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(dramatic instrumental music)

- This is a plaque to Clark Ashton Smith.

And on it is 10 lines of a short poem,

The Sorcerer Departs,

which could be the first draft of

Soliloquy in an Ebon Tower,

a finished poem.

I pass, but in this
lone and crumbling tower

builded against the
burrowing seas of chaos,

my volumes and my philters shall abide.

Poisons more dear than any mithridate,

and spells far sweeter
than the speech of love,

half-shapen dooms shall
slumber in my vaults,

and in my volumes,
cryptic runes that shall

outblast the pestilence, outgnaw the worm,

when loosed by alien
wizards on strange years,

under the blackened moon and paling sun.

Well, so far, some of that prophecy

he made about his own
work has indeed come true.

I doubt though that Smith
will ever be a household name.

Nonetheless, this is a lovely

prophecy,

and as I said, so far it
seems to be coming true.

His work has made its
way on its own merit.

He doesn't have any
big sponsors or patrons

or corporations behind him.

He represents himself,

the individual and individualist supreme.

- [Narrator] Clark Ashton
Smith is the unsung poet

of the mother lode,

foothills and gold country
of northern California.

His work as a fantasy writer

has garnered him worldwide acclaim

for its excellence and distinctness.

He has been called 'sui
generis', the one and only.

And his many devotees refer to him

as the Emperor of Dreams.

An intensely private man,

even in letters to his
closest friends he was guarded

about intimate details of his life.

He left no memoirs,

and no film footage of him survives.

Much about him will always be

shrouded in mystery and legend.

He explored the most remote
realms of the imagination,

and he mined it, not for gold,

but something far more precious, beauty.

- To read Clark Ashton Smith,

is to be washed over by a tsunami,

that colors you a million different ways.

Just a page of Clark Ashton Smith

is better than an entire
book by most writers.

(solemn electronic music)

He was magic itself.

He was the voice of magic.

- [Narrator] To the ancient Egyptians,

the west symbolized the
destination of the dead.

The direction of their
souls' hazardous pilgrimage

on its quest for immortality,

where the sun died and
was reborn each day.

The Celtic otherworld
lay beyond the horizon

of the western sea.

The Americans of the 19th century

would not be denied their
own mythology of the west.

Even before the pastoral
arcadia of Alta California

had officially become a state in 1850,

Americans were scrambling to the west,

by sea and by land.

James Marshall had
discovered gold in Coloma.

The sudden influx of
migrants and gold-seekers

changed the region,

quickly, and forever.

The spirit of the age
was manifest destiny,

and America would expand at all costs,

from sea to shining sea.

Or as Smith phrased it,

from shore to crumbled shore.

A few miles farther up
the river from Coloma,

Claude Chana discovered gold

is what is now the Auburn Ravine,

and Auburn was born.

In 1893, the year of Smith's birth,

Auburn was a lonely mountain village

with around a thousand inhabitants.

It was transitioning from the mining town

of the early days of California.

Clark was born on a Friday the 13th,

a few miles out of town,

in his maternal grandparents' home.

- I'm standing by the
front door of the house

in which Clark Ashton Smith was born.

However, the house has been altered

since the Gaylord family,
his mother was Fanny Gaylord,

lived here.

The house is slated for demolition,

and a large mansion
will rise in its place.

This is the very large camphor tree

that serves to identify
the former Gaylord house.

I first learned to identify
the property by this tree.

Genevieve K. Sully,

who was a very close friend to Smith,

was the one that gave me the information.

Here we stand by the front
door of what was at one time

the Long Valley School,

the little red schoolhouse
of the district.

Smith was born in 1893.

This place was opened
as a school about 1890,

so he would have come here

when he was about five or six,

which would have been
in the latter 1890's.

And he went to this school for a while,

but then finished up at the
grammar school in Auburn.

The building is still there.

He did not go on to high school,

figuring, and his parents agreed with him,

that he could do a better
job educating himself.

So Smith truly is an autodidact.

Meanwhile, it's a nice
thought that early on

he went to an institution

that existed all over the United States,

a little schoolhouse that covered

the early grades.

- [Narrator] Of his early
schooling, Smith would write,

I believe I was distinguished
more for devilment

than scholarship.

He began to write fairy
tales around age 10.

His first poem shows an early
inclination towards rhyme,

and a deep love for his mother.

- He was teased in elementary
school quite a bit,

because he was smart.

The story is that he attended
one day of high school,

and it was just unbearable for him.

And he came home and
said, I'm not going back,

and his parents said okay,

and just proceeded to
basically self-educate himself.

Smith was not a normal
intellect, he really wasn't.

I think he had what they call eidetic,

or photographic memory,

not so much I think in the visual sense,

but he apparently retained
everything he read.

Apparently he was like seven
years old when his father,

he was born down in Long Valley,

just down the hill from Auburn,

and right by the schoolhouse,

and the father purchased
the 40 acres up there,

and then they built the cabin.

Smith was about seven years old,

and apparently he helped him

with whatever he could do at that age.

It was simple, there was no water,

running water or electricity.

There was an old man shaft,

there was like ladders going down,

and they got their water
from there I believe,

and it was like the cooler, sort of thing.

Primitive, really.

- [Narrator] The Smith cabin was located

just a mile or two from old town Auburn.

That distance was his buffer

from a quickly modernizing world.

He lived there for 50 years.

No running water, no
electricity, no vehicle.

Lin Carter called it a
sort of self-imposed exile

from his century.

It was a nice spot.

They had a view of the
Sacramento Valley to the west,

the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east.

- This is the library

that Clark Ashton Smith knew all his life.

It was opened in 19 ought 9,

built on a grant from the
Andrew Carnegie Corporation.

According to different accounts,

he once read virtually every book

that was in the library, at that time,

which if that is true
that is a remarkable feat.

I guess it would have
been fairly well stocked

for the period in which he lived.

So, it was a major source
of education for him.

- [Narrator] Books were Smith's refuge

as a sensitive boy in a rugged rural town.

It was in a grammar school library at 13,

that Smith first discovered Poe,

whose poetry and prose was an immediate

and lifelong fascination and influence,

along with the Arabian Nights.

- He wasn't literally an outsider,

he lived outside Auburn with his family,

and he was not used to
being around people.

That's why early on he
seemed shy to people.

Or diffident?

Well, it's like a wild
creature is quite diffident,

around entities it does not know.

I think there's something
comparable to that in Smith's,

he gradually gained
confidence being with people,

but I think he chose with great care

the people with whom he
wanted to be associated.

- [Narrator] He was first published

in professional magazines
at just 17 years old.

The Overland Monthly.

His poem, Moonlight, was
in the August 1910 issue.

Later that year, he would
publish short fiction

in The Black Cat.

And in January of 1911,

with the help of a school teacher friend,

he would be put into
contact with his idol,

poet, George Sterling.

Sterling not only responded,

but was dazzled by the
young poet's early work.

Sterling was a central figure
in California literature

around the turn of the century.

His mentor was Ambrose Bierce,

and his best friend, Jack London.

His works were visionary,
expertly crafted,

and he was ranked with the
giants of romantic poetry.

- Well, Smith just wrote
to him out of the blue,

in early 1911 I believe.

We don't actually have
the first few letters

that Smith wrote to Sterling,

but it's clear

that Smith not only wrote to him

but sent him some of his poetry,

that he was writing at the time.

I think Smith discovered Sterling

as early as around 1907, or thereabouts.

In fact, that was when Sterling
had become really famous,

because his great poem,
A Wine of Wizardry,

had appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine,

under Bierce's influence,

and created a huge furor,

and I'm sure Smith was aware of that,

because it was the kind of
poetry that Smith himself

was writing, or wanted to write.

And so when Sterling received
these early poems of Smith,

I think he did a sort of

deja vu sort of thing, because

it was as if he was now the
mentor to this young poet,

just as he had been the young poet

being mentored by Bierce,
about a decade or so earlier.

- [Narrator] Sterling
arranged for the young poet

to visit him, in Carmel,
in the summer of 1912,

for a month-long sojourn.

He help Sterling write
the famous Abalone Song,

and the two saw a performance

of Alice in Wonderland together.

On the return trip, Smith
stopped in San Francisco

to sit for portrait
photographer, Bianca Conte.

Smith would remark,

to me the eye of the camera always looks

like the mysterious
muzzle of a 13 inch gun,

and I am out to look like the enemy.

Of Smith's first book,

The Star-Treader and other Poems,

Donald Wandrei would remark,

it shows the effects of imagination
in its first exuberance.

Stars, suns, and comets
parade in all their majesty.

Chaos, infinity,

and the eldritch dark, are ever-present.

And the wonder, the inexplicable
mystery of the universe

form the background of the book.

Published in 1912, when
he was just 19 years old,

Star-Treader sold well regionally,

and garnered worldwide attention.

He was called, The
Keats of the West Coast.

There was the most serious attention

from the mainstream literary world

that he would get in his lifetime.

- The problem with Smith was

that he didn't really produce a lot.

In those early years from
say 1912 to like 1920,

he was in pretty bad health

for various reasons,

may have had tuberculosis,

may have been slightly depressed also.

He was very shy, he didn't get out much.

In fact, Sterling wanted him in 1912

to come San Francisco
to meet Ambrose Bierce,

who was making a visit to California.

But Smith was so shy,

that he said, no I can't possibly go there

and meet this great titan of literature,

so he missed the chance of
meeting the great Ambrose Bierce,

and Sterling wanted him
to go meet Jack London,

who was one of his best friends,

but again Smith just couldn't
bring himself to do that.

- [Narrator] Despite his shyness,

and feeling like a pariah in Auburn,

Smith gained a reputation as a lady's man.

- He talked about being
somewhat of a Don Juan

in a small town.

He may have played that up a bit,

but some of it is true.

There was one,

I'll call her a girl,

because it was like
probably his first love,

Mamie Miller,

and no one knows anything about her,

but I suspect that he was very young,

in his teens, maybe around
the time of the Star-Treader,

they were in love.

And she came down with, and
died, from tuberculosis.

And it ruined him.

When she was dying, or when she had died,

he ran off up into the hills by himself,

and stayed there for a day,
or as long as he could,

until he had to come back,

hungry and starving,

but it really affected him.

- [Narrator] In 1915, during
a period of ill health,

Smith would begin drawing
in pencil and crayon,

to relieve stress.

He would soon be painting

fantastic creatures and landscapes.

His work in the visual arts would continue

for the rest of his life.

- It grew on me, I think the more I

grew to love Smith, I understood, oh,

he's sort of a phobist,

or a true modern primitive.

He did the very best he could.

Perhaps that is the
realm of the art world,

in which he might one
day be properly embraced.

He is a true outsider artist,

completely untrained.

One, informed by a unique vision,

a private world and realm,
'weltenschau' world vision,

and a world of inner fantasy.

His work is barbaric and yet,

what really puts him in that category

is an absolute necessity to produce.

He wasn't producing for the next show,

or the art critics, or somebody waiting.

When you're living in a log cabin

in the middle of the woods,

it's your muse or demon

that impels you to create,

it's just what you do.

You make your homemade wine,

you write these stories that
are flowing through you.

- You know there were so
many different avenues

of his creativity.

He was almost like over-creative.

The poetry, the prose,

the artwork, the painting, the sculptures.

He did a lot in expressing himself.

The artwork in general,
if that's all there was,

it wouldn't be that notable,

but I think as just another
facet of his creativity,

it just makes him all
the more interesting,

because some of it is very interesting.

He had a genuine talent,

and nobody else was doing this stuff.

- His artwork is cool to me,

because it's like outsider art.

It looks to not be tethered

to anything.

It looks like just some weirdo

making art that's trippy,

and I don't know,

it seems

like beautiful archaic,
primordial visions.

You know what I mean?

Like weird flower, this one that I have.

It looks an alien, a horrible
little creepy alien flower

from one of his planets.

You know what I mean?

That would try to sting your foot,

or something while you're on
your way to go to the cave,

to address the deity that you
need to kill, or whatever.

And it's also kind of cool,

because a lot of people
get good at something,

and then they feel inhibited
from trying something else.

It sounds to me,

I didn't know him
personally or nothin' but,

it sounds to me just like
somebody whose whole life

was dedicated to the exploring
of the nature of creation.

You know, that's it.

(eerie electronic music)

- There's just the love of a juiciness

of a human or creature's face.

It's the face.

We have less entire scenes with creatures,

we have landscapes, a
number of full bodies,

but for some reason, over and over,

he could have drawn
anything he wanted, but,

the face, creature, head and shoulders,

over and over, often very
balanced, very geometrical.

- [Narrator] His greatest
work as an artist

came in the 1920's,

with these otherworldly dream landscapes.

- His artwork is cool.

I think it's cool as shit.

I mean if you look at it,

you have to give value to things in life,

we all do so,

if I try to show this drawing to somebody,

they'd be like, who drew that?

Like a 13 year old, with some crayons?

I'd be like, no, this genius did it.

- [Narrator] Smith chose to self-publish

his next and best book of
poetry, Ebony and Crystal.

In its introduction,
George Sterling declares it

to be the birth of Smith
as an immortal poet.

Smith's brand of cosmic decadence

had matured into a more
exotic, yet Earthly, product,

under the influence of French
poet, Charles Baudelaire.

- People may wonder about
the real life exoticism

in Ebony and Crystal,

and which is reflected
as well in his prose,

but in a different way.

Where does that come from?

It comes from his father,

who at an early, he was a young man,

come into an inheritance and
just went around the world,

pissing it off.

I like that term, that's
the exact correct term.

There's references to flamingos, palms,

in Ebony and Crystal.

That reflects his father,

who of course regaled his son

with these stories of his early life,

and where he had been,

and it's a shame that Smith
never had the money to travel.

But in one way his stories

are more vivid than the
recollections of people

who have been to all these places.

- [Narrator] Smith's longest
and most audacious poem,

the Hashish Eater, or
the Apocalypse of Evil,

would serve as Ebony and
Crystal's centerpiece.

- The Hashish Eater,

from the very first time
I saw it, I read it.

It commands your attention,

with that, bow down, I
am the emperor of dreams.

That's like a really commanding voice.

And it never lets up.

- His longest and most ambitious poem,

The Hashish Eater,

is in pentameter blank verse,

and opens up chaotic and incredible vistas

of kaleidoscopic nightmare

in the spaces between the stars.

In sheer demonic strangeness,
and fertility of conception,

Smith is perhaps unexcelled
by any other writer

living or dead.

- Smith, the way he uses words,

above all in The Hashish Eater,

which is not typical,

that took him over, while he was doing it.

Generally, he was a very

self-aware creator with words,

but sometimes it seems to be

he's pushing them almost
beyond what they can carry,

although he's using them

in a correct way.

Bow down, I am the emperor of dreams.

I crown me with the million-colored sun

of secret worlds, incredible,

and take their trailing
skies for vestment,

when I soar, throned
on the mounting zenith,

and illume the spaceward-flown
horizons, infinite,

like rampant monsters,

roaring for their glut,

the fiery crested oceans rise and rise,

by jealous moons, maleficently
urged to follow me forever.

- There's crystalline,
cube-forming turrets and

weird castles that are inside out.

It's like M.C. Escher shit, you know,

and then like the bizarre
alien flora and fauna

of some vast area and
like the people there.

It's like some Jim Henson shit on crack.

- It's definitely an important piece.

It is not one which I would recommend

for the novice Smith reader.

It's like if you were just getting to,

if you were just starting to

get into the music of Richard Wagner,

you'd want to start with Die Walkure

or Die Meistersinger or possibly
Lohengrin or Tannhauser.

You're not gonna start
with Tristan and Isolde,

or Parsifal.

- [Narrator] At over 600
lines of dense blank verse,

Hashish Eater is Smith's
nightmarish, psychedelic opus,

in which he crowns himself
the Emperor of Dreams.

HP Lovecraft would call the poem,

the greatest imaginative
orgy in literature.

Smith also fully illustrated his poem

with at least 23 paintings,

making it a visionary hybrid,

in the tradition of William Blake.

Unfortunately, the poem and the paintings

have never been published in tandem.

- [Man] Surveyed, from this my throne,

as from a central sun,

the pageantries of worlds and cycles pass,

forgotten splendors,

dream by dream unfold,

like tapestry, and vanish.

Violet suns, or suns of
changeful iridescence,

bring their rays about me,

like the colored lights imploring priests

might lift to glorify

the face of some averted god.

- [Narrator] Smith filled every rift

of his condensed epic poem with
sparkling and grotesque ore,

providing the reader
with vision upon vision.

The theme of the drug experience

allowed Smith to free his hero

from the chains of time and space,

where the poem ultimately
culminates in dark revelation

of cosmic consciousness.

- In terms of pure escapist
fantasy, high fantasy,

weird cosmic fantasy,

certainly The Hashish Eater
is virtually unparalleled.

It's just this,

I almost envision The Hashish Eater,

the poem itself is like this monument,

like I imagine it like this
almost like obelisk of words,

like towering over everything,

admitting every color just like fantasy.

- [Man] And bloats against
the limits of the world,

with lips of flame that open.

- In many cases, just because a man

wrote about drugs fantastically,

doesn't mean that he took drugs.

We'd like to believe that
beyond being an alcoholic, Poe,

was deeply addicted to opium,

and lived the life of his
characters, possibly not so.

People would love to get proof

that Clark Ashton Smith

smoked a little bit,

or consumed something beyond
fantastical homemade wine,

that gave him these visions.

I don't know if we'll ever
be able to prove this,

although, off the record,

didn't you hear something about some

doormen or some kids who
supplied him with the ganja,

did you hear anything about that one?

- You look at like Lord Dunsany's work,

and it's all fantastical and amazing,

but you look at the stories
in The Hashish Eater,

and they have such an
extraordinarily strange quality,

kind of like Max Fleischer's cartoons,

with this serpent eating its own tail,

and this weird sort of
seamlessness that just,

somebody's smoking opium in there.

- One thing I should emphasize is that,

Smith was using hashish
as a metaphorical term.

There is no evidence to suggest that

he ever had consumed hashish.

George Sterling had some

hashish at one time,

but he discouraged Smith from using it.

- And it was myself and John Shirley,

who know whereof we speak,

whereas in the relation
between the pharmaceutical

and the literary arts,

we both said, I can hear it,

and I can smell it in there,

the way that,

you know, the way that a
junkie knows his own kind.

- I can't help but feel
that like Lovecraft,

Lovecraft,

was a teetotaler,

and yet has anybody
written trippier visions?

The guy must have been on drugs, man.

With somebody like Smith,

I can't help but think of
another surrealist, Dali,

who said, I don't do
drugs, I am drugs, right?

I don't do acid, I am

the vehicle.

He was already tapped into

those worlds at birth.

He didn't need artificial
stimulation to get there.

- [Narrator] Ebony and
Crystal sold poorly.

To repay printing and binding costs

to the Auburn Journal,

Smith started writing a weekly
column for the local paper.

From 1923 to 1925, the
Clark Ashton Smith column

featured lyric poems,
and Biercian epigrams.

He would later say,

the column was too
sophisticated for its audience,

and that he was lucky he wasn't
thrown in the county jail,

with the provocative and risque
form of satire he employed.

- After all,

why resist temptation?

If one's temptations are scarce,

one cannot afford to slight them,

and if they are plentiful,

one is sure to succumb
sooner or later anyhow.

Surgeons always operate twice,

once on the patient, and once
on the patient's pocketbook.

- George Sterling Park.

The plaque reads,

George Sterling's romantic, lyrical poetry

won him the unofficial title

of poet laureate of San Francisco.

Jack London was his close friend,

and Ambrose Bierce, his mentor.

Sterling's charisma and high spirits

inspired fellow writers and
artists to dub him quote,

King of Bohemia, unquote.

This other plaque

is a stanza from his poem,

The Cool Gray City of Love,

which is of course San Francisco.

George Sterling, 1869-1926.

Though the dark be cold and blind,

yet her sea fog's touch is kind,

and her mightier caress is joy

and the pain thereof.

And great is thy tenderness

oh cool gray city of love!

- I think Sterling felt
that the subject matter

of his poetry was hindering
his own recognition

in broader literary circles.

Because again at this time,

elements of the weird
and the fantastic were

regarded as not genuine literature.

The modernists didn't like the weird,

they wanted social
realism of the sort that

people like Sinclair Lewis was writing,

and even poetry was meant to reflect

present-day reality, as
opposed to fantasy and horror,

and so I think Sterling
was worried that Smith

would not receive the
recognition that he deserved,

if he kept solely devoted to the weird.

But a real rift came
in the mid-1920's when

Smith started writing fiction.

He wrote The Abominations
of Yondo in 1925,

and sent it to Sterling,

expecting Sterling to like this work,

because it was a very
evocative piece of writing,

but Sterling came down quite hard,

saying oh the weird has played out,

nobody's writing the weird any more.

We just don't think this is
a mature form of writing,

and I think Smith was totally taken aback,

and he shot back a very
strong response to Sterling,

saying, hey I'm sorry but

the weird is as legitimate
a form of writing

as anything else, and
I'm gonna stick to it.

- [Narrator] Smith
vowed to go even further

into the realm of the
imagination than ever before,

into Hyperborea beyond
Hyperborea, as he phrased it.

Unfortunately, this rift over the merits

of the purely imaginative in literature,

would occupy the bulk of
their final correspondence,

before Sterling's death by suicide,

on November 16th, 1926.

(eerie electronic music)

As George Sterling was steering
Smith away from the weird,

Smith's other great friend
and literary correspondent,

HP Lovecraft, was encouraging
in that direction,

inciting him to do so in prose.

They began exchanging letters in 1922,

before Lovecraft would
write any of the tales

in his celebrated Cthulhu mythos.

- It's really pretty
remarkable how these two

great writers came into contact.

In 1922, Lovecraft really was not

a recognized figure at all.

He had only published in amateur venues,

with the exception of two little stories

that had been published
in this horrible little

professional magazine called Home Brew.

But he had already started developing

a network of friends and
colleagues around the country,

who were interested in
the things that he was.

In particular, he got in touch with

George Kirk, who was a bookseller,

first in Cleveland, and
then later in New York.

Now Kirk, I believe, had visited Smith

in California and certainly knew Smith

for a good many years.

And so Kirk passed on one of Smith's early

poetry books to Lovecraft.

At the same time, Samuel Loveman,

who had known Smith also
since at least the teens,

passed on another poetry
book to Lovecraft.

Loveman had gotten
acquainted with Lovecraft

in at least around 1917 or thereabouts.

And Lovecraft was totally blown away.

I mean it was exactly the
kind of poetic writing

that he himself wished he could
write, but knew he couldn't.

Smith was so much better
a poet than Lovecraft,

and Lovecraft recognized it.

So he simply sat down and wrote

what can only be considered
a fan letter to Smith,

saying, wow I read these
two books of your poetry

and I think they're fabulous,

and please write back to me.

He was being a fanboy.

It's so funny.

Lovecraft always sought
out kindred spirits,

and he found very few of them really.

His focus was what he
called cosmic horror,

and he recognized that
he wrote in a letter

to Donald Wandrei, who was
also a great friend of Smith's,

that it was rarer than
hen's teeth as he called it,

that sense of the cosmic.

He had it, Wandrei had it, Smith had it.

Not a whole of other people
in his circle had it,

so I think he felt a
particular bond to Smith.

I mean he had great
correspondences with people

like August Derleth, and Robert E Howard,

but these writers really
didn't express the cosmic

in the sense that he did.

- [Narrator] The two embarked
on a collaboration of sorts

after just four months of correspondence,

when Smith illustrated
Lovecraft's, The Lurking Fear,

for Home Brew magazine.

- This is a facsimile printing
from Necronomicon Press,

of the Home Brew publication

of Lovecraft's The Lurking Fear,

illustrated by Clark Ashton Smith.

One of

Smith's talents is

he catches movements

and you can see the way he
catches movement in his artwork.

It's very simple artwork.

But the really amusing thing, because

Lovecraft is known to have
been a bit of a prude,

and I don't know

if Lovecraft actually.

I don't think Lovecraft
was as much a prude

as people say he was,
and he may have been,

because how can you miss,

these trees resemble nude bodies.

This tree has testicles.

Maybe it's so obvious to us because

we know what they are but,

I want to imagine that Lovecraft,

he wasn't maybe in on it,

but he recognized it for what it was,

and it probably amused him.

- That is a male tree I believe.

That blossom is definitely a female.

What were they thinking?

- Well, he was an ardent lover of women,

of beauty and of drink,

and wild times.

That kind of frivolity,

he was able to get inside it,

the way that Lovecraft
always felt outside.

In his Dreamland stories,
they're always about

pretenders and people in
this world who fail and die.

But when they go off
into that other place,

it kind of becomes sort of evanescent,

what those pleasures
were, they're wonderful,

but they're always in that
city that's unattainable.

Smith started out in that city.

And that's kind of wonderful,

I would much rather have
been Smith than Lovecraft.

- The focus of both writers'
work in prose fiction,

initially at least,

was Weird Tales magazine.

In fact, Lovecraft claimed that he

at the very outset of Weird
Tales' founding in 1923,

persuaded the editor to
revoke what he called

a 'no poetry' principle,

and get Smith's poetry
published in Weird Tales.

Smith didn't start writing fiction

extensively until about 1929,

but by then you could tell

that the relationship
between Smith and Lovecraft

had developed to the point

where they were really exchanging

a lot of ideas back and forth,

and not just plot ideas, but
really fundamental ideas,

on what it is to write weird fiction,

what is the nature of weird fiction.

What is the best way
to write weird fiction?

The two writers were
actually quite different

in their approaches.

Lovecraft called himself a prose realist,

starting with the natural world,

and building upon it.

Whereas Smith said,

I like to invent everything in a story.

He was a pure fantasist of the sort

that we found in the work of
Lord Dunsany, for example,

or later, in the work of JRR Tolkien.

Smith really wasn't interested
even in the real world,

he said, I don't care
enough about the real world

to write about it.

So he wanted to create imaginary
worlds out of whole cloth,

but given that difference,

they still had a very similar outlook

in the sense of the cosmic.

- [Narrator] Lovecraft, Smith,

and the young writer, Robert E Howard,

would become known as the three
musketeers of Weird Tales,

during the golden age of the magazine.

Under the editorship of Farnsworth Wright,

the unique magazine was a perfect place

for Smith's Poe-esque tales.

Three of these stories

would receive color cover illustrations.

And he was the rare talent

who would illustrate his own
stories for the magazine.

- Yeah it's funny,

a lot of people think Smith

is some sort of imitator of Lovecraft,

which is flagrantly not the case,

even in those few stories
where Smith did adapt

elements of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos,

there are only really
three or four stories

where he uses that mythos

in a central or essential way.

Otherwise it's just a
matter of dropping terms.

In fact, a lot of people
aren't aware that Smith

was the one who created
the toad god Tsathoggua,

assuming that's how you pronounce it,

and that Lovecraft borrowed it from him,

and then kind of ran off with it.

In fact, later in the 1930's,

when he saw that Lovecraft and others

were borrowing some of his own inventions,

he said, it seems that I
have created a mythology.

So in a sense, Smith had
created his own parallel

mythology, similar to the Cthulhu mythos.

- If you read the stories
that Lovecraft wrote

before he came into contact with Smith,

and those that he wrote afterwards,

you notice that there,

that there was definitely
an increase in cosmic,

in a cosmic vision.

And when Smith was inspired by Lovecraft

to start writing more

short fiction,

we could see basically that the two began

a positive feedback loop,

where the two were basically,

each one was seeing where
the other one was going,

and would kind of leapfrog

to the next position.

- I think Lovecraft was
seriously influenced

by Clark Ashton Smith,

that he opened doors for Lovecraft,

that Lovecraft had only peered through.

Clark Ashton Smith
opened those portals wide

and Lovecraft walked through,

and became the icon he is today.

Lovecraft himself,

maybe is not as well known as a poet,

but he considered himself overall a poet,

although most of his earlier stuff

was kind of imitation 18th century verse,

which is a little dry,

not actually terribly interesting,

not very weird, or fantastical
like his stories were.

And I think it was his
correspondence with Smith

that kind of opened up Lovecraft's eyes

to the possibility that

poetry could be an expression
of fantastic vistas,

much in the same way
that his stories were,

and he wrote some really
amazing weird poems,

like the Fungi from Yuggoth,

and The Ancient Tract,

and I don't know if he would have

gotten there without Smith.

So I mean they're kind of
inseparable in a way to me,

Lovecraft and Smith.

I mean you can't have
one without the other.

- As a stylist, and as
a writing personality,

Clark Ashton Smith very
soon became that jewel.

Lovecraft, the substance of
his ideas are so fantastic

that as you grow, you
kind of outgrow his prose,

or his lack of interest in
human being, human motivations,

but somehow

Smith's poetical nature,

and his very canny sanguine understanding

about human nature,

it's really easier to love

and feel a love in it,

that is kind of missing in Lovecraft,

and is really kind of
frightening in Howard.

- [Narrator] Determined to make a career

writing for the pulps,

in order to support his aging parents,

Smith began writing science
fiction and fantasy tales.

He had great success with Hugo
Gernsback's Wonder Stories,

and although the genre
was not perfectly suited

to his sensibilities,

because of its insistence
on formulaic plots,

and heavy doses of action,

he distinguished himself
from other writers

by his staggering imagination,

and his instantly
recognizable writing style.

- The voice

of a master

is the one he takes at spearpoint,

for his own.

All others stand aside,

and he allows no one else

to write like him.

And they try and try
and try and try and try,

and it's wonderful to watch people

trying to reach that summit,

and they shan't,

because that summit is beyond reach.

It is above Hyperborea,

beyond

Zothique.

And that's where Clark Ashton Smith was.

He was in the outer reaches.

- It's so out there,

everything about the way he uses language

is designed to create the effect

that we strive for in weird literature,

the other, the fantastic, the beyond.

- He preferred to create a type of

verbal black magic in his stories,

in which he used alliterations,
simile, metaphor,

and a number of other poetic devices to

create a type of spell.

- For a brief period,
the dead had lived again.

Fallen leaves had returned to the bough,

the heavenly bodies had stood

at the long-abandoned station.

The flower had gone back into the seed,

the plant into the root.

Then, with eternal disorder
set among all its cycles,

time had resumed its delayed course.

I learned how to read aloud,

from reading Clark Ashton Smith.

I would sit and read him aloud to myself.

And reading him aloud,

taught me how put accent,

how to put emphasis,

how to put meaning and order.

- I know a lot of people that were,

they didn't like Lovecraft
because of his monster stories,

but the people never
win, there's no action,

there's not even any dialog,

and they were frustrated with it.

And people that were
frustrated with Smith,

because it's not sword and sorcery,

it's not Fafhrd and the
Gray Mouser, and Conan,

it's the anti of that.

The slinky evil wizard
that is the antagonist

in a Howard story,

is gonna be the protagonist
in a Smith story,

and rightfully so.

- It's almost like revenge against

the banality of reality,

by expanding in this way,

where they're like, no
dude, I'm going out here.

You guys are down here,

and that's, I love you,

but you're gonna have to
stay here in a shitheap.

I'm going out here,

and there's wizards and
dimensions and places

and reflections,

of impossibility.

What else can you do with
your brain except for use it?

How would the universe's ultimate

power reveal itself?

I'd like to think it would look cool.

(eerie electronic music)

- [Narrator] Much of Smith's
reputation as a pioneer

of the fantasy genre

rests on his four main story cycles,

set on created worlds.

The Averoigne Chronicles
fuse weirdness and eroticism,

and are set in medieval France.

The dark, misty forest of this region

teems with every conceivable
form of superstition,

and creature of mythology,

witches, wizards, giants,
vampires, werewolves,

and killer gargoyles,

animate this realm with
a dark romanticism.

Smith borrowed the setting,
Hyperborea, from the Greeks.

To him, this fabled
region of the far north

is doomed by the coming of an ice age.

From this cycle we get the
famous god, Tsathoggua,

and two of his most memorable characters,

in Ivan the Sorcerer,
author of the black book,

and the one-armed wine-swilling
thief, Satampra Zeiros.

The Atlantean Tales take
place on Poseidonis,

the last isle of the
foundering mythical empire.

They prominently feature Malygris,

a powerful wizard, housed in a tower,

coming to grips with his own mortality,

as he surveys the destructive tide.

His most popular story
cycle is also his darkest.

Zothique is set on Earth

with a far-future epoch.

The opening paragraph of The Dark Eidolon

features some of his best writing.

- [Man] On Zothique, the
last continent of Earth,

the sun no longer shone with
the whiteness of its prime,

but was dim and tarnished
as if with a vapor of blood.

New stars without number
had declared themselves

in the heavens,

and the shadows of the
infinite had fallen closer,

and out of the shadows, the
older gods had returned to man,

the gods forgotten since Hyperborea,

since Mu and Poseidonis,
bearing other names,

but the same attributes.

And the elder demons had also returned,

battening on the fumes of evil sacrifice,

and fostering again the
primordial sorceries.

- The zenith of Smith's short
career as a fiction writer,

is the breathtaking fantasy,

The City of the Singing Flame.

This profound tale is perhaps

his greatest statement
for the imagination,

and gets to the very source
of what propels artists

towards mystery and inspiration,

and the darkness and
danger that lies therein.

It's perhaps his most
influential tale as well,

inspiring the likes of Ray
Bradbury and Harlan Ellison.

Mister Ellison claims to
have read it over 200 times.

- Well I first came across
Clark Ashton Smith in this book.

I was in high school, at
Cleveland Heights High.

That would have been 1950, I guess,

50, 51.

And the story of course was

The City of the Singing Flame.

Opening this book, this
August Derleth book,

The Other Side of the Moon,

with a Virgil Finley cover on it,

was as if I had opened Pandora's Box.

The limitations of the
English language suddenly

were blown out at me,

like a giant blossom opening.

The man used words in a way that I found

utterly captivating.

Fantasy rides on gossamer wings,

and it defies its own reality.

And if you have to involve
a flying blue monkey,

or you have to throw in a dragon,

you do it, it's just,

wishy washy.

Clark Ashton Smith was
anchored to the Earth,

and when you read The
City of the Singing Flame,

it's as if you were walking
with Clark Ashton Smith.

- You know the whole city inside the,

you know it's like,

it's just incredible.

You go through the portals,
and then you find the road,

and then you find the city,

and then all these alien
pilgrims are heading there,

and you can hear that music,

that kind of a siren call,

and then you find the temple
in the middle of the city.

It's just like all these
distancing kind of techniques,

and so by the time you,

and then you enter the
flame and go somewhere else.

It's like wow.

- Reading the City of the Singing Flame

was like nothing else I have ever read.

It's a story that is almost
like a drug experience,

because if you react strongly to it,

you never have that same experience again.

- [Narrator] The story
is set in a real location

in the Sierra Nevada Mountains,

Crater Ridge, near Donner Summit,

now home to Boreal Ski Resort.

I ventured there for the first time

in spring 2015 with my expert guides,

Ron Hilger, and Donald Sidney-Fryer.

Crater Ridge is still a wild, eerie place,

subject to extreme winds.

The landscape and surrounding
mountains are rugged,

and inspiring.

As we got closer and closer
to the top of the mountain,

I was slowly drawn in to
the world Smith created,

and I kept thinking about
what Harlan had said.

- [Harlan] When you read the
City of the Singing Flame,

it's as if you are walking
with Clark Ashton Smith.

- [Narrator] Crater Ridge
is like an epicenter

to Smith's world,

not just the setting to
his most famous tale,

it was here that his
girlfriend Genevieve Sully

convinced him to attempt to
make a living as a pulp writer.

And it was here that he
found those strange rocks

that he sent to friend, HP Lovecraft.

And it may have inspired
his later sculptures.

- This is just an example of the erosions,

and the etchings,

you know, it's weathered
and then crumbles off

and falls down the slope.

We'll find some better examples,

but these are the kind
that Lovecraft described

as hieroglyphic writings

from some pre-human

civilization.

(eerie orchestral music)

- [Narrator] Many devotees
of Smith's writings

have made the hike to
the top of Crater Ridge.

Now past the ski lifts,
time seems to stand still.

One can still see the sparse vegetation

he describes in the story.

The strange volcanic rocks,

and the unfathomed lake, or tarn,

at the top of the mountain

that he so magnificently recounts.

(eerie orchestral music)

- I think the City of the Singing Flame

is one of Smith's greatest pieces.

It is almost the perfect example

of the weird story that
Lovecraft described

in Notes on the Writing of Weird Fiction,

and that it is the description of,

the hero is a mood or phenomenon,

not so much any particular character.

It's also one which
deals with one of Smith's

major themes, one which he got

from the decadence in Theophile Gautier.

Basically it's

a death wish,

a drive towards Thanatos,

a mixture between Thanatos and Eros.

- [Narrator] Eros and Thanatos,

Smith's two great themes,

present in nearly every story he wrote.

This tale is a dark meditation,

with intimations of suicide

as the characters seem to willingly

propel themselves towards
annihilation and the flame.

But its sequel, Beyond the
Singing Flame, is the payoff.

The lure of the flame won't kill you,

but transport you to a higher
plane of consciousness,

to an exalted state.

(light orchestral music)

- When the city is attacked,
and evidently destroyed,

because the neighboring countries,

dismayed by all the people

disappearing into this other dimension,

and then of course when he finds himself,

he's still alive, his friend has died,

it is a shattering
experience don't you think?

And the complete feeling of

desolation, wow.

Yeah, it really is like,

it's something analogous
to a drug experience,

where people have a very intense,
other-worldly experience,

and then after that,

you come down,

and you will be down in a way

you never imagined before.

- I even shoplifted the original book

that I read that story in,

from the Heights High library,

in Cleveland.

- [Man] Now, as I write this,

I am wondering why I came
back to the human world.

Words are futile to express

what I have beheld and experienced.

Literature is nothing more
than a shadow of a shadow.

I have no longer any will to fight

the ever-insistent music I hear in memory.

Tomorrow, I shall return to the city.

- [Narrator] One can
easily read the characters

of Angarth and Hastane,

as stand-ins for Lovecraft and Smith.

Self-immolating themselves

into the very source
of mystery and wonder.

Lovecraft very much wanted to visit Smith

and see Crater Ridge for himself,

but he died in 1937,

before such a meeting could occur.

- It is incredible and
so fortunate to us all,

that they became such good friends.

It kills me that they never met.

I love to imagine that meeting.

I know their hopes and dreams

in a number of the letters,

perhaps one day next year I
might be able to arrange--

But that meeting was not to occur,

and yet it did occur,

and they were closer
friends of the same mind,

than most people who get
to hang out all the time.

It's so fortunate they were
there to inspire one another.

- [Interviewer] And I know
you're particularly fond

of his elegy to Lovecraft.

- Yeah, I mean,

his poem that he wrote
upon Lovecraft's death,

I think he wrote only a few days,

or at least a few weeks afterwards,

one of the most touching
poems I have ever read.

Especially if you know Lovecraft's work,

he has all these poignant references

to Ulthar and Cthulhu,

but even beyond that,

you can tell that he was
a man who was deeply moved

by the death of a colleague and friend,

whom he had never met,

over the 15 years of their
correspondence, and yet,

they had established such a bond,

just through their own
writings and their own letters,

and in some ways Smith never recovered

from the death of Lovecraft,

as with the death of his own parents.

And I think that had a lot to do with his

giving up writing, basically,

at least giving up prose writing.

To Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Lover of hills and
fields and towns antique,

how hast thou wandered hence
on ways not found before

beyond the dawnward spires of Providence?

Hast thou gone forth to seek
some older bourn than these,

some Arkham of the prime
and central wizardries?

Or, with familiar felidae,

dost now some new and secret wood explore,

a little past the senses' farther wall,

where spring and sunset
charm the eternal path

from Earth to ether in dimensions nemoral?

Or has the Silver Key

opened perchance for thee

wonders and dreams and worlds ulterior?

Hast thou gone home to Ulthar or to Pnath?

Has the high king who reigns in dim Kadath

called back his courtly, sage ambassador?

Or darkling Cthulhu sent

the sign which makes thee now a councilor

within that foundered fortress of the deep

where the Old Ones stir in sleep

till mighty temblors shake
their slumbering continent?

Lo, in this little interim of days

how far thy feet are sped

upon the fabulous and mooted ways

where walk the mythic dead!

For us the grief, for us the mystery.

And yet thou art not gone

nor given wholly unto dream and dust.

For, even upon

this lonely western hill of Averoigne

thy flesh had never visited,

I meet some wise and
sentient wraith of thee,

some undeparting presence,
gracious and august.

More luminous for thee the vernal grass,

more magically dark the Druid stone,

and in the mind thou art forever shown

as in a magic glass;

and from the spirit's page
thy runes can never pass.

- [Narrator] Smith was always a collector

of local rocks and minerals.

In 1935 on a whim,

he began carving some of the softer ones

into grotesque and demonic characters.

Thus began a new phase
of his creative life.

These small sculptures gave him great joy.

And when his mother experienced
her final illness and death,

he credited his new interest
with saving his life,

and drawing him out of a deep depression.

- I know that his first couple of pieces,

he was like, chopping them out of granite,

or not granite, but like very hard rock,

and then

his uncle, Ed Gaylord,

had that mine down in Lincoln,

the Collaga Mine,

and that's where he
found this talc material,

which is a very chalky,

easy to work,

and so then that probably
just kind of freed him up.

He could just carve it, and away he went.

- What excites me about Smith's carvings,

is that we see no struggle,

or even experimentation.

Although his work

has that raw, primitive barbaric

roughly hewn quality,

you could see that from the very beginning

he had no problem achieving,

which most artists or people
who try to set pen to paper,

struggle with immediately,

which is to transfer
what they see to paper.

Over and over, people
might copy something,

but Smith he saw the thing and

he just messed with it and work it

until he got it how he wanted it to be.

So you know that this is
directly from his subconscious.

I think that a lot of his sculptures

look like him by the way.

- [Interviewer] Really?

- Go back and look at quite a number

of those strange faces.

It's impossible, being an artist,

to not produce self portraits,

even if all you do is monsters.

- [ST] Tell me many tales
oh benign maleficent demon,

but tell me none that I've ever heard,

or have even dreamt of

otherwise than obscurely or infrequently.

Nay, tell me not of anything

that lies between the bourns
of time or the limits of space,

for I am a little weary

of all recorded years and charted lands;

and the isles that are westward of Cathay,

and the sunset realms of Ind,

are not remote enough to be made

the abiding-place of my conceptions;

and Atlantis is over-new for
my thoughts to sojourn there,

and Mu itself has gazed upon the sun

in aeons that are too recent,

tell me many tales,

but let them be of things that are past

the lore of legend and of
which there are no myths

in our world or any world adjoining.

Tell me, if you will, of the
years when the moon was young,

with siren-rippled seas and mountains

that were zoned with
flowers from base to summit;

tell me of the planets gray with eld,

of the worlds whereon no mortal
astronomer has ever looked,

and whose mystic heavens and horizons

have given pause to visionaries.

Tell me of the vaster blossoms within

whose cradling chalices
a woman could sleep;

of the seas of fire that beat
on strands of ever-during ice;

of perfumes that can give
eternal slumber in a breath;

of eyeless titans that dwell in Uranus,

and beings that wander in the green light

of the twin suns of azure and orange.

Tell me tales of inconceivable
fear and unimaginable love,

in orbs whereto our
sun is a nameless star,

or unto which its rays have never reached.

- He evidently found a dinosaur skeleton,

along the railroad tracks
where they had cut in,

and he said that some of them

were cut out of what he
called dinosaur steak,

and apparently it worked out pretty well.

This one almost looks

reddish, who knows what exactly it was?

This is a neat thing I
got from Marjorie Hill,

who is Marilyn Novak's daughter,

and as you can see it's a pipe bowl.

And it's just very intricate,

and never had a stem on it,

but can you imagine how long
it took to hollow that out?

I mean it's a fairly soft material,

but this is probably my favorite piece.

- [Narrator] The year
he began is sculptures

would also mark the year
his short, but prolific,

and successful career as a
fiction writer would end.

He would only write prose
sporadically, thereafter.

(eerie instrumental music)

- Lovecraft was his first
and most appreciative reader.

When Lovecraft passed away,

and his parents passed away,

Smith developed what he
called the disgust mechanism,

and found it very, very difficult for him

to write any more stories,

and then when Weird Tales was sold,

and the new publisher returned

his story, The Coming of the White Worm,

as being too disgusting,

Smith gave E. Hoffman Price
a couple of manuscripts,

told him to rewrite
them, or throw them out.

He didn't care what he did with them,

but he basically rid his
hands of fiction writing.

- [Narrator] Out of frustration Smith

would self-publish another book in 1933.

It was entirely comprised of tales

Smith could not sell to the pulps,

regardless of their high literary quality.

With the founding of Arkham House in 1939,

Smith would never again have
to self-publish his work.

His poetry and prose would be
housed in the high quality,

hard-bound format, they so deserved.

- The inspiration for Arkham House,

came when Lovecraft died,

suddenly and unexpectedly.

Very few people knew that he was so ill,

but he died at an early age in 1937,

and August Derleth, who had
been a correspondent of his,

since 1926,

said we gotta do something here,

we gotta save Lovecraft's work

from the oblivion of the pulp magazines.

So he and Wandrei got together

and founded Arkham House in 1939.

But almost immediately thereafter,

Derleth said well,

we should publish other work
by the Lovecraft circle,

or by the Weird Tales circle,

and so his second book

was one of his own stories collections,

and then the third book was
Smith's, Out of Space and Time.

At this point, Smith was really

not doing so well.

As I say, since the death of Lovecraft,

and the death of his own
parents, in the mid-1930's,

I think Smith was sort of

at sea, he didn't really know

how he wanted to proceed.

I think he actually spent a lot of time,

I'm sorry to say, drinking,

and I think the inspiration
to write prose fiction

certainly had fallen by the wayside.

Smith was very happy to
have his stories published

in collection after collection,

but he was dismayed, as Derleth was,

that these books were not welcomed

by the literary public in general.

The New York Times Book Review
wrote some rather pungent,

unfavorable notices of the Smith books,

and that I think discouraged Smith.

- Of great wonderment to me also,

is the shortness of his writing career.

It haunts my greatly.

It troubles me.

Why did he stop?

What would we have, had he continued?

- Sometimes I want to scold Smith.

He was a popular Arkham House writer,

and he didn't take advantage of that.

- Yeah, I was imagining a conversation

with Clark Ashton Smith where,

after looking at photos of
what Auburn used to look like,

and seeing photos of the people,

whatever, borderline gold miners, yes,

like leather things on everywhere,

just being like,

oh hey young man what's your?

Oh you're a writer?

Oh that's cool.

You got a nice little talent there,

that's great, what do you write about?

And then they read the
writing, you know what I mean?

They read it, and like,
oh you've been published?

Oh that's cool,

you're bringing some
glory to our little town.

And then they read what they write,

and it's like, what the
hell is wrong with you man?

You're weird, dude.

And so, I imagined that happening to him,

in some capacity because that's
exactly what happened to me.

Because people be like,

oh you do art?

Oh that's great.

And show 'em this horrendous

weird shit you draw,

and then they're just like,

trying to get their children

not to hang out with you from that point.

- [Narrator] After the
deaths of his parents

in the mid-1930's,

Smith was free in ways
he'd never been before.

He'd often expressed a
desire to leave Auburn,

which he called a hell bedunged,
heaven bespitted place.

He not only wanted to leave Auburn,

but leave California and the USA.

Instead, he settled in
for nearly 20 more years.

He clearly perceived himself as a rebel,

and an outsider.

In a letter to Robert
Barlow, he would say,

I could never live in any modern city.

Even more of an outsider than HPL.

His outsideness was principally
in regard to time period,

mine is of space, too.

- Well he did get to
manifest the realization

that people were moved in Japan,

and were moved in France,

and were moved in other
places in the world,

and even in the United States,

where few would come to see him,

but they did come,

and Clark never left to meet HP but.

Had Howard lived he would have come,

and I think if HP had
lived he would have come.

I think they would have.

They would have come to him.

- [Narrator] Many fans and fellow writers

would come to him.

His hilltop cabin became
a somewhat mythical place,

with no roads leading to
its door, only footpaths.

During this period,

he began fancying himself
as some sort of wizard,

and there are many fanciful
memoirs of journeys

to meet the Dark Lord of Averoigne.

In reality, Smith was a gracious host,

courtly and courteous,

and made lifelong friends
with some of his fans.

(soft electric guitar)

Such esteemed writers as Fritz Leiber,

Henry Kuttner, Jack Williamson,
and Edmond Hamilton,

make the pilgrimage to
meet the Bard of Auburn.

And he would have the occasional visit

from an enchantress.

But such visits were infrequent,

and the years long.

(soft electric guitar)

The Gold Rush history
of Auburn and the region

never impressed Smith much,

and in a postcard to HP Lovecraft,

he fails to note the beauty
of Auburn's famous courthouse,

which is surprising,

since its goddesses of wisdom and justice

are surrounded by the gargoyles
of the local law offices.

He worked many odd jobs

during this period to support himself.

He was a woodcutter, a gardener,

fruit picker, miner.

He once joked that the local
ragpicker at the city dump

offered to take him on as an assistant.

He was Auburn's starving artist.

He suffered through severe poverty.

Friends would buy him meals,

and send him typewriter ribbon

when his letters would
arrive too faint to read.

Despite living out the tragedy
of the neglected artist,

there was also triumph.

Through his uncompromising life in art,

he was slowly building his legend,

one that was not susceptible
to fads and literary movements.

His work, his volumes
and filters would abide.

(slow rock music)

He did write the occasional story

for a new generation of pulp readers,

but mostly, he just sort of floated along,

writing the occasional poem,

working on his carvings.

He was done chasing literary fame.

Perhaps he was waiting for
the world to come to him.

- I think it was part of him, too,

because he was born into
this wonderful place,

and it is beautiful.

Auburn was, before people came,

those blue oaks were, very
much blue, and everywhere.

And I think that's part of it for him,

was being in such an insular place.

- When I

first went to Auburn,

I was hoping to find a
place that celebrated Smith,

at least to the extent that
Providence celebrates Lovecraft.

A few more plaques, a
sense of his presence,

local history.

I certainly feel that
Auburn should be a center

for pilgrims of weird fiction.

Just like Baltimore,

people go there because Poe was there.

Providence, Lovecraft.

Auburn, Smith.

- And this rock on which I'm sitting

is a favorite rock, it
comes from Smith's property,

it was a favorite rock where he

would like to sit down and

and just sort of hang out.

And it's a nice public
monument in Centennial Park.

So that anybody coming from a distance

and wants to see something
associated with him,

this is it.

- [Narrator] There's
also this newer tribute

on the sidewalk in downtown Auburn,

but even with these plaques and markers,

Smith remains mostly unknown
to the average Auburnite.

- Pretty much ubiquitous that throughout

that people don't know
who we're talking about.

The native son is not the native son.

The memories of the old that live here,

they've all passed on,

so he's not really known as
a native son unfortunately.

He is to the larger world outside of us,

but not here, which is really abysmal

considering what a remarkable
person he was, and writer.

- [Narrator] This is Poet Smith Drive,

but the footpath was
always his preferred route.

- I think he felt like he
would have been much happier

if he had been born during the renaissance

or in medieval times,

when he could have been a
troubadour or something,

and become famous

for his lyrics and his poetry,

and he just was not appreciated.

- He escaped,

from Auburn,

in more ways than one.

As much as he loved the
place, the physical place,

and much as he loved some of the people,

I think it was a very daunting experience

for a kid like him to grow up there.

- [Man] And yet the thing we yearned for,

the thing that we returned for,

from tomb and catacomb,

it may not wholly dwindle

while moon or meteor kindle,

a phantom beacon on the ebon foam.

Through ghoul-watched wood unthridden,

by goblin mere and middin,

no ivory horn will blow,

no gold lamp lighten gloom-ward,

but we will carry doom-ward

the broken beauty caught from long ago.

- [Narrator] In 1954,
the solitary sorcerer

finally departed from the foothills,

and fulfilled a dream of his,

to live near the sea.

After knowing each other
for just a matter of weeks,

Clark Ashton Smith and Carol Jones Dorman

would be married at the office

of the Justice of the Peace in Auburn.

They would remain a devoted
couple for the rest of his life.

- That was 1954, November,

and I was just returning

from a high school
football game in Carmel,

when Eric Barker, a poet,

who introduced Smith and my mother,

drove up in what my mother
used to call a black moriah.

It was a saloon car of some vintage,

and drove up in the front of the house

just as I arrived,

and out popped Eric, who was
sort of a gnomish little guy,

and proudly opened the door,

and out stepped my mother and this guy.

And of course it was Smith.

I was 13, my sister was 15,

and my brother was 12.

Here is a 61 year old guy,

coming into a family.

My mother was in her 40's, 46 I think,

was coming into this household,

with these three kids,

and anybody that knows anything
about Smith's background

knows that that must have been

an interplanetary experience on its own,

and I'm sure it was.

- [Narrator] Smith now lived in a house

with electricity and running
water for the first time,

with neighbors no less.

He would still get up to the
cabin for weeks at a time,

and thought of it as a
sort of rustic vacation

from city life.

But to his great sadness,

his longtime home was vandalized,

and finally burnt to the
ground in December, 1957.

Arson was suspected,

and Smith refused to
sell the remaining land

in defiance to developers.

Now, the final empty lot

in the vicinity of the
cabin is being built upon.

And the boulder ridge that
Clark Ashton Smith knew,

no longer exists.

- You had asked if I was aware of his

reputation as a poet.

I wasn't that much until much later.

What I was aware of,

was that his writing had
brought him some kind of fame,

because,

my brother and sister both
moved out of the house

while I was still in high school.

My sister across the
street to become a nanny,

and my brother moved into
an apartment with friends

when he was a sophomore in high school.

I was the only one that
remained in the house,

until I graduated from high school.

And the door, somebody
would knock on the door,

and it'd be a visitor from Japan,

in broken English saying, could
he see Clark Ashton Smith.

That's the way I met Donald Fryer.

- Clark Ashton Smith lived
here at 117 15th Street,

from late 1954 until his
death in August, 1961.

I visited him here twice,

the late summer of 1958,

and the late summer of 1959.

We had a picnic on the beach,

on that part of the beach
that was closest to the house.

And since, and I had been wanting

to spend some time with Smith,

but we had not thought about
reservations in motels.

There was no place to be found.

We did not know this was
very much (muffled) area,

and so they let me stay
with them several days.

Smith had all these
like, what do you call?

Plank bookcases.

I would ask him a question,

he would turn around and pick out a book.

Yeah, I remember this.

Oh wow, lookie.

Yeah, I remember the backyard.

And I remember the kitchen
ceiling, which I don't know,

it's probably not the
same, but I cleaned it.

And it was a mixture you know of oily gas.

And I remember the bathroom.

Yeah, and then that bedroom.

But I've lived long
enough to see this happen.

You know what Yeats said,

it isn't the artist's
eye which justifies him,

it's his public, if he can find one.

And if he's a mere popular
poet, well he'll find that,

but if he's a great poet,
he creates a new audience,

and that's exactly what Smith is doing.

- I knew from being in the house

and listening to Mom and Smith

and the osmotic process,

that poetry is what mattered
to him, not the prose.

And that according to my Mom,

and from what I've read about it,

he quit writing the prose in the 30's,

after his parents died,

or after he no longer had
the responsibility for them,

and concentrated on poetry and carving.

The carving, he was doing constantly

when we were in Pacific Grove.

- We discussed his poetry.

There wasn't very many people
with whom I could discuss it.

They didn't know it.

There were people who could discuss it,

I didn't know them,

so I asked him, which poet

meant as much to him,

as his poetry meant to me.

So he turned around and
pulled out that volume

and started reading the
beginning of Duandon,

which really impressed me,

because later on I got a copy

and I read it for myself.

As you know the language,
it's like that of the ocean.

In case I do not mention, he
had a beautiful voice, deep.

And he did not speak fast.

He had a kind of a winsome
quality that I liked.

They were tender with each other,

which is always a lovely thing to see

between people, don't you think?

Yeah, and also again I
must give credit to Carol.

Whether or not, you know, you get old.

Your mentation isn't the same,

you're not gonna keep
producing masterpieces.

He did do poetry, he
continued writing poetry,

but he was older, maybe he just didn't,

don't begrudge an old
man a period of rest.

And so she provided him
with a lovely home here,

which otherwise he might not have had.

- Here we are in Pacific
Grove in the 1950's,

McCarthyism is still going
on, and all of this stuff.

My mother's writing letters

to the Monterrey Peninsula Herald,

protesting McCarthy, you know,

I don't even know exactly what's going on,

all I know is that

this isn't mainstream,

and here he is, wearing a beret,

using a cigarette holder.

I mean in Pacific Grove in the 1950's,

I'm not even sure they knew
what a cigarette holder was,

and he was wearing,

I'll always remember these,

he wore cargo pants, World
War II Army cargo pants.

He loved them,

because they had these huge pockets,

and he could put his
carving tools in them.

He'd be wearing those, a
beret, smoking a cigarette,

Pall Malls, unfiltered,

in a cigarette holder,

and wearing one of those

wonderful shirts that he used to have.

Sometimes they looked sort of
semi-Hawaiian or something.

And blissfully sort of floating.

- The following poem, insofar as we know,

was the last poem that Smith wrote.

It's called Cycles.

I actually commissioned
the poem from Smith.

It was gonna be used in
the Smith bibliography.

Unfortunately, for some reason or other

it didn't make into the Black
Book and other Publications.

Cycles.

The sorcerer departs, and
his high tower is drowned

slowly by low flat communal
seas that level all,

while crowding centuries
retreat, return and fall

into the cyclic gulf that
girds the cosmos round,

widening, deepening ever
outward without bound,

till the oft re-risen bells
from young Atlantis call;

and again the wizard-mortised
tower upbuilds its wall

above a re-beginning
cycle, turret-crowned.

Newborn, the mage re-summons
stronger spells, and spirits

with dazzling darkness clad
about, and fierier flame

renewed by aeon-curtained slumber.

All the powers

of genii and Solomon the sage inherits;

and there, to blaze with
blinding glory the bored hours,

he calls upon Shem-hamphorash,
the nameless Name.

June 4th, 1961, Clark Ashton Smith.

He died the 14th of August, 1961.

- Because of his illness,

he had been ill previous to his death,

bedridden, if you will,

and Mom had moved a bed downstairs,

or had it moved down,

where the table, the
writing table usually was.

And you've been in the house,

so it's in the main dining room part,

and the table was removed,

and the bed was substituted in,

and Smith was lying there,
on a bed, in a state.

I don't know how else to describe it.

She hadn't called anybody else,

she just called me and

she had given him a small posy of flowers,

some flowers to put in his hand.

And he looked extraordinarily peaceful.

That's the first person,

I suppose I remember this so clearly

because it was the first
person I had ever seen

who was dead.

And we sat there for I
don't know how many hours.

It was sort of a gentile
version of sitting shiva.

We sat there, I don't know how many hours,

and not saying much at all.

And then finally called a mortuary.

(solemn jazz music)

- Real talent always prevails.

The real talent is always rediscovered,

and Clark Ashton Smith was
so god damn impressive,

that anybody who has any aspirations,

will come to him and find him, eventually.

- Smith is probably more popular
now than he has ever been.

There's always new editions
coming out of his work,

both in the US, and in foreign countries.

- It's constantly bubbling up,

and at a lower level.

When I first got into
Lovecraft it was in the 80's,

there was no internet.

I had to go to the local university,

and go into the special
room to read books,

and they wouldn't let you
take them out and everything.

It felt like you were
at Miskatonic University

reading forbidden tomes.

Now, not only does the internet
make it easy to access,

it's utterly commonplace,

everybody knows Cthulhu,

and there's all these events

and culture and merchandise
and stuff like that.

And so Smith still is this kind of

conclave, sort of a cabal underneath.

- He knew of his own immortality.

Clark Ashton Smith, all of his work

speaks of his knowledge,

his inherent deep down knowledge,

his core certainty,

that he would not turn to dust,

that he would not be
planted like a pumpkin,

that eventually the
world would come to him.

- [Narrator] Arkham House
would publish 13 books by Smith

through the years,

including his selected
letters, his writing journal,

and the long-awaited
Selected Poems, in 1971.

The early 70's saw Smith
published in paperback

for the first time, thanks
to editor Lin Carter.

Ballentine's the Adult Fantasy Series

was instrumental in bringing Smith

out of the realm of the collector,

into the common fantasy fan.

New editions of his work continued

to be brought forth
throughout the 80's and 90's.

And in the 21st century,

our wizard's tower has been built anew,

with the publication of
his collected fantasies,

and his complete poems and translations.

And the inclusion of Clark Ashton Smith

in the Penguin Classics Library in 2014

has finally cemented his name

as a major figure of western literature.

(dramatic electronic music)

There have only been two attempts

to translate Smith's
visionary tales into film.

The first was an episode of
Rod Serling's Night Gallery,

which transforms the story
of the Return of the Sorcerer

into what would have been
Smith's worst nightmare,

a hopelessly campy,
made-for-TV occult melodrama.

Perhaps Smith's unique blend
of high literary quality

with pulp narratives, is
impossible to film faithfully.

Harlan Ellison suggests
that the problem lies

with the Hollywood system.

- They are truly lyrical,

in that they deal with other realms,

realms beyond human awareness.

And Hollywood movie-makers

are neither equipped

nor anxious to go into those areas.

- [Narrator] The other
film, Mother of Toads,

elevates the B movie format,

and does Smith's tale justice

under the direction of
auteur, Richard Stanley.

- It's been very, very
poorly served by cinema,

similar to Lovecraft who I don't think

has been treated terribly
well by Hollywood either.

But Smith in particular
is almost impossible

to translate to film.

I would like to see more
animations based on Smith's work,

because possibly animation is the only way

to approach some of the tales,

considering their incredible,

their sheer wildness.

A story like say the
Empire of the Necromancers

might well work as an animation.

But I would shudder to imagine

how you could conceive of
such a thing in real life.

- It's definitely time, I think

for him to be considered

not just as a serious fantasist,

and should be elevated to that canon,

right in there between
L Frank Baum, Tolkien,

and all of these other
great and immortal creators,

but also as a great American writer,

as an American poet,

and as an American prose stylist,

and as a neo-primitivist artist.

I think it's time.

- Here you are, 37,

from Placerville,

come to interview me in Los Angeles.

I'm in the Clark Ashton Smith circle.

You're now in the Clark
Ashton Smith circle.

Clark Ashton Smith has his own circle.

There's no need for it to be larger,

or smaller, it is as it is,

and as it properly should be.

Now everyone in the world is gonna respond

to Clark Ashton Smith anymore
than everybody in the world

responds to Colette or Dumas.

It is not necessary for everybody

to be in the same place.

You don't have to have everybody say,

well how come he hasn't--

Fuck you.

You're asking the wrong question.

You're asking a question that says

everybody should be in
the same god damn place,

that unless you've got a twitter load

of people posting your name,

you aren't smart enough.

Look at all the schmucks
who have 10,000 hits

on Facebook, who can't get a job.

Anybody who says, how
come he doesn't have more,

say, you aren't asking the right question.

He has all the aficionados he's
supposed to have right now.

And if he doesn't have
them, they're coming.

They're all coming.

They're charging in slower, or faster.

Time moves at its own pace.

Clark Ashton Smith will
never be forgotten.

♪ Ye that see in darkness ♪

♪ When the moon is drowned ♪

♪ In the coiling fen-mist ♪

♪ Far along the ground ♪

♪ Ye that see in darkness ♪

♪ Say, what have ye found ♪

♪ We have seen strange atoms ♪

♪ Trysting on the air ♪

♪ The dust of vanished lovers ♪

♪ Long parted in despair ♪

♪ And dust of flowers that withered ♪

♪ In worlds of otherwhere ♪

♪ We have seen the nightmares ♪

♪ Winging down the sky ♪

♪ Bat-like and silent ♪

♪ To where the sleepers lie ♪

♪ We have seen the bosoms ♪

♪ Of the succubi ♪

♪ We have seen the crystal ♪

♪ Of dead Medusa's tears ♪

♪ We have watched the undines ♪

♪ That wane in stagnant weirs ♪

♪ And mandrakes madly dancing ♪

♪ By black, blood-swollen meres ♪

♪ We have seen the satyrs ♪

♪ Their ancient loves renew ♪