The House That H.P. Lovecraft Built
Dan Clore
http://tinyurl.com/689wlu
The house that H.P. Lovecraft built
By Jeremiah Tucker
Sauk Prairie Eagle
When Batman drops from the inky Gotham skyline to mete out justice, the
criminals on the business-end of his fists often end up in Arkham Asylum.
This foreboding hospital for the criminally insane whose escaped
patients play a large role in "The Dark Knight" — the new Batman movie
that shattered box office records this past weekend — shares its
namesake with a small Sauk City publishing company that specializes in
turning out horror and science fiction books.
This is no coincidence.
Arkham House Publishers and Arkham Asylum both were named after the
fictional Arkham, Mass. town where H.P. Lovecraft — perhaps the most
influential horror writer of the 20th Century — set many of his stories.
But without the Sauk City publishing house founded by native son and
prolific author August Derleth, it's unlikely the asylum where Batman's
enemies unwind between breakouts would bear the name Arkham.
Publishing a mentor
When Lovecraft died in 1937, he was a fringe writer who had been
published only in pulp magazines like "Weird Fiction." As Derleth wrote
in his essay "Arkham House: 1939-1969," his venture into publishing "was
brought into being at first solely to publish the fiction of Howard
Phillips Lovecraft, a friend and fellow writer."
[That would be "Weird Tales".--DC]
Derleth never met Lovecraft, but they wrote letters back and forth to
each other for years. Kay Price, who worked for Derleth for the last
three years of his life and is now the executive secretary of the August
Derleth Society, said Derleth considered Lovecraft a mentor.
"When Lovecraft died at age 47, Derleth was devastated," Price said. "He
didn't write anything that year. He was in mourning."
Derleth and his business partner and fellow writer Donald Wandrei
immediately set about collecting Lovecraft's manuscripts and putting
together a large book of his short stories called "The Outsider and
Others." When Derleth's publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, and then
Simon & Schuster passed on the book, Derleth and Wandrei decided to
publish it themselves.
In 1939, "The Outsider and Others" by H.P. Lovecraft became the first
title under the Arkham House imprint and the first book of Lovecraft's
fiction.
April Derleth, August's daughter and the current president of Arkham
House, said her father seized on the idea of publishing all of
Lovecraft's work because he worried the manuscripts might otherwise
languish in "moldy boxes somewhere."
"He thought if he didn't publish it, it would end up in an attic or
basement and never be seen by the public," she said.
It's likely that even without August Derleth and Wandrei going into debt
to collect and publish Lovecraft's stories that the eccentric, often
reclusive writer's weird fiction teeming with dread and aliens
immemorial would have eventually gained a wider audience.
But without Arkham House Lovecraft's popularity and influence most
likely would've grown at a slower pace and his transformative impact on
American pop culture delayed.
A scary influence
Chris Livanos, an associate professor of comparative literature at the
University of Wisconsin who teaches Lovecraft, said Lovecraft is
important because he was the first writer to tap into the creeping
unease people in the early 20th century began to feel after the rapid
advances in astrology and evolution.
[Er, "astrology"? I presume that should be astronomy.--DC]
"He was the first to really address the anxiety that maybe we're not the
center of the world; maybe we're not the product of some divine plan,"
Livanos said. "He was the first to put in literature the anxiety over
what a trivial part of the universe man might be."
Derleth had trouble selling "The Outsider and Others" for $3.50, and it
took four years to sell out the initial press run of 1,268 copies.
Now a good copy can fetch between $2,000 and $5,000, and almost every
major writer in the horror genres acknowledge a debt to Lovecraft.
In 2005 when the Library of America went a long way to canonizing
Lovecraft by publishing a collection of his best works, best-selling
horror scribe Peter Straub edited the edition. Stephen King recently
wrote the introduction to a book examining the Lovecraft's life and work.
More than 70 years after his death, "Lovecraftian" is its own sub-genre
of horror, and there are Web pages that track references to Lovecraft's
work across pop culture.
"I think his influence is much stronger in popular culture (than
fiction)," Livanos said. "Every time you see a demon coming through a
space-time portal, there you go. I was just watching re-runs of
'Charmed' the other day and like much of pop culture it has Lovecraft
all over it."
April Derleth said she recognizes the magnitude of Lovecraft's influence
and the quality of his work, but she doesn't share his fans' affection.
"Personally, I've never been a Lovecraft fan," Derleth said. She said
Lovecraft has always been a "love him or hate him" author.
Livanos said it was only within the last few years that he was able to
look past Lovecraft's often clunky prose to the underlying ideas and
gifted imagination that mark him as an important writer.
Lovecraft's virulent racism and xenophobia also have been off-putting to
many readers who dip into his biography, but Livanos said he believes
Lovecraft's fiction is redemptive in that respect: "I think that's why
his fiction is still compelling. His prejudices are based on this idea
that there are moral and aesthetic absolutes and his fiction undermines
that."
Family business
April Derleth still runs Arkham House from the same place her father
did, the family home located at the end of a long, winding driveway
across the street from St. Aloysius Cemetery. A sign at the beginning of
the drive says "Place of Hawks" - the name her father gave the property.
In 1999 April Derleth quit her job as Vice President for Sales,
Marketing and Operations at Mueller Sports Medicine and took over the
day-to-day operations of Arkham House, which she said before then had
been handled by business managers.
"I felt like all the energy I put in there I should be putting into my
own business," April said.
She describes Arkham, which she co-owns with her brother Walden, today
as "me, my computer and Reggie." (Reggie would be her dog.)
April — a tanned woman with short blonde hair in her early '50s dressed
casually in board shorts and a tank top — works in a long, rectangular
building that her father built in front of the house to get all those
books out of the family's living space.
Large boxes of books are stacked to the ceiling, and mementos from
Arkham's golden era mingle with Packers newspaper clippings, office
supplies and the kind of knick-knacks that you might find in any office
cubicle.
Like her father, April personally fills Arkham's orders and takes them
to the post office, but most of her orders are now placed over the
Internet. (Although there is still a whiff of the old-fashioned in her
use of a dial-up modem.)
She said keeping the business going hasn't been easy. Her father wrote
of Arkham House "that in no single year since its founding have the
earnings of Arkham House met the expenses, so that it has been necessary
for my personal earnings to shore up Arkham House finances."
Most of the collectible early editions of Arkham House's catalog August
Derleth or members of the family sold off long ago. April said she
recently bought a first edition of "The Outsider and Others" but it
doesn't have its original dust jacket, making it, she said, only
slightly more valuable than "worthless."
"(Arkham House) is profitable enough to pay the bills," April said.
"We're not in the red, but I'd never suggest anyone go into small
publishing — believe me."
In its nearly 70 years in business Arkham House and its imprints have
published more than 200 books, but April said Lovecraft's works still
account for almost 80 percent of sales.
The company has published other famous authors: Robert Bloch, who wrote
"Psycho," Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the
Barbarian, and Clark Ashton Smith.
"I think keeping some of these old authors in print is important," April
said.
Arkham's future
After that first volume in 1939, August Derleth continued publishing
Lovecraft's other work including his many letters and Lovecraft-inspired
fiction. He also published his own posthumous collaborations with
Lovecraft — books Lovecraft purists found objectionable.
Still, the small publishing house's reputation for publishing the best
in macabre, fantasy and sci-fi grew.
"Arkham House is an interesting company," Price said. "It was the creme
de la creme of publishing houses that did macabre and sci-fi."
Locally, however, April said Arkham has always had a low profile, which
she said she doesn't understand and wishes the company had more of a
local presence. Today she does more business on the coasts than in the
Madison area.
Her father wrote "not one in fifty persons in Sauk City and the area of
the village could identify Arkham House if asked to do so by a visitor."
April said she wants to maintain Arkham's reputation and continue to
publish quality, hardcover books by great authors.
In a normal year Arkham House publishes between one and two new books.
April said she hasn't published a new book in two years due to the expense.
But she said she's working with two consulting editors and has new
volumes in the works.
"Dad didn't expect Arkham House to last ten years after his death,"
April said. The company has now been in business longer since August
died in 1971 than when he was alive.
"I don't think I understood the magnitude of what my dad did," April said.
She was 16 when he died and can still remember Clark Ashton Smith's
sculptures of strange, Lovecraftian creatures resting in August's study
and scaring her when she went in there to read.
"To me, he was just our dad."
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
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