Neale's Reviews > Zothique

Given that Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘Zothique’ stories were a clear influence on Jack Vance’s ‘Dying Earth’ series, it seems a little churlish that Vance once referred to Smith as a ‘very bad’ writer. Vance was quite right, of course (perhaps he was tired of comparisons being made): Smith’s writing is a triumph of style over substance, and his capacity for characterisation is limited. And yet his style is so outrageously ornate that it often transcends what it is describing, and characterisation is hardly essential to his project – indeed, it would detract from it. Human beings are just details in the tapestry.

It’s interesting to compare Smith and Vance: both affected an elaborate, colourful and deliberately archaic style, but Vance leavened his style with humour, narrative drive, humanity and a lightness of touch even at his most outrageous. For Smith, language was an end in itself. His orientalist fantasias are almost like pornography, in that they exist only to create an effect. Only in the pulps could Smith’s peculiar genius have flourished, freed from the constraints of ‘seriousness’, allowed to take any path it chose – as long as there was a ‘pay-off’...

If you love language for its own sake, Smith’s stories can be great fun to immerse yourself in...