Anthologies
Lovecraft's
Best Short Stories (Michael Ashley, editor) is being brought out by Dover.
One listing shows nine titles, some of which would hardly rank as "best," such
as "The Lurking Fear" and "From Beyond."
Crafts
See a photo of three Lovecraftian-inspired "papertoys": Robert E. Howard's
Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Robert Bloch's
De Vermis Mysteriis, and Cthulhu.
Criticism
I've discovered a pdf search engine. What follows are some of the results. "Howard Phillips
Lovecraft: The Early Years: A Psychological Profile" by Doug Crill appeared in HunterGatheress Journal, volume 2. tinyurl.com/m8fwpv
*** Read an online translation by Robin Mackay of Michel Houllebecq's H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against
Life. tinyurl.com/fpkz7 *** A pdf of George T. Wetzel's The Lovecraft Scholar (Hobgoblin Press, 1983)
has the
articles "The Pseudonymous Lovecraft," "Lovecraft's Literary Executor," and
"Copyright Problems of the Lovecraft Literary Estate." *** "Supplementing
the Abyss-H.P. Lovecraft and E.A. Poe" (Studia
Anglica Posnaniensia XXIV 1992) is by Marek Wilczynski, a
professor at a Polish university. He has written for the same journal "Secret
Passage Through Poe: The Transatlantic Affinities of H. P. Lovecraft and Stefan
Grabinski" (January 2008), which is not available as a free pdf. *** "Howard Phillips Lovecraft et la
Postmodernité" by Piermaria Chapus is a French language article in Sociétés (De Boeck Université, no. 75,
2002/1, p. 99-112).
Movies
Oscar winner for an animated short documentary,
Chris Landreth is working on a fictionalized animated biography film to be
called "Lovecraft."
Music
The band Unit 7 Drain had a 2008 album
title Lovecraft.
Opinion
What does the Internet think of Lovecraft?
If the search terms are "H.P. Lovecraft," it is 5.2% negative (22 results),
94.8% positive (404 results), and 0% don't care (0 results). If the term is
just "Lovecraft," it is 3.6% negative (44 results), 96.3% positive (1,170
results), and 0.1% (1 result). So the answer is overwhelmingly positive.
This summer an adaptation by Tim Uren of
"The Curse of Yig" is being put on at the Fringe Festival in Minneapolis. *** On "Unfilmable" are photos of a puppet show
adaptation of "The Outsider" by Marisa Merewood.
Influence
Weird
Horror Tales (Cornerstone Book Publishers, 2009) by Michael Vance and
illustrated by Earl Geier contains thirteen stories "in the Lovecraft
tradition!"
Contemporaries
IDW Publishing is adapting 100 short
stories by Robert Bloch into a graphic novel format.
EOD Members
Doesn't anything happen in Seattle? It is
somewhat dumbfounding to discover that ST has made the news simply by
purchasing a house. It's in the BlockShopper Seattle.
Dunwich Origins
From the M.G. Lewis poem in the 1808 Tales of Terror, "The Abbot of Leiston:
An Old English Tale": "No tear of compunction o'er Leiston's he'll shed,/When
high on the ridge of dark Dunwich's heath/He throws a last gaze on her
pinnacled head." Here is one possible source for the introduction to Lovecraft of
the name "Dunwich," especially interesting since Lewis was one of the masters
of the Gothic tale. There are other contenders: A Faithful Narrative of the Wonderful and Extraordinary Fits Which Mr.
Tho. Spatchet (Late of Dunwich and Cookly) Was Under by Witchcraft. (1693);
Dunwich: Or a Tale of the Splendid City,
in Four Cantos (1828); and An
Historical Account of Dunwich, Antiently a City, Now a Borough. (1754).
"Dunwich" was also the title of a poem in an 1824 collection by Bernard Barton.
But perhaps none of these had any influence on HPL's name choice.
Tortuous
Retorts (to Mailing 146)
Ken: Based on your review of
the stage production The Dreams in the
Witch House, I'm satisfied that I didn't see it. I wish the title had been
changed to further the distance from Lovecraft that its story already had. ***
In your research on chiefly Polish names in "The Dreams in the Witch House" you
may be over-nice in confining yourself to the 1930 census. Perhaps some of the
names were more common in the 1900, 1910, or 1920 census when Lovecraft may
have encountered and remembered them. Even more pertinent would have been to
scan Rhode Island and Providence directories for these times or even earlier.
*** You state that "Sonia H. Green" was a roomer in Brooklyn, 1930. However, as
I pointed out (The Criticaster 51),
on a 1932 ship's passenger list she is listed as "Sonia Lovecraft" and widowed.
I wonder why she chose to go back to the Lovecraft surname? Her age given on
the passenger list was 49. *** You congratulate the Burlesons on their 100th
issue. I imagine that with all the EOD issues you have published-albeit under
different names-you have surpassed 100, and perhaps you are the leading EODer
in quantity.
John H.: I'm confused by your
documentation. You have Derleth replying to Chester Whitehorn (page 2 of Hesperia [Spring 2009]), but your
citation is "Whitehorn to Derleth: Feb 12, 1954." Shouldn't it be Derleth to
Whitehorn? Nor would I agree with the word "unwisely" as it applied to Ackerman
sending his interpretation of a carbon contract to Derleth; I'd say he was
being forthright. It appears that Ackerman had trusted S. Fowler Wright's
testimony, and Wright was wrong. However, Ackerman's IS account of the episode with Derleth shows how memory is so often
self-serving, not just for Ackerman, but for any of us. *** That was an
intriguing and fact-driven narration of the dispute betwixt Derleth and
Ackerman. Though I feel that you are too warm a partisan of Derleth for the
history to be truly objective-there might have, for example, been more naiveté
on the part of Ackerman than unethical intent-"The Ackermonster and the Aug"
was both enlightening and enjoyable. So, when can we expect a biography by you
of Derleth and Arkham House? (I look forward to reading it.)
Ben: Typo--the name should be
Wilmar H. Shiras. *** Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife has been dramatized a
number of times. First was Weird Woman
(1944), then Night of the Eagle
(1962). This latter was the British title, the American being Burn, Witch, Burn. Why the A. Merritt title
was adopted I know not. Another movie version was Witches' Brew (1980), and another is "in development." A TV series,
Moment of Fear based at least one
episode on the novel, if the IMDB is to be trusted.
Scott: The description
"talentless hack" is an oxymoron. In my view a hack writer is someone who gets
published, generally often, and paid for it. The work may be uninspired and
trite, but it is good enough that money exchanged hands. This means the writer
had talent. Compare this with the number of amateurs who send in manuscripts
that are rejected by a professional editor. Until they prove themselves, they
can rightly be judged as "talentless." *** As I've said of the "black magic"
quote a few issues ago, whoever uttered it, it is reasonably descriptive of
some of Lovecraft's later stories (e.g., "The Dunwich Horror"). *** Re
"Derleth's hubris of putting Lovecraft's name bigger than his" on The Lurker at the Threshold: wouldn't
the charge of hubris have been more appropriate if he had made his name bigger than HPL's on the cover?
Martin: Re Jorkens chiding
the narrator "for getting the price of a mermaid ticket wrong"-there's an
exchange in the 1950 movie Harvey-but
not in the play on which it is based-that involves the sanatorium worker Wilson,
nurse Kelly, and the eccentric Elwood P. Dowd who believes in a human-sized
white rabbit:
Wilson: "Who's Harvey?"
Miss Kelly: "A white rabbit, six feet
tall."
Wilson: "Six feet?"
Elwood P. Dowd: "Six feet three and a
half inches. Now let's stick to the facts."
Re Stephen King's Under the Dome: The Simpson
Movie used the same premise.
Don: Re your citing, via
Bertrand Russell, proof that there is "no
golden teapot somewhere in orbit around the sun." It would be harder to prove
that there is no golden teapot somewhere in orbit around a sun. Infinite stars make for infinite possibilities, even if the
unlikelihood of a teapot remains terrifically impossible. It is rather like the
remark that x number of monkeys on x number of typewriters would in x years
type out a Shakespeare sonnet. *** I suppose that "The Colour out of Space" is
HPL's finest story. I first read it in a volume, The Colour out of Space and Others (Lancer Books, 1964). I remember
that in 1965 I bought the volume at Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood. I can
virtually envision where it was on the book store shelf when I spotted it by The Dunwich Horror and Others (1963)
from the same publisher. The pink cover had a skeleton with a veil that turned
out unrelated to the contents. I can also remember that I began reading the
work in an apartment in California belonging to some family acquaintance. These
were (with qualifications) the good old days!
Leigh: I wonder why HPL did
not destroy the maligned "The Transition of Juan Romero"; or conversely, what
caused him to destroy works of-or was it before?-that period. The story appears
to have a number of undeveloped elements that leave an unsatisfied taste in the
mouth. Was "Huitzilopochtli" a name introduced "as a touch of exotic
strangeness"? Or was it, in the words of Pooh-Bah, "merely corroborative
detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and
unconvincing narrative"? *** The story seems to have one of Lovecraft's
unreliable narrators, since witnesses dispute the events. *** I disagree with
several of your arguments. While I guess the word "throbbing" could be courtesy
of Poe, the evidence is far too insubstantial. This may not be much of a rebut,
but I can offer a bit more about the story's excessive vagueness. Lovecraft did
use vague allusions in At the Mountains
of Madness, "The Thing on the Doorstep," etc. In these instances the
allusions are lagniappe, adding a bit more atmosphere; yet the works could get
along without them. However, the vagueness is the story in "The Transition of
Juan Romero." It's an incomplete narrative that tantalizes but never fulfills
expectations. I'd compare it with "Nyarlathotep," which also never jells, but
is more successful, perhaps as a dream experience is successful, if
inconclusive. At that, the narrator of "Juan Romero" suggests the experience
might have been "a mere dream."
Juha-Matti: I can shed light
on one correction in the TLS to Loveman. You have, including the bracket: "I
went to Paterson to [?board] James Ferdinand in his lair"; going by the context
I suggest that the bracketed word should be "beard," as in the catch phrase
"beard the lion in his den." As for the ALS: perhaps "Writer is a ridiculous
institution" should be, again by the context, "Winter is a ridiculous
institution"; yet it is singular to refer to winter as an institution. And in
"take on Old Gentleman's advice" the word "on" should be "an."
Machen
and Lovecraft
In "Novel of the White Powder" there may be some parallels to
Lovecraft's sentiments, and this intrigues at least me. To wit:
Machen: ". it serves to conceal much
that it is better should not be known generally."
Lovecraft: "it was decided that such
secrets are not good for mankind." ("The Rats in the Walls")
Machen: ".the human trinity dissolved,
and the worm which never dies, that which lies sleeping within us all."
Lovecraft: ". instructs the very worm
that gnaws." ("The Festival")
Hundreds
of Years
The months of January and February of 2009 are remarkable for the
hundred year intervals they commemorate. August Derleth was born in February in
1909. One hundred years before that Edgar Allan Poe was born in January, and in
February came the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, on the same
day. Darwin's idea of evolution was an influence on HPL's writing. I suspect
that it came through the mediation of Ernst Haeckel. S.T. alludes to Hackel a
few times in the Life, but his approach
is that of Haeckel and philosophy rather than biology or evolution. I suspect
that it was through Haeckel that HPL principally learned about the latter
subject.
According to Wikipedia, in 1868 Haeckel wrote a German language
bestseller that gave his version of Darwinian evolution. This was translated in
1876 as The History of Creation and
went through many editions until 1926. It stated that human evolution went
through 22 stages, the 21st being the "missing link" between apes
and humans. (N.B.: Eighteenth Men was as far as W. Olaf Stapledon dared
speculate in his Last and First Men.) Haeckel was also a defender of scientific
racism, which showed that some people were more equal than other people. He
would have supplied HPL with the ammunition or justification or corroboration
for his own view.
How did this play out in his fiction? I will trace the thread in order
of composition.
In "The Beast in the Cave" (1905) there's an encounter with a snow-white
thing, comparable to an ape. The revelation at the end is "the strange beast of
the unfathomed cave, was, or had at one time been a MAN!!!" The devolution is
due to the environment rather than genetics.
"The Picture in
the House" (1919) can squeak into this conversation. Cannibalism is identified
with more primitive people, as in the butcher shop picture. The old man of the
story has retained his human form, unlike the characters in the other stories.
"But for his horrible unkemptness the man would have been as
distinguished-looking as he was impressive." The source of his atavism seems
not so much environmental as an inheritance of the "dark furtive traits from
the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage."
"Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" (1920) is the
most extended treatment of the theme of evolution-or more correctly
devolution-in the fiction. Here the horror is brought on by genetics rather
than environment. The culprit in the narrator's hybrid bloodline is a white
ape, an incarnation of the "missing link," with the ape side more favored, I
gather. An explorer discovers the remains of a city and speculates that "things
that might have sprung up after the great apes had overrun the dying city."
Later it is stated that the creatures are a "white ape of some unknown species
. and infinitely nearer mankind." Simian-like characteristics are found in
descendants of the Jermyn family; one, for example, has "a kind of reputation
for feats of strength and climbing." If not written by Lovecraft, this story
could have been taken as a raw satire, perhaps on the order of-was it an Aldous
Huxley novel?, where I seem to recall that one of the characters is actually an
ape/human hybrid. "Jermyn" has notable parallels with "The Rats in the
Walls."
"I saw that they were dwarfed, deformed hairy devils or apes-monstrous
and diabolic caricatures of the monkey tribe." This was how the narrator from
"The Lurking Fear" (1922) described the morlockian underground dwellers, the
Martenses, probably the result of a "degenerate squatter population." In the
nature vs. nurture debate, I suspect that nature shows itself the winner in
this instance. The Martenses have a "queer hereditary dissimilarity of eyes,"
and there was probably something in their background to take the path that they
did. They become isolated and intermarry with a "numerous menial class."
Likewise, "many of the crowded family degenerated." They have an "unclean,
animal aspect," no doubt from inbreeding. Here may be a variation on the
Darwinian theme. The idea of reversion or atavism has been mixed with the
consequence of inbreeding.
The greatest story to use the theme-and imho the greatest of all Gothic
horror short stories-is "The Rats in the Walls" (1923). The evidence of
devolution is abundant. The ghostly (?) rats and the cats are different
representations of the narrator's beast kinship, and they have an implied
psychic link with the narrator, who eventually succumbs to his surroundings and
reverts to ancestral appetites. It appears that environment is the key
influence on heredity, but this is not consistent. One learns that "Temperament
rather than ancestry was evidently the basis of this cult, for it was entered
by several who married into the family." Yet the narrator states of the remains
of the penned beings that "some of the skeleton things must have descended as
quadrupeds through the last twenty or more generations." This would be the
result of their captivity. It is unclear if the narrator's change at the end is
brought on chiefly by environment or heredity. One imagines that had he
remained in America or had he not accompanied his companions into the twilit
grotto, there would have been no change in his fortunes. Yet the proximity of
Norrys and the place acted as a trigger; since it affected him, heredity must
have also played a role. To put it in more classical terms, the twilit grotto
acted as the full moon to de la Poer's werewolf-for "Rats" is a combination of
the haunted house and werewolf motifs, though submerged into an evolutionary netherland
through Lovecraft's genius.
In the underground the world becomes
bones and skeletons, the principal evidence for evolution, but exaggerated
almost into parody. In particular there are skulls, which show "utter idiocy,
cretinism, or primitive semi-apedom." The language also identifies congenital
disorders with throwbacks. In the grotto prehistory and history are as jumbled
together as the bones, but it is the former that concerns us. A reference to
the skulls of both Piltdown man-now known as a fraud-and a gorilla serve as
time markers for the evolution from ape to human.
Devolution is most originally dramatized
through a backward journey via language, to the time of grunts "Ungl unl...
rrlh ... chchch..." The subject of the development of human speech continues to
draw speculation to this day.
Besides-or even
instead of-Darwin, the scientist being referenced here may be Lamarck, who had
a theory about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This is the
transmission of features from generation to generation. Since some of de la
Poer's ancestors were cannibals, this influence was in his blood. (On the other
hand HPL may have known that the concept had been largely discredited by the
early twentieth century.)
The theme of
evolution becomes more tangential after this story, as though Lovecraft had
satisfied himself that he had said his say. In "Pickman's Model" (1926) one
character is familiar with "the biological or evolutionary significance of this
or that mental or physical symptom" and finds that Pickman was not human. More
vividly put by Pickman, he is supposed to be "a sort of monster bound down the
toboggan of reverse evolution." Yet I think that this is not an example of
devolution, of returning to the ape a la "Arthur Jermyn," but of hybridity with
an alien life form, the ghouls. In this way "Pickman's Model" is, in more than
a single sense, a transitional story that leads to Wilbur Whateley and the
Innsmouth folk. I'll even go so far to say that the motif finds itself in the
captive minds of the Great Race-human minds in inhuman (but not subhuman)
bodies. (Incidentally, the horror for Arthur Jermyn is the self-discovery of
what he is, but for Pickman the horror originates from someone who has accepted
what he is; both are ostracized by society.)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931) makes
reference to evolution (the "human race we know had shambled out of apedom" and
there is "a shambling, primitive mammal, used sometimes for food and sometimes
as an amusing buffoon by the land dwellers, whose vaguely simian and human
foreshadowings were unmistakable"). This, and I suppose the idea of life's
creation are the prominent nods to evolution.
To draw up the
threads: HPL is ingenious in sounding variations on the theme of (d)evolution
in his fiction. "The Beast in the Cave"
suggests man's form (compared to "an anthropoid ape") reverts due to environmental
circumstances.
The evidence for
the old man's atavism in "The Picture in the House" is thin. It is only a
suggestion that he is channeling primitive instincts. (Whether he also has
supernatural longevity others may consider.)
"Arthur Jermyn"
posits a race of ape/humans who intermarry with humans. Evolution is seen in
terms of hybridity.
The Martenses of
"The Lurking Fear" devolve in almost an opposite way from Arthur Jermyn. In the
former the cause is inbreeding (abetted by mental aberrations), while in the
latter it is, so to speak, outbreeding.
"The Rats in the
Walls" comes closest to dramatizing devolution. Heredity and environment work
in tandem to bring de la Pore to his moment of revelation, and this takes place
among a physical manifestation of evolutionary artifacts (bones, skulls, burial
mounds, etc.). It's a place that an archaeologist or paleo-anthropologist would
visit in their nightmares.
"Pickman's
Model" uses the evolutionary idea less to suggest a reversion to the primitive
than to the alien.
At the Mountains of Madness has references
to it only as part of the much bigger picture of the Great Old Ones. By then
evolution as a theme for Lovecraft's horror works has receded from his creative
conscious, perhaps in part because the alien hybrid has supplanted it.
It's tempting to
hunt for evolutionary connections to other Lovecraft related authors. For
example, there may be a hint of man's reversion in Arthur Machen's "The Novel
of the Black Seal" (the boy whose body pushes out a tentacle) and "The Novel of
the White Powder" (a descent into a kind of protoplasmic mass). Yet Machen's
mysticism is an odd companion for evolutionary science, though he observes "Omnia exeunt in mysterium, which means,
I take it, that every branch of human knowledge if traced up to its source and
final principles vanishes into mystery."
Browne Popular Culture Library, Science
Fiction, Fantasy & Related Collections (Bowling Green State University)
Pulp magazine holdings come with extensive or complete runs of Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Tales
of Magic and Mystery, Thrilling
Wonder Stories, Weird Tales, etc.
There are nearly 4,500 fanzines, and a Sheldon R. Jaffrey Collection includes
his Arkham House bibliography.
Coslet Collection (University of Maryland,
Baltimore County) Among its 15,000 fanzines are long runs of the Fantasy
Amateur Press Association (FAPA) mailings and a nearly complete set of the
publication of R. H. Barlow's Dragonfly Press. UMBC also has a pulp collection
(Weird Tales, Amazing, Thrilling Wonder
Stories, etc.).
H.P. Lovecraft Collection (Northern
Illinois University) Acquired in the late 1960s, "the collection consists of
Lovecraft's fiction writing, letters, poems, scientific articles, pulp magazine
stories, books about Lovecraft, collections of Lovecraft stories, titles of
books known to have lived in Lovecraft's personal library, and a few
miscellaneous items, including several manuscript letters."
The J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science
Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Utopian Literature
(University of California, Riverside) There's are some Lovecraft-related
fanzines. Colin Wilson is one of the writers whose manuscripts are here.
The [Judith] Merril Collection of Science
Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy (Toronto Public Library) There are pulps, etc.
M. Horvat Collection of Science Fiction
Fanzines (University of Iowa) One of the titles is "Dramatizing Lovecraft" by
Ben Indick.
The Maison d'Ailleurs is a Swiss "Museum
of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys" Although I couldn't find
much about what is in its collection, it has in the past had a Lovecraft
exhibit, and one of its web pages features an Astounding cover for At the
Mountains of Madness.
Paskow Science Fiction Collection (Temple
University) "In 1986, with the gift of the book collection of Roger Knuth and
his interest in Lovecraft and Howard, fantasy was added to the collecting canon."
Fanzines are included, and among author manuscripts are those by Stanley
Weinbaum.
Roland Bounds Science Fiction Collection(University of Delaware) Pulp literature is included, but there appears to be
little Lovecraft, based on my few searches.
Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection (Michigan State
University)
The Science Fiction Foundation Collection
Home Page (University of Liverpool).
Jack
Vance
An appreciative article by Carlo Rotella on this favorite writer has
appeared in the New York Times Magazine
(19 July 2009). tinyurl.com/nhbpbe
Thanks
for reading the 61st issue of The Criticaster (summer 2009, mailing 147)
by SWalker. Eventually published on the Net as The Limbonaut (no 32).