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Sun Spots, v. 7, issue 1, whole no. 27, Spring 1946
Page 15
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Spring, 1946 SUN SPOTS Page 15 FANTASTICS AND OTHER FANCIES, By Lafcadio Hearn...Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914. This book contains 36 short sketches by one of the little-known, but most talented of fantasy writers. Lafcadio Hearn was born in 1850 on the island of Santa Maura off the coast of Greece. Although he left the Ionian Islands at an early age, the idea of having lived among the memories of the ancient Hellenic world impressed him to a definite degree in later life. Hearn spent his early life traveling and in 1869 migrated from Ireland to the United States, where he remained until 1890. It was while in the United States that Hearn composed his "Fantastics." The majority of these sketches first appeared in The Item and The Times-Democrat, two New Orleans papers on which Hearn worked. "I am conscious they are only trivial," wrote Hearn to his friend H. E. Krehbiel in 1880, speaking of these sketches, "But I fancy the idea of the fantastics is artistic. They are my impressions of the strange life of New Orleans. They are dreams of a tropical city. There is one twin-idea running through them all -- Love and Death." Culled from the browned pages of The Item and Times-Democrat, these sketches were compiled into book form in 1914 by Charles Woodward Hutson under the title "Fantastics and Other Fancies." Howard Phillips Lovecraft writes of Hearn and his "Fantastics" as follows: "Lafcadio Hearn, strange, wandering, and exotic, departs still farther from the realm of the real; and with the supreme artistry of a sensative poet weaves phantasies impossible to an author of the solid roast-beef type. His "Fantastics", written in America, contains some of the most impressive ghoulishness in all literature." To really appreciate Hearn you must read his work, study it. His writing is generally simplicity personified, but it has a charm all its own. His variety of subjects in the Fantastics is vast. Of the selections in this book especially effective are "The Black Cupid", "The Undying One", "The Name on the Stone", and "A Kiss Fantastical." After 21 years in the United States, Hearn left for Japan in 1890. There he remained until his death in 1903, marrying a Japanese woman, assuming a Japanese name, and eventually being buried with full Buddhist rites. While in Japan Hearn won world reknown as an interpreter of that country. He also had published several books of a fantastic nature, among them "In Ghostly Japan", "Kwaidan", and "Kotto." ---Gerry de la Ree
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Spring, 1946 SUN SPOTS Page 15 FANTASTICS AND OTHER FANCIES, By Lafcadio Hearn...Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914. This book contains 36 short sketches by one of the little-known, but most talented of fantasy writers. Lafcadio Hearn was born in 1850 on the island of Santa Maura off the coast of Greece. Although he left the Ionian Islands at an early age, the idea of having lived among the memories of the ancient Hellenic world impressed him to a definite degree in later life. Hearn spent his early life traveling and in 1869 migrated from Ireland to the United States, where he remained until 1890. It was while in the United States that Hearn composed his "Fantastics." The majority of these sketches first appeared in The Item and The Times-Democrat, two New Orleans papers on which Hearn worked. "I am conscious they are only trivial," wrote Hearn to his friend H. E. Krehbiel in 1880, speaking of these sketches, "But I fancy the idea of the fantastics is artistic. They are my impressions of the strange life of New Orleans. They are dreams of a tropical city. There is one twin-idea running through them all -- Love and Death." Culled from the browned pages of The Item and Times-Democrat, these sketches were compiled into book form in 1914 by Charles Woodward Hutson under the title "Fantastics and Other Fancies." Howard Phillips Lovecraft writes of Hearn and his "Fantastics" as follows: "Lafcadio Hearn, strange, wandering, and exotic, departs still farther from the realm of the real; and with the supreme artistry of a sensative poet weaves phantasies impossible to an author of the solid roast-beef type. His "Fantastics", written in America, contains some of the most impressive ghoulishness in all literature." To really appreciate Hearn you must read his work, study it. His writing is generally simplicity personified, but it has a charm all its own. His variety of subjects in the Fantastics is vast. Of the selections in this book especially effective are "The Black Cupid", "The Undying One", "The Name on the Stone", and "A Kiss Fantastical." After 21 years in the United States, Hearn left for Japan in 1890. There he remained until his death in 1903, marrying a Japanese woman, assuming a Japanese name, and eventually being buried with full Buddhist rites. While in Japan Hearn won world reknown as an interpreter of that country. He also had published several books of a fantastic nature, among them "In Ghostly Japan", "Kwaidan", and "Kotto." ---Gerry de la Ree
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