XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.english.usage
On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 10:49:59 +1000, Peter Moylan
<
peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
On 22/06/22 02:08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
characterisation:
Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette
began to glow and foulder like the small scar-
let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrant spirals,
like incense from an altar of pagany, across
the high auroral flames that soared from the
setting of the giant sun.
That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.
I once bought a book of short stories that featured some by Clark
Ashton Smith, and gave up in disgust. It was really crap writing.
Thirty yeasrs later someone told me, in the context of a discussion on
new religious movements (NRMs), that there were some who believed in
the religions and deities propounded by a fiction writer called
Lovecraft, and in particular they believed that there really was a
book called the Necronomicon, kept in a vault in the Miskatonic
University.
Out of curiosity I read a couple of Lovecraft's stories, and found, as
my informant had reported, that some were not bad and some were dreck.
And gradually it dawned on me that Clark Ashton Smith belonged to the
same school -- and the same genre. I suppose one could call them the
"Eldritch" chool, because that's a word they like to use a lot, or
alot as their fans might write it.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web:
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog:
http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
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