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!)