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"...And so I write, as I was coerced and I have come to enjoy, a distraction from those brooding and unfocused fears of things beneath that idlenes brings.."
Category All / All
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File Size 98.9 kB
Perhaps because he was a much darker, a much more sardonic writer than Lovecraft. For all the bleakness of his worldview, Lovecraft, at heart, was a gentle writer who rarely killed off his protagonists, who rarely pursued the bleak implications of his concepts to their final conclusions. In contrast, Smith wiped out his characters with Jacobean fervour, and his entire universe might as well be a vast black joke at the expense of human pride and feeling.
At the same time, Smith was a much more precise and disciplined writer than Lovecraft. He had a keener eye for physical detail and a steadier sense of pace; his work is concentrated, and therefore demands a greater degree of concentrated reading.
Smith also had the great misfortune to be in the wrong time and the wrong place; in essence, he was a 19th-Century French Decadent who wrote in English while living in America during the 20th Century... a time, a place, and a people that considered Decadence too mannered, too intellectual, and too bleak. Fame and critical attention often depend far more on sheer blind luck than on skill and vision!
Mark
At the same time, Smith was a much more precise and disciplined writer than Lovecraft. He had a keener eye for physical detail and a steadier sense of pace; his work is concentrated, and therefore demands a greater degree of concentrated reading.
Smith also had the great misfortune to be in the wrong time and the wrong place; in essence, he was a 19th-Century French Decadent who wrote in English while living in America during the 20th Century... a time, a place, and a people that considered Decadence too mannered, too intellectual, and too bleak. Fame and critical attention often depend far more on sheer blind luck than on skill and vision!
Mark
In a nutshell - i disagree with you because i belive that everything can be 'brought over', as some showbiz-ers say, even if it isn't popular or mainstream at the moment (otherwise the worlld would never change, would it?) So Clarckashton just did not promote his work enough, regretfuully, or his agent was just bad... Plus, I'm a fan of Moorcock (though i never can remember his surname) and its derivate, Warhammer games' fantasy, so his pessimism doesn't seem so extreme to me:) (And Elric and Warhammer sell really well and stay popular since decades - agents' powah!-)
I like the sombre greys and purples, the curved architectural forms, the almost aquatic murk of prehistoric mist and distance.
Best of all, I think, is the sense of an alien milieu. The most famous illustration of the story, Howard Brown's cover for the June 1936 issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES, depicted these beings very well yet failed to convey a sense of non-human architecture, a sense of time and space far removed from our own. Brown was an excellent artist, one of the best pulp illustrators in the 1930s; but in this particular case, and in this particular matter, I consider your picture a greater success.
Mark
Best of all, I think, is the sense of an alien milieu. The most famous illustration of the story, Howard Brown's cover for the June 1936 issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES, depicted these beings very well yet failed to convey a sense of non-human architecture, a sense of time and space far removed from our own. Brown was an excellent artist, one of the best pulp illustrators in the 1930s; but in this particular case, and in this particular matter, I consider your picture a greater success.
Mark
I saw that picture when looking for source material. Although my first taste of the Yith was in the Call of Cthulhu game by bethesda (hey, it was good for something, right?) I later felt a little bad bad about looking instead of just trying to draw from how it was described. :) It feels a little derivative now, and from much greater illustrations too.
(Translated from Yithic)
"...Once it is safely contained, hang the mobile over the pot so that the figures hang around the sides of the pot; this will distract it to the degree that it will not know it is being baked. Furthermore, if, at the moment of solidification, several of the eyes are not at the sides but in the middle of the batter, the effect of the Shoggoth soufflé is greatly enhanced, as the flavour of one of the eyes can mean the difference between a gulp and a savour when taking a sample..."
*glances at cover* "Cooking for Cthulhu"
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Automatic fave, this. H.P. Lovecraft forever!!!!!!
"...Once it is safely contained, hang the mobile over the pot so that the figures hang around the sides of the pot; this will distract it to the degree that it will not know it is being baked. Furthermore, if, at the moment of solidification, several of the eyes are not at the sides but in the middle of the batter, the effect of the Shoggoth soufflé is greatly enhanced, as the flavour of one of the eyes can mean the difference between a gulp and a savour when taking a sample..."
*glances at cover* "Cooking for Cthulhu"
________________________________________________________________________________________
Automatic fave, this. H.P. Lovecraft forever!!!!!!
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