Clark Ashton Smith Reading 'The Dark Eidolon' again recently reminded me why it's one of my favourite Ashton Smith stories ('The Last Incantation' being another). There are no heroes, no happy ending, no redemption, no hope. The characters are inexorably dragged onward and downward by their own obsessions, weaknesses and mistakes, culminating in a great big fucked up mess. Nobody wins. It is a relentlessly bleak tale of stupid, petty, and very human vengeance.
There are some wonderful images, ideas, and phrases here: "a dark liquid full of star-cold lights" and the sudden appearance of Namirrha's "house" (not a palace, a sinister citadel, or anything so clichéd) to name but two examples. There's a fundamental dreamlike weirdness at work here that I can't quite place but find utterly compelling.
M. John Harrison is quoted (in my edition of 'The Emperor of Dreams') as saying that C.A.S. "helped point the way to the hard-edged British fantasy of the 1960s and '70s". Having read the likes of Harrison's 'Viriconium' stories and also the works of Michael Moorcock (who I would also count as a huge influence) I can definately see the truth in this statement, but I think Ashton Smith's stories are also very worthy of the attentions of current day readers and writers. He deserves to be read and rated a lot more highly than he is.
People keep telling me that the New Weird is "dead", whatever the hell that means - well, I think that if that's the case then now is a more appropriate time than ever to embrace all that the "old" Weird has to offer.
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