We must not forget that Ashton Smith was living if not right inside, then certainly not far from, a small town already celebrated for its gossipmongers when Ambrose Bierce was residing there, off and on, during the 1880s, just before Smith would be born in January of 1893. In such circumstances as these, a discreet young man would not go out of his way to advertise his amorous and sexual preferences and proclivities—even when they were of the accepted heterosexual variety—if he could help it! Such a stance or attitude on the part of Ashton Smith does not by any means indicate that the noncorporeal aspects of love did not have considerable importance for him. Rather, he had clearly chosen a method whereby he could enjoy those aspects of a mature loving relationship which possessed the greatest value for him, and also whereby he could minimize, biologically and socially, those potentially negative possibilities of such a regular relationship with a woman.
For anyone who can read between the lines of Smith’s letters to Sterling for the first half of the 1920s—and who can correlate his behavior vis-à-vis his women friends with the amorous duplicity or two-timing on the one hand, as well as with the discreet cuckoldry on the other, such as he describes in his ironic-romantic fiction—it is quite obvious that Smith was directly writing out of his own life, or was directly and strictly extrapolating therefrom, when he was writing these particular stories. In other words, these richly ironical tales can make perfectly decent claims on our attention as examples of oldest but genuine realism. It is therefore appropriately ironical that, when they were finally published as a group, they should have been greeted as, inter alia, “trite tearjerkers.” Making love to married women continued to claim Smith’s creative attention to some degree even after he had turned his principal energies to writing prose fantasies sometime between the middle and latter 1920s. Why otherwise would he have composed, or completed, such a tale as “Checkmate” in late 1930 when such a type of comparatively realistic fiction had become much less salable for him than the type of prose fantasies that he was creating for and selling to Weird Tales, and by then with undoubted popular and artistic success? While it is extremely dubious that he would have gone on to become a major realist of any type—if we may judge at least by such marginal prose—yet Smith’s ironic-romantic fiction will probably remain as a fascinating and not unfruitful byroad that marketing circumstances alone caused him to pursue no further than he did.
For permission to quote excerpts from the letters of Clark Ashton Smith to George Sterling, cordial acknowledgement is hereby made to the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection / The New York Public Library / Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. The New York Public Library is the physical proprietor and custodian of the Sterling-Smith correspondence, together with related MSS. and art-work. For further permission to quote these same excerpts, grateful acknowledgement is likewise made to “CASiana Literary Enterprises,” representing the literary Estate of Clark Ashton Smith.
Note
1. Additional non-fantastic fiction includes “The Parrot” (1930) and “A Copy of Burns” (1930), both collected in Strange Shadows. Both are “ironic” rather than “ironic-romantic” —Ed.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
THE SORCERER DEPARTS
A BIOGRAPHY OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH
SOME GENERAL REMARKS ON SMITH’S POETRY AND PROSE
THE SORCERER DEPARTS
AFTERWORD
THE ANIMATED SWORD
THE RED TURBAN
PRINCE ALCOUZ AND THE MAGICIAN
THE MALAY KRISE
THE GHOST OF MOHAMMED DIN
THE MAHOUT
THE RAJAH AND THE TIGER
THE FLIRT
THE PERFECT WOMAN
A PLATONIC ENTANGLEMENT
THE EXPERT LOVER
THE PARROT
A COPY OF BURNS
CHECKMATE
THE INFERNAL STAR
Chapter I: The Finding of the Amulet
Chapter II: The Wearing of the Amulet
Chapter III: “I am Avalzant, the Warden of the Fiery Change.”
Chapter IV: The Passage to Pnidleethon
DAWN OF DISCORD
HOUSE OF THE MONOCEROS
THE DEAD WILL CUCKOLD YOU
THE HASHISH-EATER; OR, THE APOCALYPSE OF EVIL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
O AMOR ATQUE REALITAS!
FOREWORD
THE SORCERER DEPARTS
A BIOGRAPHY OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH
SOME GENERAL REMARKS ON SMITH’S POETRY AND PROSE
THE SORCERER DEPARTS
AFTERWORD
THE ANIMATED SWORD
THE RED TURBAN
PRINCE ALCOUZ AND THE MAGICIAN
THE MALAY KRISE
THE GHOST OF MOHAMMED DIN
THE MAHOUT
THE RAJAH AND THE TIGER
SOMETHING NEW
THE FLIRT
THE PERFECT WOMAN
A PLATONIC ENTANGLEMENT
THE EXPERT LOVER
A COPY OF BURNS
CHECKMATE
THE INFERNAL STAR
Chapter I: The Finding of the Amulet
Chapter II: The Wearing of the Amulet
Chapter III: “I am Avalzant, the Warden of the Fiery Change.”
Chapter IV: The Passage to Pnidleethon
DAWN OF DISCORD
HOUSE OF THE MONOCEROS
THE DEAD WILL CUCKOLD YOU
THE HASHISH-EATER; OR, THE APOCALYPSE OF EVIL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
O AMOR ATQUE REALITAS!