TSOU -- The Descendant

[HARMSDM]

The Shadow over Usenet
"The Descendant"

Sources: _Dagon_, Arkham; _The Tomb_, Ballantine.

Synopsis: An old man in an apartment in London reads only novels
and screams when the church-bells ring. A young man who lives near him
befriends him. When the young man finds a copy of the Necronomicon, he
shows it to the old man, who tells him his family's history and his
own experiences. The story ends abruptly here.

Comment: This was all right, but I really didn't see where Lovecraft was
going with it. Evidently HPL didn't, either.

One note before we begin: I believe there's an extra sentence at
the beginning of the Ballatine printing that doesn't show up in the corrected
Arkham one. It doesn't seem to fit in, at any rate.

This fragment is not mentioned in Lovecraft's published letters, so
it seems it wasn't something he considered to be of any importance. The
story as a whole reminds me of a cross between the already-written "Rats in
the Walls" and the soon-to-be-written "Silver Key". My guess is that if
Lovecraft had continued on this, Lord Northam would have continued in his
worldwide quests for meaning in his life, but a fragment in the Necronomicon
would have revealed that he should return to his home and past to achieve this,
as Randolph Carter does in "The Silver Key." Evidently, he goes into the
caverns beneath the castle (which might resemble the Snake Den in "The Silver
Key" in their importance), but sees something that unhinges him. It could
be that Lovecraft realized that a horror story would be an inappropriate way
to express his philosophy, so he stopped writing on this idea and later took
it up in "The Silver Key".

Mythos notes: Here Lovecraft tells us for the first time that five
known copies of the Necronomicon exist, though others may be found hidden
away. We also learn that Lord Northam was the narrator in Lovecraft's
previous story "The Nameless City."

That's all I have for now.

Daniel