| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
Weird Words - A Lovecraftian Lexicon (Hippocampus Press 2009) by Dan Clore  I have just purchased this book. It's a vast tomely lexicon of weird words. Very aesthetic. I may pass further comment in due course after exploring it. It seems already to fill a gap in the realm of dictionaries for the benefit of brainwrights and weirdmongers alike. Here below is a specimen page (no axe to grind with Shakespeare, Jack Vance, James Joyce, Weirdmonger et al!):-  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.229.157 |
I'm amazed someone was able to pick a single sought-for word from FINNEGANS WAKE! (It must be in a computer by now, so you just do simple data searches... in fact, all these, must be... google books, does that allow for that?...) | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.132.5.239 |
Famous company you keep Des but you fit in nicely  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
Just picking some words from this huge Lexicon at random: corpse-light, Charonian, fescenninely, blasphemous, immeasurable, nyctaloptic, recondite, Phlegethontic... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
.............'fescenninely' (as defined in the book) for example has this quote:- "Laying an affectionate hand on Valzain's shoulder, he hoisted aloft with the other that fescenninely graven quart goblet from which he was wont to drink only wine, eschewing the drugged and violent liquors often prefered by the sybarites of Umbri." Clark Ashton Smith, 'Morthylla' (1952) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Smith was ripe for happy slapping at times, don't you think? You can just see him rubbing his hands and muttering: "FIVE syllables!" | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
What a horribly convoluted sentence. It demonstrates very well my problem with Smith. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.163.176.9 |
He patted his best mate on the shoulder and raised his wine glass. He didn't like the cheap plonk the chavs drank. Yes, a line made much richer by Fancy Words. Poor fella...  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
This rich brew that is Clark Ashton Smith... Actually, the more I look into this book, the more I think it is indispensable for any horror writer (Clark Ashtom Smith style or Cormac McCarthy!) It's brimful with a cornucopia of words and quotes from literature and fiction (weird or otherwise). I am puzzled to report that I am one of the very few late twentieth century writers to have a quote in there (or so it seems so far). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Oh, if only Farnsworth Wright had docked $10 from Smith's fee for every use of the word 'haply'... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.229.205 |
Apparently Smith read a hefty dictionary from cover to cover solely to broaden his vocabulary. I don't know which dictionary it might have been, but I'm inclined to believe this. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I'm tempted to say he used it as a guide to plotting as well. But that would be mean. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.46.49 |
I believe it was the Oxford Unabridged, Hubert! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.131 |
Hey, SOMEONE had to write stories that way! And Hemingway sure wasn't his weight doing it. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.131 |
"pulling his weight" - though, hmm... is there some kind of hidden meaning in that flub there?... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
By means of a vexed texture of text or a woven firewall of words, I feel that one can sometimes wring a greater degree of (often unexpected) meaning or plot-direction or characterisation-construction than in straightforward or transparent or linear prose. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I love that Robert E. Howard passage... it sums up his weird and earthy approach at one and the same time. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
This is the full text of the CAS story that contained the word 'fescenninely': http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/142/morthylla Does it work in context? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
I like this bit in it: "And tedium lurks at the middle of all kisses" | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.169.217.52 |
This is a quote from Clark Ashton Smith that Dan Clore (the author of the Lexicon) has highlighted elsewhere: Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind. -- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms" | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.229.205 |
I wonder whether the man talked like that as well. I don't recall any anecdotes in the biographical material I've seen. |