The Maze of the Enchanter

by Clark Ashton Smith

  It’s hard to understand the botching of “The Dweller in the Gulf,” except on the theory that Gernsback or one of the editors thought that the horror needed toning down. But I hadn’t understood that the horror element was objectionable: the only criticism they made of the tale in its original form was, that it “lacked scientific motivation.” I am utterly disgusted with that outfit. Gernsback’s present policy strikes me as being suicidal. Science fiction requires abundant descriptive matter to put it over at all—and most of the tales I have sent in recently have been objected to as containing a surplus of descriptive matter, adjectives, etc. Oh, hell.... And the bastards owe me about six hundred dollars anyway. They might at least have the decency to print my stuff straight.7

  Some of Gernsback’s motivation for altering the story might be inferred from remarks Lasser had made concerning what they regarded as Smith’s “over-reliance” on atmosphere. Lasser had sent Smith a letter dated August 11, 1932—about the time he was writing “Dweller”—that warned Smith that Wonder Stories was “not interested in weird tales” or any “bizarre scientific themes,” which of course was Smith’s forte; instead he should concentrate on “originality of plot, drama, conflict, situation, environment, character.”8 Lasser apologized to Smith on February 15, 1933 and insisted that the changes were made at Gernsback’s “special request,”9 but the damage was already done: “Gernsback must be loco [...] Lasser apologized profusely in reply to the verbal drubbing that I gave him—but that hardly mends matters. I judge that the idiotic alterations have cooked the story pretty well with readers who might otherwise have admired it.”10

  Smith didn’t realize just how right he was. Forrest J. Ackerman wrote a letter to the fan magazine Fantasy Fan attacking the story. Ackerman stated that he “could not find one redeeming feature about the story” and called for the ink in Smith’s pen to “dry up.”11 He even went so far as to write Smith a personal letter asking that he not submit such stories to WS. (Ackerman would later approach Smith about publishing a collection of his science fiction stories, includung this tale, and would include “The Dweller in the Gulf” in an anthology that he published in Spain.12)

  Smith was to have received fifty dollars for “The Dweller in the Gulf.” By the time of the “Boiling Point” controversy, Gernsback already owed Smith $741, which according to Mike Ashley was probably the most money he owed to any writer. Ashley observes that “though the payments would obviously have been beneficial, they were not critical.” 13. They soon became critical when Smith’s elderly mother scalded her foot in October 1933, throwing “another monkey wrench into my literary programme.”14

  The domestic duties that his mother performed now fell to CAS, along with the task of providing nursing care, so he was no longer producing stories with the same regularity as before. It became imperative that Smith collect what he was due, so he hired a New York attorney, Ione Weber, to pursue collection of the debt. Smith was surprised when payments were forthcoming despite Gernsback’s having dissolved Wonder Stories’ old publisher, Stellar Publishing, which Ashley notes would have limited Smith’s claim.16 Miss Weber reported to Smith that “it is getting even more difficult to collect from Gernsback. However, you are the one getting paid. I have not had a check for any other author for months and months.”15 Since Smith was not submitting stories, Ashley concludes that Gernsback held him in high enough regard that he was attempting to lure him back. This might be the reason why Gernsback himself wrote to Smith the next year to invite him to serve as an “incorporator” and Honorary Member of the Science Fiction League that he was sponsoring; Smith was listed as a Director of the League in the May 1934 issue of Wonder Stories.

  1. CAS, letter to DAW, September 1, 1932 (ms, MHS).

  2. CAS, letter to AWD, September 1, 1932 (SL 190).

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, November 24, 1932 (SL 197). See Appendix 4.

  4. CAS, letter to AWD, February 9, 1933 (SL 201).

  5. CAS, letter to DAW, November 10, 1932 (SL 196).

  6. HPL, letter to CAS, April 4, 1932 (AHT 32.83).

  7. CAS, letter to AWD, February 19, 1933 (ms, SHSW).

  8. David Lasser, letter to CAS, August 11, 1932 (ms, JHL).

  9. David Lasser, letter to CAS, February 15, 1933 (ms, JHL).

  10. CAS, letter to AWD, March 1, 1933 (ms, SHSW).

  11. Forrest J. Ackerman, letter to “The Boiling Point,” Fantasy Fan 1, no. 1(September 1933): 6; rpt. In The Boiling Point by Clark Ashton Smith et al (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, April 1985): [1].

  12. See Ackerman’s letter to CAS, July 1, 1947 (ms, JHL); also Forrest J. Ackerman, ed., Los mejores historias de horror (Barcelona: Editorial Bruguera, 1969).

  13. Mike Ashley, “The Perils of Wonder: Clark Ashton Smith’s Experiences with Wonder Stories.” Dark Eidolon no. 2 (June 1989): 7.

  14. CAS, letter to RHB, October 25, 1933 (SL 234).

  15. Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes, The Gernsback Days: A study of the evolution of modern science fiction from 1911 to 1936 (Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2004): 243.

  16. Ione Weber, letter to CAS, March 15, 1935 (ms, JHL).

  The Maze of the Enchanter

  After completing “The Dimension of Chance,” Smith apparently felt the need to cleanse his literary palate by writing something more to his liking. The result was originally entitled “The Maze of Mool Dweb,” which he described to August Derleth as “ultra-fantastic, full-hued and ingenious, with an extra twist or two in the tail for luck.”1 He did not think that it would find favor with Wright, and was proven correct when the manuscript was returned as “too poetic and finely phrased.” The rejections of “Mool Dweb” and “The Eidolon of the Blind,” in combination with a perceived decline in the quality of Weird Tales in recent issues, “make me feel that the chances for fine literature in that direction are growing decidedly slimmer.”2

  Smith next submitted the story to Argosy, which had published interplanetary romances by Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) that were perhaps in the same phylum but definitely not the same class, but without success. (Smith probably expected as much, since he wrote to Derleth not “if Argosy returns it,” but “when.”) He decided that a preferable title would be “The Enchanter’s Maze,” and also that “Maal Dweb—two syllables,—would be preferable, perhaps, for tone-color, etc. The few rare (?) words, with the exception of valence, termini, and possibly one or two others, can be replaced with less exotic terms without an actual sacrifice of meaning.” He added defiantly “But beyond this, I won’t touch the story for anyone, if I never sell it.”3 Lovecraft wrote at the time that the story “had much charm, & Satrap Pharnabazus [Wright] was certainly an ass (as usual) to reject it.”4

  Smith revised and retyped the story at the beginning of October 1932. He presented the original version to a Bay Area science fiction fan named Lester Anderson, whose position at a bookstore allowed Smith to purchase a number of long-desired titles at bargain prices. This typescript was “so overcrawled with alterations that I had to make a clean copy to send out. But maybe the variant readings will interest you.” (This typescript is now part of the Bancroft Library’s collection.) He went on to explain that

  Wright objected to the “unfamiliar” exotic diction of the tale, so I tried to eliminate almost everything that might bother a fifth-grade grammar student. My sole reason for using words not usually employed by “pulp” writers have been to achieve precision, variety and richness. The words are never plugged in for their own sake, but simply because they expressed a fine shade of meaning or gave the tone-color that I wanted. I am forced to infer, though, that all this is lost on the average reader. And yet the A. R., formally speaking, has probably received more education than I have had.5

  Despairing of ever selling the story to a magazine, Smith decided to publish “The Maze of the Enchanter” (as the story was now called) in The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies. Later, when the revived Astounding Stories invited the submission of weird material, Smith aske
d his new correspondent Robert H. Barlow to prepare a new typescript for submission. Unfortunately, Astounding Stories changed its policy before he could submit the story. This was possibly a result of letters written by “Forrest Ackerman and other laboratory-minded donkeys of the same breed” who had “been braying their disapproval of the mild and tepid element of weirdness in some of the Astounding items.” (See also the notes for “The Dweller in the Gulf.”) Smith expressed his annoyance by wishing that those “ who are so hell-bent on realism and scientific verisimilitude should stick to the Scientific American, in which they will find no superstitions other than those of current materialism.”6

  Donald Wandrei and his brother Howard sold some weird stories to Esquire in 1937. Seeing a possible new market, Smith revised the story in an attempt to make it more acceptable, by cutting approximately one thousand words and modifying the language.7 The story also reverted to a version of the original title, “The Maze of Maal Dweb.” (“I think it should be admitted,” wrote CAS of this, “that some of my nomenclature achieves certain nuances of suggestive and atmospheric associative value.”) Esquire editor Arnold Gingrich rejected it as “‘reminiscent of both Burroughs and Cabell;’ a criticism that amazed and disgusted me. I was not aware that Burroughs had any copyright on jungle hunters, or that Cabell had acquired a monopoly of irony. *******!!******** I fear that Mr. Gingrich is a better judge of garbage than of literature.**********!!”8 After all these travels, “The Maze of Maal Dweb” ended up where it began when Wright accepted this version, which was published in the October 1938 issue of Weird Tales.

  Since Smith himself selected the present text for inclusion in The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, a venture that was as much a gesture of defiance at the editorially-dictated mediocrity he saw infesting the pulps as iy was an attempt at financial independence, it is abundantly clear that this is the version he wished to present to the world. While he would ultimately come to prefer “The Maze of Maal Dweb” as a title, this has come entwined with the “abridged and pruned” version published in Weird Tales and included in OST and RA. The editors have decided to retain “The Maze of the Enchanter” to distinguish between the two.

  “Maze” also has the distinction of being the second story of Smith’s to be reprinted in a hardcover anthology, and also the second item by Smith to be included in a school textbook (the first being a poem, “The Cherry-Snows,” which was included in a grade school text book). William Whittingham Lyman (1885-1983) was a correspondent of Smith’s and also an instructor at Los Angeles Junior College. In 1935 he edited, along with two of his colleagues, a textbook called Today’s Literature. Smith contributed “Maze” and four poems. Since this was a textbook, several questions were offered “for study and discussion;” we would have enjoyed being the proverbial “fly on the wall” for the classroom discussions that ensued!

  For study and discussion

  1. How much do the names in the story add to the weird effect?

  2. Note that the sentences have a definite cadence. Do you find this effect pleasing?

  3. Did you expect a happy ending? Did the conclusion surprise you?

  4. Compare the story and the others in the volume The Maze of the Enchanter and Other Stories [sic] with A Dreamer’s Tales by Lord Dunsany. Which do you prefer?

  5. Compare them with John Silence by Algernon Blackwood.

  6. What other writers of terror stories do you know?

  For themes

  1. The modern literature of terror.

  2. The intellectual (or moral) value of the terror story.9

  1. CAS, letter to AWD, September 11, 1932 (SL 188).

  2. CAS, letter to AWD, September 20, 1932 (SL 190).

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, September 28, 1932 (SL 192).

  4. HPL, letter to AWD, October 11, 1932 (in Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth: 1932-1937, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi [New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008], p. 503).

  5. CAS, letter to AWD, October 10, 1932 (SL 193).

  6. CAS, letter to RHB, November 16, 1933 (ms, JHL).

  7. For a discussion of how “making the tale more commercially acceptable and closer to the assumed reading level of the herd ... brought about a corresponding loss to the finer shades of meaning,” see Jim Rockhill, “The Poetics of Morbidity: The Original Text to Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘The Maze of the Enchanter’ and Other Works First Published in The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies,” Lost Worlds no. 1 (2004): 20-25.

  8. CAS, letter to RHB, September 9, 1937 (SL 312).

  9. Dudley Chadwick Gordon, Vernon Rupert King, and William Whittingham Lyman, eds. Today’s Literature. An Omnibus of Short Stories, Novelettes, Poems, Plays, Profiles, and Essays (New York: American Book Company, 1935), p. 950.

  The Third Episode of Vathek:

  The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah

  “Posthumous collaborations,” a practice of which it has been said that the writers involved should trade places, is a controversial yopic, and the stories that have been written by divers hands from notes or fragments by Clark Ashton Smith have generally not been well regarded except possibly as homages. It is a little ironic that Smith himself was a practitioner of this particular form of literary necromancy, and that “The Third Episode of Vathek” holds up well.

  William Beckford’s Gothic novel Vathek (1786), which Smith first read when he was fifteen, was one of his chief literary influences.1 Beckford had also written a series of separate stories, The Episodes of Vathek, in French, in which each of the princes awaiting their damnation along with Vathek at the end of the novel recounts the series of events that brought them to their ultimate fate. The last of these, “The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah,” (hereafter referred to as “Zulkaïs”) was left unfinished by Beckford. An English translation by Sir Frank T. Marzials was published in 1922, and in the course of time a copy found its way into the library of H. P. Lovecraft, whose 1926 novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was heavily influenced by Vathek.2 Lovecraft, along with his friend James F. Morton, thought that Smith would be the ideal candidate for completing the unfinished “Zulkaïs:”

  Regarding “Episodes of Vathek”—my copy is even now on its way to you as a long-term loan, & it is my hope that—as interest—you will ere long shew me a completion of the 3d Episode which shall out-Beckford Beckford! Possibly you may not wish to write the text in French, as Beckford did, but I am sure you can capture the general atmosphere better than anyone else in the gang. [W. Paul] Cook once had a wild idea of letting us all try our hands at this job of completion, & of publishing the collected results in book form. That plan has now evaporated, but I don’t think literature has lost very much thereby—since most of us would be very inept at this form of composition. You, however, are really well fitted for it—& Morton & I were impressed with the idea of what a splendid result you could obtain. I’ll wager Wright would publish the episode with your ending—& perhaps a brief explanatory introduction.3

  After reading the Episodes, Smith was sanguine about the project, noting that “the unfinished one is particularly good, and certainly merits an ending. I hope I can do something that won’t fall too far short. The development that Beckford intended is obvious enough.”4 As enticing as the completion was to CAS as an artistic challenge, he was worried about whether he would be able to recoup the time and money invested:5 “I don’t feel at all sure, though, that [Farnsworth] Wright will be receptive: the length of the tale will militate against it—also, perhaps, the slight hint of perversity in the affection of Zulkaïs and Kalilah.”6

  Smith finished “Zulkaïs” on September 16, 1932, and promptly announced its completion, along with the presentation of a typescript, to Lovecraft in suitably mock-archaic language:

  As a result of your instigation I have striven, with all due necromantic rites, and the burning of Arabian gums in censers well greened with verdigris, to invoke the spirit of William Beckford. Our g
hostly collaboration has eventuated in the continuation and conclusion of Zulkaïs and Kalilah enclosed herewith. It is, of course, tentative, and may require sundry revisions ere the aforementioned revenant will fully approve it. In the meanwhile, I should greatly appreciate your opinion, before submitting the composite whole to Tyrant Pharnabeezer. My feeling is, that the arbiter of W. T. will find it too poisonous, perverse, fantastickal, et al., for his select circle of Babbitts and Polyannas.7

  A few days later CAS would write to Lester Anderson that his contribution ran to 4000 words, as opposed to 13,000 by Beckford, and described the story as “a strange mixture of the ludicrous, the grotesque, the sinister and the devilish.” 8

  Smith sent “Zulkaïs” to Wright,9 who held onto the typed manuscript for several months until reluctantly returning it on grounds that “he saw no opportunity of using it at present, but might possibly ask me to re-submit it at some future time.”10 Wright found much merit in “Zulkaïs,” as evidenced by its frequent mention in his latter letters to Smith. For example, when apologizing for the rejection of “The Coming of the White Worm,” he expressed a hope that he could use it and “Zulkaïs” at a time “when we can realize our ambition for Weird Tales….” 11 Wright confided to CAS in 1934 that

  My head is full of plans, to be carried out in that hypothetical future (I hope not too hypothetical) when the Depression will be far enough behind us so that plans can be brought to realization. One of these plans is to put out yearly, on excellent paper, with an attractive typeface, a really attractive book. I think we could then use your “Third Episode of Vathek;” that is, we could then publish Beckford’s work, including your ending of the third episode, and starting the book off with a foreword by yourself or Lovecraft. What say, feller?12