Vance on CAS and HPL

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.

Lovecraftian Inspirations

There's a lot one could say on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, but the difficulty comes in finding something to say that others -- or oneself -- haven't already said on similar occasions in the past. In some sense, that's a testament to the huge debt we all owe the Old Gent: almost anything we say about him has already been said many times before, probably more eloquently and more originally than anything we can possibly say ourselves.

And yet I don't think that should stop us from making the effort, no matter how tritely or banally we might do so. I'm a firm believer in honoring the achievements of one's forebears, particularly those forebears on whom one's present efforts depend heavily. That's clearly the case with H.P. Lovecraft, without whose writings, I am quite convinced, this hobby we enjoy would be very different, not least of all because, like us, he inspired others to follow in his footsteps -- to take up pens or sit at typewriters (or computers) and give free rein to their imaginations. Among those writers who count HPL as an important influence is Fritz Leiber, whose Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser began their existence in a story ("The Adept's Gambit"), an early version of which Lovecraft himself read and critiqued. Imagine how just this little hobby of ours might have changed if Leiber had never taken up writing or had never created the Twain?

Ultimately, I think this is Lovecraft's greatest contribution to posterity -- his inspiration to others. Whatever his other virtues, HPL was a great friend, colleague, and mentor to his fellow writers, a trait he first developed during his days as an amateur journalist, where he made the acquaintance of many people who would become his lifelong comrades and where he found his Muse as a writer of weird fiction. It's in his tireless support and encouragement of others to create, as he did, that I find Lovecraft at his most admirable and it's here that I most hope to emulate him.

In remembering Lovecraft's time as an amateur journalist, I was reminded of an address he gave in 1921, entitled "What Amateurdom and I Have Done for Each Other," in which he discusses his joining the United Amateur Press Association and his activities since. I'm reminded of it, because HPL closes with a couple of paragraphs that, except for their specific details, could just as easily apply to my own feelings about my involvement in the online old school community. He wrote:

What Amateur Journalism has brought me is a circle of persons among whom I am not altogether alien -- persons who possess scholastic leanings, yet who are not as a body so arrogant with achievement that a struggler is frowned upon. In daily life one meets few of these -- one's accidental friends are either frankly unliterary or hopelessly "arrived" and academic. The more completely one is absorbed in his aspirations, the more one needs a circle of intellectual kin; so that amateurdom has an unique and perpetual function to fulfill. Today, whatever genuine friends I have are amateur journalists, sympathetic scholars, and writers I should never have known but for the United Amateur Press Association. They alone have furnished me with the incentive to explore broader and newer fields of thought, to ascertain what particular labours are best suited to me, and to give to my writings the care and finish demanded of all work destined for perusal by others than the author.

After all, these remarks form a confession rather than a statement, for they are the record of a most unequal exchange whereby I am the gainer. What I have given Amateur Journalism is regrettably little; what Amateur Journalism has given me is -- life itself.

I know exactly how Lovecraft felt, even if, in retrospect, it's clear that HPL gave to the world even more than he took from it. As a recipient of his inspirational largess, I can only say, "Thank you, Mr Lovecraft. For everything."

A Crazy Idea

Here's the thing: like most gamers I want to be a writer. Technically, I already am a writer and have been for years. Besides this blog, I've written quite a lot of gaming material. But that's not the same as being a writer, by which I mean a writer of fiction.

I've got a lot of ideas for short stories and, as any aficionado of swords-and-sorcery literature will tell you, short stories are the native form of the genre. The problem is that there aren't a lot of outlets for short stories anymore. There are a handful of magazines out there who are theoretically interested in swords-and-sorcery tales, but it's just a handful and many of them tend to have slush piles so tall that the odds of breaking into print are slim. On the book publishing side of the equation, fantasy generally means interminably long books that are part of an interminably long series that started out as trilogies and then just never ended. I have no interest in contributing to that literary miscarriage, even if I had stories I could somehow extend in perpetuity (which I don't).

What I do have, though, are some ideas for a series of short stories about a failed wizard's apprentice named Ya'govian of Volmar. What I think might make my stories interesting -- and dare I say unique in the annals of swords-and-sorcery -- is that Ya'govian is a family man, married to a respectable priestess and father to three children. Because of his wife's position, Ya'govian doesn't lack for much in the material sense, but, as he approaches middle age, he's growing bored of his cosseted lifestyle and looks back on his failed apprenticeship with increasing regret -- which is naturally how his adventures begin.

In any case, what I plan on doing is posting these stories here once I write them. I have a large enough readership that I ought to be able to gauge how much people like what I'm writing. If there's actual interest, which is to say, if my readers think my writing isn't terrible, I might then be able to collect these short stories together and do some kind of print on demand edition or even try and sell them to a "real" publisher. The point is I'll be using this blog as a testing ground for my fiction every now and again. It won't be often and the first installment might not come for a month or more, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up so they won't be surprised when Ya'govian of Volmar makes his appearance on this site in the future.