Category: Books & Writers

Once More Into the Thickets

~ Jackson ~ Leave a comment

James Maliszewski of Grognardia ran into troubles of his own when he tried to produce an RPG based on the settings of pulp fictioneer Clark Ashton Smith. The obstacle, however, wasn’t Smith’s estate — in fact, William Dorman, Smith’s stepson and director of CASiana Literary Enterprises, signed off on the project. The problems began when Maliszewski tried to include excerpts from Smith’s stories in the game rulebook:

I wrote to Mr Dorman to make certain this was acceptable and received word from him that CASiana has an “understanding” with the publisher Arkham House. This understanding is such that, while CASiana may be Smith’s literary executor, it makes no claim to holding the copyright to Smith’s actual literary texts. Instead, Arkham House makes that claim and, if I wanted to include any text from Smith’s stories, I’d need to contact Arkham House.

Naturally, I did. April Derleth, daughter of the company’s founder, directed me to someone else, who acted as Arkham House’s “literary agent” or some similar title. I can’t recall the man’s name, but I did get in touch with him. He and I exchange some letters and emails before eventually coming down to brass tacks about the cost of securing the rights to Smith’s texts for an RPG. Needless to say, the cost involved was higher than I could justify given the likely return and so, unhappily, I reported this back to the interested publisher. There was brief talk of negotiating for a better deal, but, in the end, all concerned knew it’d hardly be worth it, as this would be a niche product.

Apparently Dorman also told Maliszewski that both CASiana and Arkham House use the same agent (the one I quote throughout this post) because the two entities have a “shared interest in copyright.” Since Smith himself took part in assembling at least three of Arkham House’s collections — Out of Time and Space, Lost Worlds, and A Rendezvous in Averoigne — Arkham House has maintained the copyright of these slightly different texts, whereas the original versions that appeared in Weird Tales are most certainly in the public domain. Recall that the agent stated:

Also note that some of the earliest of CAS’ published works may be considered in public domain, and Wildside (Prime is a part of Wildside) do unfortunately take advantage of this.

Which is a clear admission that neither party has ownership of the copyright to these early versions.

It’s interesting that on the copyright page to Necronomicon Press’s 1995 collection Tales of Zothique, Arkham House is never mentioned. Instead, editor Will Murray used Smith’s original manuscripts archived at Brown University. When, in a few cases, the originals were absent, the Weird Tales versions were used. There is also this:

Of invaluable help also was William Dorman, representative of the Estate of Clark Ashton Smith, without whose enthusiasm and support this project would have never seen the light. … All items reprinted by permission of CASiana, the Estate of Clark Ashton Smith.

So my advice to anyone seeking to do what James and I failed to accomplish: communicate with Dorman solely; bypass Arkham House and the joint agent completely; and, if reprinting Smith’s texts, use the Weird Tales versions.

From the Halls of Massapequa to the Shores of Port Jeff

~ Jackson ~ 1 Comment

Michael Trinklein, author of the book currently topping my Amazon queue, says the scheme for Long Island to break from New York has legs:

Seceding from the nation is illegal and, practically speaking, impossible. But seceding from a state to form a new state is allowed by the U.S. Constitution — and the specifications are straightforward. Article IV Section 3 says a proposal first needs to get the approval of the existing state legislature. Dozens of plans have been debated in statehouses over the years, and in a handful of cases, legislatures have passed measures to split their states. In 1819, for example, the Massachusetts legislature voted to release its northern district — unconnected to the rest of the state — to become the new state of Maine.

Trinklein goes on to argue that potentially liberal new states — likely to send more Democrats to Washington — need to pair themselves with conservative secession attempts elsewhere to encourage bipartisan Congressional approval. That’s reminiscent of state-making efforts early in our country’s history, when the southern states agitated for the creation of Kentucky and Tennessee to balance the addition of abolitionist Vermont.

Trinklein’s essay in the WSJ here. Me on Lawng Island secession here.

Lost States has a bonus backstory further endearing it to my heart: the original edition was self-published. Yet more disproof of the corporate lie that self-publishing is harmful to a writer’s career.

Blood and 20,000 Words a Day for My Lord Arioch

~ Jackson ~ Leave a comment

Bill Ward at Black Gate pointed toward a short essay by Michael Moorcock in which he reveals his process for writing the Hawkmoon novels, now re-released:

My old method of writing fantasy novels was to go to bed for a few days, getting up only to take the kids to school and pick them up, while the book germinated, making a few notes, then I’d jump out of bed and start, writing around 15-20,000 words a day (I was a superfast typist) for three days, rarely for more than normal working hours—say 9 to 6—get my friend Jim Cawthorn to read the manuscript for any errors of typing or spelling etc. then send it straight to the editor unread by me. I have still to read more than a few pages of the Hawkmoon books. The odd thing is that I’ve actually read almost none of my own books but I seem to remember the events as if I’d lived them. Some scenes are better remembered than others, of course. Similarly, I’ve reread almost nothing of the Elric, Corum or Eternal Champion novels.

That explains a lot, actually. I read almost everything of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series in my late teens, starting with the Elric cycle, and I was struck even then by how inconsistent his writing was. The Elric stories are beautifully imaginative and fully realized. But much of the rest? The Michael Kane novels are awful, tedious pastiches of Burroughs. The first three Corum books are repetitive strings of fights and battles without impact or meaning, and on the whole memorable only for the beginning when Corum obtains the alien hand and eye and for the end when the Lost God Kwll takes them back. The second Corum trilogy is worse because it doesn’t even have that going for it.

Drumming out 20K a day and then refusing to read your own product is hack work, pure and simple. But the key phrase here is “My old method.” As I said, I read a lot of Moorcock in my teens, and I found he generally became better as he went along; probably my favorite of his novels is 1986’s The City in the Autumn Stars, even though I hate the ending (twist? anti-climax?). Maybe by that time, with his reputation and income established, Moorcock took a few deep breaths and began working with more patience and care. I seem to recall another interview in which Moorcock regretted not spending as much time on his early novels as he should have.

A few years ago I reread the original Corum trilogy and it was even worse than the first time around. Moorcock has said that his formula for writing fantasy was to have something supernatural happen every 1,000 words — every four pages, if you’re pounding on a typewriter in 12-point Courier. I think that may be why Elric endures better than the rest; the 1977 DAW series consisted of short stories and novellas interfused chronologically with two full-length novels, so the differing rhythms make the formula less apparent, less metronomic. My memory of the Hawkmoon books suggests they were not too bad, with the geopolitics tempering the otherwise typical quest narrative. Perhaps I should revisit them to see how they stand up.

Averoigne on the Internets

~ Jackson ~ Leave a comment

First The Cimmerian and then the Los Angeles Times picked up my tale of woe regarding my intent to put together an Averoigne collection. It’s an instructive case of the kicking and screaming that occurs when literature enters the public domain, yes, but it’s also a demonstration of the perils of the same agent representing both an author’s shade and the publisher who prints his work.

If I were an outsider reading these posts, not to mention the memorials uploaded back in January, I might be curious enough to give Clark Ashton Smith a try. Problem is, as a fan, it’s hard to tell newcomers where to go — which is my whole argument. But if you want to get started, try Out of Space and Time and Lost Worlds. Together they offer 44 stories that were hand-selected by Smith for their original publication in the 1940s, and since they’re paperbacks, they won’t break the bank.

Also, Eldritch Dark has all of Smith’s writing online — though, if you’re like me, that’s no substitute for an old-fashioned book.

Incidentally, Ron Hilger, who edited the Averoigne collection that Donald M. Grant, Publisher has been promising to print for fifteen years, posted in December on the Eldritch Dark forums that the project may have legs again. On the other hand, Grant has been teasing this volume for fifteen years. From what I’ve read, if it does appear, it will be hardback with full-color plates within. So not cheap.

Illo by the inimitable Jim Roslof for the Averoigne-inspired D&D adventure, Castle Amber.

The Stranger in the Rye

~ Jackson ~ Leave a comment

The more I read about J.D. Salinger, the more I realize he was Holden Caulfield. I read The Catcher in the Rye twice in high school: the first time because it absorbed me, the second for senior English. It’s a love-it-or-hate-it book (Mrs. Kuhl hates it) but for me, Holden’s revulsion of phonies was my first encounter with Sartrean inauthenticity, the first time I read an explicit expression of the pressure on children to graduate school and live a cheap, plastic life of work and consumerism and paying taxes so politicians can eat tenderloin and Predator drones can be built. For some, their introduction to existentialism is The Stranger. For me, it was Catcher.

The obits make much of Salinger’s reclusiveness but he was not a hermit; he had friends and family; he was engaged with the world, just a much smaller one than others thought befitting his stature. Reading about Salinger, I don’t see a man “hightailing it for the woods of New Hampshire to lose himself in a mental ward of his own making,” as one hack put it. I see a man unwilling to be compromised, unwilling to explain or defend himself to interviewers — a man defining the parameters of his life. Why is that so odd or frightening?