The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Penguin Classics)

This is so cool my eyeballs are bubbling! How awesome to see a beautiful painting by Smith on the cover of a Penguin Classics! I wou'd have preferred, perhaps, "The Basilisk" or his gorgeous painting of "Hyperborea," but this, although subtle in its excellent use of colours, is a lovely example of Smith's folk art style. Penguin asked S. T. to write an in-depth Introduction, knowing that this book will serve as first-reading of Smith for hundreds of new readers throughout the world, and the Introduction is quite good, shewing in part the Lovecraftian influence yet pointing out that Smith's art was unique unto himself, as it must be with all genuine artists of genius. The selection is very fine, and I am happy to see that the Penguin editors insisted that the extraordinary poem, "The Hashish-Eater; or The Apocalypse of Evil," was included after S. T. fear'd there would not be room in the wordage allow'd. One of my favourite features of the magnificent H. P. Lovecraft volumes from Penguin is the fascinating and informative Notes at the end of each book, discussing at times what inspir'd Lovecraft to write his story and where the work was first publish'd, &c; and in THE DARK EIDOLON AND OTHER FANTASIES we have a generous amount of notes explaining origin of story and containing snatches of correspondence from CAS and E'ch-Pi-El. In the annotations for "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" we find many delightful lines from HPL admiring the story, then in the notes for "The Last Incantation" we have snippets of a letter by Smith to Donald Wandrei; and additional quotations from Lovecraft's letters appear in the notes of further tales, all of which add to the history of these fantasies in a fascinating way. This is a perfect edition of Smith, and its publication will bring his poetry and prose to a new world-wide readership. Hopefully the book will be such a success that Penguin will ask S. T. for a second volume! I have posted the complete Contents of this Penguin Classics edition in a discussion at the Clark Ashton Smith Forum here at Amazon. [postscriptum: I am especially curious about ye Kindle edition of this book, for I don't own a Kindle, preferring always to read in book form. If you have purchas'd ye Kindle edition, I hope you will share your thoughts concerning it with a review here at Amazon. To see ye entire Contents, click on the "Look Inside" feature of ye Kindle edition.]

Almost any collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories will be great per force, and as such this is a fine collection. The introduction by Joshi, the presiding Lovecraft/Weird Tales scholar is excellent. The key feature of this collection, along with the scholarly introduction, is the fine cover art, which is a piece of Clark Ashton Smith's own art. Smith experimented in the plastic arts in addition to the literary, turning his hand to sculpture, drawing, and paint. Most of those experiments were unsuccessful in my estimation, consisting of bizarre macabre idols and such. This cover art is perhaps his best piece, and while primitive, fulfills its purpose well--but perhaps discordantly, as his stories tend to leave a somewhat darker impression in my mind than the jaunty picture! This pic would suit Jack Vance better. As a selection, this book is not really the best of CAS's tales in my opinion, but it does contain some of his highlights: Dark Eidolon, Last Incantation, Double Shadow, etc. Penguin collections attempt to give an author's "range" rather than the absolute best stories of a given author. This selection leaves out some of CAS's best stories, such as Necromancy in Naat in favor of some run of the mill horror tales that Stephen King or someone would have done better. The best of CAS is probably in the Zothique cycle, but he is always superior in fantasy than stock horror such Devotee of Evil. On the other hand, this collection does contain City of Singing Flame, a favorite of Harlan Ellison, but sort of an oddball that doesn't fit in to many of the other CAS collections. The book contains a helping of CAS's poetry. CAS, like Poe before him, considered himself a poet before a writer, but I find his poetry macabre and bereft of much poetic sentiment. In some cases, like the Last Incantation, his prose stories have more poetic sentiment than his verse. Still, we must thank Joshi for making a large sampling of CAS's poetry available to us at a very reasonable price. Almost any printing of CAS's work tends to go up in value after it goes out of print, so buy with confidence!

... give it a shot. Smith was a colleague of Lovecraft's, and many of these short stories echo the moods of Lovecraft's "cosmic horror" genre. I don't say you'll ever tire of reading HPL, but this might add variety to your reading along those lines. I found the short stories quite enjoyable, and occasional footnotes often added background or interest to the texts they annotate. The appeared in appendices, though, not on the pages they describe, and had no page references in the back of the book - it became tedious to figure out where to find a footnote that struck my interest. And, as much as I liked the short stories, the 'prose poems' and poetry did little for me. The former seemed more like notebook extracts, sketches of ideas for future development, and not full concepts developed to fruition. The latter, Smith's poetry, did nothing for me. I can't criticize Smith for that, since early public-school misery damaged my enjoyment of poetry beyond recovery. That's a "me" issue, not Smith's. Still, for me, those pages might as well have been blank. I'll look for more of Smith's work, but I admit I won't go too far out of my way for it. -- wiredweird

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Kindle version of this book so I have no idea what these dunces below are talking about their iPhone probably doesn’t work and they shouldn’t blame it on Amazon or Clark Ashton Smith. I assure you there is nothing wrong with the eBook, having read the entire thing on my Kindle. User error, perhaps? This is a fabulous collection of fabulous tales, and collects stories from the Zothique, Hyperborea, and Averiogne cycles, as well as some other stories to provide a wide scope and breadth of the authors work, which of course also includes selections of his prose poems and poetry, making it a truly unique and expansive collection of Smith’s thought and writing. S.T. Joshi’s introduction is superb and discusses the chrysalis of Smith from auto-didact, to poet, to Weird Tales author, and is itself a great contribution to supernatural literature. The collection is paced very well and I would recommend reading from start to finish to appreciate the arc in the selection, with the mystifying title story as the climax, and albeit, one of the most stirring and deeply confounding and transcendent story I have read. Clark Ashton Smith’s evocative prose leaps off the page and takes you to worlds that are beyond imaginig. Some of his stories are horrific, some are weirdly beautiful, and all of them will transport you in some way from the mundane to the fantastical. Smith is a wizard in the way he can suspend disbelief and ensnare even the most skeptical reader in his realms of fantasy, as his words are like potions.

Where to begin? Well, since this is intended as introductory volume of Clark Ashton Smith's literary work, perhaps a few brief remarks about Smith himself are in order. Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet, short story writer, sculptor, and painter. He is primarily remembered today as a friend and colleague of H.P. Lovecraft (of Cthulhu Mythos fame) and Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan), but, although his writing resembles that of both men, he was most assuredly his own man, both as a writer and an individual. Primarily a poet, Smith took to writing fiction, in part to earn income to support his ailing parents. Writing mostly in a genre that would now probably be described as dark fantasy fiction, his work was perhaps more aptly referred to by the great speculative fiction writer Fritz Leiber as simply sui generis. On to the book itself. This volume is divided into five sections: a mid-length (15-20 page) introduction by editor S.T. Joshi, a lengthy section (about 250 pages, comprising the majority of the book) of short stories, a brief section (about 20 pages) of prose poetry, a longer section (about 60 pages) of non-prose poetry, and about 30 pages of explanatory notes. The short story selection is excellent, and probably does as good of a job is as possible in a relatively constrained space to demonstrate to the Smith neophyte the range of the author's fiction. The prose poetry is, for lack of a better word, delightful; Joshi has referred to Smith as the finest prose poet in the English language, and, after reading the selections included here, I think the reader will find it very hard to argue the point. I found the non-prose poems to be slightly more problematic, as Smith's (in)famous fondness for recondite words is more readily on display here than elsewhere; nevertheless, there is much to admire here, and a work like his long poem "The Hashish-Eater" probably surpasses anything I have ever read in terms of sheer phantasmagoric imagination. Finally, the footnotes, as they always are in Joshi-edited works, are excellent. Should you purchase this? If you are a fan of writers like Dunsany, Lovecraft, Howard, and Tolkien, the answer is a resounding "yes". Smith is most certainly not to all tastes, but if you enjoy his work, you will almost certainly be an admirer of his for life.

Clark Ashton Smith is a master of early sci-fi and fantasy writing, you will not be disappointed with his work. Book came in perfect condition.

Clark Ashton Smith is a giant of weird tales. And the Dark Eidolon doesn’t disappoint. But (BUT!) this edition badly needs an editor to clean up the formatting. There are words mashed together on almost every page which constantly pulled me out of the flow of the story.

I’m at a bit of a loss of words as to why CAS isn’t a household name (or at the very least a household name among horror and fantasy reading circles). This Penguin Classics collection blew me away—whether it be his short stories, prose poems, or poems. CAS is undefinable; I cannot identify any concrete formula to his greatness, other than some ingrained, imbedded, unteachable command of the English language, who unapologetically uses words that you’ll never lay your gaze upon again. Perhaps that makes him inaccessible for a general audience (if you’re a type of person that needs to Google every word that you don’t understand, instead of surmising one’s deductive instinct); but if I could generalize, I’d say CAS is the Cormac McCarthy of dark, cosmic fantasy, and Hitchcockian, cosmic horror. His words paint pictures and are so vivid you almost don’t understand. Almost. Somehow, barely, you do. And it’s horrific; abysmal; phantasmagorical; beautiful; and original.

best

This guy is one of the founders of fantasy and weird tales. When you read these stories you can feel as if you are a part of it, no matter how strange and bizarre it is. He really is that good a writer and it's a pity that he's not that well known today.

Leu Lovecraft? Gostou? Tem interesse pelo gênero? Clark Ashton Smith é o próximo autor pra você. Embora no Brasil existam poucas edições que tragam a obra desse autor traduzida, vale a pena conferir seu trabalho, organizado com maestria nesse compilado de contos e poemas. A escrita dá um pouco de trabalho em alguns momentos mas garanto que até mesmo os americanos têm dificuldade com alguns dos substantivos que o autor usa (bastante parecido com Lovecraft nesse aspecto, diga-se de passagem).

Clark Ashton Smith perhaps first a Poet and only afterward a Writer, which you realize immediately. His stories are capricious, beautifully written, eloquent and extremely imaginative, I have to admit I had to open the encyclopedia more often to look up some words. I recommend it!

Item was as expected and arrived quickly and in good condition. Great read, thanks!