Clark Ashton Smith's new noise: New aesthetics for the real people
Abstract
In the midst of the modernist movement in the United States of America, hard financial times forced Clark Ashton Smith to transition from writing poetry to prose. Although publishing in a significantly different venue and genre than the other modernists, Smith carefully embedded modernist discourse within his stories. As a result, Smith's stories worked on two distinct levels, however both during his time and continuing today his tales were only appreciated on a cursory, shallow level. Had he been granted the luxuries of healthy parents and a comfortable monetary situation, his works would have been marketed differently, and his respective audience would have immediately picked up on his modernist musings. Between the newly developing understandings of space and time, the emerging status of women in the world, and the growing uncertainty of God in a war-town world growing increasingly dependent upon science and technology for answers, Smith managed to create stories that generated significant demand from the mass market, specifically the pulps, but never generated exposure to an audience that would appreciate and understand his contributions to the modernist movement as a whole. Focusing on the above three points of discussion, I discuss the reasons for Smith's inclusion into the modernist canon and provide examples of the subtlety and complexity of his stories in how they appealed to one audience while easily proving his worth to another.
Degree
M.A.
Advisors
Fewer, Purdue University.
Subject Area
American literature
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