Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
50
CRYPT or
CRYPT OF
CTHULHU
A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal
CONTENTS
Editorial Shards 2
R'lyeh Review 44
Mail-Call of Cthulhu 49
1
2 / Crypt of Cthulhu
in their hearts for "The Hound," most thing might not come out of the
critics have dismissed the tale as centuried to exact ven-
earth
little more than a florid imitation of geance for his desecrated tomb?
Edgar Allan Poe. It does contain al- And should it come, who can say
lusions to Poe, and may have been what it might not resemble?*
ber 16, 1922, while visiting New York craft) shoots himself at the tale's
City for the second time, Lovecraft denouement.
and Rheinhart Kleiner examined the A "devastating ennui" (D 162) sup-
Flatbush Reformed Church at Flat- plied the protagonists motivation for
'
a letter to Long that Poe was "the to one of Lovecraft's most famous
father of the most redeeming features creations, the Necronomicon. Poe's
of decadent literature" (SL I. 173). Roderick Usher possessed many
One suspects that "The Hound" was tomes of mysterious content, among
written for the amusement of Long them "an exceedingly rare and curi-
and Kleiner as a tongue-in-cheek ous book in quarto Gothic the Vigilae
tribute to Poe's literary legacy, and Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ec -
that the references to Poe's work clesiae Maguntinae " 1 1and perhaps
;
ruary 1 927; 11 March 1927 (MS, State riving it as simply "Book Concern-
Historical Society of Wisconsin; rpt. ing the Dead. "
R. Alain Everts in the 16th mailing l^See "Genres in the Lovecraftian
of theH.P. Lovecraft amateurpress Library" by Robert M. Price, in
association, December 1982). Crypt of Cthulhu Vol. l,No. 3,p. 14.
,
morning Dudley sees someone watch- immediacy and conviction of the first
ing him as he is leaving the sepul- person narration draw the reader in-
chre. Inexplicably, he later over- to the story and envelop him in an
hears watcher tell Dudley's father
the oppressive atmosphere of horror.
that his son spent the night sleeping He soon finds that, like the unfortu-
outside the tomb . nate narrator, he cannot distinguish
One night soon thereafter, Jervas the real from the unreal.
Dudley visits site of the Hyde
the The ending of the tale is fiendishly
mansion and finds it restored to its inconclusive. Dudley's introductory
former glory. A party is taking declaration that it is sufficient for
place, and he joins in the revelry. him "to relate events without analyz-
Then lightning strikes the mansion, ing causes" is obviously indicative
and he, now Jervas Hyde realizes ,
of Lovecraft's own sentiments.
his body will be burnt to ashes. He It is clear Dudley suffered from
resolves that he will be buried in the hallucinations- -there was no key,
family tomb "even though my soul go and he never physically entered the
seeking through the ages for another tomb. However, the central ques-
corporeal tenement to represent it tion remains unanswered: Was Dud-
on that vacant slab in the alcove of ley hallucinating that he was pos-
the vault. sessed, or was he hallucinating be-
The vision fades, and Dudley finds cause he was possessed ? The ordi-
himself struggling in the grasp of nary explanation is not entirely im-
two men as his father looks on. A plausible, but the case for the extra-
stroke of lightning has struck the ordinary explanation seems stronger.
ruined cellar, unearthing an antique In allowing the reader to choose
box that contains a portrait resem- between an ordinary and an extraor-
bling Dudley. It bears the initials dinary explanation for the events of
H. " the story, Lovecraft was following
"J.
His father insists the padlock of the example of his literary mentor
the vault has never been opened, and Edgar Allan Poe. However, Love-
that Dudley was often spied sleeping craft's motive for employing ambi-
outside the door. He asserts that the guity was not the same as Poe's.
things Dudley claims to have learned In his extraordinary stories, "Poe
from the dead were gleaned from often made slight concessions to ex-
reading ancient books. tremely matter-of-fact readers--in
Dudley cannot prove otherwise, suggesting that hallucination result-
for he has lost the key to the lock. ing from delirium, true insanity, or
He persuades a family servant to the use of opium might account for
open the tomb and explore within. the wonders. These ordinary ex-
The servant discovers an empty cof- planations are merely a sop for
fin inscribed with the name "Jervas." skeptics, and are not intended to be
Lovecraft's first mature story is taken se riously by more imaginative
an extremely well-crafted work. The readers.
stylistic model for "The Tomb" is In contrast, the ordinary expla-
the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, and nation offered in "The Tomb" is in-
no disciple followed Poe's example tended, not to appease skeptics, but
more successfully than Lovecraft. to raise doubts in the minds of all
Not a single word is wasted- -eve ry readers as to the reliability of the
scene is carefully constructed to aid narrator's story. Lovecraft com-
in establishing a single effect. The mented on his preference for ambi-
10 / Crypt of Cthulhu
tion, but is haunted by visions of the Cavalier January 11, 1913). The
,
an intelligent reptile race that breeds most certainly wipe us out some
humans for food. day as the dinosaurs were wiped
Victor Rousseau's The Sea De - out- -leaving the field free for the
mons (se rialized in All-Story in 1916) rise and dominance of some hardy
is another likely source for "Dagon." and persistent insect species--
Rousseau's novel tells of an invasion which will in time, no doubt, de-
of England by a race of anthropomor- velop a high specialisation of cer-
phous amphibians. tain functions of instinct and per-
Lovecraft may have been influ- ception, thus creating a kind of
enced by all of the foregoing stories civilisation. . . . Probably the
in shaping the twin themes of "Da- period of human supremacy is on-
gon." One theme (which the narrator ly the prologue to the whole drama
declaims as a warning) is that man of life on this planet. , . .
^
was not the first intelligent race to
rule this planet, and is not likely to Lovecraft termed himself an "in-
retain his position of dominance in differentist," by which hemeant that
the future. The other theme (which he believed natural forces are indif-
the narrator finds too shocking to ferent to man--helping or hindering
state openly) is that man and fish- him only by accident. "Dagon" illus-
man evolved from a common ances- trates its author's view that the cos-
tor. The narrator is confronted with mos does not give "a damn one way
evidence confirming both of these or the other about the especial wants
unsettling possibilities when the and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes,
creature rises from the waters, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pter-
flings itsarms about the monolith, odactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or
and audibly prays--thereby demon- other forms of biological ene rgy. "24
strating the existence, the antiquity, * #
and the intelligence of its race. 22 As the foregoing analysis shows,
In "Dagon, " as in "The Tomb, " "The Tomb" and "Dagon" possess
Lovecraft evokes horror from life-- more stylistic polish and thematic
in this case, from both human and power than one expects to see in
inhuman life. Assuming the extra- tales by a fledgling writer. If these
ordinary explanation of the story is fine stories are not fully appreciated,
correct, it is the realization that it is probably because they are over-
man evolved from earlier forms of shadowed by Lovecraft' s even finer
life, together with the prospect that subsequent stories.
man may soon be supplanted by fish-
men, that drives the narrator to NOTES
madness and suicide.
In depicting man's domination of 1 Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner,
the world as a transitory incident, August 27, 1917, "By Post from
"Dagon" "The Tomb") reflects
(like Providence, " H. P. Lovecraft: The
its author's own philosophy. In a Marc A.
Californian 1934-1938, ed.
letter to James Ferdinand Morton, Michaud (West Warwick: Necronom-
Lovecraft wrote: icon Press, 1977), p. 45.
2Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
We are not nearly
so well equipped (Sauk City: Arkham House, 1965),
for combating a varied environ- p. 9.
ment as are the articulata; and 2 Ibid. , p. 17.
some climatic revulsion will al- ^Thomas Ollive Mabbott, "Intro-
14 / Crypt of Cthulhu
p. 112.
1 thoughts on life and
5 Lovecraft' s
death are perhaps best expressed in
his poem "The Eidolon," Fungi from
Yuggothand Other Poems (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1971), pp. 48-61.
1 paeon . p. 3.
now available essay "The
l?In his
Pefence Reopens " (1 921 ), Lovecraft !
ophers. Parmenides and Democritus the end, and transmits visual pic-
questioned the truth- value of sense- tures to the brain. ..."
perception, and Gorgias the Sophist
w rote a celebrated treatise. On Not- This is actually a joke at Descartes'
Being (c. 440 B. C. ), wherein he expense: when Descartes, in the
maintained that (1) nothing exists; Meditations on First Philosophy, es-
(2) even if anything existed, it would tablished the distinction between a
be incomprehensible; (3) even if it material body and an immaterial and
were comprehensible, it would be immortal soul (one of the most per-
incommunicable - -and his whole ar- nicious ideas in the history of phi-
gument was based upon the unrelia- losophy, rivaled perhaps only by
bility of sense - perception. Finally,
1
Plato's Forms or Kant's a priori
1 6 / Crypt of Cthulhu
vasive influence for the genesis of of the world and the universe
the whole tale can be found--in the about us? Our means of receiv-
form of Hugh Elliot' s Modern Science ing impressions are absurdly few,
and Materialsim (1919). Lovecraft and our notions of surrounding
mentions this work only in a letter objects infinitely narrow. We see
of June 1921 (SL 1. 1 34; also SLI. 158), things only as we are constructed
but it is almost certain that he had to see them, and can gain no idea
read it before November 1920, the of their absolute nature. Withfive
date of writing of "From Beyond" feeble senses we pretend to com-
(cf. SL I. 121). That Lovecraft found prehend the boundlessly complex
this triumphant exposition of mech- cosmos, yet other beings with a
anistic materialism stimulating can wider, stronger, or different
be seenbyafew entries in his Com- range of senses might not only see
monplace Book which I have hypoth- very differently the things we see,
esized were inspired by the volume;^ but might see and study whole
worlds of matter, energy, and life
34 Moving away from earth more which lie close at hand yet can
swiftly than light- -past grad- never be detected with the senses
ually unfolded--horrible rev- we have. ..."
elation.
Note a very similar passage in the
35 Special beings with special introduction to Elliot's book:
senses from remote uni-
verses. Advent of an exter- Let us first ask why it is that all
nal universe to view. past efforts to solve ultimate rid-
dles have failed, and why it is that
36 Disintegration of all matter to they must continue to fail. It is,
electrons and finally empty in the first place, due to the fact
space assured, just as devolu- that all knowledge is based on
tion of energy to radiant heat sense- impre ssions, and cannot,
is known. Case of accelera - therefore, go beyond what the
tion - -man passes into space. senses can perceive. Men have
five or six different senses only,
It can be shown that each of these and these are all founded on the
entries has a correlation in various one original sense of touch. Of
passages in Elliot's book which dis- these five or six senses, the three
cuss the points in question. Entry 35 of most importance for the accu-
Eastertide 1986 / 17
fled by a "pale, outre colour or blend here simply reflecting in a vivid way
of colours which I could neither place the simple physical fact that solid
nor describe"; Tillinghast replies: matter is largely merely empty
space. Elliot writes of it at length:
"Do you know what that is? . . .
led oddly at my
surprise. "You would look like if magnified to,
thought ultra - violet was invisible, say, a thousand million diameters,
and so it is--but you can see that so that the contents of a small
and many other invisible things thimble appeared to become the
now. " size of the earth. Even under this
great magnification, the individu-
This has its exact correlate in El- al electrons would still be too
liot: small to be seen by the naked eye.
Small aggregations of these invis-
Not only are our senses few, but ible electrons, moving in invisi-
they are extremely limited in ble orbits round a centre, would
their range. The sense of sight be aggregated to form atoms, and
can detect nothing but waves of these again to form molecules,
aether; all sensations of light and appearing (if they could be seen)
colour are no more than aethereal to occupy the same volume as a
waves striking upon the retina football. The first circumstance
with varying strength and frequen- that strikes us is that nearly the
cy. And even then.it is only spe- whole structure of matter con-
cial aethereal undulations that sists of the empty spaces between
give rise to the sensation of sight. electrons. Matter, which appears
The majority cannot be perceived to us so continuous in its struc-
by the retina at all; it is only when ture is really no more than emp-
,
the wave s follow one anothe r with - ty space, in which at rare inter-
in certain limits of rapidity (be- vals here and there an inconceiv-
1 8 / Crypt of Cthulhu
um; for, from the electron's point sible to describe; and it was only by
of view, the aluminium plate is analogy that they called it a colour
very little different from empty at all. "9
space. Finally, the central philosophical
theme of "From Beyond"--the fal-
Clearly, then, the immediate in- senses--is emphasized
libility of the
spiration for "From Beyond" was in several later stories. I have
Elliot's Modern Science and Mate - studied this concept elsewhere,
rialism and the philosophical vistas and the idea of what I have termed
it opened to Lovecraft's fertile and "supra-reality"--a reality beyond
imaginative mind. But "From Be- that revealed to us by the senses, or
yond," however imperfect a product that which we experience in every-
in itself, very clearly served as a day life (what Onderdonk called the
springboard for certainlater stories "super-normal") is central tomuch
of Lovecraft's. It is as if Lovecraft, of Lovecraft's fiction; finding ex-
dissatisfied with the treatment of pression particularly in "Hypnos"
some themes in this early story, de- (1922), "The Unnamable" (1923),
cided to give them fuller and better "The Colour out of Space" (1927),
treatment elsewhere. "The Dreams in the Witch House"
Firstly, the narrator of "From (1932), "Through the Gates of the
Beyond" remarks at the outset: "That Silver Key" (1932-33), and others.
Crawford Tillinghast should ever Note also the following passage from
have studied science and philosophy "The Shunned House" (1924):
was amistake." We are immediately
reminded of "The Dreams in the To declare that we were not ner-
Witch House," where it is said: "Per- vous on that rainy night of watch-
haps Gilman ought not to have studied ing would be an exaggeration both
so hard. Non-Euclidean calculus gross and ridiculous. We were
and quantum physics are enough to not, as I have said, in any sense
stretch any brain. ... "8 A later childishly superstitious, but sci-
passage in "From Beyond" is also entific study and reflection had
suggestive of Gilman's voyages into taught us that the known universe
hyperspace: of three dimensions embraces the
merest fraction of the whole cos-
I was now in a vortex of sound and mos of substance and energy. . .
motion, with confused pictures .To say that we actually belie ved
before my eyes. After that
. . .
in vampires or werewolves would
the scene was almost wholly ka- be a carelessly inclusive state-
leidoscopic, and in the jumble of ment. Rather must it be said that
sights, sounds, and unidentified we were not prepared to deny the
Eastertide 1986 / 19
this passage and parts of "From Be- ^Hugh Elliot, Modern Science and
yond" suggests that the idea was one Materiali am (London: Longmans,
of recurrent fascination to Lovecraft Green & Co. , 1919), pp. 2-3.
--and it is an idea derived from his ^Ibid. , p. 3.
continuing researches into the find- ?Ibid. , p. 54.
ings of modern science and philoso- Mountains of Madness and
^ At the
phy, especially such books as Elliot's Other Novels (1964), p. 249.
Modern Science and Materialism, ^ The Dunwich Horror and Others
Ernst Haeckel's The Riddle of the (1963), pp. 65-66.
Universe, and Bertrand Russell's 10"'R e ality' and Knowledge: Some
Our Knowledge of the External World . Notes on the Aesthetic Thought of
Hence "From Beyond" has in its H. P. Lovecraft," Lovecraft Studies,
clumsy way shown once again the I, No. 3 (Fall 1980), 18f.
unity and integration of Lovecraft' 1 lAt the Mountains of Madness,
work and thought. Science and phi- p. 237.
losophy, far from being antagonistic
to the creation of literature, were
for Lovecraft direct stimuli for it;
and his untiring delvings into the
strange worlds revealed by astro-
physicists, biologists, and philoso-
phers proved to be a central- -per- AD RATES
haps even a necessary- -inspi ration
for some of the greatest weird tales
of the century. Full page (6 3/8"x9 1/4"). . . $30
Half page (6 3/8"x4 5/8" or
3"x9 1/4") . $16
NOTES Quarter page (6 3/8"x2 1/4"
or 3"x4 5/8") ....... $8. 50
ISee G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic
Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge Send camera ready copy, and do not
University Press, 1981), ch. exceed exact dimensions as stated
^"From Beyond," in Dagon and above (the first figure denotes width).
Other Macabre Tales (1965), p. 61.
All citations of the story derive from
this edition, although textual errors
20 / Crypt of Cthulhu
dared not think of them. " They are ery tinkle of raucous little bells
drawn past an abandoned tram-car, pealed out to greet the insane titter
through snowdrifts, to ghostly ruins of a naked phosphorescent thing
22 / Crypt of Cthulhu
thos stories. So are frogs and toads, beasts are seen huddled around a
often linked with that piping or with "greenish fire" like that from "The
the moon. While it might seem odd Festival. " They also make "loath-
to connect lunar influence with our some sounds" on "disgustingly car-
batrachian friends, this conceit is ven flutes, " and are "amorphous, "
not original with HPL. Frogs, toads, "fungous," and "jellyish." The first
and the moon are entwined in mythol- adjective, of course, applies to the
ogies all over the world. various unseen pipers in other sto-
To give some examples, in Bur- ries, while the inhabitants of lb, we
mese and Indo-Chinese mythology, were told in "The Doom that Came
the frog is an evil spirit who swal- to Sarnath, " were "soft as jelly."
lows the moon, thus symbolizing the The white-bearded daemon swine-
eclipse. Among the Lillooet Indians herd dreamed of in "The Rats in the
of British Columbia, it is told that Walls" was seen in the company of
three Frog Sisters were swimming "fungous, flabby beasts whose ap-
down a river and got caught in a pearance filled me with unutterable
whirlpool thatwhirled them right up loathing," the narrator claimed.
to the moon, where they now live. They and the moonbeasts are both
In China, Hsia Mathree-legged
is a linked to cannibalism.
toad who lives on the moon, and sym- At one point in Dream -Quest Ran- ,
bolizes the unattainable. No doubt dolph Carter meets the high priest
there are other moon-and-frog leg- not to be described, first mentioned
ends in other cultures. Who knows in "Celephais," and the piping of the
why Lovecraft seized upon this idea priest's own "disgustingly carven
and inserted it into his stories? It flute" makes Carter think of "a
may have something to do with his frightful red-litten city and of the
detestation of marine life. Amphib- revolting procession that once filed
ians probably represented a kind of through it; of that, and of an awful
life-form horrid to his conservative climb through lunar countryside be
sensibilities, yet which tickled his yond. " This could exactly describe
less-than-conser vative imagination, a scene out of "The Moon- Bog," ex-
so he used them. cept that it immediately refers to a
Toads play a major role in Love- scene that actually took place on the
craft's 1927 novel. The Dream-Quest moon earlier in Dream -Quest Car- .
ofUnknown Kadath wherein Randolph ter and other captives were part of
Carter has repeatedencounters with this procession, and only the arrival
the toadlike "moonbeasts" -- so- of an army of earth cats saved them
called because they live on the moon, from the "toadlike blasphemies. "
from which they descend in great The high priest, as is intimated
black galleys. They are described in the novel, is one of the toadlike
Eastertide 1986 / 23
moonbeasts (see my article, "Illu- "The Moon-Bog. " The black realm
minating 'The Elder Pharos'" in is called N'kai and was once inhab-
Crypt of Cthulhu #20 for more de- ited by Tsathoggua worshippers who
tails), possibly their ruler or leader. we re "not toads like Tsathoggua him-
Lovecraftdresses him in yellow silk, self. Far worse--they were amor-
sohis true nature is not obvious, but phous lumps of viscous black slime
when the silken mask slips, Randolph that took temporary shapes for vari-
Carter learns the truth. It is inter- ous purposes." Shoggoths, perhaps.
esting to note that the high priest In any case, the Yothians took Tsa-
squats on a golden throne very much thoggua-worship to their reptilian
like the one mentioned in "The Hor- bosom.
ror at Red Hook. " It is also of in- That is as much of Tsathoggua as
terest that "Red Hook" contains a we learn from "The Mound. " But
passing reference to the train of en- Lovecraft, too, embraced Tsathog-
tities who follow in the procession gua worship, mentioning him in many
led by the white, phosphorescent subsequent stories. "The Whisperer
thing, and that this parade contains, in Darkness" reaffirms that this
among other creatures, a "twisted "amorphous, toad-like god-creature"
toad. came from "black, lightless N'kai. "
All in all, frogs and toads were At the Mountains of Madness makes
firmly entrenched in Lovecraft' s fic- two references to "formless Tsa-
tion and in his imagination by 1929, thoggua and the worse than formless
when Clark Ashton Smith wrote "The star spawn associated with that
Tale of Satampra Zeiros," introduc- semi-entity. " This might be an-
ing Smith's dark, furry, amorphous other foreshadowing of the shoggoths
and betentacled toad god of ancient who appear later in the novelette.
Hyperborea, Tsathoggua. Lovecraft (Shoggoths also pipe, by the way. )
fell in love with the character; he no "Through the Gates of the Silver Key"
sooner finished reading the story in refers to the worship of "black, plas-
manuscript than he incorporated tic Tsathoggua" in ancient Hyper-
Tsathoggua into a re vision-in-prog- borea by beings originally from Ky-
ress, "The Mound. " thanil, the double planet of Arcturus.
In a letter to Smith dated Decem- According to Smith, Tsathoggua
ber 19, 1929, HPL told Smith that originally hailed from Saturn.
"The Mound" would detail Tsathog- Lovecraft was so taken with Tsa-
gua's background prior to his appear- thoggua, he began a story obviously
ing on the surface of the earth. Ac- inspired by him, at least in part.
tually, the story is not terribly il- But it was never finished. Posthu-
luminating on that subject. It seems mously, AugustDerleth incorporated
that there was once an underground the surviving fragment into The
world called Yoth in which Tsathog- Lurker at the Threshold . It con-
gua was worshipped. The inhabi- cerned a demon of old New England
tants of this world, who were "rep- which was "sometimes small and
tilian quadrupeds" of some sort, solid, like a great Toad the Bigness
claimed that Tsathoggua came from of a Ground-Hog, but sometimes big
"a black realm of peculiar- sensed and cloudy, without any Shape at all.
beings which had no light at all" be- It had the Name Ossadagowah which
,
neath Yoth. Yoth, by the way, is signifys the child of Sadogowah the ;
"red-litten," just like the lunar city last a Frightfull Spirit spoke of by
of the moonbeasts and the ruins of old men as coming down from the
24 / Crypt of Cthulhu
Stars and being formerly worshipt in to Azathoth' s " throne of Chaos where
Lands to the North. " Sadogowah is the thin flutes pipe mindlessly."
an Indian corruption of Sadoqua, it- Later the protagonist, Walter Gil-
self a Latin corruption of Tsathoggua man, ventures into another realm
used by HPL from time to time. The where he sees "a hint of vast, leap-
land to the north has to be Hyper- ing shadows, of a monstrous, half-
borea. acoustic pulsing, and of the thin,
It is interesting how this manifes- monotonous piping of an unseen flute
tation of Ossadagowah resembles the . .Gilman decided he had picked
.
sounds into his stories, he had a symbols for HPL. But symbols of
weird experience while living in a what? We may never know with cer-
one-room New York apartment circa tainty, but the web of connective im-
1925-26. He tells of it in a letter to agery crosses all categories of Love-
Bernard Austin Dwyer dated March craft's fiction and is especially
26, 1927: strong in a hitherto unappreciated
littlestory, "The Moon-Bog." None
The sounds in the hall! The of Lovecraft's stories really stands
faces glimpsed on the stairs The ! alone
mice in the partitions [Shades of ! While we may forever speculate
the rats in the walls!] The fleet- on the meaning behind these images,
ing touches of intangible horror their source is not that illusive. One
from spheres and cycles outside ofHPL's favorite fantasy stories was
time. . once a Syrian had a
. . The Moon Pool which along with its
,
room next to mine and played el- sequel, Conquest of the Moon Pool ,
looked upon something in a tomb a lot of jewelry, much like the fish-
at night which no eye may look frog people of "The Shadow over
upon and live. Innsmouth." In any case, the imag-
ery of Merritt's The Moon Pool
This unseen piper in silkmay have seems to have exerted a profound in-
inspired the flute-playing toads and fluence on the youthful H. P. Love-
high priest in The Dream-Quest of craft. Most of the weird elements
Unknown Kadath written within a , of "The Moon - Bog" - - the lunar influ-
year or two of the experience, but ence, ruins near a pool, odd music,
the piping itself was already part of transportation to other realms, and
the developing Mythos. It must have the intelligent frogs--first appeared
sent a thrill down his spine to hear in The Moon Pool Lovecraft's treat-
.
"The Temple" was a radical de- were lifted fromadiary. The activ-
parture for Lovecraft from his pre- ities of each day, from June 18 when
vious style of writing. Up to this the Germans sank the Victory to Au-
point, most of his stories were set gust 20, the day Heinrich abandons
either in the past or in his dream- his submarine are precisely chron-
,
land. And most of his characters icled. Latitude and longitude, time
were typical Lovecraftian "dream- of the day, day of the week--all de-
ers." Lovecraft s flights of fancy
1
tails of the bizarre occurrences that
tended to brood on vague, unseen plague the U-29 are given.
horrors, but "The Temple" bristles Very early in the "story" Love-
with precise detail. craft introduces the strange event
The revelatory manuscript is a that ultimately leads to the death of
de vice Lovec raft would use frequent- the entire crew. The corpse of the
ly inhis career. "(Manuscript found young seaman, from whom the ivory
on the coast of Yucatan)" opens "The curio is taken, brings to mind echoes
Temple. " The narrator of "Dagon" of Lovecraft's "The Tree" written
leaves behind an account of what hap- se veral months earlier. "The youth's
pens to him. So will the narrators head crowned with laurel" as well as
of "The Call of Cthulhu," At the Moun - the underwater city of Atlantis, seem
tains of Madness , "The Shadow out to grow from the Grecian motifs in
of Time," and "The Loved Dead." The "The Tree. " Lovecraft admits this
entire story, told in the first person, to Frank Belknap Long in a letter
is mapped out in precise, crisp de- written three and a half years after
tail, for that is the key to the story. "The Temple. "
"The Temple" is not so much an ac-
count of weird phenomena as an un- I do not consider that "In the
folding of the psychological make-up Abyss" anticipates my "The Tem-
of Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg- ple. " Wells' undersea dwellers
Ehrenstein. As in Poe's "The Tell- are natives of the deep, and ich-
Tale Heart," not only do we experi- thyoid in nature; whilst their city
ence the narrator's terror, but we is a work of men-a templed and
learn also of his madness from the glittering metropolis that once
manner in which he tells the story -- reared its copper domes and col-
as he tries to convince us otherwise. onnades of chrysolite to glowing
It is curious that the narrative of Atlantean suns. Fair Nordick
Karl Heinrich is written on August bearded men dwelt in my city, and
20, 1917, the day he dies, which was spoke a polish'd tongue akin to
Lovecraft's twenty- seventh birthday. Greek; and the flame that the Graf
It is also curious that he is the Lieu- von Altberg - Ehrenstein beheld
tenant-Commander of the submarine, was a witch-fire lit by spirits
U -29, for Lovecraft' s age at the time many millenia old.
he wrote "The Temple" was probably
29. Furthermore, in August 1917, Following the abandonment of the
Lovecraft had been attempting, un- dead seaman's body, the men of the
successfully, to join the Rhode Island U-29 begin to suffer from bad dreams
National Guard. and various delusions. Two men who
The manuscript found in the bottle "became violently insane" suffer
is extremely well-written, for were "drastic steps" necessary to disci-
not the title given above the story, pline them. The deaths of these two
one might actually think the narrative men are quickly followed by other
28 / Crypt of Cthulhu
deaths among the crew, for one rea- state. " He sees himself, with his
son or another. First there are two Prussian mind, as a most superior
suicides; next two engineers are human being.
killed in the disastrous explosion that He sees Klenzeas "given to imag-
cripples the submarine. The subma- inings and speculations which have no
rine begins to drift southward, un- value," because he is only a mere
able to navigate. Another crewman Rhinelander. His "fanciful stories
is killed for urging surrender to a of the lost and forgotten things under
nearby American ship. Two days the sea" and "endless poetical quo-
late r, six men are killed for attempt- tations and tales of sunken ships"
ingmutiny. Thirteen crew membe rs amuse Heinrich, who urges Klenze
are killed, lea ving only Heinrich and to speak of these things for his own
his lieutenant. entertainment. On the one hand,
Throughout the story, we have been Heinrich leads on Klenze in what he
picking up hints of the Lieutenant- euphemistically calls a "psychologi-
Commander's increasing instability. cal experiment" and on the other hand
Cloaked among the cool reporting of he claims to "dislike to see a Ger-
the facts that he feels will exonerate man suffer," though by experiment-
him, are suggestions pointing to the ing with Klenze he is increasing
eventual "impairment of [his] iron Klenze's suffering.
German will." He sees nothing wrong Heinrich declares that at "7:15
with killing seamen Bohn and Schmidt p. m., August 12," Klenze went mad,
todiscipline them, even though "Ger- as though madness would overtake
man lives are precious." He believes a man in a single instant. Heinrich's
that Lieutenant Klenze's shooting of obsession with such cold details
seaman Traube "quieted the crew. " makes him oblivious to the madness
One doubts that the occasional thin- that gradually overtakes him. No
ning (with a pistol!) of an already one could read "The Temple" and de -
small crew, in a submarine stranded cide at which exact moment Hein-
underwater, would "calm" the crew rich goes mad, and few would agree
members. And even though "German on the same time.
lives are precious" and Lieutenant Heinrich states "My course at once
Klenze balks at any further shoot- became clear. He was a potentially
ings, Heinrich assassinates six more dangerous madman. By complying
men, leaving only two to pilot the with his suicidal request I could im-
crippled ship. mediately free myself from one who
Heinrich then becomes a most in- was no longer a companion but a
teresting departure from the typical menace. " He shows no compassion
Lovecraft protagonist. Whereas to his sole companion, a German
most of Lovecraft s protagonists are
1
whose suffering supposedly bothers
dreamers, sensitive individuals that him so greatly. Heinrich calmly
the rude world ignores or scoffs at sends Klenze to his death and pre-
--ultimately the Lovecraftian "hero" posterously "wished to ascertain
--the reverse is true here. Hein- whether the water-pressure would
rich, a man who is utterly insensi- flatten him as it theoretically
tive to the hundreds of deaths he has should. " Surely these are not the
caused, including each and every words of an interested scientist, but
member of his own crew, simply a man every bit as mad as he has
brushes them aside saying "all things claimed his entire crew to be.
are noble which serve the German The Lieutenant is left alone onhis
ship for eight days before the end. the Atlantean ruins, is a theme found
His second day in isolation, Hein- throughout Lovecraft's stories. Inns-
rich discovers an immense under- mouth is a dying city. The cities of
water city. The ruined city seems the alien entities beneath the Austra-
to be a destroyed ve r sion of the beau- lian desert and the Antarctic snows
tiful te rraced cities that fill the lands are dead. The narrator of "He" calls
of Lovecraft's dream stories--the New York City a "dead city, " a
cities he himself ha dreamed of-- "corpse city." And of course, R'lyeh
particularly in light of his comments in "The Call of Cthulhu" is the corpse
concerning "The Temple" above in city where dead Cthulhu waits dream-
the letter to Long. Heinrich then ing. Heinrich's descriptions of the
makes an amazing statement in his titanic temple, "hollowed from the
manuscript: solid rock," its elaborate facade, the
"great open door" and "impressive
For as I examined the scene more flight of steps" are virtually echoed
closely I beheld embankments in Francis Wayland Thurston's ac-
once verdant and beautiful. count of the dead city R'lyeh, "the
hideous monolith-crowned citadel
He has used his imagination for once, wherein great Cthulhu was buried. "
instead of his computer-like mind, Heinrich spends many hours ex-
by filling in with his mind' s eye what amining the city from the submarine.
the city must have looked like. The He eventually wants to explore the
lapse is noticed immediately by the city: "I, a German, should be the
reader, and byHeinrich himself, for first to tread those eon-forgotten
he quickly follows this statement with ways!" Cities untrod by human feet
"In my enthusiasm I became nearly also abound in Lovecraft's works.
as idiotic and sentimental as poor On the fifth day following Klenze 's
Klenze. " death, Heinrich leaves the submarine
The "dead city" as Heinrich calls to explore the ruins. However, his
30 / Crypt of Cthulhu
lights grow dim and he must curtail be careful how I record my awaken-
his exploration to renew his source ing today, for I am unstrung, and
of light. much hallucination is necessarily
The realization impending
of his mixed with fact. " It seems that he
doom begins to take its toll on Hein- is thinking out loud to him self- - that
rich. He had acknowledged his real- he himself he must be care-
is telling
ization before, but as the end draws ful of the impression he will give his
near he "experienced the emotion of readers, for he wants to be assured
dread" for the first time. Left alone that "The Fatherland would revere
in utter darkness with only his my memory." Three impressions
thoughts for company, Heinrich become manifest to Heinrich: (a) a
muses: desire to visit the temple, though he
has no lights and said he would not
Klenze had gone mad and perished foolishly venture from the ship with-
before reaching this sinister rem- out one; (b)an impression of a phos-
nant of a past unwholesomely re- phorescent glow in the water; and (c)
38-
mote, and had advised me to go a series of chants coming from out-
with him. Was, indeed, Fate pre side the soundproof ship.
serving my reason only to draw (The following entries from Love-
me irresistibly to an end more craft's Commonplace Book seem to
horrible and unthinkable than any point to the events in "The Temple"
man has dreamed of? at this point:
reason for an explanation. However, ased in his own favor) are true or
as more and more uncanny events imagined. He does this superbly in
occur, he is less and less able to ac- "The Temple," for the reader is left
count for them. Heinrich swears that hanging at the end of the story. Were
Klenze was a soft-headed Rhineland- all the occurrences in this story sig-
er, who went mad from troubles a nificant or all coincidental? If they
Prussian could bear with ease. As were real, were they caused by per-
it turns out, the same troubles that sons living in the dead city of Atlan-
caused Klenze to break cause Hein- tis? And what is the fate of Hein-
rich to break as well. Heinrich, rich? Did he simply suffocate as he
however, does so with much more predicted, or did he join those be-
dignity, and he thrusts his coolness ings? Was he insane or not? A
before us to cloud what has happened master storyteller can cause his
to him. The dead ruins of the tem- readers ask questions like these,
to
ple, the solid rock that has crumbled for that shows that what plagued
from hundreds of years of imprison- Heinrich before the end of the story
ment in the cold Atlantic depths, is is now left to plague us. Of course,
a perfect symbol for the erosion of we will never know the answer, and
the rock-like Prussian officer. And since this is the case, "The Temple"
just as "The door and windows of the can be called a very successful tale.
undersea temple hewn from the rocky While it doesn't contain the trappings
hill were vividly aglow with a flick- that traditionally give his stories
ering radiance, as from a mighty their appeal, "The Temple" should
altar-flame far within, " so too is be considered a major success for
Heinrich aglow; he is facing certain Lovecraft.
death, but a persistent flame still
flickers within him.
While "what [Heinrich has] seen
cannot be true," and "the light in the
temple is a sheer delusion, " he is
s till obsessed with the idea of check- LIVE IN PROVIDENCE?
ing to be certain, and having written
his account, he leaves the ship to TAKE A COURSE ON HPL
walk into Atlantis. Does the "de-
monic laughter which I hear as I "H. P. Lovecraft: The Man, His
write [come] only from my own weak- Environment, and His Work" will be
ening brain"? Or are the sounds taught by Henry L. P. Beckwith, Jr.,
real? The last section of Heinrich s 1
author of Lovecraft's Providence ,
SOFT BOOKS
We buv and sellArkham House. Berkley. Jonathan Cape. Dobson. Doubledav, Victor Gollancz,
Don Macdonald, Phantasia. Scream. Underwood-Miller. Viking - Crvpt of Cthulhu.
firant,
Drumm. Fawcett. Norronomtcon. Pardoe, Spectre. Strange Co. - Aldis, Anderson.
Ballard. Bloch. Brennen. Campbell. Copper. Derleth. Ellison. Farmer. Hodgson. Howard.
King. Leiber. Long. Lovecraft, Moorcock, Niven. Smith, Straub. Vance. Wellman.
Wilson, etc., etc., etc.
We have also published the following items. - The Young Folks' Ulysses, hv H.P. Lovecraft.
FuBar 1. H.P. Lovecraft and the fanzine, detailed lists for Crvpt of Cthulhu. Nvctalops.
etc., - FuBar 2. Special art issue with ten full page illustrations Lovecraftian plus A
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" has Lovecraft was only two years old
been te rmed one of H. P. Lovecraft's whenhis father abruptly went insane,
"uninspired" stories, part of his raving and hallucinating. Winfield
nondescript outputprior tohis crea- Lovecraft was confined to Butler
tion of the Cthulhu Mythos. Although Hospital in Rhode Island from 1893
of itself the story may appear supe r- to his death in 1898 from what now
ficially to be rather cliched, careful is thought to be general paresis--
reading correlated with historical disseminated syphillis. Lovecraft
data of Lovecraft's life reveal it to was raised by his mother in a mor-
be one of the most singular and ar- bidly close and dependent relation-
restingly personal tales that he ship after their loss of his father,
wrote. and she, too, eventually became de-
In the story the narrator is a psy- lusional and hysterical, and in 1919
chiatric intern (an "alienist" in the she was also committed to Butler
terminology of Lovecraft's day) in a Hospital. Lovecraft had never be-
mental institution. Under his care fore been separated from his mother
comes Joe Slater, who has committed and was now functionally, if not tech-
murder, e vidently in a fit of insanity, nically, an orphan.
and who hallucinates of distant, fan- Lovecraft had a pronounced aver-
tastic worlds. Compelled by the sion to matters physical, but in "Be-
patient's ravings, the narrator links yond the Wall of Sleep" he appears
minds with him with the aid of a tel- in fictional guise as a physician, car-
epathic machine and discovers that ing for the mentally ill. His patient
the patient's visions are no mere is of a "degenerate" race, but the
hallucinations. In sleep, he has an narrator treats him in a "gentle
alter ego that journeys across the manner," with a "certain friendli-
universe. After Slater's death, this ness. " These terms, which would
alter ego lingers long enough to send ordinarily be thought rather mild and
the narrator a promised signal, to hardly worth notice, are notable here,
confirm that he was no mere figment given the conspicuous absence of any
of the dead Slater s fevered imagina-
' comparable emotional tone in later
tion. Lovecraft works.
What is most remarkable about That this story was written when
the story is the consistent, gentle Lovecraft's mother was institution-
tone, quite unlike most of Love craft' alized might make one suppose that
subsequent stories with their isolated it is a thinly disguised wish to be
and alienated protagonists who strug- reunited with her. This may be in
gle alone, linked only with unname- part true, but a closer review sug-
able terrors. Perhaps surprisingly, gests that the loss of his mother
then, one notes that Lovecraft wrote awoke in Lovecraft memories of the
this story in 1919, when his mother similar loss of his father, with re-
was committed to a mental institu- pressed fantasies of re-union, and
tion, the same hospital in which his that here rests the deeper interpre-
father had died twenty-one yea rs be - tation of the story.
fore. The psychiatric patient. Slater,
34 / Crypt of Cthulhu
repellant form that lies here on his earlier, under her married name
couch. " Although the body of Joe "Christine Hartley, " she published
Slater dies, the narrator knows that two interesting nonfiction works: The
he will one day be reunited with his Western Mystery Tradition (1968)
"brother of light. " andA Case For Reincarnation (1972).
In Lovecraft's later works, only British readers will always be
terror and isolation reign. "Beyond grateful to Miss Thomson for intro-
the Wall of Sleep" may be viewed as ducing Lovecraft, Derleth, Quinn,
Lovecraft's wish to see his father Long, and all the other great WT
untouched by the (quite real) ravages name s, to them during the golden age
of venereal disease and insanity, as so many years ago.
noble, caring, and ultimately unsep- [Thomson obituary
arated from his son. As such, it submitted by: Richard Dalby,
would be the most direct and loving North Yorkshire, England]
of his stories.
West has tampered with a lot of guably, Dagon contains the most mi-
corpses, and while he is in the midst nor of the Lovecraft corpus, yet with
of a last great experiment, they de- the sole exception of West's adven-
scend upon him in "The Tomb-Le- tures, all saw paperback collection.
gions" ("Their outlines were human, There are sound comme rcial and
semi-human, fractionally human, artistic reasons for this seeming
and not human at all- -the horde was omission. This has nothing to do
grotesquely heterogeneous. "), and with the humorous nature of the sto-
the saga of Herbert West comes to ries, nor precisely with the serial
a messy conclusion. structure. After all, "The Lurking
Obviously, these are not serious Fear" was a serial, but it was not
efforts. While some manage a few only reprinted.it lent its title to the
nice shudders, the series reads like Ballantine collection of the same
a satire of the old cycle of Franken- name.
stein films--except that West was Where "Herbert West" is unlike
created a decade before Boris Kar- "The Lurking Fear" lies in its struc-
loff and his train began that cycle. ture. "The Lurking Fear" was a
How seriously can we take a story single story broken down into four
in which the corpse of a decapitated segments, none of which can truly
victim of the mad scientist returns stand by itself despite all the sub-
for vengeance- -but not before plac- climaxes. They can be read as parts
ing a wax dummy's head on its of a whole, or they can be assembled
shoulders ? into a single coherent, if awkward,
Lovecraft seems to have been short novelette. But the Herbert
having fun spoofing the mad scientist West stories can be taken by them-
horror story--but not to hear him selves. Often, months or years pass
talk about it in his Selected Letters: in the protagonist's life between epi-
"To write to order, and to drag one sodes. Lovecraft goes to some pains
figure through a series of artificial to maintain continuity from episode
episodes, involves the violation of to episode, inserting references to
all that spontaneity and singleness past stories so the reader can pick
of impression which should charac- up the series at any point, but doing
terise short story work," HPL com- it so deftly that, at first, this is
plained to Frank Belknap Long in fairly unobtrusive. Only with the
October 1921 while writing the se- final episode is any impact lost for
ries. "I shall be glad when the bur- not having read previous install-
then of this hack labour is removed ments, and even there one needs only
from my back ," he told Rhein-
. . .
to have read "The Horror from the
hart Kleiner. Despite these pro- Shadows" to fully appreciate "The
tests, the series has a distinctly Tomb-Legions. "
Eastertide 1986 / 37
Still, after four or five episodes, then publishing. But suppose they
the amount of past activities requir- spaced them two episodes to a book.
ing recap becomes significant and If someone were to have picked up
the finalepisode is especially heavy At the Mountains of Madness before
laden with exposition of that sort. The Tomb, they would have read the
Herein lies the real problem. two terminal episodes first. This
Read serially, "Herbert West-- makes no difference when reading
Reanimator" is fine. But assembled the Randolph Carter stories, where
together, they don't function well mood is the crucial element and
read at one sitting. Lovecraft ac- chronology is underplayed. But with
knowledged this in a lette r to Rhein- the pulpish Dr. West, the strong con-
hart Kleiner (October 7, 1921) when tinuity does not permit reading the
he grumbled, "In this enforced, la- stories out of sequence.
boured, and artificial sort of compo- Theoretically, Ballantine could
sition there is nothing of art or nat- have spaced the sixepisodes through-
ural gracefulness; for of necessity out a single volume, but this would
there must be a superfluity of strain- only have underscored the fact that
ings and repetitions in order to make they are after all, a unit. And ed-
,
each history compleat. " This "su- iting out the connecting passages was
perfluity of . . .repetitions" is the out of the question. Obviously, the
crux of the difficulty. What Love- Ballantine editors, seeing the situ-
craft was writing was, in effect, a ation as beyond their powers to rec-
series character like Nick Carter or oncile, opted to ignore the story. So
Doc Savage. It was pure pulp. Un- decrees Fate. And thus the cruel
like his Randolph Carter stories, fate of that orphan of Arkham, may
they cannot be comfortably read as he rest in peace--the cursed little
a unit. The Herbert West stories tow-head fiend!
are too short to absorb the charac-
ter's snowballing history. By the ["Herbert West -- Reanimator" has
end of the sequence, an editor is recently been reprinted as a booklet
likely to be tempted to retitle the by Necronomicon Press. ]
whole series "Herbert West--Re-
gurgitator. "
Now in the privately-printed Ark- SPAWN OF THE MOON- BOG
ham House editions, this drawback (continued from page 25)
was overlooked in the interest of
completeness. But in a mass-mar- Lovecraft traveled from that first
ket book, it is a distinct technical reading of "The Moon-Bog" to the
obstacle. Obviously the people at creative heights of his later stories
Ballantine could not bring themselves --but not as long as one might think.
to publish the series in toto; they
cannot be blamed.
There was another option: they
could have simply broken down the !
My thanks go to S. T. Joshi for
sequence into its component parts suggesting the connection between
and distributed them among the vari- the sunken city in "The Moon-Bog"
ous Lovecraft collections they were and lb.
38 / Crypt of Cthulhu
HPLs Style
By Ralph E. Vaughan
that story, the haunted narrator sees can only lead to disaster. For most
stars shimmering weirdly and wink- people, the problem is that they speak
ing hideously; he sees strange peaks, some dialect of basic English, such
strange plateaus, ghastly marble, as Black English or Southern Eng-
and sinister swamps. However it lish, but, in HPL's case, the prob-
Eastertide 1986 / 39
lem was that he spoke too well. He he perceives surrounding him, with
resisted the leveling effects of other the fervor of the most ardent reli-
peoples' speech, which bombards gious fanatic.
each of us daily. The most trying trait of Love-
When HPL used words such as craft's macabre fanatics and the
"squamous," "eldritch," and "ru- world's religious fanatics, other
gose," I don't think he was trying to than the fact that for them real life
be cute. From the evidence ofhis pales to unreality, is that they mouth
letters and the memories of those the meaningless stock phrases of
who knew him, that was the way he their respective faiths. Besides,
talked. Lovecraftdid notuse "pedes- using such phrases, even in third-
trian" speech unless he was in a jok- person narration, implies a certain
ing mood. In this case he might af- legitimacy of beliefs, a certain an-
fect "darkie" dialect, or report that tiquity- -much in the same way as we
he had received a hundred "berries" mouth certain patriotic platitudes to
for a story. legitimate various social or political
And since that was the way HPL schemes.
spoke, his narrators followed suit, So, it seems that Lovecraft's
e ven when, logically, their education three worst vices - -adjectivitis, ses-
and background was such that such quipidalianism, and triteness--were
ability with the English language was merely his attempt, successful in
not believable. More often than not, many places, to convey atmosphere,
however, Lovecraft's first-person state of mind, and education.
narrators were educated profession-
al men (or wealthy unemployed men)
who had nothing better to do than
educate themselves beyond the level
of the rabble, and it was logical, at
least in Lovecraft's mind, that such
people would speak as he did. OTHER CRYPTIC PUBLICATIONS
The Silver Cliche Shudder Stories #1 ..... $3. 00
Shudder Stories #2 .... . $3. 00
The last criticism usually leveled Shudder Stories #3 ..... $4. 00
at HPL, that he used the same cliche Risque Stories #1 ..... . $3. 00
phrases over and over throughout his Risque Stories #2 $3. 00
stories, is probably the truest. It Risque Stories #3 $4. 00
is true that, as we read his stories, Two-Fisted Detective Stories
we are continually barraged with by Robert E. Howard . . . $4. 50
phrases like "eldritch horror," "in- The Adventures of Lai Singh
accessible Leng, " "forbidden" (or by Robert E. Howard . . . $3. 00
"blasphemous") books, and features
"repellent" and "batrachian. " Also available:
Almost all of HPL's stories use
phrases that are cliches within the History & Chronology of
framework of his writing, but they the Book of Eibon by Lin
mostly appear in stories like "The Carter $1. 00
Hound" where the narrator has sunk
to such morbidity that he attacks the
occult and supe rnatural world, which
40 / Crypt of Cthulhu
a funny story about that. Once I was "Is there a sort of discoloration
unable to get into Harvard Square to under the jaw like the skin is unnatu-
pick up one of these editions, so I rally dry? "
tapped an old friend to do it. When "Yeah, the re is. "
he phoned to say he'd gotten the book, "Is his head oddly shaped, and his
he expressed curiosity over this ears kind of pointed?"
Lovecraft character. Who was this "Yeah yeah!" The power of
. . .
kindergarten and had once dubbed me "And does it look to you like he
"Madman" Murray (a name which has no lower lip?"
never stuck, fortunately) he should "Yeah, yeah! God, what hap-
have known better than to ask. I im- pened to him ? "
mediately launched into a ponderous "Well, as I understand it, Love-
Eastertide 1986 / 41
craft's occult studies affected him enjoy his work as much as I had be-
horribly. Hishead began to lengthen, fore, I've found my absorption ex-
his ears grew pointed, and the lower pressing itself in assorted articles
part of his jaw started to transform for Crypt of Cthulhu and Lovecraft
until his head turned into ..." Studies. It surprises me to find that
"Yeah, yeah?" The friend was after all that's been written on old
beside himself with a mixture of in- "I-am-Providence," I--or anyone--
trigue and horror. can still find new things to write
". . a turnip "
. . about him. New discoveries, too!
There was a moment of shocked Lovecraft' s work is full of unrealized
silence, followed by laughte r- -mine riches.
boisterous, his nervous. His was like that, too, I think.
life
I was just a teenager then, dis- his life on his terms, DeCamp not-
covering Arkham editions in a Paper- withstanding. History has vindicated
back Booksmith in the shadow of Lovecraft the Writer. But Lovecraft
Harvard's Widener Library, where the Man remains an unhappy tangle.
a copy of the Necronomicon was sup- Long to the contrary. Society didn't
posed to repose. I bought all the fail him; he failed himself. His great
Selected Letters as they came out powers were imperfectly channeled
and read with interest how HPL at best. When I look at the volumes
changed from a turn-of-the -century of letters and junk poetry and self-
tightass into the archetypal Fan as a parodying revisions, I can only think:
W ay of Life. what if he had writtenjust one more
After returning to Lovecraft re- volume--or one story--equal to his
cently and being amazed to find I (continued on page 43)
42 / Crypt of Cthulhu
Christine Campbell Thom son, who her other horror stories are "Be-
did more than any other person to hind the Yellow Door" and "When
introduce Lovecraft and the other Hell Laughed. " Cook had five sto-
Weird Tales authors to British read- ries published in WT including the
ers over half a century ago, died at famous "Si Urag of the Tail. "
home on 29 September 1985 aged 88. In 1951 Miss Thomson wrote a
The funeral took place at Guildford fascinating autobiography, I Am a
Crematorium miles southwest of
(30 Literary Agent which is worth track-
,
London) on 7 October. Born in Lon- ing down for the numerous anecdotes
don on 31 May 1897, the daughter of (continued on page 34)
Eastertide 1986 / 43
DONNA DEATH
Rlyeh Review
H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator : Lovecraft even admitted, in a letter
Director: Stuart Gordon to Rheinhart Kleiner, that, "My sole
Screenplay: Dennis Paoli, William inducement s the monetary reward
i .
J. Norris, an$ Stuart Gordon . ." There you have it; the old gen-
Based on "Herbert West--Reani- tleman himself was bowing to Mam-
mator" by H. P. Lovecraft mon !
people from the grave, though the (He must have thought that an Edgar
drug's results are somewhat unpre- Allan Poe poem was more familiar
dictable. The luckless resurrectees to American middlebrow audiences
include a boxer killed in an illegal than H. P. Lovecraft's name!) The
fight, a group of mutilated soldiers Dunwich Horror, which Roger Cor-
from the trenches of World War I, man produced in the sixtie s, was just
and Dr. Allen Halsey, the Dean of abysmal. Horribly miscast (Sandra
the medical college at Miskatonic Dee!), the Wilbur Whateley charac-
University (the first mention of this ter came acrossmore like a bargain-
hallowed institution). basement Charles Manson than as a
Lovecraft felt no great respect demigod.
for Home Brew, referring to it as a Luckily, Charles Band, who pro-
"vile rag." He also disliked the con- duced Re-Animator seems to have
straints of form he was forced to had two distinct advantages over
workwithin, to wit: "In this enforced, Roger Corman. One is a young film-
laboured, and artificial sort of com- maker named Stuart Gordon, the
position there is nothing of art or other a talented actor named Jeffrey
natural gracefulness; for of neces- Coombs. Gordon, who directed and
sity there must be a superfluity of co-wrote the screenplay, obviously
strainings and repetitions in order has more respect for the material
to make each history compleat. " than Lovecraft himself possessed.
Eastertide 1986 / 45
film ultimately becomes a send-up shining star," a doctor who has won
of the blood-soaked slasher films it the Nobel Prize for inventing the
at first glance represents. "laser drill," West immediately ac-
The Re -Animator is inspired hor- cuses him of plagiarism.
ror of a decidedly "post-Romero" This kind of academic backbiting
sort. The influence of George A. continues all through the film. West's
Romero's horror films is apparent behavior ranges from the kind of ar-
not only by the level of gore (which rogance displayed by Peter Cushing
is at all times excessive) but also in the Hammer Frankenstein films,
by the fine delineation of each char- to the sheepish embarrassment that
acter, no matter how minor. Like might be felt by a malignant Beaver
Romero's first horror film. Night of Cleave r caught vivisecting the family
the Living Dead it is obvious that
,
cat. Dr. Allen Halsey, a character
The Re-Animator is not a typical right out of Lovecraft's story, is the
"splatter" film from the first reel. Dean of Miskatonic who is more con-
The action commences in Geneva, cerned with grants and government
where young Herbert West is experi- research projects than genius, or
menting with his reanimation formu- his own daughter's feelings for, you
la. The brilliant Dr. Gruber is his guessed it, young Dr. Kane, who
guinea pig. In a horrifying sequence, rents a room to "Herbie" West and
Gruber rises from a spastic attack falls increasingly under the mad-
to scream in pain as his eyes and man's spell.
the veins on his face burst outward, One extremely funny scene occurs
splattering the terrified witnesses. at a lecture by the Nobel winning
It seems the old professor had over- scientist and attended by Kane and
dosed on the drug, or so Herbert West. The lecturer deliberately
We st explains to the authorities. Af- prods West by stressing a point over
ter a credit sequence artfully pro- which the two men disagree. West's
jected over anatomical charts and reaction is to promptly (and loudly)
with a theme that sounds more and break his pencil in two. As the lec-
more like Bernard Herrmann's score ture progresses. West continues to
for Psycho as it progresses, we find interrupt the teacher with snapping
ourselves at the modern Hospital of pencils. At length, the flustered
the Medical College of Miskatonic professor concludes his lecture by
University. Inside, a young intern, suggesting angrily, "Mr. West, get
Dr. Kane, is trying to save a woman a PEN!"
who has just had a heart attack. He At this point, the film really takes
is unsuccessful, but so ardent are off, with West bringing a variety of
his ministrations that a colleague is people and animals to life, all with
moved to remark that a good doctor disastrous results. As one critic
"knows when to give up. " pointed out. West has the uncanny
46 / Crypt of Cthulhu
knack of resurrecting people that are quality by its ability to play at the
much stronger than he is. He first fancy art film theaters and on New
reanimates a pet cat, then a vagrant York's sleazy 42nd Street with equal
at the morgue, then Dr. Halsey, who acceptance, since a great film enter-
gets himself killed by the reanimated tains everyone regardless of the
vagrant. Finally, West kills, then level of their sophistication. Re-
revives the evil professor, who not Animator is showing at theaters of
only has stolen the work that earned both kinds in New York City as of
him the Nobel Prize, but sought to this writing.
steal West's formula as well. Charles Band, the producer, has
The climax in the University said that there will be another Love-
morgue indeed grisly, and includes
is craft film going into production early
a gross sexual scene not for the in 1986. It too will feature director
squeamish. But the fine acting, es- Stuart Gordon. This time he will be
pecially the quirky manner created tackling Lovecraft's short story
by Coombs as West, convinces the "From Beyond. " Advanced word
viewer of the sincerity of the char- has it that the character "Tillinghast"
acters, as well as their obvious in- is to undergo a name change to "Pre-
sanity. The viewer is forced to sym- torious," but that otherwise the movie
pathize with the protagonists at all will be fairly faithful to the Lovecraft
times because they are truly believ- story.
able, not just one of the many "vic- I, for one, look forward to more
tims" that usually populate movies films from Stuart Gordon, and more
of this kind. film adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft'
The impressive thing about The fiction. It's about time. Perhaps
Re -Animator is the fact that most of they will tackle one of Lovecraft's
the critics can see the quality inher- major stories in the near future,
ent in the film. The newspaper ads though I do hope they don' t get Sandra
for the movie are filled with Amer- Dee for a remake of The Dunwich
ica's most influential critics' ova- Horror >
cross-country up the northeast coast, book or deity. And the lack of overt
with an occasional sojourn in Eng- fantasy in much of T. E. D. Klein's
land. Along the way, old reliables work might be attributed to his love-
like Robert Bloch and Richard Math- hate relationship with the genre's
e son share space with young upstarts prescribed codes of conduct.
like Clive Barker; people largely But this is exactly what you should
unrecognized outside of the genre not do with Faces of Fear namely ,
like Charles Grant, David Etchison, come looking for touchstones. Giv-
Alan Ryan and T. E. D. Klein are ing answers to questions about cre-
given equal time with bestsellers ativity is an unnatural act for those
John Coyne and Whitley Streiber and doing the creating. Accept what you
talismen Stephen King and Peter find in this book as dimensions to
Straub; and even William Peter these authors you might never have
Blatty, who is not strictly a horror considered and resist the temptation
writer but whose work has had a sig- to "decipher" them. In the course of
nificant impact on the genre, is reading it you'll run across some
present. surprises (at one time, production
Winter brings out everyone s pe r-1
problems on the movie Psycho were
sonality largely by suppressing his so well known that for Bloch to ac-
own; with one exception, all of the knowledge he was the author would
interviews are presented as narra- have been a liability); some things
tives in which, after setting up the you might have expected (Dennis
context with bibliographical and bio- Etchison is as self-effacing an inter-
graphical facts, he drops out of the viewee as an author); some irony
picture to present a portrait of the (David Morrell, a professor of lit-
artist. The absence of call and re- erature, created the character with
sponse questioning allows each au- whom Sylvester Stallone has become
thor a voice for giving insight into synonymous- -not the boxer); some
his or her work, and those insights disappointments (Michael McDowell
are usually different from, if not and John Coyne take a mercenary
contradictory to, the criteria we use view of the genre); some interesting
to categorize these folks. match-ups (JamesHerbert and Rob-
Take the three whose names most ert Bloch on the morality of horror
frequently crop up here. A fair por- fiction; Stephen King and V. C. An-
tion of Robe r t Bloch's work has been drews on the cult of personality for
interpreted and analyzed, but were the bestselling writer); some omi-
you aware that Psycho II was written nous experiences (Whitley Streiber
in response and
to the antisociality surviving the crossfire of the Charlie
irresponsibility Bloch perceives in Starkweather massacre in 966); and
1
the horror literature and movies of one of the best reasons for becoming
today? (Ironically, the producers of a horror writer I've heard yet (a
the movie Psycho
II rejected Bloch's young Clive Barker, who had already
story for a more "visceral" screen- seen the ending of Psycho and who
play.) We sometimes think of Ram- watched the movie audience at the
sey Campbell as a neo-Lovecraftian, next showing going nuts with sus-
yet the biographical information he pense deciding, "'I want to do this
supplies when discussing why he be- to people. '"). And you may even
came a horror writer goes more come to appreciate the genre that
deeply than simply wanting to en- can embrace such a variety of indi-
cumber the Mythos with another viduals even more.
Eastertide 1986 / 49
MAIL-CALL OF CTHULHU
On the subject of special issues, Weirdbook Press) was one of my
how 'bout giving the celebrity treat- favorite fantasy reads of the past
ment to Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap year. And like Schweitzer I greatly
Long, and Henry Kuttner? The first enjoyed "Lord of the Worms," find-
and last listed have all kinds of im- ing it to be possibly Lumley' s finest
possible-to-find Mythos works that Mythos work. But I stand by my as-
would certainly be appreciated by sessment of the Crow novels, and
your readership. And it seems ob- Lumley's tirade against critics is
vious that since you're saluting the still embarrassing to behold.
"second wave" of Mythos authors you I loved Steve Behrends' enlighten-
should go back and give more credit ing article on the Carter-Smith col-
wave.
to the first It may even take laborations (in Crypt #36). These
two such issues to do proper justice are my favorite Carter works, though
to Bloch. And hurry up with that I haven't seen all of them. Which
Ramsey Campbell issue! brings me to my only complaint about
A note about Randall Larson's Behrends' piece: why not tell some
small press bibliography "The Fan of us unenlightened folk where these
Mythos" in Crypt #35: Etchings fa stories appeared ? Similar informa-
Odysseys managing director James tion concerning the publishing future
J. Ambuehl recently informed me of Carter's Book of Eibon Necro -
,
that E&O will devote every odd-num- nomicon. Terror Out of Time, and
bered issue to Mythos fiction. Cthu- Yoh-Vombis and other Charnel House
lhu & Co. continue to thrive in the publications would also have been a
small press. boon to the Carter issue. Oh well,
William Fulwiler's letter in #35 small complaints these on an other-
gave us the lowdown on "Professor wise fine issue. Get well, Lin!
Peabody' s Last Lecture" from TV's Crypt #37 was very impressive.
Night Gallery A few more details
. Once again the cover was stunning,
are available in the February 1986 and the interior art was equally
issue of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone creepy, especially Chris Gross'
magazine. The only notable detail stuff. And Darrell Schweitzer's
omitted byFulwiler is the identity of Curwen cartoon was hilarious.
one of the female students in Pea- Ralph Vaughan' s article on "Real
body's class: a "Miss Heald." Ap- W orld Links in Dream-Quest" doesn't
parently knew his Lovecraft pretty bring up the most obvious HPL-quote
well. concerning the ghoul-burrows con-
Geez, when you read letter my necting Dream-Earth and the waking
after Darrell Schweitzer's (in Crypt world: "So the ghoul that was Pick-
#37) I come off sounding like a one- man advised Carter either to leave
man crusade against Brian Lumley. the abyss at Sarkomand ... or to
Presupposing the inevitable deluge return through a churchyard [grave-
of pro-Lumley clarify the
letters I'll yard] to the waking world and begin
position my 45-caliber mouth got
. the quest anew" At the Mountains of
(
me into. First I'd like to point out Madness, p. 339). And Lovecraft
that Bri' s House of Cthulhu and Other very cryptically mentions yet another
T ale s of the Primal Land (from link between the worlds when de-
50 / Crypt of Cthulhu
scribing Carter s panoramic view of ' "The Descent into the Abyss," Weird
Celephais: and far in the back-
. . Tales #2 (Zebra Books).
ground the purple ridge of the Tana- "The Light from the Pole, " Weird
rians .behind which lay forbidden
. . Tale #1 (Zebra Books).
ways into the waking world and to- "The Feaster from the Stars," Crypt
ward other regions of dream" At the (
of Cthulhu #26.
Mountains of Madness, p. 352). Nasty "The Utmost Abomination, " Weird
place, the Tanarians. Tales Fall 1973; Ashley (ed. ),
,
"The Stairs in the Crypt," Fantastic , Derleth and Carter said e ven though
,
August 1976; Year's Best Fantasy I knew in my heart that there was
shi's article on Dream -Quest fol- , Charles Dexter Ward And Will
.
Copyright e 1986
Cryptic Publications
Robert M. Price, Editor
107 East James Street
Mount Olive, North Carolina 28365
About time for some more fiction, you say? We agree! And
wotta line-up! Where else but Crypt of Cthulhu are you liable to find
a menu like this?