Re: H.P.Lovecraft
icarp...@aol.com
free online.
For example:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecolouroutofspace.htm
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm
Of course, I am a bit of a fanatic so I suggest this collection if you
want to buy a copy or get it from the library:
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=223
This will give you most of his more famour tales. Here are the
contents:
•The Statement of Randolph Carter
•The Outsider
•The Music of Erich Zann
•Herbert West--Reanimator
•The Lurking Fear
•The Rats in the Walls
•The Shunned House
•The Horror at Red Hook
•He
•Cool Air
•The Call of Cthulhu
•Pickman's Model
•The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
•The Colour Out of Space
•The Dunwich Horror
•The Whisperer in Darkness
•At the Mountains of Madness
•The Shadow Over Innsmouth
•The Dreams in the Witch House
•The Thing on the Doorstep
•The Shadow Out of Time
•The Haunter of the Dark
Of course then you will need a good biography, so you need a copy of I
Am Providence by ST Joshi, our foremost scholar of all things HPL:
http://www.hippocampuspress.com/h.p-lovecraft/about-hp-lovecraft/i-am-providence-the-life-and-times-of-h.-p.-lovecraft
After this you may want to branch out into Lovecraftian/Cthulhu mythos
fiction by otther authors (yes, there is a distinction!). One ef the
neat things about HPL's universe is that, well, it isn't just his
universe. Ever since he started publishing in Weird Tales other
authors have been borrowing his entities/topography/themes and adding
to it or reimagining it. Many people know about Cthulhu without ever
having read the source stories. Anyway, this is my hobby so here are
some product lists on Amazon you may find of use. You can ignore the
product ratings, understanding that I tend to be enthusiastic.
Anyway, this will give you an idea what's going on in Lovecraft's
worlds lately.
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Lovecraftian-fiction/lm/1SWKPZ9GCZ2FI/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/More-modern-Lovecraftian-fiction-my-other-list-is-full/lm/R3HFJCEWDSHI0F/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/Still-more-modern-Lovecraftian-fiction-and-art/lm/R2DKOQROKAJINU/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/Not-so-great-Lovecraftian-fiction/lm/RATW05K7V3Q6I/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Lovecraftian-fiction-this-is-the-golden-age/lm/R2LHL9GWVDK3GP/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/Lovecraftian-scholarship/lm/R19SLG397H0ZMP/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/More-Lovecraftian-scholarship/lm/R3IFTN3VTYQZY9/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/Lovecraftian-and-Cthulhu-mythos-comics/lm/R27IDE2SY26DDN/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Lovecraftian-fiction-the-deluge-continues/lm/R2S9TCU2CZV9LK/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
http://www.amazon.com/More-Lovecraftian-and-Cthulhu-mythos-comics/lm/R2GL33V5ZBATXX/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full
In the very low use newsgroup alt.horror.cthulhu there are periodic
discussions of what the best such stories are.
Matt
Norm D. Plumber
>http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecolouroutofspace.htm
Interesting. Nice craftsmanship.
Which of his writings are most expressive of his philosophy?
--
everything is deterministic except the choices made by free-will, and
as a result the universe at large is non-deterministic.
tphile
not his writing, but evidently Mein Kampf and whatever the KKK writes.
Moriarty
That's more than unfair to Lovecraft as he wasn't particularly racist
for his time. He held the belief in the innate superiority of the
white man over other races and, while we find those views
reprehensible today, the attitude was fairly common in most 1930s
Western societies.
It doesn't show up in his writing much either. Just the usual
screaming black savages you'll find in any adventure story of the day.
-Moriarty
icarp...@aol.com
>
> Which of his writings are most expressive of his philosophy?
Interesting question! His philosophy evolved over time; The Rise and
Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos by Joshi is a pretty good discussion of
this.
At his most completely developed, the cosmicism of At the Mountains of
Madness and The Shadow Out of Time probably best express it. Namely,
human concerns of no import to at best an indifferent and at worst a
hostile, unthinkably vast, impossibly ancient cosmos. The thing is,
as others have mentioned, his writing isn't readily accessible to the
idle dabbler. Start with some shorter works, say The Call of Cthulhu,
and see if you enjoy his writing. I often wonder if I hadn't been
hooked in early adolescence if I maybe never would have been a
devotee. Of course, I wonder that about Tolkein too. A much more
poetical writer of the weird is Clark Ashton Smith, who I also highly
recommend.
Matt
Norm D. Plumber
Sorry, I don't know the first thing about his politics (or much care),
and I'm confused by your references.
Norm D. Plumber
>> Which of his writings are most expressive of his philosophy?
>
>Interesting question! His philosophy evolved over time; The Rise and
>Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos by Joshi is a pretty good discussion of
>this.
>
>At his most completely developed, the cosmicism of At the Mountains of
>Madness and The Shadow Out of Time probably best express it.
I read The Shadow Out of Time yesterday afternoon, and aside from
being a nicely crafted horror-story it seemed fairly namby-pamby.
After the talk of his view that anyone who truly reasons risks
madness, I'm looking for the beef but all I found in The Shadow Out of
Time was some fairly plain yogurt.
> Namely,
>human concerns of no import to at best an indifferent and at worst a
>hostile, unthinkably vast, impossibly ancient cosmos. The thing is,
>as others have mentioned, his writing isn't readily accessible to the
>idle dabbler. Start with some shorter works, say The Call of Cthulhu,
>and see if you enjoy his writing. I often wonder if I hadn't been
>hooked in early adolescence if I maybe never would have been a
>devotee. Of course, I wonder that about Tolkein too. A much more
>poetical writer of the weird is Clark Ashton Smith, who I also highly
>recommend.
So, The Call of Cthulhu, followed by At the Mountains of Madness?
What I'm looking for is his expression of the so-called reasoning that
he thinks risks madness. Criminy, I don't have to *imagine* living in
a "hostile, unthinkably vast, impossibly ancient cosmos", I live in
the USA of 2011 surrounded by the rest of Earth after all. I have
reasoned (and yes, risked madness) but I'm wondering if there's
something I forgot to consider that old H.P. happened to mention,
because after having reasoned it doesn't seem all that terribly awful
unless you don't understand which parts of the machinery to keep your
fingers out of.
icarp...@aol.com
> What I'm looking for is his expression of the so-called reasoning that
> he thinks risks madness.
OK, this is an aspect of HPL's writing that has become a sort of bad
cliche. It does not read well to the modern reader. Another trope
was his use of italcis to make the ending seem more dramatic (which
has it's worst expression in the mound where we get it in both Spanish
and English). Beyond the mechanics of:
1. A very well developed fictional topography/geography
2. A collection of well imagined tomes with ancient lore
3. Extraterrestrial alien creatures
..what set Lovecraft apart and probably accounts for his enduing
influence on popular culture, was his cosmicism. The first three
features are easy to copy and accounted for the bulk of pastiches
involving HPL's work for the first 50+ years after his death.
>>Criminy, I don't have to *imagine* living in a "hostile, unthinkably vast, impossibly ancient cosmos", I live in
> the USA of 2011 surrounded by the rest of Earth after all.
Going back to the 1920s, the ancient age of the earth wasn't so well
appreciated nor the size of the universe. HPL was a materialist and
wrote fiction where humans had to confront the fact that compared to
the grand scheme of things, mundane concerns like the importance of
our lives, didn't count for a flyspeck. In fact there probably was no
real grand scheme of things. This was a relatively new approach to
writing weird horror stories at the time, which were largely ghost
stories and the like at the time. Most of the people I know who could
better express this are lucky enough to be at Mythoscon today so they
may not get back to you for a while.
Anyway, if you just want a good yarn, try these: The Colour Out of
Space and The Call of Cthulhu. Just like I would rather read George
RR Martin than Tolkein these days, because GRRM has the better prose
(IMO), I would rather read something new by Charlie Stross than crack
open my HPL collections these days. Of course when I do, it's like
visiting old friends. I'll also plug Clark Ashton Smith again. Here
are *some* of my favorite mythos short stories. A Colder War by
Stross is available free online (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/
colderwar.htm):
The Doom That Came to Innsmouth - Brian McNaughton (Wildside Press)
A Study In Emerald - Neil Gaiman (Shadows Over Baker's Street)
A Colder War - Charlie Stross (Toast)
To Be As They - Stephen Mark Rainey
Rapture in Black - Stephen Mark Rainey
Fat Face - Michael Shea (Cthulhu 2000)
Black Man with a Horn - TED Klein (Cthulhu 2000)
Old Virginia - Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence)
Cabinet 34, Drawer 6 - Caitlin Kiernan
Last Feast of Harlequin - Thomas Ligotti (Cthulhu 2000)
Fair Exchange - Michael Smith
Shaft Number 247 - Basil Copper
Crouch End - Stephen King
Objects from the Gilman-Waite Collection - Ann K. Schwader
Glimpses - AA Attanasio
The N-scale Horror - Gerard Giattannasio (Tales Out of Dunwich)
Acute Spiritual Fear - Robert Price (Blasphemies & Revelations)
Behold I Stand at the Door and Knock - Robert Price (Blasphemies &
Revelations)
Mr. Skin - Victor Milan (Cthulhu's Heirs)
Incident on Highway 19 - CJ Henderson
Wormwood - Tim Curran
Tomb on a Dead Moon - Tim Curran
Eldritch Fellas - Tim Curran (Hardboiled Cthulhu)
What Sort of Man - Walter DeBill (The Black Sutra)
The Bookseller's Second Wife - Walter DeBill (The Black Sutra)
The Wreck of the Ghost - Tim Curran (High Seas Cthulhu)
Twenty Mile - Ann K. Schwader (Strange Stars and Alien Shadows)
Only the End of the World Again - Neil Gaimen
One Way Conversation - Brian Sammons
Seduced - Ron Shiflet (Eldritch Blue)
The Other Names - Ramsey Campbell (Dead But Dreaming)
The Faces at Pine Dunes - Ramsey Campbell
The Violet Princess - Stephen Mark Rainey (Eldritch Blue)
Final Draft - David Annandale (Dead But Dreaming)
Why We Do It - Darrell Schweitzer (Dead But Dreaming)
The Disciple - David Barr Kirtley (Dead But Dreaming)
Bangkok Rules - Patrik Lestweka (Dead But Dreaming)
Impossible Object - David Conyers (The Spiraling Worm)
False Containment - David Conyers (The Spiraling Worm)
Topping Out - Denise Dumars (Lovecraft Slept Here)
The Video - Denise Dumars (Lovecraft Slept Here)
Mail Order Bride - Ann K. Schwader
The Margins - Robert Weinberg
Goat Mother - Pierre Comtois
Dominion - Don D'Ammassa (New Mythos Legends)
The Night Music of Oakdeene - Joseph Pulver (Blood Will Have Its
Season)
What Washes Ashore - Jeffrey Thomas (Unholy Dimensions)
The Roaches in the Walls - James Chambers
Dreams.biz - Richard Lupoff
Small Ghost - Michael Minnis (Arkham Tales)
Al Azif - Michael Minnis Short Fiction (Anencephalus und vergiftete
Traume)
Chartreuse Michael Minnis Short Fiction (Anencephalus und vergiftete
Traume)
Horror Show - Gary Myers (Dark Wisdom)
Terror Rate - Konaka Chiaki (Inverted Kingdom)
A Night at Yuan-Su - Nanjo Takenori (Inverted Kingdom)
Inverted Kingdom - Matsuo Mirai (Inverted Kingdom)
Take Me to the River - Paul McAuley (Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth)
The Pisces Club - James Ambeuhl (Hardboiled Cthulhu)
Some Thoughts on the Problem of Order - Simon Bucher-Jones (Hardboiled
Cthulhu)
Salt Air - Michael Minnis (Dead But Dreaming)
Arkham Rain - John Goodrich (Arkham Tales)
Broadalbin - John Tynes (Rehearsals for Oblivion)
Tattered Souls - Ann K. Schwader (Rehearsals for Oblivion)
The Road - Aramata Hiroshi (Straight to Darkness)
...Which Art in Heaven - Azuchi Moe (The Dreaming God)
Rshanabi Street - Fushimi Kenjo (The Dreaming God)
The Idiot God - Don Webb (When They Came)
Meeting the Messenger - Don Webb (When They Came)
Big "C" - Brian Lumley (Lovecraft's Legacy)
The Barrens - F. Paul Wilson (Lovecraft's Legacy)
Clownfish - Matthew Baugh (High Seas Cthulhu)
Predicting Perdition - Paul Melniczek (Horrors Beyond 2)
Children of the Mountain - Stewart Sternberg (Frontier Cthulhu)
The Dunwich Lodger - Brian McNaughton (Tales Out of Dunwich)
Felicity - Susan McAdam (Cthulhu's Creatures)
The Horror in the Genizah - Robert Price (Blasphemies & Revelations)
Psychopomp of Irem - Wilum Pugmire (New Mythos Legends)
The Sothis Radiant - Will Murray (Miskatonic University)
Ghoulmaster - Brian McNaughton (Even More Nasty Stories)
The Invasion Out of Time - Trent Roman Cthulhu Unbound 1)
Turf - Rick Moore (Cthulhu Unbound 1)
The Patriot - John Goodrich (Cthulhu Unbound 1)
New Fish - Kiwi Courters (Cthulhu Unbound 2)
The Long Deep Dream - Peter Clines (Cthulhu Unbound 2)
Abomination with Rice - Rhys Hughes (Cthulhu Unbound 2)
Hallucigenia - Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence)
Cold Water Survival - Holly Phillips (Lovecraft Unbound)
Houses Under the Sea - Caitlin Kiernan (Lovecraft Unbound)
Come Lurk with Me and Be My Love - William Browning Spencer (Lovecraft
Unbound)
Daoine Domhain - Peter Tremayne (Eternal Lovecraft)
Necrophallus - Makino Osamu (Night Voices Night Journeys)
Love For Who Speaks - Shibata Yoshiki (Night Voices, Night Journeys)
Night Voices, Night Journeys - Inoue Masahiko (Night Voices, Night
Journeys)
Firebrands of Torment - Michael Cisco Short (Secret Hours)
The Elephant God of Leng - Robert Price (The Tindalos Cycle)
Sanctuary - Don Webb (Cthulhu's Reign)
The Shallows - John Langan (Cthulhu's Reign)
The Pauline Corpus - Matt Cardin (Cthulhu's Reign)
Russian Dolls - Robert Furey
Once More from the Top - A Scott Glancy
Valentia - Caitlin Kiernan (To Charles Fort, With Love)
Snuff Movie - Michael Minnis (Anencephalus und vergiftete Traume)
Here are my favorite mythos/Lovecraftian novels:
Radiant Dawn - Goodfellow
Ravenous Dusk - Goodfellow
The Fuller Memorandum - Stross
The Atrocity Archives - Stross
The Jennifer Morgue - Stross
Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement
Balak - Rainey
The Gardens of Lucullus - Tierney
The Midnight Eye Files: The Amulet - Meikle
Where Goeth Nyarlathotep - Reiner
Haunting of Alaizabel Cray - Wooding (Lovecraftian, not Cthulhu mythos
really)
A Night in the Lonesome October - Zelazny
Gemini Rising - McNaughton
Downward to Darkness - McNaughton
Worse Things Waiting - McNaughton (The House Across the Way is not
Lovecraftian or mythos, imo)
Queen of K'n-Yan - Ken
Threshold - Kiernan (very Lovecraftian but not mythos)
Mall of Cthulhu - Cooper
Low Red Moon - Kiernan
Daugher of Hounds - Kiernan
The Red Tree - Kiernan - (these last 3 by Kiernan deal directly or
tangentially with ghouls and the Dreamlands and are no so much
Cthulhu
mythos)
The Darkest Part of the Woods - Campbell (also more Lovecraftian than
mythos)
The Drums of Chaos - Tierney
Matt
Norm D. Plumber
So what I'm getting here is that in the 21st century, normal folks no
longer need to worry about being driven insane by actually reasoning?
Because... I dunno, society reasoned for us and we're what's left?
Remus Shepherd
> "icarp...@aol.com" <icarp...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Going back to the 1920s, the ancient age of the earth wasn't so well
> >appreciated nor the size of the universe. HPL was a materialist and
> >wrote fiction where humans had to confront the fact that compared to
> >the grand scheme of things, mundane concerns like the importance of
> >our lives, didn't count for a flyspeck. In fact there probably was no
> >real grand scheme of things.
> So what I'm getting here is that in the 21st century, normal folks no
> longer need to worry about being driven insane by actually reasoning?
No, I think that by 1920s standards, normal folks of the 21st century
are already quite insane.
... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
New Webcomic: Genocide Man http://www.genocideman.com/
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.
blackw...@gmail.com
> > Which of his writings are most expressive of his philosophy?
*LMAO* Sadly, too true... Ah well, he was a great author... Just
ignorant.
Norm D. Plumber
>In rec.arts.sf.written Norm D. Plumber <nom-de...@non.com> wrote:
>> "icarp...@aol.com" <icarp...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >Going back to the 1920s, the ancient age of the earth wasn't so well
>> >appreciated nor the size of the universe. HPL was a materialist and
>> >wrote fiction where humans had to confront the fact that compared to
>> >the grand scheme of things, mundane concerns like the importance of
>> >our lives, didn't count for a flyspeck. In fact there probably was no
>> >real grand scheme of things.
>
>> So what I'm getting here is that in the 21st century, normal folks no
>> longer need to worry about being driven insane by actually reasoning?
>
> No, I think that by 1920s standards, normal folks of the 21st century
>are already quite insane.
Hell, most "normal folks" are insane by my standards in 2011. I was
in a TacoBell the other day, hit the place right at lunchtime. It was
amazing. I was looking around wondering at all the chittering aliens
doing their strangenesses when I realized they were just regular
folks. It struck me as somewhat weird, and my thought was "holy
jeebus get me outa here *now*!".
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Didn't he marry a Jewish woman? That would seem to take him out of
MK territory at least..
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
David DeLaney
>>Norm D. Plumber <nom-de...@non.com> wrote:
>>> So what I'm getting here is that in the 21st century, normal folks no
>>> longer need to worry about being driven insane by actually reasoning?
>>
>> No, I think that by 1920s standards, normal folks of the 21st century
>>are already quite insane.
>
>Hell, most "normal folks" are insane by my standards in 2011. I was
>in a TacoBell the other day, hit the place right at lunchtime. It was
>amazing. I was looking around wondering at all the chittering aliens
>doing their strangenesses when I realized they were just regular
>folks. It struck me as somewhat weird, and my thought was "holy
>jeebus get me outa here *now*!".
resistance is useless
you will be asciimilated
Dave "invizibl tabu" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
tphile
> In article <995d1b01-dfe7-4d46-a8a6-c094312d3...@29g2000yqq.googlegroups.com>,
>
> blackwingb...@gmail.com <blackwingb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Jan 5, 6:26 pm, tphile <tph...@cableone.net> wrote:
> >> > Which of his writings are most expressive of his philosophy?
> >> not his writing, but evidently Mein Kampf and whatever the KKK writes.
>
> >*LMAO* Sadly, too true... Ah well, he was a great author... Just
> >ignorant.
>
> Didn't he marry a Jewish woman? That would seem to take him out of
> MK territory at least..
>
> Ted
> --
> ------
> columbiaclosings.com
> What's not in Columbia anymore..
not necessarilly when you look deeper into their biography.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Greene
She was a writer also but the marriage only lasted two years and she
moved to California. His experience in immigrant New York was a bad
one
and it shows in his work
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Well, there's not much info there..
The article I read (can't remember when or where) more or less said the
marriage failed more because he was Lovecraft than because she was Jewish..
icarp...@aol.com
> So what I'm getting here is that in the 21st century, normal folks no
> longer need to worry about being driven insane by actually reasoning?
>
> Because... I dunno, society reasoned for us and we're what's left?
Well, it is fiction after all. HPL never explained the mechanics of
madness but considering his dad died in an asylum and his mom went off
the deep end and he lived with 2 maiden aunts, well maybe his idea
didn't come out of nowhere. But if you want to get into whether such
a thing is possible, it is well established, with data dating back to
the Civil War, that men returning from combat have a high incidence of
psychologic trauma and problems. It is not too much of a stretch to
say if you confronted a 5 story high gibbering octopus you might lose
it. Anyway, in answer to this, some authors have created characters
who remain manly in the face of impossible horrors, for example, the
Delta Green books, Radiant Dawn and Ravenous Dusk by Goodfellow, and
Major Harrison Peele in The Spiraling Worm.
Matt
Quadibloc
> Sorry, I don't know the first thing about his politics (or much care),
> and I'm confused by your references.
Well, in one story, a protagonist trying to expose the cultists ends
up being killed by a quick-acting poison... applied by a member of the
cult who happened to be an apparent sailor of African-American
descent, who appeared simply to innocently bump into him on a crowded
sidewalk.
In another story, in the vicinity of New Orleans, a group of Cthulhu-
worshipers consisted of poor unemployed black people, just a bit more
unprepossessing than those who might have been worshipping Baron
Samedi instead.
Now, there are things in his personal letters that showed that indeed
he did share some of the bigoted ideas current in his era. On the
other hand, his wife was Jewish.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> I read The Shadow Out of Time yesterday afternoon, and aside from
> being a nicely crafted horror-story it seemed fairly namby-pamby.
>
> After the talk of his view that anyone who truly reasons risks
> madness, I'm looking for the beef but all I found in The Shadow Out of
> Time was some fairly plain yogurt.
That view... is a canard, and I should have pointed that out when I
mentioned it.
H. P. Lovecraft is no Stephen King. What he had was a very rich
imagination. He was not very good at actually writing stories that,
due to their dramatic pacing, would actually scare people.
At the Mountains of Madness - without giving you any spoilers, it will
be rather obvious as you read it that Lovecraft is telegraphing his
punches, and the shocking surprise ending will come as a "well, duh".
So, yes, if you read Lovecraft for what isn't there, you'll be
disappointed.
But what _is_ there makes him a cult favorite.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> So what I'm getting here is that in the 21st century, normal folks no
> longer need to worry about being driven insane by actually reasoning?
I guess it also helps that night falls every 24 hours instead of only
after thousands of years, and the Earth isn't located closer to the
Galactic center.
John Savard
blackw...@gmail.com
> Didn't he marry a Jewish woman? That would seem to take him out of
> MK territory at least..
Adolf Hitler was part Jewish, so I don't think so...
John Goodrich
And I would like to point out that Stephen King is no HP Lovecraft.
Just saying.
John Goodrich
Avid Fan
I don't understand why everyone goes on about his racism. Using "The
Horror at Red Hook" as an example he is talking about bad foreigners
"a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the
Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of
Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue."
Nobody goes on about Robert W. Chambers read the beginning of this story
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8kngy10.txt.
Once you get past the beginning this is a good read.
Avid Fan
>
>> What I'm looking for is his expression of the so-called reasoning that
>> he thinks risks madness.
>
> OK, this is an aspect of HPL's writing that has become a sort of bad
> cliche. It does not read well to the modern reader.
I don't agree as late as the 60's the idea extreme psychological trauma
could send a person insane was widely accepted. Now it believed that
you have to have a under lying genetic predisposition. Who the hell
really knows. I mean if the trauma was extreme enough???
Now PTSD has been cut out. Extreme PTSD I would imagine would look
very much like madness.
What I like about H.P. Lovecraft is that he is so insistent that
something is seriously wrong and everyone is in very serious danger that
he infects you as you read.
Avid Fan
>
> That's more than unfair to Lovecraft as he wasn't particularly racist
> for his time. He held the belief in the innate superiority of the
> white man over other races and, while we find those views
> reprehensible today, the attitude was fairly common in most 1930s
> Western societies.
>
> It doesn't show up in his writing much either. Just the usual
> screaming black savages you'll find in any adventure story of the day.
>
> -Moriarty
Well put.
Michael Stemper
>On Jan 6, 1:28=A0am, "Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de-pl...@non.com> wrote:
>> I read The Shadow Out of Time yesterday afternoon, and aside from
>> being a nicely crafted horror-story it seemed fairly namby-pamby.
>H. P. Lovecraft is no Stephen King. What he had was a very rich
>imagination. He was not very good at actually writing stories that,
>due to their dramatic pacing, would actually scare people.
Well said.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
COFFEE.SYS not found. Abort, Retry, Fail?
Avid Fan
> H. P. Lovecraft is no Stephen King. What he had was a very rich
> imagination. He was not very good at actually writing stories that,
> due to their dramatic pacing, would actually scare people.
>
Totally disagree.
"The Horror at Red Hook" gets you in quickly - something is seriously
wrong.
Scared me plenty, fear and foreboding in every paragraph. This is
what makes Lovecraft so effective, he keeps telling you something is
seriously wrong, he will not let up. Fear creeps through every page
until you believe it too. There is no humour or jokes in Lovecraft,
everything is deadly serious as a real horror situation would be.
Like most H.P. Lovecraft at the end there is no happy ending the problem
has gone away - FOR NOW.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>I don't understand why everyone goes on about his racism. Using "The
>Horror at Red Hook" as an example he is talking about bad foreigners
>"a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the
>Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of
>Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue."
>
>Nobody goes on about Robert W. Chambers read the beginning of this story
>
>http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8kngy10.txt.
>
>Once you get past the beginning this is a good read.
What I find interesting about the Chambers story is that he bans the
immigration of Jews, but gives African-Americans their own state and
gives Indians back their pride. For his time, that would have been a
pretty liberal position.
Oh, and he doesn't seem to have a problem with the Jews who were
already here.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.ethshar.com/TheFinalCalling01.html
Louann Miller
@mid.individual.net:
> Didn't he marry a Jewish woman? That would seem to take him out of
> MK territory at least..
In the official bio, L. Sprague DeCamp points out that Lovecraft was
consistently nicer to People Not Like Him, when he actually met them, than
his stories and letters would suggest he ought to be.
Michael Stemper
>On 07/01/11 11:02, Quadibloc wrote:
>> H. P. Lovecraft is no Stephen King. What he had was a very rich
>> imagination. He was not very good at actually writing stories that,
>> due to their dramatic pacing, would actually scare people.
>
>Totally disagree.
>
>"The Horror at Red Hook" gets you in quickly - something is seriously
>wrong.
>
>Scared me plenty, fear and foreboding in every paragraph. This is
>what makes Lovecraft so effective, he keeps telling you something is
>seriously wrong,
Exactly his problem. He doesn't show that something's wrong; he just
tells you. Repeated dinning of "something's wrong" doesn't tend to
frighten me.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
"Writing about jazz is like dancing about architecture" - Thelonious Monk
trag
But he is a fan of HP Lovecraft, or has so publicly stated on at least
one occasion.
Derek Lyons
Outside of the trailing edge of the bell curve (where the true
nutcases and wingnuts reside), I generally find that to be true.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Avid Fan
> In article<_qFVo.6900$MF5....@viwinnwfe02.internal.bigpond.com>, Avid Fan<m...@privacy.net> writes:
>> On 07/01/11 11:02, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>>> H. P. Lovecraft is no Stephen King. What he had was a very rich
>>> imagination. He was not very good at actually writing stories that,
>>> due to their dramatic pacing, would actually scare people.
>>
>> Totally disagree.
>>
>> "The Horror at Red Hook" gets you in quickly - something is seriously
>> wrong.
>>
>> Scared me plenty, fear and foreboding in every paragraph. This is
>> what makes Lovecraft so effective, he keeps telling you something is
>> seriously wrong,
>
> Exactly his problem. He doesn't show that something's wrong; he just
> tells you. Repeated dinning of "something's wrong" doesn't tend to
> frighten me.
I don't get it - you want all to be revealed straight away?
You see the results; madness, erratic behaviour first, then you uncover
the cause.
The fear in Lovecraft's writing is infectious. To me that is what gets
you in and very rare in other authors.
Avid Fan
> On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:19:09 +1100, Avid Fan<m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't understand why everyone goes on about his racism. Using "The
>> Horror at Red Hook" as an example he is talking about bad foreigners
>> "a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the
>> Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of
>> Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue."
>>
>> Nobody goes on about Robert W. Chambers read the beginning of this story
>>
>> http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8kngy10.txt.
>>
>> Once you get past the beginning this is a good read.
>
> What I find interesting about the Chambers story is that he bans the
> immigration of Jews, but gives African-Americans their own state
Sounds a lot like Apartheid to me.
> and
> gives Indians back their pride. For his time, that would have been a
> pretty liberal position.
I suppose so.
Avid Fan
> Louann Miller<loua...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan<tednolan>) wrote in news:8omcbdFplqU2
>> @mid.individual.net:
>>
>>> Didn't he marry a Jewish woman? That would seem to take him out of
>>> MK territory at least..
>>
>> In the official bio, L. Sprague DeCamp points out that Lovecraft was
>> consistently nicer to People Not Like Him, when he actually met them, than
>> his stories and letters would suggest he ought to be.
>
> Outside of the trailing edge of the bell curve (where the true
> nutcases and wingnuts reside), I generally find that to be true.
>
> D.
That is so true. The "I'm not racist, but.." community do tend to make
a lot of exceptions for people they know.
Still the 1920's was a different time. I don't think his personal
views show in his stories, so they are not dated.
John Goodrich
>
> That is so true. The "I'm not racist, but.." community do tend to make
> a lot of exceptions for people they know.
>
> Still the 1920's was a different time. I don't think his personal
> views show in his stories, so they are not dated.
I have to disagree. Lovecraft's neuroses and racism and fear and
loathing of people are the engine from which all his stories come. We
can understand this, appreciate and even enjoy his work without
condoning the source from which is sprang.
John Goodrich
rochrist
"Norm D. Plumber" wrote in message
news:h2tbi6dmu1qdjrfnr...@4ax.com...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
well, hell, I mean....Taco Bell. What did you expect? Have you seen their
television ads? Who other than an alien would be attracted to those extreme
closeups of dripping pasturized cheese product?
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>On 08/01/11 03:43, Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>> On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:19:09 +1100, Avid Fan<m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't understand why everyone goes on about his racism. Using "The
>>> Horror at Red Hook" as an example he is talking about bad foreigners
>>> "a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the
>>> Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of
>>> Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue."
>>>
>>> Nobody goes on about Robert W. Chambers read the beginning of this story
>>>
>>> http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8kngy10.txt.
>>>
>>> Once you get past the beginning this is a good read.
>>
>> What I find interesting about the Chambers story is that he bans the
>> immigration of Jews, but gives African-Americans their own state
>
>Sounds a lot like Apartheid to me.
Not really. There's no suggestion of a different legal status. It's
much more like the creation of Israel.
>> and
>> gives Indians back their pride. For his time, that would have been a
>> pretty liberal position.
>
>I suppose so.
>>
>> Oh, and he doesn't seem to have a problem with the Jews who were
>> already here.
--
Quadibloc
> I suppose so.
"After the colossal Congress of Religions, intolerance and bigotry
were laid in their graves..."; so he is painting, as a background, a
United States without social problems. Almost makes me think of the
artificial religion in Dune here, though.
Back in his day, of course, the Holocaust had not yet happened - and
Jewish immigrants from Russia were often poor people, some of whom
even were a crime problem; there were Jewish organized crime gangs
back then.
So instead of anti-Semitism, he simply is trying to keep out
immigrants similar to, say, the Vietnamese boat people, or Hispanics -
poor people who would bring down real-estate values, take jobs at low
wages, and get into trouble. And no more slums, since an area of the
South by that old Swanee river has been set aside for the nation's
black people.
So even in his day, it would be clear his aims were conservative:
clean up the country, get rid of all these annoying modern problems
that our ancestors didn't have to cope with, so that we could leap to
one Apollonian achievement after another. (Note, also, the fondness
for decency in New York.)
And thus, in this shining future, in which all the grime and filth and
squalor of the present-day is a distant memory... the supernatural
menace of The King in Yellow stands out all the more horribly by
contrast.
Think of Oswald Cabal's daughter getting kidnapped by the Esoteric
Order of Dagon to be sacrificed in their rites...
It's just as well, then, that the first part was just introductory
paragraphs, rather than several chapters in a strange fusion of
genres.
John Savard
Avid Fan
I have read very little of H.P. Lovecraft's letters.
I am only judging from the stories.
"The Horror at Red Hook" is often cited as a very racist. I don't
agree. To me at least he is talking about bad people who happen to be
foreigners. Maybe I am naive.
Most of the stories involve no foreigners.
The Whateley's are white Americans in "Ihe Dunwich Horror".
Marsh was a white American in "Shadow over Innsmouth".
Magister
Use http://www.hplovecraft.com instead.
Yrs
Martin
icarp...@aol.com
Thanks, Martin
chuck c.
Hi John,
I've never been an AMM fan--it reads too much like a journal
article, which I guess it's supposed to be.VERY tedious. Give me
DUNWICH HORROR , RATS IN THE WALLS,CALL OF CTHULHU, or even HORROR AT
RED HOOK anytime. Oh, and of course WHISPERER, but why didn't the guy
just leave?
Cheers,
CC