137
Retorts
John H.: Congratulation on the publications of your
Derleth
bibliography. I’d recommend that you promote your booklet,
rather than taking
the opposite route. And congratulation on winning the Venarium Award
for an
emerging scholar in Howard studies. *** Most Ofians “probably
believe there’s
very little left to say” about the Cthulhu Mythos? Holy moly,
there’s an
untapped ocean of comment that will continue to be made on this
subject. People
can’t even agree on what the CM is and what stories belong to
it. This has been
like trying to define “science fiction.” *** Re:
“any good vs. evil
conflict is philosophically akin to
Christianity”–different times have
different morals, so the meaning of good to one group may be anathema
to
another. As Milton’s
Satan says, “Evil be thou my good.” ***
You’ve quoted that the critic’s role is
analysis. Is that your personal view? I feel that
this is too exclusive.
*** When somebody produces evidence that confirms what you wish to
believe, you
are less likely to call it into question then otherwise–as
with the quote from
Farnese to Derleth. *** Re the Colavito quote that Derleth’s
“first success
came in appropriating the legacy of
Lovecraft”–unless there is more context,
I’d say that Derleth’s early success had to do with
his own writing, both weird
and mainstream. *** Like you I esteem Bradbury’s
writing–at least the earlier
stuff–for I’ve read very little of his later
material. You state that Lovecraft
and Smith influenced the dreamlike, otherworldly quality of
Bradbury’s prose.
Here you seem to be following Sam Moskowitz’s line, who
stated HPL brought mood
into science fiction, and this requires word wizardry. ***
Unfortunately, that
photo would not allow anyone to identify you, for there is chiefly a
white
blank.
Fred: What do you mean that HPL wrote
“Anthropological Science Fiction”?
This sounds something of a paradox, since anthropology is the study of
man, who
had relatively little value in Lovecraftian eyes. I’ll be
interested to see
what you say about the history of reading, should you pursue this. ***
The
neurotic does not require absolution from his neurosis. It may
interrupt human
fulfillment, but this condition may have given us any number of
terrific
artists. *** Re your “Blundering never implies
power”–at least on this planet
there are any number of people in high office who blunder, make
mistakes. That
one can blunder does in itself suggest power, though of course at
different
levels. *** “Madame Blavatski’s ashes filled three
urns”–but you leave out the
size of the urns.
Ben: Your phrase “deities are dieting”
is close to an anagram. This
leads me to think of a pun: What do you call the god of appetite? A
“diety”.
*** Poe’s work has been illustrated, as by Edmund Dulac and
in The Annotated
Edgar Allan Poe. *** Thanks for the Poe letters
review– good, lucid, and
useful. As you detail Poe’s request for money in his letters,
I am reminded of
the similar importunities from Arthur Machen, discussed by you in
earlier Ibids.
Here are two lives that were economic horror stories.
Ken:
Thanks for your comments on the
Lovecraft auction, which was complete news to me. You note that some
collectors
and booksellers will make it impossible to bring everything under the
scholar’s
eye. In A Gentle Madness (about book collecting par
excellence) at least
one collector notes that when he passes on he wants his collection to
go back
on the market to give other collectors the same pleasure he had in
collecting.
T.R.: For some reason you use the word
“inaccurate” to describe Stuart
Gordon’s statement that he had to go to a rare book
department to read “Herbert
West–Reanimator,” presumably in its pulp
appearance. Why he would go that route
rather than use the available (as you note) Arkham House volume is a
puzzle.
Also, what time frame was it when the best of HPL was not available in
paperback? I sort of thought that he has been continually in print
since at
least the 1970's.
C.D.: It was a pleasure to read of your touring enthusiasm
for things
Poe and Lovecraft. I was particularly interested to read of your
account of Baltimore,
since I had
gone there in March, and had written about it for the previous mailing.
*** I
see that the movie Airplane! is called Flying
High in Australia.
Maybe
that is a funnier title for Aussies.
Martin: I’m sorry to hear about your
unemployment ups and downs (I mean
I’m sorry about the down part, not the up). ***
Congratulations on your
appearance in Two-Gun Bob.
Don and Mollie: In your “Epithets”
essay, Don, you show yourself as a
good hater. So many of your statements ask for rebuttals, or at minimum
buts.
For example, in reference to Islamic culture you wonder “what
‘culture’? (Where
is their Shakespeare? Their Bach?).” Discussing four
centuries of Islamic
civilization in close to two-hundred pages Will Durant summarizes
“Only at the
peaks of history has a society produced, in an equal period, so many
illustrious men–in government education, literature,
philology, geography,
history, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, philosophy, and
medicine–as Islam”
(The Age of Faith (Simon and Schuster, 1950), p.
343).
Alan: Your story begins “I dreamed of you again
last night. You were the
daughter of a lighthouse keeper.” Believe it or not, Alan, that
wasn’t me.
S.T.: Typo alert! Your bibliography states about Gatto
(#42) “...whose
value is almost nit.” (I’m such a nit-picker.)
David D: Contrary to your comment, Frank Belknap Long had
not “ clearly
... always been something of a joke” to HPL and Wellman, at
least so far as the
former. Lovecraft and Long were friends.
R. Alain: Thanks for the information about another obscure
writer
(Georgia Pangborn).
John H.: Your reasons for rejecting the thesis about
incest in HPL is
level-headed and detailed. You note “that if Lovecraft had
homosexual
encounters ... there would be some hard
evidence.” It’s fortunate that
you didn’t move that second italics over by one word. ***
With each photo of
HPL I wish that you had given its source. If I wanted to see what some
photo
really looked like, I couldn’t, beyond randomly checking my
books.
On
to Mailing 138
Fred: It is unlikely I’ll soon buy the book on
Smith criticism from
Hippocampus, though one of these days, in the Xicaarpian future, I
might take a
gander at it. The issue in part is my reading time budget; only so much
can be
squeezed into it. *** Thanks for the Ingoldsby poem. The legends need
not be
over anyone’s head, since they are explained in Wikipedia and
available free
online for anyone who wants to read them. *** In recognition of his
centennial
I’ve recently read a number of Robert A. Heinlein stories,
and I believe if
anything he was pro-Semitic, pro-black, etc. In this area he seems much
more
advanced than the majority of the population. I’d say there
were no Jewish characters
in Lovecraft, though there may have been stereotypical references to
them. ***
The line in your poem “Lest I be claimed by fires”
brings in a theological
element that I wonder if you intend, assuming that you were taking a
Lovecraftian world view.
C.D.: I recommend that when you send in your contribution
attach your
name to it. I had to look in Nuclear Chaos to see
who the author was. Re
Lovecraft’s poetry as being similar to Thomas
Hardy’s–in The Criticaster 1
(back about 1986) I discussed a Hardy poem that had in it the word
“love-craft.” *** Thanks for the rundown of what The
Ancient Track: The
Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft contains.
I’ve had the book
several years, but haven’t yet got around to it. *** For
evidence of Stephen
King as a Lovecraftian you cite Salem’s Lot,
but it should be “Jerusalem’s
Lot.” ***
It
is common for clubs (e.g., Fanoclasts) and associations to make rules
about who
can or cannot be a member. There’s no reason to resent this.
*** To contradict
the Shakespearism, there are people who jest at scars because
they’ve
felt wounds. *** As for Harley Warren prying into secrets of the dead
and so
suffering “punishment”–this suggests a
moral principle at work. If you are punished,
you have crossed a boundary in doing something
“bad.” *** Dyed-in-the-wool
politically correct people have become what they claim to
hate–intolerant of
differing viewpoints.*** “A single leaf” is a good,
traditional style poem,
though I would have replaced the phrase “glorious
reign” with something
fresher.
Ben: In your book review To the Edge of the World
you write “It
is impossible for any author to gainsay Charles Darwin.” Hah!
Just to dispute
you, I will ‘gain say it: “Charles
Darwin.” There, see how I’ve shown you up.
*** Virtually the first issue of a science fiction magazine I read was If
(November, 1964), which had art by Ed Emshwiller. He
illustrated a story
by Keith Laumer, “The Hounds of Hell,” and I
thought that his drawing of a
hound fit the idea of one of Pickman’s ghouls. I’ve
been spoiled ever since,
despite the well-known portrait of Pickman’s model by Hannes
Bok. *** Thanks
for the sentimental “Caught Between,” but I wish
you had included the year of
the mailing.
Leigh: A convicted sceptic, I wonder about the
authenticity of that
Dutch article about August Derleth. Was it first published in 1957, or
if it
did first appear in the Dutch fanzine Cthulhu
(1983), what prompted the
author to recite his memories? There is a typo, I presume, and not some
quaint
Dutch phrase, when the author talks about
“pinching” an HPL letter: “Derleth
would after all not kiss it?” The “kiss”
should be “miss,” unless Derleth
really liked those letters. At any rate, thanks
for making the
translation available.
S.T.: While this is nothing against your HPL work, I hope
you continue
to write on subjects unrelated to this field, instead of getting
typecast, as
well as achieving a greater likelihood of success and recognition.
R.Alain: Oddly, you list Judy Garland’s daughter
as having met a tragic
death. As of this writing both are still alive.
Martin: I notice that the Swedish
wiki article on Dunsany is very small. You’re just
the person to elaborate
it, if you have the interest.*** The book that you received as
remuneration
from Minotauren, Icons of Horror and the
Supernatural, got a
terrific review in the librarian journal of Choice,
so your taste is
validated. *** Your relation of a giant in Scandinavian mythology
asking for
the sun and the moon causes me to wonder if that is where the phrase(?)
comes
from, which goes approximately, “All you want is the sun and
the moon.” *** Not
without irony is “I was the only kid in class who knew what a
semi-colon was and
could us it correctly - something I deduced by
myself...”; better would’ve
been “...use it correctly; it was
something...”; I trust you can see my
point (or semi-colon). *** I think that I read Dunsany in part because
of his
publicizing by Lovecraft. However, the books of his that I got were due
to
their being made available in book stores through Lin
Carter’s Adult Fantasy
series; and since I also bought writers unrelated to Lovecraft, it is
certainly
possible Lovecraft was not the tipping point in my decision to read
Dunsany.
Rather, it was my interest in fantasy. However, Dunsany has not
resonated with
me as have a number of pulp writers. *** I did a re-read of
“Herbert
West–Reanimator,” starting with the revised Arkham
House, found a typo in the
first chapter, switched to the Dell annotated version and found a typo
in the
second chapter–so there is no unadulterated Lovecraft. I say
a little more
about this elsewhere.
One way to find an error-free version is to have,
let’s say three
people, view the original ms, transcribe it individually, then check
the parts
of the text where the three transcriptions differ. It’s
complicated–and may be
not particularly practical–but what other way is there, if a
typo-proof copy is
desired? *** Re the misleading “black magic” quote,
you’re very persuasive with
your suggestion that Derleth chose to champion his own vision over
Lovecraft’s,
as through ignoring Clark Ashton Smith’s remarks and
suppressing the
insignificance of good and evil. Later you note “that
scholars outside the
central field of Lovecraft studies still bring [the “black
magic” quote] up”;
but how scholarly are they if they make a factual mis-attribution? ***
I wish
you had given an introduction to Dan Clore (e.g., who is he, etc.). ***
Re
Poe’s neglect in Sweden–Poe is a double threat, so
to speak, as both a horror
writer and a classic writer. Am I to understand that looked at from the
latter
instance he is neglected in comparison with Jane Austen, Charles
Dickens, Mark
Twain, William Faulkner, and other mainstreamers? In other words (pun
unintended), is there relatively little translation of classic
English-language
writers into Swedish? *** The Essential Dracula is
an updated edition of
The Annotated Dracula, the one I read and reported
upon (Cr’aster
51); we doubtless were enlightened by some of the same footnotes. *** I
hoped
that the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society also treats “The
Whisperer in
Darkness” as a silent, for their “The Call of
Cthulhu” is the best adaptation
yet of a Lovecraft work–I liked the film a lot.
(But–see under
“Movies.”) *** Maybe you should go on Mastermind,
considering how
successful you were as a vicarious answerer of the Lovecraft questions
on
“Youtube.”
John G.: Despite Borges’ dedication of a story
to HPL and imitation of
him once, he doesn’t appear to appreciate his work. *** You
wrote: “Nor do
Hemingway’s followers (as far as I know) pay specific homage
to their literary
mentor.” Look no further than Ray Bradbury, who pays such
homage in stories
with Hemingway-apparent titles, “Kilimanjaro
Machine” and “The Parrot Who Met
Papa,” “papa” being the nickname of EH.
*** Probably the most valuable part of The
H.P. Lovecraft Companion–the alphabetical list of
characters, monsters, and
stories–have been superceded by The H.P. Lovecraft
Encyclopedia.
However, it was useful in its day.
Linda:
In Ulysses the fictional
Leopold Bloom covers miles walking in a single day in the Dublin
of 1904. Several decades ago walking
was much more usual, and if like HPL you didn’t own an
automobile, walking was
what you did if you wanted to get somewhere independently. *** You
quote from Selected
Letters faithfully, part of which is “... and the
more mechanicks of
locomotion is a matter of the utmost indifference to me.” I
believe that the
word “more,” though printed in the Arkham House
volume, should be “mere.” I’ve
reached a point where I trust completely no text I read by
HPL–typos can
intrude at any time.
On the other hand, several pages into Squiddy’s
Ink you supply
your own HPL mis-quote, which is humorous in the context, i.e.,
“an hospital
whose grounds are contagious” when it should be (as it is in
the Arkham House SL)
“contiguous.” *** Thanks for highlighting
Lovecraft’s sensitivity to nature,
one of his personality’s most appealing aspects and one often
overlooked,
though not by me. *** Re your quotes on sunset vistas, you might check
Peter
Cannon’s “Sunset Terrace Imagery in
Lovecraft” and Other Essays, which
is useful for its corralling of the type of quotes that you use.
However, the
essays are generally shallow and of small value (I can’t
speak for his humorous
writing, which has received considerable praise). Peter was a former
member of
EOD. Sunset, I note, is the harbinger for night, the deepest of all
shadows (“shadow”
being an operative word for HPL). *** When you quote from Selected
Letters,
please give a date or volume number and page. *** There’s
some irony when you
note HPL wrote his last letter “in the twilight of his
tragically short life”
(but was having a short life tragic for him?). *** Lovecraft refers in
a letter
you quote to one of two kittens as “Little Tortoise-Shell
Brother.” I suspect
that it was female and not male, since this coloring is more likely to
be in
this sex.
Scott: Since I have most of the prose Arkham House
Smith–that is not his
nickname–plus the Lin Carter collections, why should I spring
for The End of
the Story and the subsequent volumes? What’s the
value added? At any rate,
congratulations on the fruition of your efforts.
John H.: You’ve been luckier than me in getting
a response from the
Library of America. They (it?) ignored my mailed request for
information about
the possibility of their (its?) fixing of typos in the Lovecraft volume.
Don: Since you seem obsessed with social issues, and
considering your
opinions, maybe you should go into talk radio. As a title–and
I’ll paraphrase a
label from one of your MRG covers–call it “The
Donwich Horror Show.”
Oxford
English Dictionary
Known
for citing the first use of a word,
the OED (not to be confused with the EOD) has a
number of entries
related to Lovecraft. He is the subject of a quote—though not
of the word
illustrated (“corn-pone”)—by Stephen
King: “It's hard to say what's wrong with
Lovecraft's dialogue, other than the obvious; it's stilted and
lifeless,
brimming with country cornpone.” Elsewhere he is associated
in a quote by
someone from a Usenet group with the odd word
“pluquam.” However, Lovecraft is
the origin of quotes for his use of the word
“nighted” (“The Festival”);
“paleogean” and “polypous”
(both “The Shadow out of Time”);
“timbreless” (a first
usage, from “Cool Air”); and
“vigintillion” (“The Call of
Cthulhu”). The word
“Lovecraftian” appears in a heading before a quote
illustrating the word
“obliged.”
The equivalent of the OED that limits itself to science
fiction words is
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction
(Oxford
University Press, 2007), edited by Jeff Prucher. The online "Science
Fiction Citations for the OED" must be the online counterpart.
Anthologies
HPL makes it to The Antarctic (Granta,
2007) edited by Francis
Spufford.
Art
“The
Dulwich Horror
- H.P. Lovecraft and the Crisis in British Housing”
was a July-September exhibition by Dean Kenning. From what I can make
out,
across London signs that already had the words “To
Let”
(i.e., “For Rent”)
formed the canvas for painted images of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth,
etc. *** Two artists—New Yorker Maddy Rosenberg in
collaboration with Austrian Hubert
Sommerauer—have fashioned text from
“Pickman’s
Model” into a pop-up
book. It
sells for $500. *** There’s a few
Lovecrafts featured in this collection
of “Science Fiction Paperback Covers.”
Biography
Memories of Lovecraft’s Florida
visits to Robert Barlow were featured in the article
“Literary Haunt”
(“Daytona Beach News-Journal Online,” 29 July 2007)
by Audrey Parente. The
author noted that the Dunrovin log house where HPL stayed, plus several
acres, was being sold.
Comics
Crime Detector (Sept. 1954) has a
Lovecraftian work that begins
“If you value your sanity, DON’T read this
story.” Called “Ultimate Destiny” it
was written and drawn by Jayson “Jay” Disbrow, who
(to quote Scott
Shaw)
“specialized in creating turgid horror and jungle stories
with a twisted aspect
that was highly reminiscent of pulp magazine author H. P.
Lovecraft.”
*** “The Festival” is the title of a
3-part Lovecraft story in a comic from
Borderland Books; I suspect that any similarity with the HPL short is
mostly
coincidental. *** The Dark Goodbye (volume 1;
TokyoPop, 2007) drawn by
Drew Rausch and written Frank Marraffino belongs to that group of
writing that
puts together HPL with the hard-boiled (Chandlerian) detective genre.
Criticism
“Baroque Intensity: Lovecraft, Le Fanu and the
Fold” by Patricia
MacCormack can be read
online at The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror
Studies.
Fanzines
Another fanzine
(see previous ‘asters) with a
Lovecraft-inspired
title was The Nekromantikon by Manly Banister. Its
first of five issues
was dated 1950. Nor overlook The Lovecraftsman
(first issue 1963) by bnf
Redd Boggs.
Japan
Japanese Cthulhu stories,
Straight
to Darkness: Lairs of the Hidden Gods (Kurodahan, 2007),
receives a review
in “Cthulhu Meets Godzilla,” the Sunday New
York Times (15 April 2007).
Movies
In C’r 51 I spoke of the
Japanese movie Marebito, which
has references to HPL and “deros,” the invented
beings of Richard S. Shaver.
Thanks to the preliminary bibliography that S.T. circulated I found
that Shaver
had written an article, “Lovecraft and the Deros”
in Vampire (no. 6
(June 1946), p. 14–15). The article concerns Shaver's
beliefs. He maintained
that an actual artificial underworld existed. There's only one
significant
paragraph (p. 15) re HPL. It concerned “The Mound,”
“as good a picture of the
underworld as I ever read. Take off about twenty per cent for
Lovecraft's weird
ideation and ornamentation--and you have an exact picture of the
underworld--except for the radioactive light.” He also states
“Our race was not
the only race on earth; there were greater races and greater
times.” *** In
another Japanese movie, the 2006 Otoshimono
(English title: Ghost
Train), a character is going to attend Miskatonic
University.
*** “The Whisperer in Darkness” is being made as a
black-and-white 1930’s
talkie by the team who scored with the silent The Call of
Cthulhu.
Music
The English group Axis of Perdition finds inspiration in
HPL.
The
Pulps
Harold Brainerd Hersey wrote in Pulpwood Editor
(1937) of pulp
readers, “People no longer rip off the covers, hide the
contents and sneak off
to some secluded spot [to read the magazines]” (p. 2). I
wonder how much
Winfield Townley Scott was influenced by this stereotype and applied it
to his
account of HPL, “His Own Most Fantastic Creation”?
According to the essay,
“When he bought pulps at Douglass Dana’s book shop
he tore off the more lurid
covers lest his friends misunderstood his interests” (Marginalia,
p.
330) . *** News on
pulps and the media
they’ve influenced is at “Coming
Attractions”
Quotes
“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on
mankind.” Did HPL
originate this, especially the last half? There’s a review in
that darn New
York Times (21 August 1960, just missing HPL’s
birthday) of John Barth's The
Sot-Weed Factor, the article titled “The Joke Is on
Mankind.” Coincidence?
The young Barth, be it noted, “had a special love for
supernaturalists such as
H. P. Lovecraft, John Collier and Abe Merritt” (Blair Mahoney
in “The
Scriptorium”).
Television
In Japan,
Demonbane TV is a mecha anime series of 12 episodes set in the Cthulhu
universe. Here appears Arkham and the character Al Azif, a girl with
lavender
hair (see South China Morning Post, 25 February
2007).
Theatre
A Shakespeare by the Sea festival in St.
John’s, Newfoundland
had a pairing of dramatizations, “The Rats in the
Walls” with Poe’s “The Cask
of Amontillado.” Appropriately, the plays were held in a wine
vault. *** Part 3
of Necropolis Series by Ian W. Hill is At
the Mountains of
Slumberland, combining
HPL and Little Nemo. It played in Brooklyn
in August.
*** Seattle’s
Open Circle Theater is dramatizing some more Lovecraft. This time
it’s “The
Picture in the House,” “Nyarlathotep,”
“The Cats of Ulthar,” and “The Dreams in
the Witch House.”
Translations
Read
“The Very Old Folk” in Basque.
Predecessors
A collection of different t-shirts, each with a portrait
of Ambrose
Bierce and a quote from The Devil’s Dictionary,
is available (for $24.95
apiece!) from CafePress.
Influence
and Associations
Back in ought six John Shirley did an interview
with Weird Tales
in which he mentions that he sometimes has references to HPL in his
work. *** Dominican-American writer
Junot Diaz notes in a September “Bookslut”
interview that research for The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao included the
“nerdy reading” of Lovecraft
(and “Doc” Smith Lensman) books. *** Borges
and the Eternal Orangutans
(New Directions, 2005) by Luis Fernando Verissimo has numerous
allusions to
HPL, the Necronomicon, and Hastur. *** By chance I
discovered in Anthology
of Magazine Verse for 1958 a poem,
“Snow Song for Patti,” by Joseph
Payne Brennan. It is not macabre, unlike some other verse by him. There
are
other familiar presences in the book: Leah Bodine Drake, Lilith
Lorraine,
George Sterling. *** Thomas Ligotti’s The Nightmare
Factory has become a
comic anthology (Fox Atomic Comics) that contains four of his stories.
*** In
his introduction to Harry Warner’s A Wealth of
Fable: An Informal History of
Science Fiction Fandom in the 1950s (SCIFI Press, 1992),
Wilson Tucker
wrote that Warner said “I am a miserable second-rate
Lovecraft” (p. x). *** There's
a list
of Ray Bradbury short stories and where they first
appeared–or haven’t
yet. A related blog covers
Bradbury adaptations.
A
Review of The Free-Lance
Writer’s Handbook
Henry S. Whitehead appears with the article “The
Occult Story” in The
Free-Lance Writer’s Handbook (Writer Publishing
Company, 1926), edited by
William Dorsey Kennedy. Whitehead wrote “At the present time,
so far as the
writer is aware, there is only one market in the English-speaking world
for the
occult short-story. That is Weird Tales”
(p. 70).
While
this may be a correct, a perusal
through the book’s list of magazine markets shows Ghost
Stories; Mystery
Stories,
which uses “half-page fillers having to do with mystery, such
as superstitions,
haunted houses, occultism, and fantasies of the unusual type”
(p. 320); and Occult
Digest, which notes that it “uses short-stories,
novelettes, serials.” A
title from another genre may also be remarked—Real
Detective Tales &
Mystery Stories—because the editor is Edwin Baird.
Several names appear in the Whitehead essay, among them
M.R. James,
Hodgson, Machen (“to my own mind the finest occult story
writer who has ever
lived”), and Blackwood, who receives the greatest attention.
No WT
writer is mentioned.
At the book’s end is “The Magazine
Market” list. An entry for Amazing
Stories states the magazine “desires romances of
the future, based on exact
scientific knowledge of the day, giving full rein to the
author’s imagination”
(p. 250). Handbook’s publication date was
also the first year of AS.
As for Weird Tales I’ll
quote the entry (p. 357) in full:
“WEIRD TALES (M), 450 E. Ohio st., Chicago,
Ill.
$2.50; 25c. Farnsworth
Wright, editor.
Wants two types of stories—the weird-scientific
(Jules Verne type) and
the weird story (Edgar Allan Poe type)—stories of invention,
science, and
surgery, particularly stories that forecast the marvelous science of
the
future; tales of other planets, and voyages between the worlds; bizarre
and
unusual stories; occult and mystic tales, and tales of the
supernatural,
preferably with a logical explanation; tales of werewolves, vampires,
witches,
and devil-worship; ghost stories, and tales of spirit return; tales of
strange
monsters; tales of mystery and terror; and tales of horror, but nothing
sickening or disgusting, no sex stories, no detective tales, and no
crime
tales, unless the weird element is so strong that the stories are
really weird
tales. Gruesomeness does not constitute weirdness. Uses short-stories,
novelettes, serials, and poetry, not exceeding thirty lines, but no
general
articles, no humorous verse, and no jokes. Sets limit at 40,000
words[,] does
not buy photographs, and pays, at a minimum rate of one-half cent a
word, on
publication.” As it applies to Jules Verne the
“weird” part of the compound
“weird-scientific” is used in the sense of
fantastic and not supernatural, as
it is for Poe.
Lovecraftisms
Before HPL’s poem “The Ancient
Track” there was George Meredith’s
“Lucifer in Starlight” with the lines
“Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
/ The army of unalterable
law.” *** “New
England is quite as large a
lump of earth as my heart can really take
in.”—Nathaniel Hawthorne (cf. HPL’s
“I am Providence”).
*** Preceding “Pickman’s Model,” M.R.
James wrote in "Canon Alberic's
Scrapbook" (published in 1904) about an illustration of a monstrous
being,
“One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown
the picture: ‘It
was drawn from the life.’” (My
“discovery” concerning the similarity of the
quotes is independent of Michael Dirda’s in his review).
Garrison
Keillor
Being a celebrity is not synonymous with knowing your
subject. Garrison
Keillor in “The
Writer’s Almanac” for 20 August 2007
states “It's the birthday
of a man who would have shuddered at the thought of the Voyager
missions into
space [HPL].” As a lover of astronomic discoveries, Lovecraft
would have been
delighted with the Voyager spacecraft—launched that day in
1977—and what it
found.
Conferences
By the time you read this the 2007 H.P. Lovecraft Forum
will be history.
The program, which I recently discovered online,
seems to have raided the ranks of the Ofians–the first panel
alone consists of
Joshi, Phillips, Indick, and Hussey. I’m going out on a limb
and predict these
lads are going to have a bright future in Lovecraft studies.
As for me–I have been pre-empted by the forum,
discovering that one
panel is dealing with a subject I am independently working on for a
conference,
while a paper appears to deal with another of my researches, even
having the
same title that I have given my project. Since they are the firstest,
I’ll have
to eventually contribute the mostest.
Typos
Martin has sent me via e-mail some mind-croglingly
detailed lists of
typos that he discovered in various professional editions of Lovecraft
collections. I’d be neglectful not to ramble on in a few
words about this.
I suppose that I should be something of an expert on
typos, having
supplied so many unintended examples in each issue of The
Criticaster.
Anyway, of typos there are at least two categories. The first are
conspicuous
errors–the wrong word or a grammatical mis-construction which
leaps out at you.
In the second instance one must compare the authoritative
text with a
reprint to find where there’s a drift. This is a particular
problem with
Lovecraft’s work. There is no authoritative edition. This
includes the corrected
Arkham House volumes. For example, to quote a mistake in
“Herbert
West–Reanimator” (Dagon and Other Macabre
Tales, p. 138), concerning the
fate of West: “Now he had disappeared.” As other
editions, and the context
show, the correct reading should be “Now he has
disappeared..” While the
corrected Arkham House may be the least given to error, as Martin has
told me,
the edition does have at least one error. And what of the stuff that is
not so
obvious–or that has slipped by me?
A totally reliable edition of Lovecraft remains to be
published.
Thanks for
reading the 54th issue of The
Criticaster (for Hallowe’en 2007, EOD mailing 140)
by Steve Walker
(that’s
me). Eventually published on the Net as The Limbonaut (no
25).
Whitehead’s “West India Lights”
appeared in the April 1927 issue.