DMR has a new blog post, “When Klarkash-Ton Read The Book of Westmarch”, musing on precisely why Clark Ashton Smith was an early admirer of The Lord of the Rings, in those fallow decades before the book was properly understood by its early fans or was taken seriously by some perceptive critics. I can add a few useful dates and some historical context, which DMR lacks. For instance, in the year Smith died the reviewer Philip Toynbee in the Observer newspaper (6th August 1961, then a leading UK Sunday newspaper) was pleased to note of Tolkien’s works that… “today these books have passed into a merciful oblivion”. Even when the book gained fans in a big way circa 1966, they often deeply mis-understood it, or just saw its surface layer. Many critics seemed to assume it was set on another planet. Thus Smith would likely have regarded Tolkien as akin to Lovecraft in his then-obscurity and tight cadre of (often befuddled) fans, and without even a Derleth to champion him.
DMR suggests that, in what must have been a close reading, Smith had especially noted Gandalf’s passing revelation — made in the context of the secret council on the Pelennor after the defeat of the Witch King — that Sauron “is but a servant or emissary” of a greater evil. At that time Smith would not have been able to discover more about this unknown master in The Silmarillion, as that monumental book was only published in 1977. Thus Smith was seemingly left free to imagine something very dark and chthonic indeed. Such is the implication of the interview with Smith’s friend, linked in the DMR article.
Also interesting is DMR’s suggestion that Smith might have found a distillation of a rooted ancestral homeland in The Lord of the Rings, since…
As with Tolkien, Smith’s father, Timeus, was an Englishman — and Clark’s mother was of predominantly English stock. Did Timeus Smith imbue his son with an interest in the Green and Pleasant Land?
Timeus Ashton-Smith was apparently the son of a wealthy iron manufacturer, in the years before the transition to steel, and one wonders exactly where his formative years were spent before he became an adventurer? Nothing online can tell me the answer to that. But if he grew up in the industrial West Midlands, then that would give Smith another tie to Tolkien via Birmingham.
DMR adds about another eight very likely points of linkage between Smith and Tolkien, or perhaps a better phrase would be ‘natural sympathy’. I think I’d enjoy reading DMR’s blog post as an expanded and footnoted article in a journal, with a dating framework added and a brief survey of the many “horror” elements in The Lord of the Rings that would have appealed to Smith, something DMR doesn’t mention, from the Barrow Downs to Shelob’s Lair. One might also briefly note how the studied lack of tub-thumping Narnia-style Christianity would have eased Smith’s journey into Middle-earth.
