Lovecraft through the lens of Bloch

I always forget that Robert Bloch was part of the Lovecraft circle. He seems too young to have been one of Lovecraft’s pen pals and he also seems like he’s at least one generation further in the development of horror.

Well, to be fair, he was the youngest member of the circle, still a teenager when he was a part of it. And, while he started out writing Lovecraftian tales, he moved on to develop his own style and voice.

Reading the Mysteries of the Worm, a collection of some (but I don’t think all) of his Mythos works, a number of things struck me. 

First of all, a lot of stories are meh. Which isn’t unreasonable, seeing as how young he was when he wrote most of them. However, they don’t show the promise of how good he was going to become. His afterward pretty much agrees with that assessment lol

But I can’t ignore that some of the stories, The Shambler from the Stars in particular, were influential and important to the Mythos. Not only did Shambler give us the memorable star vampire, it inspired Lovecraft to write the Haunter of the Dark. (Bloch and Lovecraft killed each other in their respective stories because that’s how they had fun)

The other thing was how hard Lovecraft’s death affected Bloch. I hadn’t realized how important a mentor, as well as a friend, Lovecraft was to him. Lovecraft did a lot to push Bloch into becoming a writer. And Bloch was also well aware how unknown Lovecraft was to the world at large when he died. Lovecraft’s passing was devastating for Bloch.

(I get why some people are August Derleth haters. But we wouldn’t have the world of the Mythos without him)

The best story in the book is, unsurprisingly, one of the last ones written. Terror in Cut-Throat Cove, despite having one of the most hackneyed titles _ever_, is a rich and unnerving work. I was reminded of Ramsey Campbell’s The Faces of Pine Dunes in a very positive way. It is Bloch approaching Lovecraft is a very Bloch way.

For me, Mysteries of the Worm was an archeological dig into both the history of the Mythos and Bloch.

Why I would teach Pickman’s Model

 While I’m pretty sure I’ll never get the chance to reach Lovecraft in a high school or middle school English class, I have given a lot of thought to how I would do it.

In the past, I’d figured that The Outsider would be a good work to work with. It’s relatively short and the plot is accessible. And, while at least to modern audiences, the twist might be really obvious, I think the bit where the narrator opens the trapdoor on the tallest tower to find it opens onto open ground is really strong.

However, while I don’t agree with all of his Kenneth Hite’s critique of the story, he made a damn good point that the prose is purple enough to be ultra violet. I honestly think that would really challenge students enough that the actual content of the story wouldn’t get through. (I have found Poe is a challenge to many of them)

Now I think that Pickman’s Model is the best story to introduce kids to Lovecraft.

First of all, it has some of the plainest language of Lovecraft’s work. It’s also one of his shorter works. Both of those things are going to make it easier for students to handle.

I also know that both of those elements have also relegated Pickman’s Model to being a lesser Lovecraft work for some authorities. Which I don’t think is correct. What they do is make for a lean, mean piece of writing where every element is tightly aimed at creeping me out.

Pickman’s Model is one of the two Lovecraft works that have given me nightmares. (The other is Dreams in the Witch House. Brown Jenkin is so visceral that it’s pure nightmare fuel) It has some real oomph. And it helped define Lovecraftian ghouls which have become a staple of the Mythos.

No, it’s not Call of Cthulhu but it’s a good place to open the door.

What I got out of the Tour de Lovecraft

 I ended up reading the first edition of Kenneth Hite’s Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales in order to figure out if I wanted to get the second edition. In the first edition, Hite examines fifty-one of Lovecraft’s stories. 

It skips his juvenilia, his poetry, and almost all of his ghost writing. In other words, Hite covers the Lovecraft that most of us actually care about.

I have to admit that I found the work initially pretentious but, as I kept reading, I found I had to caveat that impression. First of all, while I have read a lot of Lovecraft, Hite has clearly read a lot more and a lot more academic criticism of Lovecraft as well. Second, I think it can be hard to write literary criticism without having some level of arrogance. You need it if you are putting your opinion out there.

Hite also gained my respect by saying that Lovecraft only wrote seventeen great stories. He realistically tempers his appreciation of Lovecraft and, let’s be honest, Lovecraft did write some stinkers. I think Hite is too harsh on The Outsider and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath but that’s my pretentious opinion.

And Hite helped me realize how much of an influence Edgar Alan Poe was on Lovecraft. I was aware of Lord Dunsany and Arthur Machen being an influence on Lovecraft but I also discovered those two due to Lovecraft. I was already familiar with Poe by the time I started reading Lovecraft.

To be fair, Edgar Allen Poe’s influence is so big that it’s almost invisible. Poe casts a big shadow. Like the dreams of sleeping Cthulhu, Poe is all around us.

At the same time as reading Tour de Lovecraft, I also read Hite’s Lovecraft 101. Despite being touted as an intro to the Mythos, it was really more like a collection of in jokes for us fanboys. Amusing but Tour was better all around.

I got more out of the first edition of Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales than I expected. I still haven’t decided if I want to buy the second edition or the Destinations because what I’ve already read is what I wanted to read the most.

Why I think Ithaqua is cool

 October is almost done. Time for one more Mythos post!

One of my personal favorite Great Old Ones and my favorite that wasn’t made up by H.P. Lovecraft is Ithaqua, the Wind Walker.

A big part of that is one of my earliest exposures to Mythos was a collection of Wendigo legends, stories and anthropology references that I can’t seem to find any record of. (Mostly because pop culture has now become super saturated with Wendigo and there’s so much out there) It included The Thing That Walked On the Wind and Ithaqua.

I know that there is plenty of nostalgia involved but I think Ithaqua is Derleth’s best addition to the Mythos.

But there is an additional reason why I think Derleth’s creation of Ithaqua is so solid. He blatantly and pretty openly stole quite a bit from Algernon Blackwood’s novella The Wendigo.

Blackwood’s story has informed so much of the popular idea of The Wendigo. Heck, a simplified version of the story is in the children’s book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Even if you don’t know you know the story, you probably know it. If ‘oh my burning feet of fire’ rings a bell, this story is where that comes from.

The elevator sketch is that a hunting guide gets taken by the Wendigo, possibly partially transformed into a Wendigo himself. While the lost guide, or the Wendigo disguised as him, briefly reappears, the guide does not truly reappear until they find him dying of exposure.

One of the reoccurring motifs of the story is that the Wendigo has strange, deformed or unnatural feet. The footprints are wrong and when the guide is under the sway of the Wendigo, his feet are unnatural as well. Indeed, the feet are never truly seen but only briefly glimpsed as dark and oddly massed.

Written in 1910, the Wendigo captures many cosmic horror elements. The northern woods become a liminal space. (I wrote that sentence just so I could use the word liminal.) The characters enter another world, one they don’t understand. And one is horribly transformed by the experience.

More importantly, the Wendigo is never truly defined or even seen. There is no explanation for it or its nature. It is outside the context of the hunters’ experience. Blackwood wrote eldritch cosmic horror before that was cool.

To be fair, he had already done that in his earlier story The Willows.

Many earlier authors influenced Lovecraft and the Mythos. Usually, though, there is some changes along the way. (Ambrose Beirce’s Hastur doesn’t resemble the Hastur we know and dread today) Blackwood, on the other hand, gave Derleth Ithaqua in a package with a bow.

Brian Lumley’s fun with the Cthulhu Mythos

A long time back, possibly when life was still crawling out of the ocean and the Elder Things still thought Shogoths were a good alternative to bulldozers, I first saw the entry in the Call of Cthulhu RPG entry for Cthonians and Shudde M’ell. Now, I finally have read The Burrowers Beneath by Brian Lumley.

I’m honestly not sure Lumley is obscure or not as far as Mythos writers are concerned. I couldn’t find any of his books until digital publishing brought them back. But I have seen his short stories in different anthologies. He was writing before the Mythos went mainstream so he kept the fire going.

Lumley is allegedly controversial because he fully embraced the Lovecraft Lite style. That is basically defined as ‘humans can win’. So actual Lovecraft works like The Dunwich Horror count. I also think of it as the normalization of the Mythos. Not necessarily ‘the ghouls are stealing the wifi’ normal but the Mythos being a regular part of the world, not something that drives you insane.

Okay, spoiler time:

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Titus Crow, paranormal Sherlock Holmes, and his Watson Henri de Marigny figure out the existence of the burrow horrors the Cthonians and their blasphemous god Shudde M’ell. Their attempts to thwart the Cthonians put them extreme danger until they meet the Wilmarth Foundation. That’s an organization devoted to the extermination of Myrhos stuff. Our heroes help them make some major victories but the book ends on a cliffhanger.

But since there are five or six more books, I am sure Crow and de Marigny are okay.

Next, some thoughts about the work.

On the one hand, I have to give Lumley full props on creating a whole new Mythos element with Shudde M’ell and the Cthonians. On the other hand, with a detailed life cycle, the Cthonians stop being a cosmic horror and just an alien life form that is comprehensible. Water being a huge weakness also makes them one of the vulnerable Mythos creatures, giving humanity a fighting chance.

Speaking of which, the Wilmarth Foundation, with its global network, psychics, and the ability to create unlimited elder signs, are what Delta Green wishes it could be. That said, Crow and and Marigny’s induction into the foundation really  reminds me of my college group’s transition from a traditional Call of Cthulhu game to a Delta Green One. Down to the GM being the only one who knew it was happening.

I also liked how the Wilmarth Foundatiions aren’t small bands of pulp adventurers on commando missions. No, they are massive works of civil engineering, using drilling rigs to drop elder signs and bombs deep in the earth. Killing Mythos is a major endeavor.

I also have to note that, as Lovecraft Lite as the book may be, there are some horrific elements. The physical prowess of the Cthonians is not as dangerous or insidious as their psychic powers.

And the fate of the explorer Amery Wendy-Smith, his brain placed in what sounds like a Shogoth to be tortured for decades, makes the Migo’s brain canisters seem quaint.

(I also have to note that the early part of the book is full of references to not just Lovecraft works but also works by other Mythos authors like Derleth and Campbell. Back when those weren’t as widely punished as they would be just ten years after Burrowers Beneath was published) 

I had fun. I’ll hunt down more Lumley.

 

Fritz Leiber couldn’t imitate Lovecraft

Near the start of the year, I tried to read Fritz Leiber’s The Terror from the Depths. It was a short story I’d never heard of, even though I’ve been reading Leiber for over thirty years. I tried again and got through it. As an intellectual curiousity , it was interesting but I didn’t think much of it as a work of fiction.

Something I hadn't  known until I read about the story in my second go is that Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft  corresponded near the end of Lovecraft’s life. I wasn’t surprised since Lovecraft collected pen pals the way some people collect stamps but I hadn’t known Leiber was one of them. 

Leiber started the story in 1937, the same year that Lovecraft died. In fact, Lovecraft’s death is part of the story, which makes me really wonder if Lovecraft’s death was the impetus for the story. Which didn’t get finished until 1975.

The actual plot is easy to describe. A sensitive, artistic type discovers dark secrets of the eldritch universe, which includes his own lineage. Eventually, said revelations lead to his horrible demise. It does include winged, eyeless serpents who swim through the earth and has might actually be the dreams of dread Cthulhu unleashed. That’s a new touch to the mythic, albeit one that hasn’t been reused Tommy knowledge.

 But there are two things that make the story a slog.

Leiber wrote some brilliant works. The Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, Conjure Wife, Our Lady of Darkness. But one of the things that really marks is work is how grounded his style is. No matter how fantastic the situation is, there is a level tone, almost deflating the wonder. Leiber imitating Lovecraft’s purple prose is working against his strengths.

And there are soooo many references to Lovecraft’s works. An annotated version of The Terror from the Depths would be half again as long. Even Lovecraft himself is referenced. It bogs the story down and actually lessens the mystery and horror.

Frankly, the story behind the story interests me more. What exactly inspired Leiber to write this? Why did it take so long? What did it means to him and what was he trying to say?

If the Terror from the Deeps has been written by someone I’d never heard of, it would have been utterly forgettable. But since it was by Fritz Leiber and ties into his personal relationship with Lovecraft, reading it was a fascinating experience.