How many?

If you had to guess — or merely desired to — how many Cabell enthusiasts do you think there are in the world?

I am not sure how I would go about forming an educated opinion.

I suspect there are more than we think. They don't seem to be herded together like Lovecrafters or Bardolaters, but they seem to pop out of many cracks. Many seem to me to be content to be solitary-ish Cabell admirers though.

And how enthusiastic does one have to be to be an 'enthusiast'? Read 'em all? Read just Jurgen?

A thousand?

"Bardolaters?" What're they?

It does seem that reading Cabell becomes a more esoteric enthusiasm with every passing year. It is necessarily for a subset of the shrinking population of people who read books of adult-oriented fiction for pleasure. Poictesme notwithstanding, his work will not generally satisfy the appetite for vicarious participation in setting and character that seems to drive most fantasy readers these days.

>3 paradoxosalpha:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardolatry

If we'd take the gross liberty of allowing an "enthusiast" to be anyone who's ever read and then had a positive opinion of any Cabell work, then assumed that only a tiny percentage (less than 1%) of those readers ever documented owning/rating a Cabell book on an internet site... then given that Cabell's most known work, Jurgen, is currently libraried 857 times on LT and mostly positive rated 790 times on Goodreads, it would seem safe to number said enthusiasts in the tens of thousands worldwide.

If I were to make a completely unscientific guess, I'd say 10 out of a million in countries that English language literature has managed to penetrate. That would mean something like 3,000 in the US, and 1,000 in Europe. Add another 1,000 for the rest of the world. So, 5,000 real enthusiasts (who have read at least five books by him and who are interested in his work).

A guess pulled out of my hat.

Anglemark: Your hat is remarkably similar to mine.

But Vaniamk13 . . . How to define ‘enthusiast’?

I would say an enthusiast is a person who collects an author’s work, and loves with exceptional ardor at least two works by said author.

I am an Umberto Eco enthusiast by this definition, since my affection for The Name of the Rose is not without an echo in my love for A Theory of Semiotics. Vladimir Nabokov earns my devotion with Lolita and Despair.

I think Branch Cabell is the author with the greatest number of beloved-by-me works, including The Cream of the Jest and The Silver Stallion and The Music from Behind the Moon and The High Place and The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck along with many works to which glowing endorsements come forth unbidden, such as Jurgen and Hamlet Had an Uncle and Smirt and The Devil’s Own Dear Son, and the appreciated stragglers, like The Certain Hour and Special Delivery.

The fiction authors who would share anything like my Cabell enthusiasm are Peake, Dunsany, Morris, Vance, Beagle, Tolkien, Lewis and the like, in the realm of fantasy and sf, and, in higher-brow literature, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Trollope and Twain, are just in the Ts. I have perhaps excessive devotion to the work of F. Marion Crawford and Iris Murdoch. George Meredith will probably burst forth in my reading habits soon.

But if we use your definition, I am an enthusiast of hundreds and hundreds of authors.

Which might be accurate.

Crypto-Willobie, your guess of ‘more than we think’ is borne out in at least one way, for I am often delightfully surprised to discover Cabell encomia coming from the unlikeliest of people.

Wirkman: So really, we have a spectrum of possible, and unknowable, answers that adjust dramatically depending on what an enthusiast actually is. Indeed, I was pulling my guess from somewhere other than my hat, using some likely faulty logic.

But, if by your rarefied definition you mean someone who approximates your own or say Crypto-Willobie's engaged enthusiasm for Cabell (more than just claiming him as a favorite author), then perhaps as much as a thousand worldwide is reasonable. Though, I'm not sure I could meet your "loves with exceptional ardor" requirement for Party inclusion (smile), but I certainly enjoy reading Cabell.

An amusing thread.

I like >2 Crypto-Willobie:'s idea that Cabell afficianados* are content to nurture their affection in solitary, even while looking forward to that semi-public tip of the hat when unexpectedly discovering a fellow traveler.

>7 wirkman: The fiction authors who would share anything like my Cabell enthusiasm are ...

I know you were not attempting anything like an exhaustive list. Still, I feel motivated to add Moorcock and Gaiman to your list, as well as Mencken among non-fiction writers. What others have I missed?

//

* Cabellistos? -- that doesn't sound right, the term should have an Old French flair.

I understood Wirkman to mean authors about whom he has as much enthusiasm as he does for Cabell. (Not authors with actual enthusiasm for Cabell, which we have treated in various other threads here.)

Fiction authors whom I read as avidly and delightedly as I read Cabell would include Thomas Pynchon, Robert Irwin, Umberto Eco, M. John Harrison, and Lee Siegel.

ETA: Author touchstones are belly-up?

After re-reading, I believe you're right.

And digging up a few of those threads you mentioned:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/139026
http://www.librarything.com/topic/299882
http://www.librarything.com/topic/270664
http://www.librarything.com/topic/192099

Not an exhaustive list, either.