Who dies writing, "The three-lobed burning eye?"  


It's like dying while carving "Auuuugh!" on a stone. ("Perhaps he was dictating!")

I think that The Haunter of the Dark and The Whisperer in Darkness are both pretty good stories.  They seem like they could happen to real people.  And, the old church building and the remote house are places we can all identify with.

The same website that had pictures of the remains of Lovecraft's church tower also had pictures of the boarding house where he was staying at the time he wrote The Haunter of the Dark.  (I believe it was in Providence.)  The character who dies in that story was clearly based on Lovecraft himself.  His character lived in the same room as HPL.  Lovecraft made references to, and killed off, fantasy versions of Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch in his stories (for instance, the wizard "Klarkash Ton").  They returned the favor.

I wonder what Lovecraft, who was interested in astronomy, would have said about Yuggoth/Pluto getting kicked out of the planet club.  Surely, some of the recent discoveries about space, planets, super-giant black holes, etc would have inspired him.  You can imagine what a term like "dark matter" would have done for Lovecraft!

HPL's influence is all over pop culture.  Some of the most interesting and ominous Star Trek episodes, for instance, were heavily Lovecraftian.   That's no surprise, seeing as some of the episodes were written by people like Robert Bloch.

It is interesting how far ahead of his time Lovecraft really was.  His work anticipates the atomic bomb, innumberable scientific advances and the distopic world of the second half of the 20th century (...although those of you born in the 1980's will have missed much of all that...it's hard to explain to those who missed it that the Cold War really happened).

In other ways, Lovecraft was such a part of his own era.  The terrorist threats and religous madmen of the early 21st century would have fit nicely with Lovecraft's racial ideas.  Osama Bin Laden and his compatriots exactly fit HPL's stereotypes of mongrel races infected with madness seeping up from R'lyeh.  World War II was the direct result of the racial theories embraced by so many people like Lovecraft.  I wonder what he would have thought or written about the Holocaust.  

(Again, it is hard to explain to someone born at the end of the 20th century that many people...perhaps even a majority...once held racial and evolutionary views that would be considered repugnant today.  We think we know better now.)

FormCritic wrote:Who dies writing, "The three-lobed burning eye?"  


It's like dying while carving "Auuuugh!" on a stone. ("Perhaps he was dictating!")

The funniest of all is the dying WRITTEN message of the poor guy that gets it at the end of Frank Belknap Long's "Hounds of Tindalos".  I don't have the story handy, but inside the guy's study is found a piece of paper with his last words, written as the Hounds appear to kill him, and it's something like "They are coming! The smoke clears!  I see ther horrible tongues! They are going to kill me!  Ahhhhhh..."  I don't know about you, but instead of writing the "ahhhh", I might have given RUNNING LIKE A MADMAN a try instead....

Mike B.

FormCritic wrote:It is interesting how far ahead of his time Lovecraft really was.  His work anticipates the atomic bomb, innumberable scientific advances and the distopic world of the second half of the 20th century (...although those of you born in the 1980's will have missed much of all that...it's hard to explain to those who missed it that the Cold War really happened).

In other ways, Lovecraft was such a part of his own era.  The terrorist threats and religous madmen of the early 21st century would have fit nicely with Lovecraft's racial ideas.  Osama Bin Laden and his compatriots exactly fit HPL's stereotypes of mongrel races infected with madness seeping up from R'lyeh.  World War II was the direct result of the racial theories embraced by so many people like Lovecraft.  I wonder what he would have thought or written about the Holocaust.  

He had a keen understanding of relativity theory and was obviously up-to-speed on the emerging field of quantum mechanics up until his death.  I always found this astonishing, given the fact that it wasn't exactly the information age.  But then again, Providence was (and is) a major university city, so I guess it's not surprising that he'd been exposed to these topics.

He was part of his era, but I also seem to remember a bio (either by Lovecraft himself, but more likely by someone like Joshi) that described HPL changing his political and societal beliefs late in his life.  

Am I correct in remembering that his positions on certain issues (like racial issues, big government, etc) changed considerably in the mid-1930s?

Keith

Badmike wrote:
The protagonist in Haunter of the Dark, Robert Blake, is based on Bloch.  Likewise, Bloch kills of a Lovecraft-like character in The Shambler From the Stars (by a Star Vampire, no less).  

The REH collection referenced above is Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors.  I have a copy in my Ebay bookstore if anyone is interested! Plus a lot of Lovecraft I haven't yet listed; let me know if you are interested and I can sell you a collection or two.

Badmike3Books (ebay name)

Mike B.

That's the one called Blake?  It's been a long time...maybe 20+ years.

FormCritic wrote:
Well, Keith.  I'm impressed that you own the volumes of letters.  Those are always out of my price range!

I always fantasize about finding a copy of The Dark Man and Others on a shelf at Goodwill or St. Vincent De Paul.  But...the rise of the internet and Ebay means that fewer and fewer sellers are unaware of the value of what they're selling.

The copies of Selected Letters that I own I  found at a used/rare bookstore in Birmingham (AL) back in the early 90s.  At the time, the owner had a good feel for the going rates for classics, modernism and the like, but he didn't seem to bother with any kind of genre literature (he was a nice guy but a literary snob).  

So, what I do own came about as sheer luck that this guy had a lot of HPL for sale for what amounted to peanuts.

Keith

FormCritic wrote:... while admiring the silly (but...granted...entertaining) work of people like the Bronte sisters...
Mark  

You're being awfully generous here.  In my opinion, Wuthering Heights even fails as a love story.

If I owned a bookstore, I'd put it with the Harlequin Romances.  Strike that.  I wouldn't stock the Bronte sisters at all.

I used to write fiction and attended a lot of writer's conferences.  It was fun cheesing off the literati by dropping tidbits like, "You know that Kafka wrote fantasy, don't you?"  Another one that always skewered them was when I'd talk about Vonnegut being a science fiction writer.

As you might imagine, I was often marginilized and wound up spending a lot of my time at the bar, talking sports with bartender.  

Keith

Well, I'm just about ready for my annual summer exercise with A Game of Thrones, to wit:

1. Go into it full of optimsim;

2. Read X number of pages/chapters/whatever;

3. Fling book across room;

4. Donate book to our local Paperback Exchange.

Seriously, for fans of the series: what am I missing here? Shouldn't I love this series?

For non-fans: should I even bother this year? Maybe I could just drive the book straight over to the Paperback Exchange without even cracking the cover?

(BTW, my personal record is right around chapter 4 or 5, set in the summer of 2003).

Xaxaxe wrote:Well, I'm just about ready for my annual summer exercise with A Game of Thrones, to wit:

1. Go into it full of optimsim;

2. Read X number of pages/chapters/whatever;

3. Fling book across room;

4. Donate book to our local Paperback Exchange.

Seriously, for fans of the series: what am I missing here? Shouldn't I love this series?

For non-fans: should I even bother this year? Maybe I could just drive the book straight over to the Paperback Exchange without even cracking the cover?

(BTW, my personal record is right around chapter 4 or 5, set in the summer of 2003).

X;

I will grant it starts slow. Sloooooooooow.  But man, when you get halfway through, you are hooked. Fight your way though the first few chapters; they are a set up, fluff, intro.  The good stuff doesn't get going until the regicide, incest, attempted murders, betrayals, wars, etc begin about halfway through.....!

Mike B.

The difference between myself and a number of literary snobs is that I have read the works I am criticizing.

I actually like Nostromo but didn't really care for Heart of Darkness.

If these snobs you've dealt with haven't actually read anything they criticize then isn't pretty easy to deal with them? I mean don't you just say "Have you read anything by REH ?!? No? Pick up a story then get back to me."

As for Wuthering Heights, perhaps you could work something out with the estate of the Brontes' and HPL. Of course I'm sure that's exactly what the Great Old Ones want....

OT: Azathoth must have written the leatherstocking tales.