trying to get his money's worth out of his thesaurus.
ReplyDeleteFor all my love of his work, Lovecraft certainly had flaws as a writer, but I didn't get that feeling from him. I got it from a much later writer Stephen R. Donaldson. Words like "preterite" and "jerrid" seemed out of place, and would be reused every fifty pages or so.
DeleteI’ve received this feeling from other authors too, including CAS, where he uses an antique word in place of a similar, more familiar word, to no apparent benefit.
DeleteAnd there’s worse than repeating words every fifty pages or so. I distinctly recall Hope Mirrlees’ overuse of “pleached” in Lud-in-the-Mist or R. E. Howard’s repetition of “coping” something like four times over the course of a few pages in the Tower of the Elephant (what, he couldn’t think of another way to indicate Conan was on top of a wall, or was he just getting good use out of his Word-of-the-Day calendar?).
In CAS's case, it seemed to me that he just knew so many words that he could select the exact one to give the right meaning and the right sound. I've never read Mirlees, and never noticed it in REH's writing.
DeleteThanks for posting the link to that interview; the whole thing was very interesting. I notice, however, that you omitted his qualification originally in the middle of the extract above, halfway down the left side of page 12: “But it [Smith’s writing] only influenced The Dying Earth.”
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction. That's what I get for typing too quickly. I should update the original post accordingly.
DeleteWeird that this post disappears for a few days. I was wondering what happened to it, or if I had just imagined it
ReplyDeleteLovecraft is iconic; a legend. And such critiques of his prose aren't wrong despite that.
ReplyDeleteHe is, to use a metaphor the general public would only scratch its head over, the Dave Arneson of cosmic horror: The visionary idea man who wasn't necessarily cut out to best embody those ideas out on the page.