Letters to Alfred Galpin (Hippocampus Press, 2003): Annotations, Comments,
Corrections
My most interesting discovery was a letter
to Galpin that contained paragraphs incorporated into
"The Festival" (see under page 133). Besides that, there is my typical
fussiness about typos, busybody suggestions, speculations, questions, etc.
p. 5 Unfortunately,
the table of contents does not give a list of the individual letters and their
page numbers.
p. 49 "I am sick of hearing fools &
superficial criticks prate about 'Hamlet's madness.'
It is really a distressing glimpse of absolute
truth." I wonder if this could be applied to Lovecraft's deranged
protagonists (e.g., discovering Dagon, Cthulhu).
p. 48 There should be an explanation for
the blank in the following (the pair of brackets is the editor's): "But
perchance the and
[drawing of a post]"
p. 48 "no [on] his notice"
p. 51 Another
blank in HPL's Germanized dialect: ".iss allowed in
der office"
p. 53 Word(s) omitted? ".it has been a
pair about one whom relatively little"
p. 63 I suspect there are letters missing.
Letter 6 is 30 September, 1919, and this, letter 7, is 11 December. It begins,
"Before quitting the subject of Loveman and horror stories," which must have
been in a previous Gallomo letter.
p. 75 "I give not a river-regular" If this
is an expression I cannot verify it from any source, and if it is a misprint, I
don't know the correct wording.
p. 77 "W. r. m."--is
this an abbreviation for a phrase?
p. 82 After some
background on "The Tomb" and "Dagon," HPL discusses "Psychopompos:
A Tale in Rhyme." (In The Ancient Track:
The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft, S.T. dates this letter to
"January? 1920" but in the Galpin correspondence has
re-dated it to April 1920.) What is curious is that he says of its composition
that he was "as yet unable to cast off my beloved heroicks
altogether, even in fiction" (my italics). Of course, the form of "Psychopompos"
is heroic couplets and not fiction; I suppose "fiction" is used as a synonym
for "narrative" (whether prose or poetry).
p. 94 Typo:
"neat-looing"=neat-looking. A few lines
away is ".the colossal (almost scareful)
expanse." I wonder if "scareful" was a word created
for this usage, or could this be a misprint or editorial misinterpretation for
some other word?
p. 96 Typo? in "its songful stagness" as
related to a walk with friends. A replacement word
"staginess" doesn't appear quite right, but I can come up with nothing better.
I'm reluctant to accept "stagness" as a neologism for
males only (the state of being stag), but it could be.
p. 98 "Who would not be odd, if he might
thereby re-enter the sealed door of his youth?" This seems a foreshadowing of
"The Silver Key."
p. 98 In the next
line (after above) another neologism appears in "I'd better turn off the wosh"--perhaps a play on "wish."
p. 100-101 "Next day I read some of my new
hideous yarns aloud at the hillside camp, and received one good suggestion from
the audience regarding the improvement of 'The Outsider'. Not that I hadn't
thought of the point before, but I was not sure." I wonder if he made the change.
p. 101 Typo: ". an[d] after a detour."
p. 102 HPL talks about doing a female
impersonation, laced in a hoop-skirt, with bonnet and parasol. This was to
please some acquaintances who "seem partial to the
Julian Entinge [sic] stuff." I find that Julian Eltinge (1881-1941) was a stage and screen actor as well as
a female impersonator. HPL also states that "in my acting days I went in for
the heavy villainous stuff." Does this mean that at some time he had engaged in
amateur theatrics, or was he simply being flippant?
O, to have had a photo of this. How many
speculations would have been launched. The biographer
would have linked it to the very young Lovecraft's statement of "I'm a little
girl," while the fodder for the psychologist would be fecund. The literary
critic might cast his mind forward twelve years to the writing of "The Thing on
the Doorstep," where the villainous Ephraim Waite impersonates, so to speak,
his daughter Asenath. The idea of HPL as an actor
might lead to the use of aliens masquerading as humans, say Wilbur Whateley or "Henry Akeley."
p. 101 HPL's early impressions of his
wife-to-be are amusing, e.g., "a human dynamo and phonograph combined." There
is both ridicule and admiration in several of his observations.
p. 108 ".a real snowbird or hop-hound."
The first is slang for a cocaine user, but the second term appears to be a
nonce word, whose meaning is a serious beer drinker. Or perhaps he was thinking
of the established slang "hophead" (drug addict) and mis-remembered
it.
p. 120-21 HPL speaks of turning into
poetry a prose translation by Galpin of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.
The French title reminds me of another collection of poems, Fungi from Yuggoth, which in title and
format, I suppose, might bear an influence from the former.
p. 125 HPL states of eighteenth-century
houses, "The odour of them is alone sufficient to
awake dark speculations--I found it most pronounc'd in
the antient Ward house in Haverhill." Cf. "young Ward
would venture down into this maelstrom of tottering houses, broken transoms,
tumbling steps, twisted balustrades, swarthy faces, and nameless odours" (from The
Case of Charles Dexter Ward). "Odour" occurs twenty-one times in the novel.
p. 128 HPL tours Salem in February 1923 where
he sees "an extensive undulating tract cover'd with
snow." It is odd to think of him gadding about in cold weather, considering his
weakness.
p. 133 His atmospheric description of a
visit to "Gallows-Hill" in Salem has parallels with "The Festival," which he
would write in the fall of the same year. Examples: both have a hill where
witches were hung; the phrase in the letter "up.up.up" vs. "The Festival's"
"up, up, up"; "a terrible procession of black-cowled
things" vs. "the throng of cowled, cloaked figures";
etc. *** HPL makes an unconscious pun "I hung around Gallows Hill." This time
the location is not hyphenated--a typo?
p. 134 He talks with artist Sarah Symonds
(1870-1965), whose bas-relief plaques he purchases. Plaques by her may still be
found online.
p. 142 In 1923 he
speaks of "a typical Puritan abode" where people dwelled "250 and more years
ago-close to the soil and all its hideous whisperings; warp'd
in mentality by isolation and unnatural thoughts." In 1919 he had already
expressed some of the same attitudes in "The Picture in the House," writing of
Puritan houses that "two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted,"
the inhabitants reflecting "isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for
life with relentless Nature." Compare the letter's "There is eldritch
fascination--horrible bury'd evil--in these archaick farmhouses" with the story's "What interested me
was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every visible detail" of one of
"the ancient, lonely farmhouses."
p. 145 Of an
admirable and underappreciated son of a friend, HPL writes, "He is a true 12
o'clock feller in a 9 o'clock town," a reference to a 1917 song, "I'm a 12 O'Clock Fellow In a 9 O'Clock
Town." The singer of the song does say "feller" rather than fellow, and the
song can also be found online by both variants of its title.
p. 146 Newburyport "is today locally known
as 'The City of the Living Dead.'" Ironically, in 1980 would appear the Lucio Fulci-directed zombie flick
City of the Living Dead, set in
Dunwich.
p. 146 ".speeding past the shanties (shantih shantih shantih) of fishermen." is a pun that would appear in the
same year in his parody, "Waste Paper."
p. 147-150 HPL spends several scornful
pages on the eccentric Timothy Dexter. Could the latter have lent his name to The Case of Charles Dexter Ward?
p. 153 In 1923 he
wrote, "Instead of rattling to the South Station [of Boston] on the elevated, I
chose the subway, (I am exceedingly fond of all things dark and
subterranean.)," which flies in the face of the narrator's statement "If I
don't like that damned subway, it's my own business," in "Pickman's Model."
p. 158 Typo in the
repetition of the last line from the previous page at the top of this one.
*** Here is another name to add to the list of HPL's correspondence, the late
Alfred L. Hutchinson ("I hardly knew him myself, & doubt if I ever
exchanged five letters with him").
p. 178 ".Spinoza; a
lecture upon whom I last December describ'd to you."
This was written in March 1933, and the December letter is missing; so too is
this reference to Spinoza in the "Index."
p.
179 HPL quotes T.S. Eliot's famous self-description of a "royalist in politics,
classicist in literature, & Anglo-Catholick
[HPL's spelling] in religion." While this may have originally appeared in
Eliot's 1929 For Lancelot Andrewes (as put in S.T.'s endnote), I suspect that HPL
picked it up second-hand, e.g., Scribner's
Magazine uses the quote in a 1931 issue, as did other publications prior to
the Lovecraft allusion. *** He attended an Eliot reading, and I must give his
witty observation (p. 189); the poet "appear'd to
hold his surprisingly vast audience in that state of tense awe which only a
combination of reputation & incomprehension can produce."
p. 187 ".my back is visible in the group [photogr]aph
taken for the press--a copy of which I enclose." (In this instance, brackets are
the editors'.) If the photo got published, I wonder where. It was taken at a "Musick Festival" on 11 June, 1933.
p. 190 There are times when HPL's remarks
serve as social documents, as when he is thankful that his train ride from
Quebec now shows "the absence of the swinish beer-guzzlers who used to frequent
Canadian trains in the days of intensive prohibition." *** HPL mentions a
church fire at Valleyfield, Quebec. A few paragraphs about this appeared in the
New York Times for 22 September 1933.
p. 194 "Petit-Belnape"
is the first usage I've seen of a nickname for Frank Belknap Long.
p. 196-7 S.T. guesses that "a
ghost-writing job for a goof who wanted to be publicly eloquent" is a hidden
reference to Sonia. Yet it is an odd way of disguising her--he could have easily
used a neutral term, such as "someone."
p. 220 Visiting
Long in very late December 1935 or early January 1936 HPL attended a dinner of
the American Fiction Guild "& saw a good many of the cheap magazine hacks
whose names are familiar to the reading proletariat." By this time L. Ron
Hubbard may still have been president of the New York chapter, and apparently
Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were members. Could HPL have met any of them,
and considered them hacks?
p. 221 The Hayden Planetarium he finds
"attracting a publick interest in astronomy which did
not exist when I was young," which is perhaps a poignant observation; or
perhaps he was far enough removed from the mainstream that the interest seemed
not to exist; or maybe he is accurate.
p. 233, etc. "Works of Alfred Galpin" is a collection of his essays, poems, and fiction.
Unfortunately, the works are not accompanied by year and place of publication,
though there is a bibliography at the end. Presumably, the order of the writing
is chronological.
p. 235 Galpin's
poem "Selenaio-Phantasma" counter-points "Nemesis,"
borrowing the same rhyme scheme and some of the vocabulary. It is worth a read.
Audience
"The Monsters of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, as Drawn by Children" comes with illustrations.
Cartoons
Scooby Doo characters have an episode where they discover professor H.P. Hatecraft has been abducted by one of his creations. Another professor, based on Harlan Ellison, is skeptical, and there is also someone named Howard E. Roberts.
Comic Books/Graphic Novels
Bob
Howard: Plumber of the Unknown by Rafael Nieves and Dan Dougherty doesn't
take itself too seriously, despite its Lovecraftian horror.
*** Greg Hinkle's Parasomnia
is inspired by "The Terrible Old Man." Part one is available for a look see. *** At the Mountains of Madness (SelfMadeHero,
2010) has been illustrated by Ian Culbard.
*** At the West Hollywood Book Fair artists Steve Niles,
Mike Mignola, and Hans Rodionoff
talked about his influence on horror comic books (via SF Signal). *** The Italian produced Lovecraft: Black & White (Dagon
Press) is edited by Umberto Sisia and has black and
whites by comic book illustrators. *** Parody covers by Murray Groat feature Tintin encountering
Herbert West, R'lyeh, and other Lovecraftian terrors.
Computers
Innsmouth has
been built in Second Life, a 3D virtual world. *** For the iPhone, Lucidsphere
Media has developed a single player game, Necronomicon.
Criticism
Appreciations in Jeff VanderMeer's
Monstrous Creatures collection
includes "My Love-Hate Relationship with Clark Ashton-Smith" and "Lovecraft
Art: The Link Between Tentacles and Cosmic SF." *** Jim
Moon looks at the continuity found in The
Fungi from Yuggoth.
*** ProQuest's Literature
Online, a database of full text journals, now includes Fantasy Commentator. *** The
Cosmology of H. P. Lovecraft by Marcia G. Kutrieh
appeared in Qatar University
Library's Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 1985, No. 8, pages 37-49.
Fashion
What the
well-dressed Lovecraftian wears.
Libraries
For the Howard P. Lovecraft Collection, Brown University Library has under "Finding Aids & Manuscripts Online" a big list of writings and particularly letters, with occasional annotations.
Movies
See the
trailer for Die Farbe,
the German-language adaptation of "The Colour out of Space," ironically in
black-and-white. *** SF Signal asks "Which Horror Novel Would Make a
Great Film?" and in the answers from a number of writers, HPL features
prominently. *** Among Dead Pictures's latest reviews are The Call of Cthulhu (2005) and Burn, Witch, Burn (1962). *** A
while ago I panned the documentary The
Strange Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1998). A totally different
matter is the excellent Lovecraft: Fear
of the Unknown (2008), which is available free for viewing.
Music
The Metal Register (apparently no longer extant) reviewed the band Vale
of Pnath.
Names
"Teratonymy: The Weird and
Monstrous Names of HP Lovecraft" (Names: A Journal of Onomastics, September 2010, p.
127-138) by Christopher L. Robinson begins its
abstract, "Lovecraft's teratonyms are monstrous
inventions that estrange the sound patterns of English and obscure the kinds of
meaning traditionally associated with literary onomastics."
Philosophy
Ben
Woodard writes about "A Nature to Pulp the Stoutest Philosopher: Towards a
Lovecraftian Philosophy of Nature"; and S.C. Hickman has
written a response.
Predecessors
The
Library of Wales series came out in 2010 with Arthur Machen's
The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams.
Publishing
Vintage Classics is giving The Call of
Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales a
3-D cover, along with works by Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Pierre Boulle (Planet of the Apes).
Radio
BBC Radio 7 carried an abridged reading by
Richard Coyle of AtMoM. It is available as an
audiobook.
Television
Cthulhu has made it to the animated comedy
series South Park (via CthulhuWho1 blog). *** An anime television series
called Haiyoru! Nyaruani:
Remember My Mr. Lovecraft deals with "Nyaruko, a formless Cthulhu
deity who can take on the shape of a seemingly ordinary silver-haired girl."
Theatre
Minneapolis' Hardcover Theater offers "Weird Tales for Halloween," made up of W. F. Harvey's "The Beast with Five Fingers," Edward Lucas White's "Lukundoo," and "The Dunwich Horror." Steve Schroer wrote the adaptations. *** Altadena California's Mountain View Mortuary & Cemetery is the appropriate setting for a dramatization of "The Unnameable," offered along with Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and Dickens' "The Chimes." Jeff G. Rack handled the Lovecraft tale.
*** San Francisco Theater Pub hosted an
H. P. Lovecraft Festival, which had at different dates "The Shunned House,"
"The Dunwich Horror," and three shorts. *** Tokyo
International Players presented Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as
set in the world of Lovecraft. In
addition to the usual Shakespeare roles, characters included Howard, Phillip,
Mr. Marsh, Shoggoth, Brown Jenkin,
and the Witch Keziah.
*** In New York a one-man show by Mike Daisey, Barring the Unforeseen, relates of an illegal
séance at a Brooklyn room where HPL lost his mind (according to the story).
*** In Toronto macabre fan and puppeteer Eric Woolfe adapted stories by Algernon Blackwood, E.T.A.
Hoffmann, and HPL into Madhouse Variations, which involves Ephraim Waite
seeking the Necronomicon.
*** Selections
from the lives of Donald and Howard Wandrei are
dramatized in Unspeakable Things at
the Red Eye Theater, Minneapolis. A member of the company discusses them.
Theses
The Gothic in Contemporary Interactive Fictions (Swedish title: Gotiken i Interaktiv Fiktion Idag) (Ph.D.; Umeå
University, 2010) is by Van Leavenworth. One of its parts looks at "Anchorhead, a work loosely based on H. P.
Lovecraft's terror fiction."
The 127 page French language
thesis Mythologie
de Lovecraft: Contexte, Prétexte, Texte (M.A.;
Université Laval, 2008) by Louis-Pierre Smith Lacroix is
available online. From the English language abstract: "This
mythology of H. P. Lovecraft examines the artificial myths inside his texts by
comparing them to the modem myths in the context where he wrote according to
his mythopoetic pretext."
A paper about the influence of insulin on
platelets, Der Einfluss
des Insulins auf die Thrombozyten
und auf die Wechselwirkung Zwischen
den Blutplättchen und dem Endothel (Bayerischen Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, 2008) by Steffen Rauchfuß
has an epigraph from "Herbert West--Reanimator."
A Morfologia do Horror: Construção
e Percepção na
Obra Lovecraftiana
(Masters; Universidade Estadual
de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos
da Linguagem, 2006) is a Portuguese work by Alcebiades Diniz Miguel that
analyzes the fiction.
An epigraph from "The White Ship" begins Spreading-rate Dependent Mid-ocean Ridge
Processes Expressed in Western Atlantic Lithosphere (Georgia Institute of
Technology, 2006) by Sangmyung David Kim.
The Portuguese Traduzindo Horrores com H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) : Aspectos Afetivos e Relação Tradutoria (2005) is
by Dulce Fabiana Mota Lima, who states
"The study describes my own relationship, as a translator, to the North
American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), one of the most representative
creations of the horror genre in literature."
'A Dark Poem' :
Lovecraft And His Puritans (M.A., 2005) by Geoffrey Reiter is for sale.
Dealing with proton scattering, Anregungsfunktionen der Polarisationsobservablen
ANN, ASS und ASL der elastischen ~p~p-Streuung
(Universität
Hamburg, 2004) by Kjeld Oleg Eyser
leads with the sentence "The oldest and strongest emotion [etc.]"
Da Literatura Fantástica (Teorias e Contos)
(Universidade de São Paulo, 2003), by Marcio Cicero de Sa, begins with
"a reading of the attempts of definition of [weird] literature through the
study of H. P. Lovecraft and Peter Penzoldt."
In Le
Pas Sage: A Mathesis (Angeometry
& Djinnialogy of the Short Story) (M.A.; The
University of Western Ontario, 1997) D.A. Mellamphy
states that the name "Cthulhu" comes "from the Arabic khoothwl or khtoothwlan of the Qur'an's al'furqaan, Sura XXV:xxix,
wherein the word is used to designate the 'betrayal' of the Shaitan
(Satan: Iblis)" (p. 67).
A Genre for Our Times: The Menippean
Satires of Russell Hoban and Murakami Haruki (Ph.D.; The University of British Columbia, 1997) by
Susan Rosa Fisher shows that Hoban's novel The
Medusa Frequency shares affiliations with "The Call of Cthulhu."
In Der
Traum in der phantastischen
Literatur (Heidelberg, 1997) by Erik Hauser one
of the works examined is The Dream-Quest
of Unknown Kadath.
And in Attributions
of Inferential Error, Epistemic Virtues, and Models of Minimal Rationality
(M.A.; Concordia University [Montreal], 1996) Sean Allen-Hermanson
uses an example from The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath where "Randolph Carter's sense of ethical
obligation runs up against the physical limitations imposed by the situation"
of moonbeasts killing former allies (p. 11).
Le Récit
Concentrationnaire: Une Investigation Théorique (Ph.D.; Université ce Montréal, 1996) by Éric Lozowy
contains several allusions
to HPL.
Fantastique et Événement: Étude Comparée
des Oeuvres de Jules Verne et de Howard P. Lovecraft
(Annales littéraires de l'Université de Franche-Comté, 1995) by Florent Montaclair appears to have been commercially published.
Writings
The
Weird Writings of HP Lovecraft (Girasol Collectables, 2010) includes the texts of various fiction, poems, and letters to
the editor as well as publication histories and supplemental material.
Influence
In accepting his 2009 Howie, the late Dan
O'Bannon talks about HPL in this video. *** Michel Houellebecq tells Paris
Review: "one thing definitely influenced me in The Call of
Cthulhu by H. P.
Lovecraft: his use of different points of view. Having a diary entry, then a
scientist's log, followed by the testimony of the local idiot. You can see that
influence in The Elementary Particles." Re "local idiot"--maybe he's thinking of Wilbur Whateley.
*** The title of the young adult Australian
novel, Strange Objects (Heinemann, 1990) by Gary Crew, is taken from
"The Strange High House in the Mist." *** According to a letter to Chris Perridas' blog H. P.
Lovecraft and His Legacy, cryptozoologist Nick Redfern quoted from The Lurker at the Threshold
for each chapter of his book There's Something in the Woods (Anomalist Books, 2008).
C. M. Kornbluth
I've
read C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a
Science Fiction Visionary (McFarland, 2010) by Mark Rich, and it is Hugo
material. Some of the facts might be interesting to Lovecraftians.
A photo
includes Frank Belknap Long and Manly Wade Wellman (p. 40). Among the attendees
of the Fifth Science Fiction Convention (1939) was Kenneth Sterling (p. 45).
*** In a 1941 letter to Stirring Science Stories a twenty-one-year-old
Isaac Asimov wrote (p. 84) about science and fantasy stories, "As far as the
fantasy is concerned, I favor a minimum of
shudder-shudder-Necronomicon-nameless horrors-horrible evil-mad Arab-weird
rites of Ktlbgpq, etc. Give us instead light fantasy
and screwball yarns.
"The
world is sufficiently horrible today for escape to be found in screwiness rather than horror. Weird rites and nameless
horrors don't cut any ice in comparison to the darn named horrors of a
London bombardment."
*** The
shadow of Hugo the Rat: in 1934 Donald A. Wollheim
along with other writers received no payment from Hugo Gernsback,
so they hired a lawyer (p. 86). *** Robert A.W. Lowndes received but a single
compliment for his work from Kornbluth, who called
the Lovecraftian "The Leapers" "absorbing" (p. 103).
"The Temple"
I
thought of this tale upon reading about the new artificial reef composed of 400
human statues, which is in the Caribbean off the coast of Grenada. Creator
Jason deCaires Taylor has named the project La Evolución Silenciosa (Silent
Evolution). There are a number
of evocative photos at his site.
Correspondents' Obituaries
Not without irony, the New York Times gave much more obituary
space to some of Lovecraft's correspondents than to him. For examples:
"Rheinhart Kleiner,
A Trade Writer, 56"
The obituary (p. 23) in
the New York Times (13 May 1949) identifies him as an "author of books
and of articles for trade magazines" who died in Clifton, N.J. Former
residences were New York and Chester, N.J. "Mr. Kleiner
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 Book Worm. He was a
member of The Fossils and an executive of the National Amateur Press
Association."
"J.
F. MORTON DIES; Museum Curator; Head of Paterson Institution; Was Bibliophile
and Also a Collector of Minerals; WROTE ON THE SINGLE TAX; Supporter of Henry
George; Was Champion of Negro Rights--Author of Poems"
According to the 8 October 1941 issue (p.
23) the 70-year-old Morton was a "nationally known bibliophile," etc. He "had
also written many poems."
But
What About Weird
Tales?
"The steady rise in the
popularity of the thriller had paralleled the slow decline of ghost and horror
tales during the late 1920s" (p. 119 in Bestsellers:
Popular Fiction Since 1900 [Palgrave Macmillan, 2008] by Clive Bloom).
Centennials
Both C. L. Moore (24 January) and William
Crawford (10 September) were born one-hundred years ago this year.
The Grippe
I am going to look at Lovecraft's use of
the term "grippe." On 20 June 1936 he wrote to Alfred Galpin
(Letters to Alfred Galpin,
p. 222) of "an attack of grippe which had me flat for a week," and then "my
aunt came down with a grippe attack infinitely worse than mine," this actually
being breast cancer. Before his death he would write of suffering from the grippe,
the interpretation being that he was mistaking this for cancer.
In popular usage "grippe" was another term
for influenza. However, it would seem that HPL used it not to designate a runny
nose or sore throat, but an indisposition striking the stomach or intestines.
According to an entry in the magisterial The
English Dialect Dictionary (Henry Frowde, 1962; v. 2, p. 732), one definition of the word was
"a sharp pain, esp. in the bowels."
Or perhaps he was using it in a generic
way, as an ailment. If he used it like that, he was not being deceptive when he
spoke of his aunt's condition. Nor would he have been making a mis-diagnosis about the "grippe" that was ending his life.
Thriller
As I mentioned last ish,
this venerated tv series has
emerged onto DVD. The blog A Thriller a
Day by Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri review each episode, plus there are extras, such as
an interview with Stefan Dziemianowicz. When an
episode was adapted from Weird Tales
or another magazine, the appropriate cover is featured, though typically the
artist is not mentioned.
I've been watching the second season
episode. Now that they are no longer fresh in my mind, here are my opinions,
with spoilers, about select episodes (all the episodes would've benefitted by
being shorter, hence tighter). "What Beckoning Ghost" belongs to that annoying
genre of faux supernatural-tales that appear fantastic,
but wind up with mundane explanations, in this case because of criminal
imposture. I don't understand the attraction of such stories, which appear less
believable when the truth is revealed than they would if the fantasy premise
were valid. How many times in real life are people driven mad through
supernatural hocus-pocus so that greedy relations can obtain their money?
*** "The Premature Burial," the single Poe
adaptation, was pretty good. *** Robert Bloch's "The Weird Tailor" (Weird Tales, 1950) had the premise of,
so to speak, clothes make the dummy. A man wants certain fabrics sewn into a
suit, which will be placed on his dead son in order to bring him back; the
clothes eventually find themselves on a tailor's dummy or mannequin, who comes
to life to save a life. The mannequin is so obviously played throughout by an actor, there is no surprise when it starts to move at the
story's climax. There is one wonderful line, a touch of Lovecraft, which is
thrown away in the middle of the drama, rather than used to clinch a scene.
This is where George Macready, playing the father, reveals that the fabric came from off the earth. If only it could have been italicized. I was pleased to find
the drama referencing Bloch's version of the Necronomicon, De Vermis Mysteriis.
*** Based on a Henry Kuttner story,
"Masquerade" tells of a couple arriving at a spooky house. Banter ensues. In
general, I am annoyed by humorous supernatural stories, and this was a long
joke with a short punchline. Sporting "sophisticated"
irreverence, the story seemed a natural for Unknown,
though it appeared in Weird Tales (1942).
*** "The Return of Andrew Bentley" was one
of the few Thriller's I saw when they
were new, and it is my favorite. Maybe the second scariest episode, it
introduced me to certain Lovecraft themes, such as the occult tome, which gave
me the shivers. Based on a 1933 Weird
Tales short by August Derleth and Mark Schorer,
the teleplay was by Richard Matheson, and from what I've read the mix was not
satisfactory. Matheson likes to keep tabs on the familiar workaday world, where
a fantastic premise intrudes; while in Lovecraft's world all things are infused
with the fantastic.
*** "The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk" (by
Margaret St. Clair, Weird Tales,
1950) shows its hand almost immediately as an update of the Circe myth. It
seems more about the battle of the sexes, with the males being even more stupid
than the sorceress, who unfortunately does not receive her comeuppance. ***
"Portrait Without a Face" is another faux supernatural
story, with a portrait gradually and inexplicably being filled in to reveal the
murderer (who kills with a crossbow (!)). The non-ghost person who actually
does the painting would have to work at superhuman speed and have the ability
to pick locks.
*** Robert Bloch's "Waxworks" (Weird Tales, 1939) is kind of faux
supernatural. Waxwork criminals appear to commit murders, but the real murderer
dresses up as them--but why? Also, a
woman (witch?) covered in wax has powers from beyond the grave. *** The
scariest of all Thrillers, "La Strega" was a re-seeing of an episode I remember from its
original showing or as a repeat. Its creepiness has stuck to me through the
decades. Jeanette Nolan is superb as the witch who curses the hapless hero, and
other than a scene of avant-garde dancers, the atmosphere and shocks don't let
up, creating a world of horror. *** "The Storm" is solid on atmosphere, but
prosaic when it comes to imagination. A woman is alone in a dark house (the
electricity is off) and a murderer is about.
*** "A Wig for Miss DeVore"
(Weird Tales, 1943) by Derleth gives
powers of glamour to a woman who wears the wig--but "bewear"
when she removes it. Not bad, but too repetitious a tale. *** An enjoyable
work, "The Hollow Watcher" is a scarecrow who won't
stay put, and apparently contains the remains of a murdered man. I'm reminded
of the scarecrow in John Metcalfe's "The Feasting Dead." *** "The Incredible
Dr. Markesan" originally appeared in Weird
Tales, 1934 as "Colonel Markesan" by Derleth and Schorer.
One of the best Thrillers, the scene
where the re-animated corpses are forced by Markesan (played by Boris Karloff)
to recite their offences recalled to me the interrogations by Joseph Curwen of
his victims. The closing scene of a living corpse is the stuff of nightmares,
hampered (to my mind) by a lapse in story logic--why kill a character, then why
re-animate her, and why does she look the grotesque way she does, being only
briefly dead?
Weird Tales
The blog article "Weird Tales: So What's It All About?" by Peter Enfantino
identifies anthologies largely composed of Weird
Tales reprints. *** I wonder
what was the first movie adaptation taken from Weird Tales? My guess is Fiend
Without a Face, based on Amelia Reynolds Long's
"Thought-Monster" (1930). The movie has been re-issued by the prestigious
Criterion label, and it includes a commentary track.
152
Douglas:
The reprint of the Steve Moore article on Clark Ashton Smith and William Beckford
was a mixed blessing. The mix comes from your omission of bibliographical
information fixing the origin of the article's publication. That is not
scholarly.
Ken:
The poem by Thyril L. Ladd was a pleasure, though I
think of it as playful rather than sexy. Since Helen Wesson read fantasy
paperbacks in the tub, I wonder if one of them was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (or
maybe "The Temple")? *** Suppose at some future time a desperate "critic"
decides to prove that Cataloguing Room Messenger Arthur J. Fredlund
was later the subject of the poem "The Messenger"? A line of argument could
show HPL sublimating his dismay with the lad.
Laurence:
Congratulations on submitting your master's thesis about Robert Murray
Gilchrist. On to other things: your review of The Thing from the Lake by Eleanor M. Ingram was an enjoyable read.
I suspect that out there, in less popular databases, there is information about
this fantastic novel.
S.T.:
You raise no objection to HPL's view that a white-collar job would've been an
answer to his economic problems. I wonder if he could have been able to hold
one, such as working in a bank or office. I think he might have stifled from
not being able to write save in his free time, his statements to the contrary.
He didn't last long as an envelope stuffer or movie ticket seller and didn't
succeed as a salesman. Such jobs could have killed his spirit. *** "Under the
Pyramids" is a Lovecraftian sounding title, suggesting archaeological mystery
and terror; whereas "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" is Houdinian,
for the performer was known for his escapes from prisons, shackles, etc. Since
Houdini was the draw, I can see why Baird assigned that title. *** Re "The Last
Test" and other revisions as "failures"--the raw "test" of a story's worth is, will the editor purchase it. Farnsworth Wright did.
Leigh:
Congratulations for being elected president of the Australian Horror Writers
Association.
Scott
D.B.: Re "if humanity is so insignificant to beings on the powerful level of
the Great Old Ones." Why should the Great Old Ones be more significant than
man? Both are equal. HPL wrote something along the lines--referring maybe to the
theory of relativity--that a man and a fly had been rendered equal. So this
would be true for a man and a Great Old One--though don't tell a Great Old One I
said so. J *** Part of the
fascination with the "black magic" quote is that it seems to neatly explain
(and simplify), the background or back story of the Cthuluoid
universe to the reader not familiar with the fiction. *** Re "Lovecraft's
primary purpose in inventing books like The Necronomicon or artifacts like The
Shining Trapezohedron"; one reason, as I said years
or decades past, was "merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic
verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative" (W.S. Gilbert in The Mikado). A second reason might be
these were created as imaginative jeu d'esprits or from creative zest.
*** I hope other EOD'ers
don't overdose on Charles Dexter Ward,
seeing that both of us had lengthy comments about the novel, even agreeing, as
in the unconvincing blockage of the well; your suggestion that HPL should've
revised has my second. *** Re the Ward
quote "must have it red for three months"--since this phrase was overheard, might not it be "must have it
read for three months"? For example, suppose that a spell must come
periodically from a grimoire, which must be read out
for three months. Mrs. Ward, and so her husband, was led
astray by her assumption. Such an interpretation would weaken your
vampire thesis. *** You appear to praise the novel's climax. It is too subdued.
Joseph Curwen should have a grander, more extravagant exit,
say as in "The Dunwich Horror," which had its own problems.
*** The identity of Yog-Sothoth
is debatable. It is more than an entity (entities?); it is a condition and
power and enabler. In "Dunwich" it is a "gate" as well as a "key and guardian
of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth."
*** The dissolution of the Curwen portrait may be literary license, and as such
it is acceptable in a way that the closing of the well is not since, I suppose,
the latter is not symbolic but a contrivance. An alternative explanation for
the portrait--it was ensorcelled and designed to snare Ward. Its mission
accomplished, it self-destructed (to remove evidence? to follow the rules of
magic?).
*** That Benjamin Franklin was not "a
mage, magician or occultist" does not disqualify him as a kind of kidnap
victim. Rather, Curwen et al. were after "illustrious bones" and "titan
thinkers." Incidentally, Franklin was a mason so his name might evoke occult
connections. *** My guess is that "B." refers not to Borellus
but "Mr. G. B." (Rev. George Burroughs).
Fred:
Re "proof for how 'witch-fire' can mean both 'holy fire' & 'fool's fire'
simultaneously." I'll give it a shot. A witch can be considered a holy person
(holy as in someone dedicated to the supernatural or divine). A fool can be
considered holy--"fools for Christ" is a term coined by Saint Paul (cf Wikipedia).
Sir Perceval was considered a "holy fool," and I believe such a designation
could be attributed to Prince Myshkin of Fyodor
Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. The idea is
that the holy may be so concerned with matters spiritual that they exhibit
little common sense; or that they are innocents, so fools (cf. the word
"cretin" from "Christian"); or that in giving up worldly possessions they
appear as fools to the average person. Semantically, then, "holy" and "fool"
can be akin. As a comparison, think of the illumination that is St. Elmo's fire
and ignis fatuus (i.e.,
foolish fire).
Mark:
Alas, the majority of the Wandrei letter reprints are
so faint as to be unreadable. Is there no way to darken the type?
Wilum: Re the typo "the clock peels its final chime." Yet it
sounds original and surrealistically inspired. I imagine a chime as a physical
thing being peeled off a clock.
Derrick:
Re your observation that in comparison with Poe's, Lovecraft's stories are
"largely lacking the humorous element." Having given a presentation about humor
in Lovecraft's fiction, I find this rather off the mark. There is satire,
parody, and irony in various stories, such as "The Dunwich Horror." *** Thanks
for your prodigious generosity in providing the most recent copy of The Lovecraft Annual (no. 4, 2010).
Juha-Matti: The Nostaligia League has made available the text of John
Martin Leahy's "In Amundsen's Tent" along with covers of Weird Tales.
Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns
Mentioned in a previous issue, this 2009
compilation by Paul Green has one direct reference to HPL, the RPG book Adios, A-Mi-Go! (Pinnacle Entertainment
Group). Otherwise, Robert E. Howard has a few story summaries included, August
Derleth makes it with "The Dark Boy," and above all there are many entries for
individual C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith stories.
Weird Tales
2010 saw the publication of a two-volume
biography of a genre author many consider the top in his field and around whom is
a cult of ardent admirers. This is an author who had some unorthodox views.
It's not the S.T. Joshi unabridged biography of Lovecraft, but William H.
Patterson, Jr.'s authorized biography, Robert
A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, whose second volume, to be
completely truthful, has not yet been published. Of Weird Tales Patterson commented that it "had dominated pulp fantasy
since its founding in 1922, publishing mainly eerie little tales in the
Algernon Blackwood/Lord Dunsany vein (only usually more creepy and less lit'ry)" (p. 227). This is rather like stating that Astounding Stories published in the
Wells/Verne vein, ignoring Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Sturgeon, etc. and the
other writers who defined the magazine--except that Lovecraft and Howard are now
better known than Blackwood and Dunsany, while the same is still not true when
comparing Wells and Verne with the others.
Thanks for reading the 6,594 words of the 67th issue of
The Criticaster (February 2011, mailing 153rd) by Steve Walker.