A Rendezvous in Averoigne: The Best Fantastic Tales of Clark Ashton Smith - Hardcover

Clark Ashton Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870541560 ISBN 13: 9780870541568

Publisher: Arkham House Publishers, 1988

Synopsis

From the vampire-cursed realm of medieval Averoigne to the time-ravaged spires of dying Zothique, the works of Clark Ashton Smith comprise a unique and imperishable legacy. A major pillar of Arkham house since 1942, Smith was a member of the Weird Tales triumvirate, including H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, who created a non-legendary golden age of American dark fantasy during the 1930s. Of these three authors, Clark Ashton Smith was the master literary sorcerer, presiding over a vast verbal apothecarium of piquant savors and precipitates. The author once defined fantastic literature as being “akin to sublime and exalted poetry, in its evocation of tremendous, non-anthropomorphic imageries,” and the stories collected herein seem to defy the capacity of the English language to render sonorous rhythms, subtle shades and nuances of meaning, awesome conjurations of exoticism and mystery. In employing his prismatic prose to erect edifices of wonder, Smith became a seminal figur

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Review:

In 1927, H. P. Lovecraft wrote about Clark Ashton Smith: "In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Mr. Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer dead or living. Who else has seen such gorgeous, luxuriant, and feverishly distorted visions of infinite spheres and multiple dimensions and lived to tell the tale?" If you relish horror or dark fantasy, and you have yet to discover Klarkash-Ton, you have a real treat in store. This beautifully produced Arkham House collection is a bejeweled corridor into the dark worlds of vampire-cursed Averoigne, Zothique of the dying sun, primordial Hyperborea (which, with its black, amorphous god Tsathoggua, is close in spirit to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), and others. Smith is a consummate stylist whose evocations of lush exoticism and languid evil led critic Brian Stableford to call him "the poet of American Decadence," and yet his tales are also humorous--in a wry, macabre way. A Rendezvous in Averoigne collects 30 tales, with illustrations by J. K. Potter and an introduction by Ray Bradbury.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arkham House Publishers
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0870541560
• ISBN 13: 9780870541568
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 472
• Illustrator: Jeffrey K. Potter