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Post by deuce on Mar 5, 2018 15:06:09 GMT -5
"Zothique...the idea of this last continent was suggested by the 'occult' traditions regarding Pushkara, which will allegedly become the home of the 7th root-race, the last race of mankind. However, I doubt if Theosophists would care for my conception, since the Zothiqueans as I have depicted them are a rather sinful and iniquitous lot, showing little sign of the spiritual evolution promised for humanity in its final cycles. Rosicrucianism seems to have some similar traditions regarding the lost continents."
-- CAS to L. Sprague de Camp, October 24, 1950
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Post by bobbyderie on Mar 5, 2018 22:16:43 GMT -5
I really do need to put all the REH-HPL-CAS-EHP Theosophical material together one day for an article. Just haven't had the time.
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Post by deuce on Mar 6, 2018 11:06:59 GMT -5
Klarkash-Ton's reaction to HPL not getting a book deal with Knopf...
"If I were a practising wizard, like Namirrha or Malygris or Nathaire, I’d devise a behemothian Sending and dispatch it to his office. The Sending would include a brace of penanggalans, and about a dozen rokurokubis with jaws elastic as their necks, and a regiment of poltergeists equipped with sledge-hammers. Callicantzaris and vrykolakes and barguests and Himalayan Snow-Men and Eskimo tupileks and the more unpleasant Aztec gods would form the main body; and a mass formation of shoggoths would bring up the rearguard. After their passing, the Knopf headquarters would be one with the middens of Nineveh."
-- Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, October 1933
C'mon, Clark, tell us how you really feel.
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Post by deuce on Mar 7, 2018 12:12:44 GMT -5
"I have been reading some borrowed books by [Algernon] Blackwood—“The Garden of Survival,” and “Tongues of Fire,” both comparatively recent productions of his. I like them, particularly some of the tales in the latter, but imagine that they are not quite his best work. The specimen in the Modern Library anthology was absolutely the worst by him that I have encountered."
-- Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, March 1932
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Post by deuce on Mar 22, 2018 0:44:41 GMT -5
So, what does a rather atypical Tom Hanks movie, The 'Burbs, have to do with the Emperor of Dreams? Holy Kevin Bacon, Batman! Turns out, one of the actors, Brother Theodore, was a good friend of Clark Ashton Smith when he lived in Pacific Grove. Brother Theodore (real name: Theodore Gottlieb) was born into a German-Jewish family and was imprisoned in Dachau until he signed over his family's property to the Third Reich for one Reichsmark. He came to the United States with the help of Albert Einstein. While working as a janitor at Stanford, he once beat thirty professors at chess at the same time. He later became known for his dramatic monologues adapting Poe. He was also the voice of Gollum in the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit. In the last years of his life he was a staple on David Letterman.
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Post by Char-Vell on Mar 22, 2018 6:31:33 GMT -5
I did not know Brother Theodore was pals with CAS. That's cool.
I remember seeing Brother Theodore going nuts on the old Disinformation show, it was freakin' great.
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Post by deuce on Mar 29, 2018 19:00:18 GMT -5
"Here, by the way, is a recent portrait-sketch of our Lord Tsathoggua, which I made for you the other day. My Indian [Native American] wood-cutter saw it...and said instantly: 'That's one of the Old Boys.' He then proceeded to narrate a tribal [Maidu, whose tribe, among other areas, were located on the outskirts of Smith's hometown of Auburn] about a young squaw who was carried away by some prehuman entity into a cavern. Nearly a year later, the squaw emerged to the light, bringing with her an infant that was half human and half something else."
-- CAS to HP Lovecraft, October 1933
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Post by deuce on Apr 7, 2018 15:53:03 GMT -5
"I saw Kong, which came to Auburn a few nights ago. A first-rate primeval nightmare! The island part appealed to me very much, and I wish there had been more of it. As far as the human actors went, the island chieftain was by far the best. But Kong himself was magnificent—I don't see how the effect was obtained! I was sorry when the airplanes got him in the end."
-- Clark Ashton Smith to Lester Anderson, 20 June, 1933
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Post by deuce on Apr 20, 2018 0:51:02 GMT -5
"I agree with [George] Sterling, [Benjamin] de Casseres, and others, who think that my strongest and most distinctive poems are the ones in a vein of speculative cosmic phantasy...I have more than a streak of the pioneer or adventurer in me, and hate familiar fields and beaten paths. My ambition is to explore the Hyperborea beyond Hyperborea."
-- CAS to Jack Lyman, October 26, 1926
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Post by deuce on Apr 23, 2018 11:56:32 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 28, 2018 3:30:57 GMT -5
Regarding his soapstone carvings: "I have worked entirely on carving since December, and so far have turned out about twenty-six new pieces. Only a few of these are grotesques, since I have got to experimenting with the ornamental possibilities of my materials and have made small flower-vases, trays, liquor-cups, candlesticks and even rings and a brooch on a scarf-pin. Also there are six tobacco- pipes, three of which have been disposed of. One of the remaining pipes is a grotesque which I call Water Wizard: the bowl representing the wizard' s head, and the mouthpiece his familiar in the shape of a black fish. The stem is made from a rare species of bamboo with yellow and purplish mottlings. I am planning more pipes, one to represent Tsathoggua, and the other an inhabitant of Innsmouth. Among the other new carvings I have a figurine entitled Primal Fish, which I am pricing at $8.00; a bust entitled Visitor from Outside at $6.50; and a half-length statuette, Progeny of Azathoth, which is a little on the lines of The Elder God, though with more animation in face and tentacles; this I am pricing at $8.00".
-- Clark Ashton SmithHaving one of those pipes would be too cool.
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Post by deuce on May 1, 2018 11:05:25 GMT -5
"[Robert E.] Howard’s death startled and shocked me as it must have shocked everyone else. It is understandable but infinitely tragic and regrettable . . . Sometimes, though, the anticipation of an event is more unbearable than the event itself; and I wonder if Howard might not have pulled through if the nurse had been less frank. I admired [R.H.] Barlow’s memorial sonnet greatly. Your prose tribute, and that of [E. Hoffmann] Price, were fine."
-- Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft 27 November, 1936
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Post by deuce on May 2, 2018 0:23:00 GMT -5
Klarkash-Ton was not averse to a bottle of good vintage...
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Post by deuce on May 2, 2018 23:41:55 GMT -5
"Anything that the human imagination can conceive of becomes thereby a part of life, and poetry, such as mine, properly considered, is not an 'escape,' but an extension."
-- CAS to George Sterling, October 27, 1926
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Post by keith on May 4, 2018 5:39:50 GMT -5
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