Author’s Note: Here’s an overview of the writer’s seminar I did with Katy
Script:
Interviewer-Today we have a special guest here on the KeyboardCat show, please give a warm welcome to the ghost of CLARK ASHTON SMITH
Mr. Smith, thank you so much for joining us.
CAS – How kind you are to have me.
Interviewer – To start us off, would you tell us a bit about yourself? Just whatever comes to mind. Tell us who you are.
CAS – Surely, I was born in Long Valley California in 1893 and I died in Pacific Grove California in the year of 1961.
Interviewer – Tell us about your typical writing. What kind of genre do you usually write in?
CAS – Usually quite a wide variety, I’ve written both short stories and poetry. They’re usually in the fantasy, science fiction or horror genre. I was regularly published in various weird fiction magazines alongside writers such as HP Lovecraft.
Interviewer – Would you care to explain what weird fiction is?
CAS – Weird fiction is the genre that I’m the most well known for, it’s a genre of fiction that places characters in scenarios that are vastly different from their own world. This element is also seen in other authors such as HP Lovecraft, who is probably one of the most well known weird fiction authors.
Interviewer – Considering that you wrote in the same genre as Lovecraft, would you say that he influenced you in some way?
CAS – Yes, actually, he was one of my greatest influences. In fact, I actually had a close relationship with him. He contacted me after I published a work, he wrote me a letter saying that he was impressed with my work. After that, we developed a close relationship and stayed in contact for fifteen years, although we never got the chance to meet in person.
Interviewer – Who were some other authors that influenced you? Were they all similar to Lovecraft?
CAS – For the most part. I was one of the original members of the Lovecraft circle, so many of the authors that influenced me held some similarities to him. Some of the authors were Robert E. Stone and Robert Bloch. As a child I also read some of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and the works of Edgar Allen Poe, although they weren’t part of the Lovecraft circle. Some other books I enjoyed were The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels.
Interviewer – It sounds like you did a lot of reading, were you good at language arts in school?
CAS – Actually, I had severe agoraphobia as a child and didn’t get the chance to attend a proper high school. So because I had a lot of spare time on my hands, I spent a lot of it reading.
Interviewer – That’s unusual, did you ever attend any sort of school.
CAS – I did go to a grammar school for eight years, but I would mainly consider myself to be a self taught writer.
Interviewer – Wow, so considering how you didn’t have that much education, but became a well praised writer admired by Lovecraft, what would you say was the secret to your success?
CAS – For one, I read a lot, and for a time I isolated myself from the outside world, which left me alone with my thoughts. I used to write emulations of The Arabian Nights, when I was a child and because I did so much reading, I was able to have a complete story by the age of eleven.
Interviewer – How would you describe your style?
CAS – “My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.” And as you’ll see in the example poems, I’ve used a lot of allusions to Greek mythology, both of the poems in fact contain some sort of reference. Though I am likened to Lovecraft in many ways, I do use humour in some of my writing, although Lovecraft believed humour had no place in horror, and I often used language more modern than Lovecraft. I would also say that I use a lot of figurative language, to the point that the writing can be confusing for most readers.
Interviewer – Wow, it seems you have quite the poetic voice. So, have you won any awards for all of the works that you’ve done?
CAS – Unfortunately, like many writers, I didn’t garner any attention until after my death. I was recognized by some during my time, but I never did win any awards for my works, even posthumously.
Interviewer – That’s a shame. It seems you put a lot of effort into your work. Were there any hobbies you have aside from writing?
CAS – Yes, I did do a fair amount of drawing and sculpting, but it’s even less recognized than my writing, and similarly, I haven’t won any awards for it. I see you’ve incorporated some of it into the powerpoint. [indicates one of the artworks in the powerpoint]
Interviewer- Well Mr Smith, we’ll let you get back to haunting the emo kids from the spirit world, but what is one last piece of advice you have for the next generation of writers out there?
CAS- To the youth of future generations I implore you to utilize imagination as the principal instrument of composition. It matters not penmanship or ability so long as the imagination is enough to compensate. The most pivotal tool of excellence is one’s imagination.
Interviewer- Eloquently spoken. Thank you for joining us, now we banish you back to the depths from whence you came!
Significance:
Genevieve: Clark Ashton Smith was someone who relied heavily on his imagination as a writer. As you can see in both of these poems he alludes to Greek mythology and the mythological beings and deities within the myths. He also uses a lot of imagery and metaphors within his writing, in fact you could probably argue that both of these poems are a metaphor for something entirely different. The poem Artemis is about an unrequited love and the Chimera is very ambiguous, but if I were to interpret it myself I’d probably say it’s some sort of metaphor for depression or mental illness. But then again, that’s just my perspective, I could be wrong.
Overall, I think Smith serves as a good example of someone who shows the importance of someone’s imagination in their writing. Although we didn’t get our hands directly on a copy of any of his novels, even just from reading summaries of them, it’s quite obvious that many of the stories he wrote were completely outlandish. He was widely praised for his imagination by many different writers, including Lovecraft himself. So, what we took away from this, was that your imagination is probably one of your greatest assets when it comes to writing.
Katy: A primary reason to our choosing of Clark Ashton Smith to present about (other than the fact that he didn’t look like a butt) was his relation to my favourite author, H.P. Lovecraft. They posed very similar stylistically, however what differs is mood and language. Lovecraft used very archaic words and spellings of words and typically indulged in the depths of terror within the human mind. Smith, however, used contemporary language and brought a diversity of topics that Lovecraft failed to do. I award this to his scintillating use of imagination.What I’m taking away from this (other than that with a little imagination you can BS your way through anything) is to allow my mind to wander among other emotions and environments outside of drearily disturbed.
Poems:
The Chimera –
O, who will slay the last chimera, Time?
Though Love and Death have many a cunning dart—
In spite of these, and close-wrought webs of Art,
And Slumber, with a slow, Lethean lime—
Still, still he lives; and though thy feet attain
The lunar peaks of ice and crystal, he,
Some night of agonized eternity
With brazen teeth shall gnaw thy fettered brain.
Gorged with the dust of thrones and fanes destroyed—
With lidless eyes like moons of adamant,
And vaulted mouth emportalling the void,
He crouches like a passive sphinx before
Some temple-gate, or grinning, moves to grant
Thine entrance at the monarch’s golden door.
Artemis –
In the green and flowerless garden I have dreamt,
Lying beneath perennial moons apart,
Whose cypress-builded bowers
And ivy-plighted myrtles none shall part;
In the funereal maze of larch and laurel,
Across white lawns, athwart the spectral mountains,
Seen through the sighing haze
Of all the high and moon-suspended fountains,
With feet enshaded by the fruitless green
Of summer trees that bear no summer blossom;
With wintry lusters laid
Upon the mounded marble of thy bosom,
Thou dost await, O mournful, enigmatic
Image of love-bewildered Artemis,
Whose tender lips too late,
Or all too soon, have sought the wounding kiss.
Emulation (taken from Artemis):
They called her Artemis, the one confused, bewildered, and even frightened by love. Banishing those who dared to look upon her, and doing worse to those who fell in love with her. Sealing herself in a maze constructed out of cypress and stitched together by ivy, she vowed to never fall in love. No one, not Actaeon, not even Orion, could bring down the walls of her heart. The only true love she had was that of nature; instead of falling for a pair of dark eyes or a charming smile, she fell in love with the way the stars shone and the cyclical security of the seasons. With a crown woven out of larch and laurel, she is the goddess of the hunt, never to be loved, always on the horizon, fading as the moon sets.
Emulation (taken from the Betty Smith writer’s seminar):
Chaotic was a word you could put to Manhattan, New York, especially during the winter of 1949. When the snow cluttered the streets, the pond in Central Park froze over halfway, and jazz bands could be heard blaring from inside bars; chaotic was the best word to describe it. Because in this time, you’re stuck in between, half frozen, half water, strung in a limbo between adolescence and adulthood. You’re lost in the streets of Manhattan looking for a friendly face. Wanting the independence of adulthood, yet scared you’ll become a phony like the dull eyed adults. You keep asking yourself if you’re the only one confused, scared and frightened by human behavior, is there someone, anyone out there in the blinding chaos of these city lights that sees all of this? Or are you alone in this vast ocean of cigarette scented taxicabs and gleaming, brass carousels?