Moreover, I suspect that there is a typo that has never been caught, as with my textual correction of “The Haunter of the Dark” (see a previous ‘aster). In this case, the line reads “At times the parallelism of so many cases in so many distant ages continued to worry me as it had at first, but on the other hand I reflected that the excitant folklore was undoubtedly more universal in the past than in the present.” The word “excitant” is out of place. It means, as may be expected, “exciting” or “stimulating” and so it is explained in the Oxford English Dictionary. HPL has used the word before in his work, and used it correctly. In “Herbert West” there is “an excitant solution” and in “The Crawling Chaos” there is “the direct symbol and excitant of my fear.” But in SOoT, the context is wrong in which “excitant” is thrown. The narrator is talking about “so many cases in so many distant ages,” and folklore—the fantastic cases that have taken on the patina of folklore over time—was “more universal in the past than in the present.” That is, there was more folklore in the past than in the present, so some folklore of the past has survived to the present. Such folklore is not “excitant” but “existent” or “extant.” Lovecraft was known for his difficult handwriting, and what may be here is a transcription error.

     Lovecraft’s writing is not read with the care it ought to receive, for how else to explain such mistakes? For that matter, I have read the story several times but have not caught this. I may stumble over such a construction but go on, skipping the meaning or the contextual sense for the sake of getting along with the story.

     I also caught errors, misconstructions, and things overlooked. Contrary to their statement, the American Psychological Society exists, though after the time of Lovecraft’s work. The editors compare the beginning of the sentence “No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet” with Corinthians 2:9 “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man”; but this allusion—if it is an allusion—could be by way of Shakespeare’s parodic “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The idea of a dream in this latter quote does tip the influence a bit in its favor.

     The editors summon Nazca lines as a way of explaining patterns of stones seen from the air by the narrator’s son. This dragging in is unneeded. In a landscape, cities can leave prosaic, but clearly identifiable marks such as straight lines to indicate they have been there. Archaeologists have recognized them that way.

     The editors gloss what they consider difficult words (e.g., “babel”), but omit a definition for such a Lovecraftian one as “palæogean” or “paleogean”; a “google” for either spelling finds only Lovecraft contexts.

     Finally, there is an appendix for notes and part of a discarded draft for SOoT, but would that there had been snippets about the story from his letters or a bibliography of criticism on it.

     Considering how HPL was soaked in the British or English influence, as in his spelling (e.g., “colour” for “color”), it is a short step to think he deferred to an Englishman’s—as opposed to an American’s—vocabulary.

     Through time American English has departed further from English English, so one-hundred years ago the American and English vocabulary were much closer together. Today, the British "torch" is the American "flashlight," but in "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936) there are interchangeable references to an "electric torch," "torch," and "flashlight." Take a look at "...later studying the object carefully and supplementing the moonlight with my electric torch"; and "...I saw that the light of my torch was beginning to fail, hence quickly inserted the extra battery I always had with me"; and "My flashlight was gone..." (passim). When I read “torch” I assumed the author was displaying his English English, as he did with “shew” (not related to Ed Sullivan). The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) is murky on the topic, for it gives a definition for “flash” rather than “flashlight” under 14b (b) as “a portable electric lamp which produces a light by the pressure of a button, etc.”

     Yet HPL used the word “flashlight” as well. I looked in the New York Times database to see how the word "flashlight" was used in this period and found that it was frequently an adjective associated with powder, i.e., "flashlight powder." For example, "...a large pan of flashlight powder..." (“Dancing at Seventh Regiment Ball…”, 4 Nov 1934, p.N8) and “… magnesium, the flashlight powder occasionally used by photographers for night pictures” (“Meteors’ Brilliance Is Laid to Magnesium,” 22 Jan 1937, p.23). But if “flashlight” was used as something that accompanied powder, what did Americans normally call that cylindrical illuminator with an “on” switch? I discovered that the battery-powered light that I have always thought of as a "flashlight" was then, in America, called a "torch"! But, as seen by Lovecraft’s usage in “The Shadow Out of Time,” this was a period when British English and American English had not yet separated so far as “torch” is concerned, and “flashlight” was coming into its own.

Organizations

     Ben’s essay and history of the EOD is online. *** The Cthulhu Prayer Society Newsletter, very attractive in pdf format, talks about a “Friends of Lovecraft.” Brett Rutherford is connected with it. *** According to his website, Dr. Dirk Mosig received the Robert Bloch Scholarship Award from the New England Lovecraft Society in 1997.

Conferences

     Talks held at the 2003 SW/Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference: “The Alchemy of Character in Lord Dunsany’s The Charwoman’s Shadow” by David J. Carlson, California State University San Bernardino; and “Estoppel: A Phenomenologically Deconstructive Reading of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’” by Kevin A. Christinat, Wichita State University. And at the 2003 Annual Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference: “The Woman in Question: On the Boundaries of Psychobiography in H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Thing on the Doorstep’” by James Hissom, West Virginia University Institute of Technology. *** Then there’s the World Horror Convention, 17-20 April 2003, Kansas City, Mo.

Organizations

     The Limbonaut now has a link at eFanzines.com. This has a lot of online fanzines available. *** Known as Requiem SF Fantastique, this title began in Quebec in 1974 and offered Le Prix Dagon. The zine is alive and now known as Solaris. Its March issue notes that the Parisian Science Fiction Magazine for January has an homage to HPL, the first part of a novel by a Pierre Dagon.

Philosophy

     Daniel Ust wrote a 1993 essay “The Philosophy in Lovecraft's Art” and a 1996 supplement to it, “Lovecraft Again.”

Psychology

     In “Psychological Autopsy Provides Insight Into Gifted Adolescent Suicide” (Gifted Child Today Magazine, May/June 1996) author Tracy Cross looked at three 11^th and 12^th grade male suicides, and among the themes that she found was that “suicide has a cultural component.” She gave examples for music, movies, and literature, where she named Anne Rice and Lovecraft. *** People who have bad sight or are losing it may be subject to hallucinations, such as witches, ghosts, and ghouls, according to a Telegraph article (6 Nov 02).

Religion

Paul F. Eno has written two books about the paranormal in New England: Faces at the Window and Footprints in the Attic. He is also involved with a book about Rhode Island.

Genealogy

     According to Genealogy.com, Genealogy of the Andrews Family, by Lieut. George Andrews, a Laura Maria Lovecraft, born in Rochester, was married 13 September 1864 (page 67).A Norman Lovecraft can be found in Census Microfilm Records: New York, 1910, and Mattie A. Lovecraft can be found in Early Settlers of New York State, 1760-1942. And there are other names, which may already have had their accounting.

Genealogy: May Brookyn

     The actor Mrs. E.J. Phillips—a relation?—has had her letters transcribed and mentions several times May Brookyn—who committed suicide because of Frederick A. Lovecraft’s own, as I have recorded in a previous issue. There’s a suggestion that she married a Mr. King, but she was still called “Miss Brookyn.” A work on spiritualism, Modern Spiritualism by Uriah Smith (1896) quotes from the Philadelphia Record, of Feb. 17, 1894: “"The letters and papers left by the dead woman show plainly that in her grief over the death of Lovecraft she had dabbled in Spiritualism, and had finally reached the conclusion that her only chance of happiness lay in joining her lover in the other world."

Art

     There’s a model of Pickman’s model, which I discovered through Unfilmable (see under Movies).

Comic Books

     Uncle C’thooge and others are among the “Covers for the HPL Comic Books You'll Never See.”*** The Lovecraft edition of Graphic Classics includes “Herbert West--Reanimator,” “The Shadow Out of Time,” “The Outsider,” and a biography. Jeffrey Johannes, whose art has appeared in Graphic Classics, had an exhibit at the Central Wisconsin Cultural Center that featured a watercolor, Moon Struck Poet, from “The Fungi from Yuggoth.”

Movies

     There’s a great Lovecraft film database with a wonderfully appropriate name, Unfilmable; it is designed to discuss adaptations and makes it possible to view various films. There are sections dedicated to news, classifieds, links, interviews, and Pickman’s Models, illustrations by the site author Craig Mullins (who is not to be confused with another Craig Mullins, about whom there was a discussion concerning the coincidence of a design he created and a similar one that appeared in The Dunwich Horror movie). This is kept up-to-date.

Theatre

     Based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the play The Remnant was performed by the Charlestown Working Theater, Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1995. According to a review, it was weird and effectively visceral. *** By the time you read this (May 2003, at the earliest) Seattle will have had a revival of the fringe play Herbert West: Reanimator, which last year was a “huge hit,” according to one critic.

Radio

     Author of the Lovecraft genealogy, Stern Fathers ‘Neath the Mould, Richard D. Squires has a site on radio personality Col. Stoopnagle, who was related to HPL.

Letters

     There was a Lovecraft transcription project for an M.A. candidacy at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Criticism

     Within Roger Bozzetto’s look at the fantastic genres, L'Obscur Objet d'un Savoir: Fantastique et Science-Fiction: Deux Littératures de l'Imaginaire, there’s a reading of “Pickman’s Model.” He is also author of a book of horror criticism, Territoires des Fantastiques: des Romans Gothiques aux Récits d'Horreur Moderne.

Publishing

     For those interested in publishing stories and such, particularly in the horror genre, there’s Ralan Conley's Webstravaganza - Spec. Fiction Pro Markets. *** The Three-Lobed Burning Eye states it is an annual.

“Jervas Dudley”

     Whence the name of the character who narrates “The Tomb”? “Jervas” may have come from Charles Jervas, who painted Jonathan Swift and others. He was “Principal Portrait Painter to King George II in 1723, but his fame depended on his friendship with various literary figures, who trumpeted his praises” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Ed. Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online). The eighteenth-century, English aura would have attracted Lovecraft.

     For the last name there are two plausible influences. When very young, HPL lived in Dudley, Massachusetts, which he mentions as his earliest memory. And there was Thomas Dudley, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and father of Anne Bradstreet.

     Another possibility for “Dudley” has proved to be a will o’ the wisp. According to the paranormal site Ghostvillage.com three Dudley brothers gave their name to Connecticut’s “Dudleytown” and “also allegedly brought over a curse from England that has plagued the land ever since.” One of the ancestors was cursed for treason against Henry VIII with the result that his “lineage would find themselves surrounded by horrors.” The town was located near three mountains—one called the Moussorgskian “Bald Mountain”—and the thick “Dark Entry Forest.”     Even after its abandonment the town held “accounts of ghostly tales, demons, unexplained events, and curses coupled with over 400 years of British and American history.” As you can see from the quotes, facts may very well be drowned in effects. The story is given further verisimilitude by National Geographic’s Birder's Journal: “Old Curse Haunts New England Forest.” Yet the legend could not have influenced HPL since it did not come into being until 1938 when a book gave a liberal distortion of historic facts, according to Rev. Gary Dudley, author of The Legend of Dudleytown: Solving Legends through Genealogical and Historical Research. Considering how the legend has been subsequently improved, it is even possible that HPL’s writings influenced it!

“New York Stories”

     I wonder when this group was so designated? The International Science Fiction Yearbook (1978) refers to “the big-city ghost story. This type may have its roots in HP Lovecraft’s New York stories” (p. 13).

“Fungi”

     Ben, and through him Peter Cannon, have alerted me that the latter’s Faulkner parody “The Sound and the Fungi” is to be published in a Mythos Books anthology.

“Rats”

     Time columnist Richard Corliss has real cultural literacy, for he knows the horror genre. In an essay about rats he writes how reading Henry Kuttner’s “The Graveyard Rats” began his fear of the rodents. That was the most frightening story I have ever read, coming early in my introduction to weird tales and the Weird Tales spirit. Anyway, the critic goes on to review a book, The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany by Barbara Hodgson, noting “The Rats in the Walls” is “the finest depiction I know of rat-anxiety,” a field that doesn’t sound like it would be crowded.

Influence

     Publisher’s Weekly (7 Aug 2000) tells of two editors talking about HPL. One said to the other, that if he liked Lovecraft, why not try this first novel. And so was published Ordinary Horror by David Searcy (Viking). *** There’s a link to a Ramsey Campbell interview at The Agony Column Book Reviews and Commentary *** David Bischoff’s The H.P. Lovecraft Institute is reviewed at CNN.com (24 March 2003). Interesting that allusions to HPL should appear in this and the other mainstream publication, Time, so close together. *** More on the Hoban-Lovecraft connection: the essay “Blighter’s Rock” has “cameos by Rilke, H. P. Lovecraft and Freddy Krueger” according to the descriptive table of contents for the 1992 Hoban collection The Moment Under the Moment.

Contemporaries

     C. L. Moore’s first story, “Shambleau,” came in for some feminist treatment in the three volume No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. *** Oxford has come out with Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James, with an introduction by Michael Chabon (who gave me a short interview). It also has The Monk by Matthew Lewis, with an introduction by Stephen King. The benchmark Gothic novel is a cranky read. *** Francesca M. Hitchcock has written a long, serious article entitled “Tennessee Williams's ‘Vengeance of Nitocris’: The Keynote to Future Works” (The Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 1995, p. 595-608). The Williams story appeared in Weird Tales (1928). *** Final Seance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle (Prometheus Books, 2001) by Massimo Polidoro deals with two differing views on spiritualism. *** An Arthur Machen site (link removed) quoted at length HPL’s comments on him and had a bibliography, but has completely disappeared (it was part of Area 51!). *** Brian Stableford has written a foreword to the short stories of S. Fowler Wright, all of whose works (Deluge, The World Below, etc.) are available online at *** See publicity for the 1998 Anamnesis Press title Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany : A Correspondence.

“Rheinhart Kleiner, a Trade Writer, 56”

     This is the obituary heading. The middle paragraph in the column states that he “was well known as a writer in his field in England and Australia as well as this country. He recently received wide acclaim for his most recent book Burrowings of an Old Bookworm” (The New York Times, 13 May 1949, p.23). I cannot verify that a copy of this book exists. A book with a similar title, Burrowings of a Book-Worm, was published in 2000, but undoubtedly is unrelated.

Harry Warner, Jr.

     Fan, fanzine and prozine collector, and author of both All Our Yesterdays: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the Forties and A Wealth of Fable: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the 1950s, this gentleman died on 17 February. His situation of abandonment, with the body unclaimed at a Baltimore morgue for three weeks, reminded me in generality, if not in detail, of Frank Belknap Long’s final time. (Thanks, Ben, for letting me know.)

Safety Pocket Addendum

     Three issues ago I mentioned trying to hammer down the definition of “safety pocket,” but without success. I asked some editors at the Oxford English Dictionary, and they checked their Nexis database, where the two definitions included one I had predicted—something to protect the valuables that one carried from pickpockets. The other, which does not fit with the context I found, was approximately “an area where one is safe from harm or danger.”

Yep, I Have Only Got to Mailing 120

     Ken: You mention the word “abnatural” in connection with William Hope Hodgson. I find it is in the Pseudodictionary and is also mentioned in a Hodgson essay, “Sharks of the Ether. This is where The Night Land has a site dedicated to it. *** “Only” sixteen years to the Hodgson death centenary? For me, that “only” is a long time. 

      Ben: What a shame that the biography of Herman Koenig remains unpublished. I hope that will change soon. You and Janet will celebrate your eightieth anniversary! I have heard of child brides, but this… *** You refer to your computer drawing of yourself and your wife as “laparoscopic.” All I can say is, if your insides hurt, you must know the reason. *** Wow. It is always a pleasure to find people who can wax about the works of such “old” writers as Dumas and Turgenev. *** There are several enthusiastic reviews of Bradbury, An Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor at Amazon.com. 

     Kennett: I should never read stories, because I want to criticize them, however skilful they may be. “Mist on Copplecrown Pond” had an ending that changed its tone, a “tomato surprise.” It reminded me of something that could have been written by Frederic Brown or possibly Robert Bloch. However, I would have preferred a resolution that didn’t rely on black humor, which intruded on the rest of the story, as did the fantasy element. I thought I was reading a conte cruel, but the ending changed that.

     David G.: I don’t find the realization of man’s insignificance “soul-shattering” in SooT, et al. The concept doesn’t make itself felt when I read the story. Thanks for reprinting the very interesting articles from Strange Magazine.The correspondence with Jacques Bergier has been disputed.

     John H.: Discovery. Previous to yours, there was another EOD publication also called Hesperia, written by John Gates. *** I wish you had included the EOD website address.I have already considered the points you have brought out. The problem is getting volunteers to do this, and once done maintaining it and keeping things up-to-date. This won’t happen unless you can get at least one very committed individual. There may be a few sites that should be direct links, such as The H. P. Lovecraft Archive, the standard-bearer for things HPLian. You have left out pertinent material. Did S.T. write “A Short Biography of H.P. Lovecraft”? *** Yes, in short facts about HPL the negative takes unneeded prominence and as a result the uninformed do wonder why he was popular or influential.

     R. Alain: The king and queen of your interest appear to be Derleth and Litersky (not Litursky, as you misspell it). Her book is currently in 144 libraries and has been called in an editorial (on Amazon.com) “an absorbing read.” Your name-calling doesn’t persuade me—it has a humorous excess—and lacks documentation. I wish you would continue to apply your talent and knowledge to the weird, as before. I did appreciate being able to read Mark Schorer’s comments, which should be compared with Peter Ruber’s demolishment of this award-winning author in Arkham’s Masters of Horror.

     Derrick: There’s a German publisher that has the name Hippocampus (it deals with psychiatry and medicine, logical since “hippocampus” is a brain region), and there are 52 web sites that include the name. But only one Hippocampus Press.*** I definitely agree with Clark Ashton Smith’s suggestions that the taint in the blood of the narrator in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” should have been foreshadowed; as it is, it does seem an afterthought in the story. Of the unpublished poems, I prefer the first, “Illusion,” probably because it seems the most straight-forwardly macabre. Many thanks for the publications of these and the letters, along with your informative annotations.

     Ben S.: My vote for Frank Belknap Long’s best story is “Second Night Out,” one of the scariest stories I’ve read and re-read. I don’t recall much about “The Space Eaters” or “The Hounds of Tindalos,” and perhaps I haven’t even read the latter! You’ve done a bang-up job in summarizing and annotating the Wandrei, etc. correspondence. Your comments have at times a harsh edge, as when Long “brags” and “harps”; how much of an editorial judgment is this? Had you been in EOD say a decade ago, you would have been aware that Long was married, one might say notoriously so. There is a potted bio by erstwhile Ofian Perry M. Grayson. *** Is a letter missing?—there are footnotes 22 and beyond, but no text. *** Based on my reading of Howard, I presume he follows the racist pattern, though you don’t seem to think this. Read for example “Black Canaan.”

     Henrik: Re your criticism of Timo Airaksinen, I will diplomatically quote William James: “There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” *** “The End” was pithy and had a pleasant piquancy.

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What would be the nom de plume of a horror writer who is also a gas station attendant?

Howard Phillips 666