Blogging is hard

For anyone following this blog (5 of you?) my sincere apologies; I know I haven't posted in forever.

I'm going through some stuff, some minor & major personal challenges that prevent me from making this as regular as I wanted. Blah blah - excuses excuses. I'll get back ASAP. I mean, I read He and everything!

Tuesday October 18th, 2011 - The Crawling Chaos

The Crawling Chaos by H. P. Lovecraft & Elizabeth Berkeley
Published April 1921
Illustration by idesignpre

Being something of a Lovecraft purist there are a handful of things about his work that I am wary of. Two of my biggest qualms are August Derleth's treatment of the Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft's collaborations with other authors.

I've mentioned before my distaste for Derleth's contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. Don't get me wrong - without him no one, literally no one - would have ever heard of HP Lovecraft. He published collections of his stories which were almost totally forgotten in yellowing back issues of niche magazines. I have read his work and loved it because of August Derleth. And I don't think he was a bad writer! I'm no expert but I'm sure I've read some of his stuff in the past and enjoyed it enough. It's just that he started futzing with the Cthulhu Mythos in a way that makes one think he never really got HPL's work to begin with. He added things like the classical elements into the mythology; Cthulhu is water, Hastur is air, blah blah blah. He added the concept of good and evil into this realm, and other writers ran with that. In modern Lovecraftian gaming you can use crosses and holy water against these enemies because Derleth allowed traditional Christian tropes to sneak their way in. Lovecraft created things utterly alien, in both form and philosophy, and these purely human ideas are simply not part of the Mythos. Great Cthulhu, slumbering in the sunken city of R'leyh has no human motivations or feelings - that's one of the things that makes him so terrifying. That and the fact that he's like 200 feet tall.

Lovecraft's collaborations are a bit harder for me to hate outright. There is at least one fully ghostwritten story that I know of - Under the Pyramids, supposedly written by Harry Houdini but written entirely by HPL. There are some stories where he is clearly the chief writer and others where he may have really shared the work load. Then there are the dubious works where in HPL might make a suggestion of a story to someone in a letter and later that someone writes a story - or whole novel - put Lovecraft's name on it posthumously and sell books (Derleth being guilty of this a few times.)

My story today seems to be a true collaboration, a tale of cosmic horror and a dreaming journey. Our narrator is using opium and in the depths of his trip he seems to travel to another world. He is seeing a massive, shocking destruction of a world through enormous waves and storms. The writers paint a gorgeous and frightening picture of a world slowly being ravaged by the elements. There are hints that ancient gods might be behind the scenes, and that age-old civilizations have been destroyed and reborn.

This was a short little poetical journey that was interesting and fits well in the Cream Cycle. I can't say that I'm a big fan - it was a little simple and lacked a certain weight - but I have to say I will need to give some of his collaborations a look now. Though August Derleth is still on my shit list.

~~

I read The Crawling Chaos in this narrow little book called The Doom That Came To Sarnath. Ballantine Put out ten or so of these slim little volumes that basically collect all of HPL's major work in these nice, pocket-sized books in the 90's. The covers are details of a larger work by Michael Whelan that is featured on another collection of his work. I have several of these little guys. Publishers have been doing that for a long time; I have another half set of them from much earlier, each with a really shocking and ugly cover. Nice. Oh, and whose a lucky boy? Me, that's who. In the 90's I had gotten into non-sport collector cards - like baseball cards for nerds and such. One set was of illustrations by the aforementioned Michael Whelan. I happen to still have two cards that feature that painting. How many people can say their bookmark is a little mini version of the book cover they are reading? Huh? Not many I bet. NOT MANY.

~~

NEW FEATURE!!! I'm going to start sharing links to websites I find that are totally appropriate to the theme of this blog, and for the 31 Days of Lovecraft especially.

First up - an amazing catalog of illustrations of Lovecraft beasts called Yog-Blogsoth. I can't get enough of this thing. Beautiful illos of nearly every creature from Lovecraft's stories, with the descriptive text from each story. I keep getting lost in this site! Thanks goes to Sean Nelson for pointing me to this.

Monday October 17, 2011 - American Horror Story Review

It's been far too long since I've posted; my Mom is staying with us and these last few days have been lovely and full to brimming with stuff. But rest assured even if I don't make an entry everyday I am definitely having an October full of Lovecraft.

Now I know what you're thinkin'; American Horror Story, the new horror show on FX, isn't all that Lovecraftian - what gives? It might just be the state of mind HPL's stories have put me in but honestly I think this show has some very deep, old school, Gothic ideas going on that might reveal themselves to have a touch of Mythos-esque taint on them.

The show starts Dylan McDermott and Connie Briton as a married couple gripping with, bare minimum, two apocalyptic things that have wreaked havoc on their psyches; the difficult miscarriage of there second child and the subsequent affair the husband has. We jump to months later and they are heading to LA with their teenage daughter to start a new life in an old Victorian-style house. And yeah - there's a whole lot of "bad juju" in that house.

I watched the pilot on Saturday evening with my wife - the mother of our two year old and a certified doula - and my Mom - mother to four grown kids. The opening sequence of the show takes place in 1978 when a little girl with Down's syndrome tells a pair of rambunctious twin boys the abandoned house they're about vandalize is going to kill them. "You're gonna regret it," she warns. As the boys gleefully smash up the house they come upon the darkened basement and jar after jar of - wait for it - baby parts. Yes, you read that right. Dismembered parts of babies in formaldehyde. It's all very clinical, seen in half glimpsed flashes, but there they are. My Mom didn't like this - she's sensitive. The twins then have an encounter with something in the basement - a small, furry, bestial humanoid. The twins do, indeed, regret going into the house. After this opening scene a brilliant, lengthy title sequence plays out, again with some disturbing imagery of children. My mother left the room - too intense! Ha!

Let me say before going any further that I think the show is, as of the pilot, one of the best horror TV series ever. It is dark, disturbing, beautifully written and the creators know something about the genre. The show has gotten under my skin and I can't get it out of my mind (did I see something in that one moment in the basement, something about that kid's face seemed wrong... - and who was in that suit! What was going through her - OK, gotta move on. But I can't!)

But what's so Lovecraftian about American Horror Story? To radically overly simplify it it's a haunted house story. There is, buried deep into the backstory, a far reaching taint of evil in the foundations of the house. The mural under the wallpaper in the music room is a depiction of something old and profane - demons whispering to wisemen, people in shocking grimaces hanging at the end of nooses. This taint of evil might be ancient, reaching back centuries, or millennia. What we see as a shapeshifting maid (the wife sees a middle-aged hausfrau, the husband sees a sensual young woman) could be the current incarnation of an age-old entity. And the furry thing in the basement half-glimpsed in shadow and stobelight is very much like Lovecraft's "rat-thing" in Dreams in the Witch-House or the host of unspeakable beasts beneath the Brooklyn apartment building in The Horror at Red Hook.

I've stated before that HPL was not a believer in religions - was fully an atheist, really, as am I - so the crosses held up against evil in the mural suggest they may be playing in the traditional playground of devils and Satan, holy water and hallelujahs. That's fine - it's a fun mythology albeit one that loses some of it's power once you leave the trappings of religion behind. It's one of the reasons I've been so attracted to Lovecraft's work; the horrors of the unknown are much more frightening when you know there is nothing that can stop them.

I'm watching the series with an eye open for things that suggest an origin of cosmic horror - not something from space but rather from Outside, as Lovecraft might say. I highly recommend you give the pilot a try - if you are not too sensitive.

Friday October 14th, 2011 - The Nameless City

The Nameless City by H. P. Lovecraft

Published November 1921

Illustration by Giacomo Carmagnola

Category: Cthulhu Mythos/Dream Cycle

One of the things I love most about fiction - literature, movies, TV, the whole bloody lot - is the temporary escape it gives me. For a brief few moments I can feel my way across the floor of an enormous, pitch black chamber filled with open pits, each one home to an unseen, snarling beast. I can fly with the shantak-bird or watch a town turn to dust. It's not like I'd like to live in these places! Well, I'd maybe visit them (with a shotgun and a little button that says "Press to get the hell out of here.") But there are many places I'm glad to have visited in those moments reading stories, and The Nameless City is an excellent example of one such place.

Our nameless narrator, an explorer of some kind, is tramping through the desert on a camel as he approaches the nameless city. We are very early introduced to the most repeated, most popular and most famous quote from the Gentleman Of Providence.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”

My take on it is this: If you can bury it, and it can lay there for millennia, it's not really dead if somehow death died also. Even simpler: Don't turn your back on an ancient dead thing. That's sufficiently creepy for my taste.

If he means something beyond that I haven't puzzled it out.

He reaches the nameless city and Lovecraft sets the scene for us. The city is built into the sandstone walls of a valley. Again, as in many great horror tales, we are led into a place as isolated and remote as the Moon - there will be no hope of calling for help. So of course our narrator enters a tunnel...

"It is only in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have had such a descent as mine. The narrow passage led infinitely down like some hideous haunted well, and the torch I held above my head could not light the unknown depths toward which I was crawling. I lost track of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though I was frightened when I thought of the distance I must be traversing. There were changes of direction and of steepness, and once I came to a long, low, level passage where I had to wriggle feet first along the rocky floor, holding my torch at arm’s length beyond my head. The place was not high enough for kneeling. After that were more of the steep steps, and I was still scrambling down interminably when my failing torch died out. I do not think I noticed it at the time, for when I did notice it I was still holding it high above me as if it were ablaze. I was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the strange and the unknown which has made me a wanderer upon earth and a haunter of far, ancient, and forbidden places."

Lovecraft paints this gorgeous scene for us - the shadowy chambers and temples, all with frescoes and friezes and symbols of things older than humanity, of things thoroughly inhuman.

It's a fantastic trip into a bizarre, ancient, alien city. At risk of cheapening it, think of it as a bone-dry sequel to The Temple. Highly recommended.

~~

I read this story in one of my first volumes of Lovecraftiana - my well read The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams Of Terror And Death - a fantastic collection of his late work in triptychs of the Dreamlands. I've done some research now about this area of his work and it's very detailed and fascinating; it really reads like a very dark version of Wonderland or Neverland.

Wednseday October 12th, 2011 - Guest Blogger Alex Livingston Talks Antarctic Aliens

OK, Gentle Readers - a guest blogger today! Here is a excellent article by blogger and writer Alex Livingston about the relationship between Lovecraft's only novel, At The Mountains Of Madness, the work considered by many to be his greatest, and the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing. I have to say I think The Thing is probably the best example of Lovecraft in film, - despite it not being strictly related to an HPL story. Alex breaks it down for us. Enjoy...

Can we talk about The Thing and At The Mountains of Madness?

I re-watched John Carpenter’s masterful thriller last week, and as MacReady and Doc puttered around the Norwegian camp, finding abandoned research documents and an empty coffin of ice, I could not help but see Dyer and company investigating the wreckage of the Miskatonic research party’s tent city. Something was found deep in the ice. Something weird. It looks like it came to life. And it didn’t say “take me to your leader”.

A great setup for a story, to be sure, but one that serves as more than simply a catalyst for a thriller. In order for these tales to make sense, a few facts must be in place in the development of the story world:

o Aliens exist.

o They are much, much older and much more technologically advanced than we are.

o They have no respect for our lives, and can kill us very easily.

o We are only alive because they either have not noticed us or have yet to put their plan for our eradication into motion.

What better place than Antarctica for a story about mankind’s isolation? As our understanding of the universe grows, the perceived importance of our presence in it diminishes. We’re a blip. An oddity. Closer in intellectual advancement to a crow breaking a shell with a rock than to the horrible powers which exist beyond the borders of our knowledge. Indeed, the aliens themselves are so foreign-looking that we can barely understand what they are, be they Lovecraft’s anemone cucumbers or Carpenter’s tentacle-flailing blood beings. And they’re here, hidden in the dark places of the world we thought was ours.

The authors take their stories to very different places, and the success of each could be related to the times in which they were released. Mountains(1931) came about when the edges of our world were still only starting to be explored; Byrd’s expedition started in 1928. To find a massive city with the impossible geometry of German impressionist movies, one in which hieroglyphs reveal that humankind started not in Eden but at the hands of cold alien biologists, was terrifying. We have found the edge of the world, and it reveals to us that there is no God.

By 1982, we were fine with that. Alone in the vast, dark universe? Sure. So the focus moved from external to internal. We humans have nothing to trust but each other, and can turn on each other with very little prodding. This is a post-McCarthyism tale, in which the enemy is not some mad beastie but our own incapacity to work together. Fear rules, and it will undo us all. It forces us to ask ourselves what we would do if placed in such a situation. Would you kill everyone, just in case they were duplicates? Would you trust your friends, perhaps trusting them too much? Would you run out into the cold and die, to hell with the rest of humanity?

These stories may strike different chords, but share a completely modern worldview. Someday we will find the truth about our existence, and that truth will be one of terror.

__

You can find more of my thoughts on The Thing here. http://galaxyalex.com/?cat=14

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 - The Temple

The Temple by HP Lovecraft

Published

Illustration by David Saavedra

This story is in the form of a letter found in a bottle. During World War I a German U boat becomes damaged and loses control, alighting upon the ocean floor somewhere in the Atlantic. They've almost forgotten the strange dead youth they found clinging to the outside, with the intricately carven ivory disc in his pocket, or the testimony of a witness that says once in the water the young man came back to life and swam away with great speed. No, the captain is more concerned with the sunken city with it's mighty temple in the depths, and the unearthly glow coming from it...

The Temple, an early story by Lovecraft, has the feeling of an adventure horror story rather than the traditional slow burn, creepy tale he normally writes. None of his other works include vivid descriptions of naval battles or savage Prussian discipline aboard a submarine. Our German captain (we are reminded he is German very often - he constantly tells us) is alone quite quickly on the submarine and suffers his fate with only his journal as company. I found myself reacting to the extreme isolation of the situation more so that the captain. He is a tough, emotionless guy and seems, in his bottled note at least, to be almost nonplussed by what will be his ultimate fate in what must only be Atlantis.

I liked this story a lot - didn't love it but it was a strange little journey story written before Lovecraft entered into Cthulhu country or the Dreamlands.

Oh and a note about Atlantis. Many years ago I read the submission requirements in the small print of an issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. One of the first things it said was "No, and we mean no, stories about Atlantis. If you send us a story about Atlantis we will commission a dozen short stories by today's greatest writers to write long, detailed accounts of how you were slowly and brutally killed. Don't even mention Atlantis in passing, or any variation (Lemuria, Mu, etc.) Seriously enough with the Atlantis." In the 60's and 70's the theories and fiction about Atlantis was at a fever pitch and one can only imagine the sf mags at the time had reams of watery manuscripts. I for one kinda like Atlantean stuff and wouldn't mid a bit more.

~~ My book stack is shrinking (though it's still Cyclopean, don't worry!) Last night it was late so I started reading it in bed through Stanza, an iPhone app. It's a little like a Kindle app but for free or more obscure books. Thousands of free books, stories, poems, plays, everything is available from several free sites, accessible and downloadable through the app, as well as more current books for a fee. For a fan of Victorian ghost yarns, Gothic horror stories and Pulp-era weird tales - stuff that's in the public domain! - Stanza is quite literally your best friend. I say buy the books at the used bookstores but keep the digital copy handy as well. Love my Stanza!

Sunday, October 9th, 2011 - GAME REVIEW!!! - Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness, an Arkham Horror game

Fantasy Flight Games

Designed by Corey Konieczka

OK, I've been busy as hell these past few days and I have simply not had a minute to quietly relax and read about gigantic, suppurating masses of cosmic jellies devouring college professors. I WANT TO SO BAD but I haven't had the time.

Tonight however I did enjoy a unique Lovecraftian experience that will absolutely (have to) count as one of my 31 Days of Lovecraft. Tonight some members of my gaming group (more on them later) got together to play the newish Arkham Horror game Mansions of Madness.

My Gaming Group

The guys I play games with - usually complex board and card games, and sometimes straight up role playing games - have started this thing we are calling a "game design collective." We've gotten together every so often to play games for a few years now. Recently we dug out Arkham Horror, an exceedingly complex and implacable game that induces fits of rage and confusion and, yes, Loveraftian madness on anyone who attempts to play. It's a big monster fighting game that has a ton of references to Lovecraft but fails miserably in evoking the mood or tone of his work at all. As we cut through the game, wondering whether we were doing the right thing at any given turn, we kept trying to fix the rules. We'd point out all the weak points and the extraneous bits and it seemed more fun to complain, or imagine the game improved greatly, that actually play Arkham. One of the players did a bang up blog post about it. Very much worth a read.

That night another player, Rocco, brought out some prototypes of a game he's working on, a very cool dice-like game that I think has major potential. So this all lead to another player saying "We should start up a little game design collective and share our ideas." Over email we shared ideas and worked on prototypes and tonight was our first semi-official meeting about it. It's an exciting little thing that I hope keeps going.

Mansions of Madness

Fantasy Flight, the producers of Arkham Horror, its several expansions and the Call of Cthulhu Card Game is expanding the line of games with fresher, less complex takes on the Lovecraftian horror board game. Mansions of Madness is relatively new and I'm here to say it is FAR AND AWAY A TOTALLY GREAT GAMING EXPERIENCE. I seriously can't wait to play it again.

You play, like all these sorts of games, an Investigator of the occult and arcane, though one person plays the Keeper, the one who controls and sets up the dangerous world the players will explore. There are five scenarios that come with the game, essentially allowing you to play each one once with some variation (expansions are available!) The game does an amazing job of capturing the tone and mood that evokes an H. P. Lovecraft story.

The game pieces are exemplary, which isn't saying much if you know Fantasy Flight's reputation for beautiful and high quality production. The art is recycled from previous games but if you haven't played those other games the art is brand new! There was almost no confusion while playing; the turns flowed one to the other, each player desperately trying to make each move count, and the keeper (me!) doing all he could to keep them from winning.

If you like complex board games with a ton of set up and personality you need look no further than this game. It's an excellent replacement for Arkham Horror if you are tired of that. The newest game in the family, Elder Sign, a card and dice game, is now at the top of my games wish list now.

OK, tomorrow it's back to stories - The Colour Out of Space! And here's what you can look forward to in the coming weeks...

• A guest blogger!
• A special series on HPL's NYC stories - Exile on Lovecraft Street!
• A review of an HPL movie or two!

Fun stuff y'all. Thanks for reading.

31 Days of Lovecraft - Week 1 done!

I can't tell you how fun and tough this week has been doing this blog. Like everyone else I always have a lot on my plate. I'm a stay-at-home dad, so there's lots of childcare happening. I'm a part-time commercial actor so there are auditions to go to (this week I had to drag my kid with me to an AT&T audition). I'm also working on becoming a full-time NYC tour guide - something I have NO IDEA how I'm going to pull off - and I'm also taking a class online for college credit. AND! I'm working on designing an RPG for my game design collective. So yeah - thanks October. Great timing.

But seriously it's been fun and I really appreciate comments and subscriptions.

Tomorrow's story will be... The Colour Out of Space! Yep, that u is supposed to be there!

Monday, October 10th, 2011 - The Colour Out of Space

The Colour Out Of Space by HP Lovecraft

Published September 1927

Fractal by Ace of the Fungal Kingdom

Category: Cthulhu Mythos

I gotta post this quick as I'm way behind.

I loved this story.

A surveyor arrives in a small town in New England - they are going to turn the town into a reservoir - and he notices the earth and plants in the area are grey and dying. He makes some inquiries - as these guys always do - and hears rumors of something that happened so many years ago.

Seems a meteor landed on the farm of the Gardner family. It opens up and they find a ball inside that, after a strike with a hammer, disintegrates into the air. The meteor itself, which is a total mystery to the egghead college professors that check it out, fades to nothing in the coming days. That's when things start getting bad.

The Gardner family, along with a neighbor, Ammi, who is telling this tale to the surveyor, notice that the animals on the farm are sick, and the plants and crops are turning grey and brittle. This leads to these beautifully morbid descriptions of things decaying and dying, over the course of years, that is really unsettling, in part because of course we are next, right? We will all become brittle and old and grey someday and fade away. Maybe that was what he was after. I dunno. It's late.

But seriously this is considered one of his best stories and it really, really is great. Well worth your time.

Note:

While researching this story I looked it up on Wikipedia, to get a sense of where in Lovecraft's world this falls. There are no mentions of anything else in the Cthulhu Mythos in this story, though the colour gets mentioned in other stories, so it's part of the same world. And I also happened upon a real and sort of creepy thing on the Wikipedia page - impossible colors. It seems that there are colors that are impossible - like blue-yellow (that isn't green) or red-green (that isn't brown) - that scientists have tried to get people to see through experimentation. Weird stuff - and I love weird stuff.

~~

The edition I own is at right - the illustration is totally nutty and has nothing to do with the stories. It's signed "Rowena" - that's Rowena Morrill, a pretty accomplished illustrator it seems. The book also says "Preface For This Edition By Frank Belknap Long" YET NO PREFACE EXISTS! The colour got it!

Friday, October 7th, 2011 - The Thing on the Doorstep

The Thing on the Doorstep by HP Lovecraft

Published January 1937

Illustrator Unknown

Category: Cthulhu Mythos

I.

Since HP wrote this story in seven chapters I thought I'd pay homage and do the same.

II.

I couldn't finish it in one sitting today so I'll have to break it up a bit. I sat and read the first three chapters while my 2 year old watched Dora the Explorer. The edition I'm reading (see below) has an amazing illustration on the cover, a detail of a larger work by Gustave Dore, a favorite of Lovecraft's, from Poe's The Raven. It's a picture of Death, a barely shrouded skeletal spectre with a scythe reclining on a sphere. My daughter looked at it and asked "Wass dat guy, Daddee?" I told her it's a skeleton, a ghost. She giggled and went back to Dora. Later she was a little obsessed with it, wanting to see it more.

III.

So, The Thing on the Doorstep. Like I said, it's broken into seven short chapters which is somewhat common for Lovecraft - he uses this technique in other stories, like At the Mountains of Madness and Call of Cthulhu. I quite like it, as I'm sort of a slow reader (so yeah, this blog is kinda killin' me!)

IV.

So, the Thing on the Doorstep. We are introduced to our narrator who admits in the first sentence to emptying his revolver into his best friend but says that he was actually doing him a favor, freeing him from a fate worse than death. We go back to the childhood of the two, our narrator a young man of 16 and his friend, Edward Derby, a precocious eight year old with a deep interest in the macabre. Here again we have our protagonist delving into the dark fringes of reality - a Lovecraft staple. Later Edward, a grown man still interested in the Occult, marries a young woman, Asenath, with a mysterious lineage. The description of her father is classic Lovecraft...

"...she was Ephraim Waite’s daughter—the child of his old age by an unknown wife who always went veiled. Ephraim lived in a half-decayed mansion in Washington Street, Innsmouth, and those who had seen the place (Arkham folk avoid going to Innsmouth whenever they can) declared that the attic windows were always boarded, and that strange sounds sometimes floated from within as evening drew on. The old man was known to have been a prodigious magical student in his day, and legend averred that he could raise or quell storms at sea according to his whim. I had seen him once or twice in my youth as he came to Arkham to consult forbidden tomes at the college library, and had hated his wolfish, saturnine face with its tangle of iron-grey beard. He had died insane—under rather queer circumstances..."

V.

Went on a nice walk around the neighborhood with my 2 year old after reading the first bits. We live in a clean, well-kept and quiet neighborhood in Astoria, Queens, a stone's throw from Manhattan. She's just now discovering shadows, fascinated by their properties. Every time we stepped into the shadow of a tree she shouted "Where my shadow go?" Then we'd change direction and our shadows followed us.

VI.

Just finished reading this story here, Friday night. OK - this story is now climbing the charts as one of my favorites in the canon. Love love love it. Our main character Edward is convinced that his wife, the daughter of a mad wizard, is trying to SPOILER ALERT possess his body, so she can live forever. Well, not quite right; his wife is actually her own father, who possessed her, and who has been traveling from body to body through time, undying. Edward is being driven mad by this knowledge and her psychic attacks. HPL does an amazing job taking us through this poor bastard's descent into madness. Really chilling. And the thing on the doorstep? Go read the story.

VII.

Who's up for ice cream?

~~ I read this tale in a lovely Penguin collection of HPL stories called The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. Lovecraft was a fan of Dore's and it's not hard to see why. Check this site out for more of his work; amazing stuff! And the Penguin editions are a nice, subtle way of breaking into HP's work; they refrain from cover illos of tentacle wrapped skulls and dismembered torsos on meathooks on the binding.

Thursday, October 6th, 2011 - The Tomb

The Tomb by HP Lovecraft

Published March 1922

Photo by Josh Jones

Category: Macabre

When I was a teenager - 14 maybe - a few friends of mine and I spent several weeks with my best friend John at his family's cottage in Peak's Island, Maine. It was a lush island overgrown with forests and swamps, an idyllic place for scrappy nerds to have adventures. The island was also the site of several World War II military emplacements, it being on the extreme East coast of the USA. After they were decommissioned the island's kids quickly appropriated them for exploration. My memories are foggy (I've never been a good chronicler!) but I know there were several places with ominous sounding names; The Crypt, The Towers, The Bunker, The Battery - and yes, The Tomb. To get to the tomb (we seemed to lose it from day to day) you had to tramp through a thin cluster of bushes and walk down a small hill to find the overgrown concrete structure. It was a small entry way compared to the other spots, about ten feet wide by twenty feet tall. With flashlights in hand you'd walk in a bit then have to climb over a concrete wall - using broken edges and nearby logs to get over the seven or so feet. John was the typical hardcore alpha male; if you didn't want to do it or were afraid you got a quick, embarrassing and very adult dressing down before continuing on; this happened to me a lot. Once atop the thick wall it was a short drop into a pitch black tunnel that must have gone into the earth many feet but it was long ago filled in with dirt. This was only one of the mysterious structures we'd explore. It was my favorite summer.

In Lovecraft's The Tomb our narrator is a man writing to us from the confines of an insane asylum. He tells us that when he was ten he became obsessed with his discovery of a hidden tomb in the forest near his home. He cannot enter -it's locked - but he dreams about it, desires to explore its shadowy depths. One night, after a bit of dreamy insight, he finds the key hidden in the basement of his home and now has access to the sepulcher. The image of a young boy playing in an ancient crypt is disturbing but is indicative of other stories in Lovecraft's catalog of characters who are unnaturally obsessed with the dark fringes of experience. Many of his characters thrill to the shadowy dark and turn toward the rustling sound in the bushes rather than flee. They almost always regret this! But we go along with them, and it makes it all the more frightening.

Our young narrator grows up and goes to the place nightly. His obsession never falters even after the ruinous climax that sends him to the asylum.

During our time in Maine we'd explore the island and then slog home, sweaty and filthy, eat a hearty dinner cooked by John's German mother and play AD&D until the wee small hours. His dad read loads of fantasy and science fiction (I remember an immense bookshelf in their house with every classic fantasy title in it; Tolkein, Donaldson, The Shannara Books.) We'd lay in our beds, cots or couches, reading until we slept. I was deep into Stephen King at this time though I was trying to enjoy the first of the Dragonlance novels and John's Conan books. Casually one evening HP Lovecraft came up and John's dad harrumphed. We looked up to him a lot; he was really smart and charming and could converse at length about Star Wars and Blade Runner. He told us that Lovecraft was terrible because he got the science of his stories so wrong. There was one story that he half-remembered reading about aliens that came and ate people and were later defeated by - surprise! - salt water. And since humans are made up of mostly water, well...

That stuck with me, and for the next eighteen years my literary journeys avoided Lovecraft country. So when I finally dove in and devoured these stories I looked out for that story of the human-hungry aliens afraid of saltwater - I either missed it or he never wrote it. The story was likely written by one of his contemporaries working in a Mythos mold without Lovecraft's respect for science.

So glad I went to Maine, and even more glad I didn't ultimately listen to a bad Lovecraft review.

~~

I read the story last night on the N train from a old collective called The Tomb and other tales; it was falling apart in my hands, brown pages crumbling to the train floor, the musty smell of a dozen booksellers wafting into my nostrils.

I took a pic to document the locale; I planned for the light up sign to read "Astoria/Ditmars" but it changed just as I snapped the photo...

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 - The Outsider

The Outsider by HP Lovecraft

Published April 1926

Illustration by Elliot Rodriguez

Category: Macabre

And here we have the most reprinted, most celebrated story in Lovecraft's canon. When ever I tried to introduce HPL to someone I often passed this story along; it is the simplest and best example of his macabre style and is ultimately the story that crosses into "classic literature"; this story could be taught as part of a high school, October lit lesson. Lovecraft called it the closest thing he ever wrote to Poe's work and that's undeniable.

Our protagonist, again, does not tell us his name - though he may not have a name. His origins are a mystery even to him - he has simply always lived in the dark, inescapable castle that is our setting. With only barely visible writings and silent rats for company, he decides to make a harrowing journey out of the castle to freedom.

I like this story, and in the past I might have said it was one of my favorites but this past reading my eyes rolled a bit at the "silliness" of his style. The overly descriptive prose and the italicized ending lines that let us know what is happening now is truly, truly horrific... It's all a bit much. But it's quality and chilling climax is still very effective. As you read it try to imagine how it could be made into a film; a challenge, wouldn't you say?

~~

I read The Outsider in a collection of American Gothic tales, fittingly called American Gothic Tales, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. It contains an excellent survey of classical American short stories that sit within the broad category of "gothic" - grim tales of the grotesque and mysterious. Oates, herself a master of the gothic, includes a single story from greats such as Poe, Faulkner, Hawthorne, and modern writers like Stephen King and John Crowley.

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 - Fungi From Yuggoth

Fungi From Yuggoth, a poem by HP Lovecraft

Published 1943

Illustration by Nottsuo

Category: Dream Cycle/Cthulhu Mythos

I find that I am a little behind with this blog so, to catch up I decided to read a poem, his most famous and one of his longest, yet still short enough to get done before the day is out.

Wow - what a trippy bit of poetry. It's written in 36 small, two stanza poems, each with it's own title (my favorites are "Night Gaunts" and "The Elder Pharos".) Also the book I read it from has some insane illustrations in it (see the edition note below and follow the link for some more work by the illustrator!)

That said the poem tells the story of the classic Lovecraftian protagonist - the humble, weak man who desires to know That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know.

I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap

Took up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,

Trembling at curious words that seemed to keep

Some secret, monstrous if only one knew.

He steals a book from the shop and takes it home (and yes, of course he's followed by an unseen entity!) and learns how to leave our world and travel to lands beyond. OK, fun fact - Yuggoth is Pluto! Yeah, who knew.

This is trippy and fun and the illos in my book - oh man, I wish I could just upload them all. So freaky. All right, I'll upload some!

The Elder Pharos or WTFuh?!?!?!!

The Howler or This unit has a great half bath downstairs...

Zaman's Hill or "The eyes of the hill was meant to be figurative..."

~~

In my travels to any and all used bookstores around the country I always look for the Lovecraftiana and one of my discoveries was this little gem, a crumbling old paperback with that bizarrely and bad yet weird and fun illo on the cover, by Frank Utpatel.

Monday, October 3rd, 2011 - The Rats in the Walls

The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft

Published March 1924

Illustration by Leo & Diane Dixon

Category: Cthulhu Mythos

This is the first story I ever read by HPL, back in the summer of 2002 and it made me devour the next five stories in the volume - before I ran back to the bookstore, bought the remaining two volumes in the collection so I could, before summer was out, read all of his short stories. His work has that effect for some - like the discovery of forbidden knowledge leads to the desire for more.

This story is set in England around an old estate the narrator has recently moved to, it being his ancestral home. He and his cats keep hearing the sounds of rats in the walls, and, with several compatriots, make an incredible and terrible discovery. "Making an incredible and terrible discovery" is Lovecraft's bread and butter, lemme tell ya!

This story, for several reasons, is not for the sensitive reader; it features some pretty overt "racism." The main character has a cat, a black cat, that is named, well, "N-word Man". I am old fashioned and think the word is really, really really bad, plus I don't want it to show up in searches. Anyway, he is racist in that today he would be considered an unconscionably hate-filled monster to some but I have a feeling that, being a WASP of the early 20th century, in New England, he was exactly like everyone else, which is why I put it in quotes. The word was actually really common for black cats and dogs (another story of his features another black cat named Nig) and he himself owned a cat with that name. It's a sign of those times. Throughout his stories there are some references to black folk being sub-human; I get past it by thinking the narrator or protagonist is a strange, flawed person with sad fears and hatreds. Really there are maybe ten references throughout the stories, including whole premises based on the belief that non-whites are lesser by nature. I look past it so that the other elements, the meat of the stories, takes the focus rather than an errant word or prejudice. His stories are fun, scary and gruesome, and yeah, sometimes insensitively racist.

~~

Not only is this the first HPL story I ever read but I read it in the first ever volume of his collected stories I ever owned. It's the classic Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, the single best collection of all of his best stories. It's part of the Del Rey Lovecraft push - they published many, many of his stories in volumes with the same branding. It's notable for the intense Michael Whelan cover art which was later divided several times to make smaller covers for smaller editions (I have those too! Look for them later in the month!)

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 - The White Ship

The White Ship by HP Lovecraft

Published November 1919

Illustration by Jason Thompson

Category: Dream Cycle

Our narrator, Basil Elton*, describes the lighthouse his family has kept for generations:

Past that beacon for a century have swept the majestic barques of the seven seas. In the days of my grandfather there were many; in the days of my father not so many; and now there are so few that I sometimes feel strongly alone, as though I were the last man on our planet.

And so when he alights upon the mysterious White Ship, seen only when the moon is full, on a "bridge of moonbeams" he is taken to a far off dream land of mist shrouded spires and long forgotten cities. This tale is a fantasy triptych through a strange and beautiful (and, yes, ultimately frightening) world - really quite lovely and poetic. Lovecraft was deeply influenced by the Arabian Nights and it's clear this Eastern pastiche of imagined architecture fits right in:

And the houses of the cities of Cathuria are all palaces, each built over a fragrant canal bearing the waters of the sacred Narg.

It's a quick little escapist read. Take a trip on that White Ship.

*Note that the name "Basil Elton" is solidly a British sounding name, which is unsurprising as HPL was a real Anglophile.

~~

I read this story in a lovely, comprehensive volume I found at Barnes & Noble in Union Square, while the wife and daughter were listening to a (very bad) reading hour. It's called Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre from Gollancz. The cover was really nice, leathery with gold leaf print and a wickedly evil illustration on it. The contents seemed pretty comprehensive - it contains all of his lesser known stories and official collaborations (rather than posthumous ones that many anthologies rightfully ignore.)

Saturday, October 1st 2011 - The Music of Erich Zann

The Music of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft

Published March 1922

Illustration by Nelson R. Morris

Category: Macabre

The first thing our narrator tells us is that he can no longer find the street on which he once lived while in college. It has a name but he is unable, after tireless research and inquiries, to find the street or the house he stayed in. Through half-remembered details he tells us of his time there, living across the hall from an elderly, mute musician by the name of Erich Zann.

Lovecraft very often will deny us names and locations. A narrator will not tell us his name (it's always a man) and he will sometimes find himself in a town or neighborhood that he does not name. This serves to do at least two things to the reader. One, we are not distracted with the facts and details that are after all not nearly as important as the movement of the story. We cannot stop for a moment and say "Ah ha! I have been to Providence and there is no Angell Street!" And two it establishes a sense of mystery and anonymity that sets the story in our minds - we fill in the details, and set it in the house we stayed in Maine, summer, 1984.

Erich Zann plays his viol - a sort of viola or cello - deep into the night, making music that is strange and haunting. Our narrator befriends the old man who seems paranoid and filled with a mysterious dread. It seems that, outside the window of Erich Zann's humble apartment, there is something. Something that frightens the old man and fascinates our young narrator. Something that listens to the music, that perhaps needs the music.

One of my favorite parts of this story and many of Lovecraft's stories are the details left out, the beast behind the curtain, or the maker of the odd footsteps outside a door - things we never see. I love details, don't get me wrong, but for these weird tales I love that which is left unseen even more.

~~

I read this story through the Anthology of Weird Fiction iPhone App - a simple little collection of what most be close to 100 stories by Lovecraft, Machen, Blackwood and others. I believe I paid $1 for it but it is very possible to find these same stories, and tons more, for free through Stanza (more on that app later in the month!) http://itun.es/iBm7Vg

Welcome to 31 Days of Lovecraft

An Introduction

OK, here's the deal. At about 1am on October 1st I read an HP Lovecraft story - The Music of Erich Zann, a story I haven't read in a long, long time - and I decided "It's October, the stars are right, I'M GONNA DO A MONTH OF BLOG POSTS WHEREIN I READ A DIFFERENT HP LOVECRAFT STORY EVERYDAY, REVIEW IT AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME." I think in all caps sometimes.

I'm a big fan of HPL's stories; several years ago I made it a habit to read his entire catalog of stories twice, all 60 some odd weird horror tales of the bizarre, the eldritch, the gruesome. He's been criticized for too much "purple prose" - flowery, old-fashioned language more in the realm of Edwardian or Gothic novels and poetry and not 20's-30's weird fiction. But the works he created are the foundation of literally thousands of other works, and hundreds of professional writers careers. His stories, most in the public domain, are always in print (actually that's like saying "ice cream tastes good." There are an ENDLESS supply of newly printed books with his 70-80 year old stories and poems in them. How many authors can boast that, save for Edgar Allen Poe?)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft: A (tiny) Primer

You can find all you might want to know about HPL's life and times at wikipedia, or what must be the best site for HPL info - The H.P. Lovecraft Archives. I'm interested in only a handful of important facts that you will need to know in order to appreciate the master's work.

His beliefs

HPL was for all intents and purposes a strict atheist; he believed we live in a hostile universe that cares NOTHING for us. He created horror stories and, more importantly, a strange and terrifying world to set them in. In his stories a cross or vial of holy water will do absolutely nothing to his terrors, except perhaps make them laugh.

His influences

He had many, many influences but a few stand out and can be seen in many of his stories, namely Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and William Hope Hodgson. These authors introduced him to the world of "quiet horror" - the whisper of wind through the trees and the soft, barely audible scratching in the floor can be many times more terrifying than a headless horseman or a werewolf on the prowl. They also influenced him to set his stories in other worlds or dream and nightmare. Their stories are absolutely worthy of your time.

His stories

His stories can be broken down into three broad categories. He has his macabre stories, ones that don't relate to any of his other stories (The Outsider and The Picture in the House come to mind.) Then he has the main body of his work, the stories that influenced a world of horror writers, both his contemporaries and writers of today - the stories of The Cthulhu Mythos. These all relate to each other, many in very light ways (the mere mention of the Necronomicon, HPL's fictional tome of all the eldritch secrets in the universe, sets the story in the Mythos.) The place to start might be The Call of Cthulhu, by far his most famous story. And third we have his Dream Cycle, a collection of stories featuring protagonists who travel to the wondrous and strange worlds beyond the wall of sleep. They are not particularly horrific but fall into the "weird" category - though I find them to be quite beautiful sometimes.

The rest of the month - and beyond

OK, this is the task I've set up for myself. I am going to make one post a day (I'm behind already I know!), each with a review of a different HPL story and a link to read it online. Plus! Because I'm sort of a collector of Lovecraftana I have many, many volumes of his stories from over the years - I am going to read each one from a different source, just to keep me and ye on our toes.

Fun, right?

OK, onto the first story, one of my faves... The Music of Erich Zann...