The Lovecraft Annual No. 1 (2007)

THE LOVECRAFT ANNUAL
Edited by S. T. Joshi No. 1 (2007)

Contents
Lovecraft Read This 3
Darrell Schweitzer
Lovecraft and Lawrence Face the Hidden Gods: Transformations
of Pan in The Colour out of Space and St. Mawr 9
Robert H. Waugh
Memories of Sonia H. Greene Davis 27
Martin H. Kopp
Letters to Lee McBride White 31
H. P. Lovecraft
The Negative Mystics of the Mechanistic Sublime:
Walter Benjamin and Lovecrafts Cosmicism 65
Jeff Lacy and Steven J. Zani
Unity in Diversity: Fungi from Yuggoth as a Unified Setting 84
Phillip A. Ellis
They Have Conquered Dream: A. Merritts The Face
in the Abyss and H. P. Lovecrafts The Mound 91
Peter Levi
The Masters Eyes Shining with Secrets: H. P. Lovecrafts
Influence on Thomas Ligotti 94
Matt Cardin
Thomas Ligottis Metafictional Mapping: The Allegory of
The Last Feast of Harlequin 126
John Langan
Reviews 145
Briefly Noted 26, 83, 90, 93, 160

Abbreviations used in the text and notes:

AT The Ancient Track (Night Shade Books, 2001)
CE Collected Essays (Hippocampus Press, 200406; 5 vols.)
D Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Arkham House, 1986)
DH The Dunwich Horror and Others (Arkham House, 1984)
HM The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (Arkham House,
1989)
MM At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (Arkham House,
1985)
MW Miscellaneous Writings (Arkham House, 1995)
SL Selected Letters (Arkham House, 196576; 5 vols.)

Copyright 2007 by Hippocampus Press

Published by Hippocampus Press, P.O. Box 641, New York, NY 10156
http://www.hippocampuspress.com

Cover illustration by Allen Koszowski. Hippocampus Press logo de-
signed by Anastasia Damianakos. Cover design by Barbara Briggs Silbert.

The Lovecraft Annual is published once a year, in Fall. Articles and let-
ters should be sent to the editor, S. T. Joshi, P.O. Box 66, Moravia, NY
13118, and must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope if
return is desired. All reviews are assigned. Literary rights for articles and
reviews will reside with The Lovecraft Annual for one year after publica-
tion, whereupon they will revert to their respective authors. Payment is
in contributors copies.

ISSN 1935-6102
3
Lovecraft Read This
Darrell Schweitzer
One of the difficulties in the not-always-rewarding art of literary in-
fluence-tracing is determining exactly what an author read and when.
It is one thing to say that elements in Shambles of Eldritch Horror
by J. Batrachian Hackwort prefigure a key passage in The Sound and
the Fury by William Faulkner, but quite another to prove that Faulk-
ner actually read Hackwort, and did so prior to writing The Sound
and the Fury.
In the case of H. P. Lovecraft and his influences, we may often re-
sort to his letters, his essays, and writings about him, which taken to-
gether make him one of the most documented literary persons of all
time. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that if there is a three-day
stretch in Lovecrafts life in which we do not know what he was
reading, who he was with, what they were talking about, and what
flavor the ice cream was, that constitutes a lost period.
Nowhere does Lovecraft mention The City of the Unseen by James
Francis Dwyer, a fantastic adventure novel published in the Argosy
for December 1913, but it is still possible to make a strong case not
only that Lovecraft read it, but that its central image stayed with him
and reappeared in later works. That Lovecraft never mentioned this
novel is easily explained by the fact that it isnt a very good story and
might have even inspired Lovecraft to throw the magazine across the
room in disgust at some point. But the influence may have lingered.
How do we know he read it? He must have owned a copy of this
issue at some point, because the letters column contains the first re-
turn volley in the great Fred Jackson War which Lovecraft instigated
in the pages of the Argosy.
To reiterate quickly: Lovecraft, in the September 1913 issue, pub-
lished a tirade against one Fred Jackson, a writer of sappy romantic
tales, the likes of which Lovecraft wanted to see considerably less. In
the December issue we find one letter headed Bomb for Lovecraft,
4 Darrell Schweitzer
another Elmira vs. Providence, yet another Virginia vs. Providence,
and still another Agrees with Lovecraft, and so on. Most readers
seemed to be pro-Jackson, anti-Lovecraft. Some of the criticisms par-
allel much that has been written since. Elizabeth E. Loop, of Elmira,
N.Y., wrote: If he would use a few less adjectives and more words
with which the general public are more familiar. . . . Plain English,
correctly spoken, sounds better in my estimation. It saves the trouble
of a dictionary at ones elbow (Joshi 12).
Lovecraft thrived on this sort of controversy. He made himself a
personality in the pages of the Argosy (a magazine to which, as a pro-
fessional writer, he never contributed). The Jackson battle raged for
about a year. Much of it, letters from Lovecraft and responses by the
Argosy readers, may be found in the short volume H. P. Lovecraft in the
Argosy, edited by S. T. Joshi. Here for almost the first time we see
Lovecraft displaying his characteristic wit, erudition, and critical ability.
There is even a blast in heroic couplets, Ad Criticos (January 1914).
He was twenty-three at the time, unemployed, and as much of an
invalid recluse as he ever actually was in his life. This was his first real
attempt to reach out to anyone, and as a result of it, Edward F. Daas,
Official Editor of the United Amateur Press Association, invited
Lovecraft to join, and that undeniably changed his life, the amateur-
press scene becoming the catalyst for his literary career, marriage, and
most of his lifelong friendships.
It is obvious from Lovecrafts letters to the magazine that he read
the Argosy almost cover to cover. He is first quoted in the November
1911 issue praising Albert Payson Terhune, an opinion he does not
seem to have sustained in later years.
It is safe to say, then, that Lovecraft read The City of the Unseen.
The cover of the December 1913 issue shows a man and a woman,
leaning romantically against each other, with a camel towering over
them. The blurb says, A complete book-length novel of adventure in
Arabia. Not too promising, but in the Munsey magazines of this pe-
riod one can hope for lost-race adventures in the H. Rider Haggard
mode, and this is what The City of the Unseen proves to be.
The blurbist either had not read the story or was weak on geogra-
phy, because it takes place, not in Arabia, but in Somalia, upon the
coast of which a cast of stereotyped charactersthe hero, the hero-
ine, the heros pal and his girlfriend, an eccentric French scientist, a
muscle-bound sailor, and a Steppin Fetchit type comic-relief Arab
The Lovecraft Annual: 2007 5
with the unlikely name of Sarbare shipwrecked. Dwyer (one of
those all-purpose pulp hacks like H. Bedford-Jones, widely travelled,
hugely prolific, versatile, completely forgotten today) wasnt very
strong on his sense of place either, as he describes cacti growing in the
Somali desert. (Then again, the Munsey magazines were not so strong
on realism generally. All-Story, the companion to The Argosy, had just
let Edgar Rice Burroughs get away with a tiger in Africa when Tarzan
of the Apes was published in the October 1912 issue. None other than
H. P. Lovecraft wrote in and objected.)
Without supplies or a source of fresh water, and apparently not
much worried about it, the survivors set out to walk south along the
coast to the nearest outpost. But suddenly they encounter the
Frenchman, Leroux, behaving oddly, racing crazily across the desert
and scooping up something out of the sand. He tries to discourage the
others, but soon the secret is out that he has found a trail of triangu-
lar gold coins strung out across the landscape, as if a camel-rider with
an impressive gold-hoard and a leaky saddlebag had passed that way.
The coins are of vast antiquity, supposedly minted in Miletus (an an-
cient Greek seaport in Asia Minor) many centuries before Christ,
bearing the Eye of Cybele on one side and the figure of a gladiator
on the other. (As something of an amateur in ancient numismatics, I
can assure you this is nonsense.)
At once, everyone, except for the whining, gibbering Sarb the Arab
(who consistently shows a lot more common sense than anyone else in
this story), becomes completely crazed with gold fever. Off they go, all
considerations of survival forgotten, picking up gold pieces. They come
to an oasis, where the camel-rider may have stopped without discover-
ing his bag was leaking. They cross a chasm the size of the Grand Can-
yon on one of those rickety, swaying rope-and-bamboo bridges so
familiar in cliff-hanger movies. (You may reasonably ask where, in a
desert, the builders got the bamboo. No one does.)
But never mind that. The cast then comes upon the central mys-
tery, the City of the Unseen itself, the stuff of Arabian legends, a lost
and mysterious city of the remote desert, where a massive Black Pillar
rises up out of the sand, with a curse written upon it by the armies of
the Prophet Mohammed, who were apparently unable to penetrate
the City in the seventh century.
Our heroes find their way inside rather quickly. Down they go,
into the bowels of the Earth, into black tunnels of ineffable mystery
. . . but even the French scientist shows little interest in the discovery
itself. He is in it for the money. Soon the vast treasure-hoard is dis-
covered and the maddened characters are literally wallowing in gold.
The chamber in which the gold is kept is partially lighted by arch-
ways which open into the same chasm over which everybody crossed
on the bamboo bridge. Some sunlight filters down from above.
Only cowardly, whiny Sarb thinks to suggest that maybe they
should fill their pockets quickly, then get out of there before the sun
goes down.
But nobody listens. The sun goes down.
The City of the Unseen proves to be inhabited by . . . the Unseen,
slightly built, light-fearing folk a little bit like the Morlocks in H. G.
Wellss The Time Machine, although somewhat less ambitious, at
least of late. They have been hoarding that gold all this time, making
no use of it whatsoever except for a bit incorporated into an attrac-
tive floor design. For all they are apparently responsible for numerous
carvings of exquisite quality, the Unseen People seem to possess no
edged weapons of any kind at present, or even hammers. They resist
the burglarious outsiders with their fists, and also with the curious
stratagem of entangling them with ropes in the dark, in an attempt to
heave them out the archways and into the chasm. Things look very
bad indeed. The little party fights their way back in the dark, misses
the stairway, and is trapped in a far room. Their doom seems certain.
Then, somehow, they are befriended by a maiden of the Unseen
Folk, who mercifully lets them out. You would think theyd have
enough sense to escape at that point, but, no, for all Sarbs whining, the
gold-madness overcomes them yet again and back they go to the gold-
vault, where the obsessed French scientist is ultimately killed and en-
tombed. More perils follow, a desperate escape through the chasm and
an underground river, while the troglodytes hurl boulders from above.
The hero credits his lady-love, Dorothy, with coaxing him back to san-
ity. No credit is given to Sarb, whose incantations and mysterious cir-
cular signs drawn in the sand seem to repel the Unseen Folk and stave
off pursuitat least for a time . . . although the menace remains and
eventually Sarb runs away into the desert, gibbering mad. We never do
find out about the camel-rider with the leaky saddlebags.
There is no denying this is a rather silly, if sporadically entertain-
ing novel, decently written in parts, verbosely redundant in others.
The escape through the chasm at the end is actually exciting.
As in many pulp lost-race novels of the period (Rex Stouts Under
the Andes, published in All-Story for February 1914, comes immedi-
ately to mind), once the explorers of The City of the Unseen discover
the lost city, the rest is a matter of fights and chases. There is so
much action that nothing happens in terms of development of idea or
character. And, usually, such stories include a beautiful priestess and
a dinosaur. There is only a hint of the priestess here, and no dinosaur,
so readers must have felt short-changed.
But there are occasionally effective, atmospheric descriptions of
the accursed and legendary Black Pillar, the buried city, and the sub-
terranean depths. One imagines that after Lovecraft tossed the maga-
zine across the room (if he did), some of the images stayed with him.
The relationship between this story and The Nameless City or even
At the Mountains of Madness is rather like that of Anthony M. Ruds
Ooze (which Lovecraft undeniably read, in the first issue of Weird
Tales) to The Dunwich Horror. The Rud story, with its mysterious
doings in a remote estate in the Alabama swamps, where something (a
gigantic amoeba, we eventually learn) is growing bigger and devour-
ing an uncanny number of cattle, is sort of an idiots version of the
Lovecraft. Few would dispute that Wilbur Whateleys brother is a
tremendous improvement over Ruds amoeba.
Likewise, Lovecraft, having read The City of the Unseen, would
have realized how much more interesting the story could be if the
Black Pillar opened to reveal something more than an improbable
coin-hoard and troglodytes with ropes, and if the entire ridiculous
cast of characters were dispensed with. The carvings on the walls,
admired by the hero in moments of lucidity, are enormously sugges-
tive. Lovecraft, who had a far superior imagination to Dwyer, substi-
tuted prehuman and cosmic mystery for the mundane melodrama.
Lovecraft conveys a sense of increasing awe, as discovery follows dis-
covery, an effect Dwyer is either incapable of or no more than mo-
mentarily interested in.
One also cannot overlook poor Sarb with his magical circles in the
sand, which seem to repel the menacing Unseen for a while. The
Elder Sign, anyone?
There are, very likely, many more such sources of Lovecrafts
fiction. We know that he read very widely in the pulp magazines be-
tween about 1905 (when he started with the Argosy) and sometime
in the 1920s. Like many superior writers, he was no doubt exasper-
ated with the tripe he encountered, particularly when he saw more
potential in the material than the authors apparently did. Recall his
famous comment about Seabury Quinns Jules de Grandin series, that
these had managed to bungle so many ideas and situations that a
more competent writer ought to get permission to go back and write
the stories.
There are other evident cases of this sort of oneupmanship in
Lovecraft. Unimpressed with the tame gossip of Sherwood Ander-
sons Winesburg, Ohio, Lovecraft produced a story with a really
shocking family secret in itFacts concerning the Late Arthur Jer-
myn and His Family. J. Paul Suters Beyond the Door (Weird Tales,
April 1923), a story Lovecraft actually admired, bears more than a
passing resemblance to The Rats in the Walls (Weird Tales, March
1924). If there is a link, it is simply that Lovecraft saw the potential in
the material and did it better. Such an approach can seem arrogant.
One thinks of the possibly apocryphal Beethoven insult, I liked your
opera. I think Ill set it to music.
But if the writer can actually pull it off, then he is entitled. That is
the difference between mere talent and genius.
Works Cited
Dwyer, James Francis. The City of the Unseen. Argosy 74, No. 1
(December 1913): 191.
Joshi, S. T., ed. H. P. Lovecraft in the Argosy: Collected Correspondence
from the Munsey Magazines. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon
Press, 1994.
9
Lovecraft and Lawrence Face the
Hidden Gods: Transformations of Pan in
The Colour out of Space and St. Mawr
Robert H. Waugh
Recent studies of The Colour out of Space have explored its dense
literary quality. As a story that alludes to and plays with a variety of
texts, it has slowly become as iridescent a work as the stone that it
celebrates. First, it contains a network of allusions and parodies of
various biblical moments: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah;
the leading of the children of Israel out of Egypt; the incarnation,
death, resurrection, and second coming of Christ; and the prophecies
of the Antichrist.
1
Most of these allusions parody the original texts as
well as prepare the way for an apocalyptic event. Also, in a complex
fashion the story layers allusions to Macbeth with allusions to Para-
dise Lost.
2
What we have not yet recognized is the possibility that
some of the imagery of Lovecrafts story that we have so far ascribed
to biblical material and some of its salient themes may have been
suggested by Lovecrafts reading D. H. Lawrences long novella St.
Mawr, which appeared two years before Lovecrafts work. Once
more, as Gayford and Mariconda have argued, we must consider the
extent to which Lovecraft has connections with modernism.
The evidence for this possibility is textual rather than direct.
Lovecraft refers to Lawrence only twice in the letters, some three
years after the writing of The Colour out of Space. The second ref-
erence is appreciative, clearly the result of some thought. It begins by
contrasting to writers who violate peoples inherited sensibilities for
no adequate reason other writers whose affronts to convention are

1. Price (2325), Burleson (116), and Waugh (Landscapes 23436) deal with
these allusions in detail.
2. Burleson (11113) and Waugh (The Blasted Heath) discuss these particulars.
10 Robert H. Waugh
merely incidents in a sincere and praiseworthy struggle to interpret or
symbolize life as it is (SL 3.264). Among these Lovecraft includes
Voltaire, Rabelais, Fielding, and Lawrence:
We would be simply foolish not to recognise the vigourously honest
intent to see and depict life as a balanced whole, which everywhere
animates their productions. When they commit a blunder in tech-
nique or proportioning, it is our place to excuse itwhether it con-
cern a difficult or a common themeand not to adopt a leering or
sanctimoniously horrified attitude if the theme happens to be diffi-
cult. (SL 3.26465)
Censorship, so often a question that arose with Lawrences career,
does not concern Lovecraft because no censorship law ever kept any
high-grade scholar from reading and owning all the books he needs
Bostonians read Dreiser and Lawrence, and Tennesseeans understand
the principles of biology (SL 3.265). Then, as is so often his wont,
Lovecraft draws back from the fray: But life is a bore! And I dont
know but that the frank expressers are about as damned a bore as the
vacant-skulld suppressors! Thats why I light out for the fifth dimen-
sion (SL 3.266). We must wonder, however, whether before he lit
out beyond the rim of Einsteinian space-time (SL 3.266) Lovecraft
had in fact, like those Bostonians, read Lawrence.
It is possible. The novella was published by Knopf in 1925 and
from May through November reviewed in such places as the Satur-
day Review, the Nation and Athenaeum, the New York Times Book
Review, the New Statesman, the New Republic, the Saturday Review
of Literature, and the Dial (Roberts 7576). The publication of any-
thing by Lawrence was not a minor event. And it is possible that
Lawrences repetitive, hypnotic style, exploring in close detail the
atmosphere of a landscape, might have appealed to Lovecraft, whose
aesthetic depends so much on landscape and atmosphere. Whether
Lovecraft had read that story, we do know from a remark in Super-
natural Horror in Literature that he had read Lawrences ground-
breaking Studies in Classic American Literature (D 402), which had
been published in 1923 shortly before the novella. A propos of Haw-
thornes The Marble Faun Lovecraft writes that the romance cannot
help being interesting despite the persistent incubus of moral alle-
gory, anti-Popery propaganda, and a Puritan prudery which has
caused the late D. H. Lawrence to express a longing to treat the au-
thor in a highly undignified manner (D 402)perhaps, his memory
in this point not being too good, referring to Lawrences image of sin-
ful man in The Blithedale Romance dropping his pants for a flogging
(111). Lawrence and Lovecraft are interested in different Hawthornes;
the Englishman is fascinated by the duplicities of The Scarlet Letter
and The Blithedale Romance, whereas the American is concerned
with The Marble Faun and The House of the Seven Gables. Neverthe-
less, I think Lawrence did guide Lovecrafts reading of Hawthorne;
and Lawrences description of the American attempt to slough off
European consciousness and to grow a new consciousness may also
have attracted him. Most often, Lawrence writes, the laborious proc-
ess plunges the American into a profound sickness:
Out! Out! He cries, in all kinds of euphemisms.
Hes got to have his new skin on him before ever he can get out.
And hes got to get out before his new skin can ever be his own
skin.
So there he is, a torn, divided monster.
The true American, who writhes and writhes like a snake that is
long in sloughing. (62)
Wilbur Whateley in The Dunwich Horror, trying to introduce an
alien monster, his brother, through the means of the Necronomicon, a
book of hidden wisdom from the old world, suffers this fate, a torn,
divided monster, on the floor of Miskatonic Library. The story ren-
ders in narrative terms the analysis Lovecraft makes of the contradic-
tions of Puritanism in the early paragraphs of The Picture in the
House. Lovecraft and Lawrence are not far apart when they consider
the dilemma of being an American.
With all these points in mind, let us consider Lawrences novella.
St. Mawr relates the story of a young woman who, because of her en-
counter with a totemic Welsh horse, decides to leave her husband
and his shallow English society for the mountains and deserts of Ari-
zona. It is a conversion story that challenges basic assumptions of con-
temporary life, even the assumption that sexuality and intimacy can
save the individual or that individual psychology has any significance
whatever. Instead, the novella investigates the kerygma of the horse
and of the western landscape. It is the description of that landscape,
the climax of the novella, which most concerns Lovecraft; but the
12 Robert H. Waugh
work has other moments which must have interested him, and we
shall begin with them.
First we should note the story of the horse itself, staring out of the
darkness as a challenging presence that is both solar with its sun-arched
neck and chthonic with a neck that starts forth like a snake; he is a stal-
lion, but does not seem to fancy the mares, for some reason (12), and
his Welsh name means St. Mary. He is phallic, as his lovely naked
head and his resemblance to a snake indicate, but he is also feminine;
opposites coincide in him. When Lou Witt, the protagonist, looks at
him that first time he stands there, his ears back, his face averted, but
attending as if he were some lightning-conductor (12). The crisis of the
novella occurs when the horse rears up and falls upon her husband
who, not man enough to master it, pulls it back onto himself. One of
the uncertainties of the work is whether the horse startles at a whistle
or at the sight of a snake that children have stoned to death; but the
text makes it most probable that it startles in sympathy with the death
of a kindred spirit. That image of the snake is to recur much more
forcefully at the end of the novel.
Horses play a part in Lovecrafts story. Ammis horse is sensitive
to the transformation of the landscape (DH 61), breaks loose when
the Colour in the well begins to move (DH 71), and in the climax of
the story screams and dies: That was the last of Hero till they buried
him next day (DH 77). The totemic name Hero indicates its
chthonic aspect, the son of the Great Mother and the snake (Harrison
26094). In addition, the name is androgynous if we keep in mind the
Hero for whom Leander drowns or the Hero of Much Ado about
Nothing. And St. Mawr no more endures to the end of Lawrences
novella than Lovecrafts Hero does, for before Lou retires to her
ranch where she has her climactic vision, her stallion deserts his he-
roic celibacy to pursue mares. No god is the ultimate god.
This description of the horses in Lovecrafts story, however, in no
way testifies to the real presence of St. Mawr, for with his androgyny,
his power, his hidden threat, and his character as a conductor of
lightning, he much more suggests the role of the meteor, that mes-
senger from another world. It is a stone, but with hollows inside. It
possesses a torrid invulnerability (DH 58) that renders it immune to
chemical solvents. Most interestingly, the color of St. Mawr is diffi-
cult to fix. At first he is described simply as a bay, but three para-
graphs later, when Saintsbury pats him, Lou saw the brilliant skin of
the horse crinkle a little in apprehensive anticipation, like the shadow
of the descending hand on a bright red-gold liquid (11). He emanates
a dark, invisible fire, an oxymoron related to Miltons darkness
visible that indicates how dangerous an animal he is (11); he has al-
ready killed two men, Mr. Griffith Edwardss son who had his skull
smashed in and a groom crushed . . . against the side of the stall
(12). The influence from the meteor kills Gardners sons, and the
horse kills the young also, culminating in the injury he wreaks on
Lous husband.
Before Lous vision on the ranch another god is introduced, the
god Pan. The son of Hermes, himself an ambiguous figure in Greek
mythology, Pan is both goat and human, an image that may have in-
fluenced the traditional image of the devil with his sharp ears, tail,
and cloven hoof. He feeds his flock of goats (Pan may in fact not
mean all but the feeder), plays his panpipes, and sometimes at
noon causes a panic in anyone who encounters him. Coleridge, in a
proto-Lawrentian mood, read the figure as intelligence blended with
a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the con-
scious intellect of man (2.93). Lawrence introduces his Pan through a
character that to some extent resembles an ironic self-image of the
parody of Lawrence that was beginning to move through the popular
press; this character, Cartwright, a man who dabbles in alchemy and
the occult, is about thirty-eight years old (49), and Lawrence was al-
most forty when he began the novella.
Lawrence, however, may have had someone else in mind, whom
Lovecraft would have recognized, Arthur Machen, a Welshman with
a taste for the occult who in 1894 published a novella well-known in
its day, The Great God Pan. With his eyes that twinkled and ex-
panded like a goats (50), Cartwright is emblematic of the priapic
god, but he argues that Pan is a force beyond the male and the female:
Pan was the hidden mysterythe hidden cause. Thats how it was a
Great God. Pan wasnt he at all (51). This god transcends the misog-
yny inherent in Machens story, at the conclusion of which a beautiful
woman disintegrates into a loathsome jelly: I saw the form waver
from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself, and then again reunited.
Then I saw the body descend to the beasts when it ascended, and
that which was on the heights go down into the depths, even to the
abyss of all being (1.65). Finally a form appears that cannot be de-
scribed, but the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculp-
14 Robert H. Waugh
tures . . . as a horrible and indescribable shape, neither man nor beast
(1.65). Helen Vaughn, however, through whom in this story Pan is
incarnated into the world of the fin de sicle, is not monstrous be-
cause of her descent to the original protoplasm but because she en-
gages in bisexual relations that transgress gender categories; though
Pan is incarnate in a woman, the imagery attempts to suggest a bio-
logical force that lies beneath the male and female. And thus we re-
turn to Lawrences vision.
A more classical Pan appears in E. M. Forsters 1902 tale, The
Story of a Panic, in which an indescribably repellent (1) young boy
called Eustace becomes the apparent incarnation of the god when on
a picnic with his relatives in the hills above Ravello, in a hollow that
resembles a many-fingered green hand, palm upwards, which was
clutching convulsively to keep us in its grasp (2). When everyone
runs in a fit of inexplicable animal panic, Eustace remains behind and
undergoes a transformation; goat-prints surround him, evidence to his
tutor that the Evil One has been very near us in bodily form (9).
Worse than all this, however, is the sudden friendship that Eustace
now feels for an Italian servant, who dies that night as Eustace es-
capes in a pantheistic ecstasy:
He spoke first of night and the stars and planets above his head, of
the swarms of fireflies below him, of the invisible sea below the fire-
flies, of the great rocks covered with anemones and shells . . . He
spoke of the rivers and waterfalls, of the ripening bunches of grapes,
of the smoking cone of Vesuvius and the hidden fire-channels that
made the smoke, of the myriads of lizards who were lying curled up
in the crannies of the sultry earth . . . (16)
Like Machens Pan, this is a being whose power is inamicable to hu-
man life. The lesbian imagery of Machens story transforms itself here
into gay imagery, but the point of sexual transgression and transfor-
mation is the same.
When Lawrence read Forsters story in 1915 he objected force-
fully: Dont you see Pan is the undifferentiated root and stem draw-
ing out of unfathomable darkness, and my Angels and Devils are old-
fashioned symbols for the flower into which we strive to burst? . . .
But your Pan is a stumping back to the well head, a perverse pushing
back the waters to their source, and saying, the source is everything
(Letters 2.27576). The myth, in Lawrences view, is always insuffi-
cient; he does not want to examine where Pan came from, as Machen
and Forster seem to do, but where the force that he represents is go-
ing. Pan needs to disappear back into the landscape, become once
more a hidden god, if he is to become potent.
A more benign Pan appears in Kenneth Grahames Wind in the
Willows as a Christ-figure, the true Christ of the animals, following a
tradition based upon a story that Plutarch related, one found in Eliza-
beth Barrett Brownings The Dead Pan, Friedrich Schillers Die
Gtter Griechenlands, and also on the lips of a would-be artist in
Forsters story. A sailor, Thamus, hearing a command in the air to
proclaim that the great god Pan has died (Plutarch 400), does so and
hears a loud lament (Plutarch 400403). As this story coincided with
the birth (or crucifixion) of Christ it was thought to herald the end of
the old world and the beginning of the new; scholars today connect
the story with the traditional lament for the fertility god Tammuz or
Adonis (Pan 663). Something ambiguous resides, then, in the tradi-
tional interpretations of the story; either the voice announced the
birth of Christ and the dispersal of the pagan gods, including Pan, or,
more interestingly, it implied that Pan, the all who was the logos of
the world, had died. In Grahames novel Christ manifests himself as
the god who cares for every lost creature, lest the awful remem-
brance [of death] should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and
pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-
lives of little animals (77; ch. 7).
Lawrence and Lovecraft know of another Pan, however, one
much more ambiguous than we have observed so far, in Hawthornes
romance The Marble Faun. The work concerns four friends in Rome,
one of whom, a young innocent named Donatello, bears an uncanny
resemblance to the statue of a faun, though only a few minutes later
they doubt the resemblance because faces change so much, from
hour to hour, that the same set of features has often no keeping with
itself (9.20), any more than the stone out of space has any keeping
with itself. Nevertheless, Donatello may more than resemble the
faun, since he refuses to allow anyone to touch his ears, which are
hidden by his thick hair. But though in the fancy of his friends he
seems to incarnate the golden age and Eden, he suffers a fall, throwing
a man over a cliff to his death, and Donatellos guilt infects the inno-
cence of his friends. As one of them says, perhaps meaning more than
she realizes, If there be any such dreadful mixture of good and evil
16 Robert H. Waugh
. . ., then the good is turned to poison, not the evil to wholesomeness
(10.24445). Hawthorne is in some perplexity about such an argu-
ment, and his perplexity extends throughout the ambiguous work;
but Lovecraft would wholeheartedly agree, and The Colour out of
Space may be read as a confirmation of that view. The Marble Faun
concerns several mixtures, human and animal, natural and supernatu-
ral, innocence and guilt, real and fantastic, male and female, European
and American, Puritan and Catholic, mixtures by which the charac-
ters are attracted and repulsed. However we understand these mix-
tures, we must take this language almost literally in the case of the
innocent Puritan Hilda who witnessed Donatellos murder: Poor
well-spring of a virgins heart, into which a murdered corpse has
casually fallen, and whence it could not be drawn forth again, but lay
there . . . tainting its sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and
ugly death (10.16869). Machen and Forster suggest something
much more sinister about Pan than Grahame or Hawthorne, Law-
rence something much more powerful and amoral, and Lovecraft
something much more aloof and destructive. For Lovecraft of course
knows of Pan. By 1920 he had passed beyond his pretty classicizing
and wrote of dreaded Pan, whose queer companions are many
(D 30). But considering Machen, Forster, Grahame, and Hawthorne
we now have a better idea who those queer companions could be.
Several of these details recur in Lovecrafts story, the deliques-
cence, the death of god, the physical and moral fall, the well, and the
taint of innocence. The bisexual element does not surprise Lovecraft
since he had found in Margaret Murrays account of the witch-cult a
description of its god that contained bisexual elements. Originally
the god of this cult was incarnate in a man, a woman, or an animal;
the animal form being apparently earlier than the human, for the god
was often spoken of as wearing the skin or attributes of an animal
(12), not surprisingly of a goat or a horse (6870). Murray does not
suggest that Pan was this god but indicates the two-faced god Janus,
Dianus, or Diana (12). So bisexual details find their place in The
Colour out of Space. The stone and its hollow globules are both
male and female, testicles and womb. The lightning-bolt is a male fer-
tility motif, but the iridescence of the Colour suggests Iris, the god-
dess of the rainbow. It lies in the water of the well, but it ascends to
the constellation Cygnus, the swan into which Zeus transformed him-
self in order to seduce Leda. The Colour manifests itself as both male
and female. In this regard it is significant that in St. Mawr two major
characters, Lewis and Lou, bear the same name.
Lawrence hints in a number of ways that Pan, whatever Pan may
be, presides over the crisis in which St. Mawr rears back. It is noon,
the panic hour, and the whistle indicates the sound of the Panpipe, a
detail found in Forsters story. When the horse rears, his eyes were
arched, his nostrils wide, his face ghastly in a sort of panic . . ., his face
in panic, almost like some terrible lizard (62). St. Mawr becomes the
embodiment of the chthonic moment in Pan appears as terror.
The figure of Pan recurs in Lawrences novel when Lewis, the
Welsh groom, speaking out of the darkness where Pan lives (95) reacts
to a falling star by telling Lous mother how it feels to live inside a myth-
ology. For Lewis the trees are alive, watching the humans who move
among them and eager to hurt them; the trees watch and listen and
will kill the humans if possible (9596). Lewis reacts in this way be-
cause for him the sky is not the empty space suggested by Newtonian
science, not like an empty house with a slate falling from the roof;
instead, many things twitch and twitter in the sky, and many things
happen beyond us, and so when a meteor falls from the sky Lewis
thinks, Theyre throwing something to us from the distance, and weve
got to have it, whether we want it or not (97). Just as Lovecraft ani-
mates the universe of Einsteinean space with an indifference that seems
malevolent and also describes trees thrashing in a windless night, Law-
rence argues for a world where neutral space is filled with a vital life.
Closely connected with the figure of Pan is the myth of the horse
that so much concerns the plot of the novel. When Lou first encoun-
ters the horse he already bears a totemic impact, his eyes arching out
of the darkness with a challenge that Lou slowly responds to as the
novella proceeds. He is demonic, like the classical daemons that en-
counter mortals in a personal fashion. Half snakelike, though with the
sun in his neck, he represents an early version of the divinity that
shall appear at the end of the novella. Lovecraft develops very little
of this in connection with the horse itself, but it is possible that this
imagery combines with the image of the oracular, cannibal horses in
Macbeth to produce the horse that takes on an admonitory character
in The Colour out of Space.
The climax of Lawrences novella occurs in an impassioned de-
scription of the power and the slight horror of the pre-sexual prime-
val world that Lou finds in the Arizona landscape. Lawrences
18 Robert H. Waugh
profound distrust of human individualism expresses itself as the indi-
vidual vanishes in the animated divine landscape where pillars of
cloud appear in the desert. This is a divinity, however, which only
slowly appears and which explicitly has nothing to do with the Chris-
tian god of love. It is a world before and after the God of Love (139),
a repudiation of Grahames Pan which Lovecraft also repudiates. First
the debasing (133) and invidious malevolence of the landscape is
once more insisted upon; it eats the soul of anyone who attempts to
live within it a life of trade and production (13334). Especially, it re-
duces a New England woman who had moved there with her hus-
band. No longer able to speak, she spends her days staring (137),
unable to engage the seething cauldron of lower life, seething on the
very tissue of the higher life, seething the soul away, seething at the
marrow (141), a passage that recalls both the disintegration of Helen
in Machens story and the cauldron of the witches in Macbeth. The
landscape, which is also to say the demonic divinity that is slowly be-
coming manifest within it, transforms her into a corpse that she tries
to hide from, the corpse of her New England belief in a world ulti-
mately all for love (141). And what happens to the New England
woman happens to Lous mother: She sat like a pillar of salt, her face
looking what the Indians call a False Face, meaning a mask. She
seemed to have crystallized into neutrality (142). Like Lots wife, who
looks back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lous mother
freezes into a mask because she is unable to move into the new world
of the Arizona landscape that her daughter finds so meaningful.
This entire section of the novella has an obvious relevance to the
description of Mrs. Gardner, the New England woman traumatized
and transformed by the Colour that has fallen as though it were a fal-
ling star. She becomes sure that something was taken awayshe was
being drained of something. . . . By July she had ceased to speak and
crawled on all fours (DH 65). All these events become a religious
challenge. The god of the Gardners was never a god of love; Love-
craft knows his Puritans too well, better than Lawrence. For Nahum
Gardner Gods overwhelming election has become preterition: it
must all be a judgment of some sort; though he could not fancy what
for, since he had always walked uprightly in the Lords ways so far as
he knew (DH 68). For Lovecraft the visitation of the meteor has
meant an emptying of any metaphysical sanction, even that god of a
greater life of which Lawrence was the prophet.
One of the most telling details of Lovecrafts story is the super-
natural abundance that the landscape seems to manifest even as the
people are destroyed within it: The fruit was growing to phenome-
nal size and unwonted gloss, and in such abundance that extra barrels
were ordered to handle the coming crop (DH 60), though at last
everything crumbles, and it went from mouth to mouth that there
was poison in Nahums ground (DH 62). The same abundance ap-
pears in Lawrences landscape, filled with an intense, fiery, vegetative
life: The very flowers came up bristly, and many of them were fang-
mouthed, like the dead-nettle; and none had any real scent (138).
They do, however, possess colors that declare an inhuman savagery,
the curious columbines of the stream-beds, columbines scarlet out-
side and yellow in, like the red and yellow of a heralds uniform
(138), or the honeysuckle, the purest, most perfect vermilion scarlet,
cleanest fire-colour, hanging in long drops like a shower of fire-rain
that is just going to strike the earth (139), or the rush of red sparks
and Michaelmas daisies, and the tough wild sunflowers (139). The
apocalyptic landscape is overrun in a battle, a battle, with banners of
bright scarlet and yellow (139). Even the rose, the traditional flower
of love, is set among spines the devil himself must have conceived in
a moment of sheer ecstasy (139).
This mention of the devil, like the earlier mention of those flow-
ers that are fang-mouthed, makes us consider what kind of divinity,
what kind of spirit of place (141) inhabits this landscape. Certainly
Pan has a part in it, for it had been a ranch of goats that the Mexicans
called fire-mouths, because everything they nibble die (13132), and
as we noted Pan, half-goat, may be one of the sources of the tradi-
tional image of the devil.
The landscape, however, is animated by a spirit of place, a great
reality (Studies 16), that slowly becomes explicit. A part of that god
can be seen in the vast, eagle-like wheeling of the daylight, that
turned as the eagles which lived in the near rocks turned overhead in
the blue (135). Beneath them the vast strand of the desert would
float with curious undulations and exhalations amid the blue fragility
of mountains (13536). In comparison to this desert charged with
enormous energy, mortal life is as nothing: The landscape lived, and
lived as the world of the gods, unsullied and unconcerned. The great
circling landscape lived its own life, sumptuous and uncaring. Man
did not exist for it (137). Finally the god appears, the animosity of
20 Robert H. Waugh
the spirit of place: the crude, half-created spirit of place, like some
serpent-bird for ever attacking man, in a hatred of mans onward-
struggle towards further creation (141). This is Quetzacoatl, the god
that Lawrence will celebrate in his next novel, The Plumed Serpent.
The details of this description could have originated in many
places. Though he had only arrived recently in the Southwest, Law-
rence soon became fascinated by the mythic materials of the region.
Some of its aspects, however, appear reminiscent of Tennysons
poem The Eagle: Fragment:
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls. (110)
Several of these details are to be found in both Lawrence and Love-
craft. In Lawrence the landscape seems a seething cauldron (141),
where sometimes the vast strand of the desert would float with cu-
rious undulations and exhalations (147). In Lovecraft the narrator
looks forward to the time when the reservoir will mirror the sky and
ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with
the deeps secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean (54). In
Lawrence the lightning, a symbol of Zeus and fertility, has left a per-
fect scar, white and long as lightning itself, upon a totemic pine
(138); and we recall that St. Mawr is a lightning-conductor (12). In
Lovecraft, the lightning strikes where the meteor has fallen and
scarred the ground. The sense of the sun, though, is very different in
these works; Lawrence shares with Tennyson a sense of its domi-
nance in the high mountains, whereas Lovecraft mutes the sun as he
represents the viewpoint of the Gardner family, slowly drowned in
the effects of the miasmic Colour. A difference between Tennysons
and Lawrences vision and Lovecrafts is the ring and circle of the ho-
rizon that obsesses the English imagination, the open space of the
great world, and Lovecrafts narrow landscape of a claustrophobic
New England valley. Tennysons eagle appears in Lawrence as an ac-
tual creature and as a part of the metaphoric landscape. Though no
implicit eagle appears in Lovecraft the lightning itself, as his classical
mind would have recognized, belonged to Zeus, whose bird is the ea-
gle. He would, for instance, have been aware of the portent in the Il-
iad when an eagle seizes a snake:
Joves Bird on sounding Pinions beat the Skies;
A bleeding Serpent of enormous Size,
His Talons trussd; alive, and curling round,
He stung the Bird, whose Throat receivd the Wound.
Mad with the Smart, he drops the fatal Prey,
In airy Circles wings his painful way. (12.23339)
Hectors brother warns that the eagle Retards our host (12.258); it
warns humanity not to exceed its limit. More generally, the portent is
an image of the antagonism between the sky and the earth; though it
is the first plumed serpent that appears in European literature, before
anyone in Europe had begun to interpret world mythology, it repre-
sents a failure at reconciling sky and earth, rather like what occurs in
Lovecrafts story.
Another way to understand Tennysons lines presents itself, how-
ever, and thereby another way to understand St. Mawr and The Col-
our out of Space. Given the traditional significance of the eagle as an
emblem of contemplation, its domination of the earth may symbolize
the poetic imagination, attempting in a lordly fashion to seize its sub-
ject, a seizure that is no more successful an act than is Kubla Khan,
if we keep in mind that each poem presents itself as a fragment. Law-
rences novella is also a fragment; its failure of closure points beyond
itself at the novel that he was shortly to write, The Plumed Serpent, in
which he would much more thoroughly investigate that archetype.
Like the eagle that circles and submerges itself in its landscape, Law-
rence perceives himself as circling and submerging himself in every
new landscape in which he attempts to find the new form of the gods
that shall be.
This interpretation makes us reconsider Lovecrafts story as an at-
tempt to revision his own poetic imagination; that is to say, in Hill-
mans sense of the word, he treats the Colour as a myth of his own
power to create weird fiction. When the Colour returns to the sky, it
aims itself at Deneb in the constellation of the Swan, which is a tradi-
tional image of the poet. Socrates seems to put aside irony when he
22 Robert H. Waugh
imagines himself as a swan, one that as a poet and a philosopher
praises the good things it shall see after its death (Phaedo 85b). With
more irony, and I think more akin to Lovecrafts mode, at the end of
the second book of the Odes Horace imagines himself as a half-
human and a half-swan, almost but not quite transformed into the
great bard he believes and fears
3
that he shall be regarded as after his
death (2.22). Lovecrafts Colour remains in this halfway state, bizarre
and threatening while a small part of it remains in the well to infect
Ammi, the narrator, and the reader. In this infection Lovecraft imag-
ines his art as successful, but insofar as it cannot return to that great
otherness in which it originates as unsuccessful; and even the return
aims itself at Deneb, the tail of the Swan, not its eyes or its wings.
And just as the Swan in the constellation represents the swan into
which Zeus transformed himself when he seduced Leda, with its own
voice echoing internally, Ipse deum Cycnus condit vocemque sub
illo, / non totus volucer, secumque immurmurat intus [The swan
itself conceals a god and his voice within him, not completely a bird,
and murmurs to itself within] (Manilius 5.38182), just so the Colour,
a messenger from the outside, retains its secret within itself; and
Lovecraft, despite his voluminous letters, retains the secret of his
creativity in the dreams from which so many of them originate. Ten-
nyson and Lawrences imagination glories in the day, Lovecrafts in
the night. Tennysons eagle, a contemplative that stands Close to the
sun in lonely lands and with great energy falls upon its prey, per-
forms an act of the apocalyptic imagination that informs the sense of
final things found in both Lawrence and Lovecraft.
These final things, the consummation of the world and its judg-
ment, are quite complex with both authors. In Lawrence it is a ques-
tion of what gods shall appear and what gods the protagonist Lou
shall serve. She gives an indication of this early in her approach to her
Arizona farm, as she turns to the hidden gods and the hidden fire.
Now it is no longer a question of Pan, but of various mythological
presences, which correspond to and argue with the successive inner
sanctuaries of herself (129). As she puts it at this point, the chief god
shall be my Apollo mystery of the inner fire, which is also the hid-
den fire . . . alive and burning in the sky (129). It is as though she

3. This word refers to Horaces anxiety that a classic is good for nothing but
teaching children their grammar (Epis. 1.20.1718).
were about to become Vestal virgin, the oracle of Delphi, and St.
Simon Stylites all at once, dedicated to the gods that rule the zenith
of the sky and the private hearth.
In contrast to this god, the goats of Pan that once roamed the
mountain are the spirits of inertia with their fire-mouths that kill
everything and their smell that came up like some uncanny acid fire
(132), the creatures that represent all the forces that slew the New
England woman. These preside over the poison-weed and the curious
disintegration working all the time, a sort of malevolent breath, like a
stupefying, irritant gas, coming out of the unfathomed mountains
(133). This language is very like that language that Lovecraft uses to
describe the effect of the Colour that has left a scar on the landscape
like a great spot eaten by acid (DH 55), on occasion like a gas that
brushes past Ammi or the narrator and leaves them unable to react.
Above all, it is a poison that cannot be leached out of the soil (65) and
that in the climactic moment is revealed as an undimensioned rain-
bow of cryptic poison from the well (78). In both books the inimical
powers are fiery, impalpable, acidic, and poisonous, the destructive
forces of the snake that has not yet raised itself from the earth.
Thus Lovecrafts story does hint at the snake and bird. After the
narrator has assured us several times of the poison and acid that the
Colour spills upon the landscape, he speculates, Whatever daemon
hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something or else it would
quickly spread. Is it fastened to the roots of those trees that claw the
air? (81). The rhetoric cannot permit us to see the serpent or bird of
prey still hidden in the landscape, but for a moment the story points
at a snake and bird groping beneath the ground.
Despite this mythological mode I must admit that Lovecraft's
story contains no bird except the poultry that turned greyish and
died very quickly (DH 66), a nasty end from which it is difficult to
draw any haruspicinal consequence. His serpent is not plumed. Mrs.
Gardner perceives things that moved and changed and fluttered
(DH 65); the trees are clawing at the grey November sky (DH 69),
at the crisis twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in con-
vulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impo-
tently (DH 76), but they are never able to escape the ground in the
flight that they desire. This eagle tears from underneath the earth, not
from above it. The plumed serpent does not appear. In this landscape
Lovecraft can see no way how the things above and the things below
24 Robert H. Waugh
can be reconciled; the coincidence of opposites does not take place.
Though it comes from the sky and returns to it, a sign in the heavens
and its messenger, this monster assumes a peloric form in the well;
the reader experiences it for only a short time as a teratic portent.
4
It
returns, explosively propelled from the center of the earth into the
otherness from which it came, but a portion of it falls back; it tries to
become one or the other but lags behind both. It is too, too Ameri-
can, a torn, divided monster.
Though the two stories work towards a revelation that is very
similar, the differences are striking. Lovecrafts short story, to the
mind of many critics one of his best,
5
is condensed, unveering, and
inevitable. Lawrence's novella is more diffuse, beginning as an analysis
of a modern marriage, moving into a satire of modern culture, and
only at the end revealing itself as a religious challenge. Also, some-
thing of a reversal of expectations takes place here. Lovecraft, the
quondam disciple of Poe, deserts his fantastic pantheon and takes de-
cisive steps by which The Colour out of Space becomes a science
fiction work rather than a weird tale, though not a science fiction
work that remains content with the Newtonian laws of science. Law-
rence, who began as a naturalist in the mode of Hardy, creates in the
final pages of the novella a fantasia of the unconscious that plays with
a variety of mythological figures.
Who would have expected that they could meet across such dif-
ferences?
Works Cited
Burleson, Donald R. Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1990.
Cannon, Peter. H. P. Lovecraft. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. Ed. J. Shawcross. Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Cygnus. The Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11th ed.
Forster, E. M. The Machine Stops and Other Stories. Ed. Rod Meng-
ham. London: Andr Deutsch, 1997.

4. I have in mind here the contrast that Jane Harrison drew between teratic and
peloric manifestations; the teratic is a sign in the sky, a manifestation of the
rational powers, the peloric a monstrous growth in the earth (45859).
5. Cf. Joshi (13439) and Cannon (86).
Gayford, Norman R. The Artist as Antaeus: Lovecraft and Modern-
ism. In An Epicure in the Terrible, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T.
Joshi. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991.
27397.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Intro. Peter Green. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press/Worlds Classics, 1983.
Harrison, Jane. Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion.
2nd ed. Cleveland: World Publishing Company/Meridian Books,
1962.
Hawthorne, The Marble Faun; or, The Romance of Monte Beni. Vols.
IX and X in the Old Manse Edition, 22 vols. Cambridge, MA:
Houghton, Mifflin, 1900.
Homer. The Iliad of Homer: Books XXXIV. Trans. Alexander Pope.
In The Poems of Alexander Pope. Vol. VIII. Ed. Maynard Mack.
London: Methuen, 1967.
Horace. Opera. 1st ed. Ed. Edward C. Wickham. 2nd ed. Ed. H. W.
Garrod. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912.
Joshi, S. T. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P.
Lovecraft. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1996.
Lawrence, D. H. The Letters. Vol. II. Ed. George J. Zytaruk and James
T. Boulton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.
. St. Mawr. In The Short Novels. Vol. II. London: Heinemann,
1956.
. Studies in Classic American Literature. 1923. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday & Doubleday, 1951.
Machen, Arthur. Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. 2 vols. New
York: Pinnacle, 1971.
Manilius, Marcus. Astronomia/Astrologie. Trans. and ed. Wolfgang
Fels. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990.
Mariconda, Steven J. H. P. Lovecraft: Reluctant American Modern-
ist. Lovecraft Studies Nos. 42/43 (Autumn 2001): 2032.
Murray, Margaret A. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1921.
Pan. The Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11th ed.
Plato. Opera. 5 vols. Ed. John Burnet. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1900.
Plutarch. The Obsolescence of Oracles. In Moralia. Vol. 5. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press/Loeb Classical Library, 1936.
Price, Robert. A Biblical Antecedent for The Colour out of Space.
26 Robert H. Waugh
Lovecraft Studies No. 25 (Fall 1991): 2325.
Roberts, Warren. A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence. London: Hart-
Davis, 1963.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. The Poetic and Dramatic Works. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1927.
Waugh, Robert H. The Blasted Heath in The Colour out of Space:
A Nightmare Theodicy. Lovecraft Studies No. 45 (2005): 1021.
. Landscapes, Selves, and Others in Lovecraft. In An Epicure
in the Terrible, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. Rutherford,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991. 22043.

Briefly Noted
Lovecrafts works have appeared in all manner of media, from films
and television to comic books and role-playing games. One of the pur-
est transformations of Lovecrafts words into an alternate medium is
the audio recording. Lovecraft has not been entirely lucky with his au-
dio interpreters: Roddy McDowalls 1961 Caedmon recording is splen-
did, but subsequent venturesby David McCallum and othershave
left a bit to be desired. It is therefore with great pleasure that we can
announce the recent release of four splendid audiobooks by Audio-
Realms. The first contains The Dunwich Horror and The Call of
Cthulhu, the second has The Shadow over Innsmouth and Dagon
(a felicitous pairing indeed!), the third includes Herbert West
Reanimator, The Horror at Red Hook, The Statement of Randolph
Carter, and The Outsider, and the fourth contains The Rats in the
Walls, The Shunned House, and The Music of Erich Zann. Each
audiobook contains three CDs and lasts well over three hours. They
are read by Wayne June, whose deep, cavernous, almost sepulchral
voice, subtly modulating its timbre and emotional resonance with the
fluctuations of the text, forms an ideal vehicle for Lovecrafts richly
textured prose. Uncluttered by distracting and unnecessary music or
other frills, these audiobooks provide a wonderful vehicle for appreci-
ating Lovecrafts dense and complex work. For further information, go
to: www.audiorealms.com.

27
Memories of Sonia H. Greene Davis
Martin H. Kopp
[The following memoir by Sonia Daviss nephew provides valuable
sidelights on the life and career of H. P. Lovecrafts wife.ED.]

It occurs to me that a memoir of my recollections regarding my Aunt
Sonia is probably timely, since I have recently become aware of the
importance of her life with H. P. Lovecraft.
Accordingly, Ill begin with my earliest memories.
My grandmother, Rachel Moseson (when I knew her) was living
in the small village of Ichnya near Kiev in the Ukraine at the time
Aunt Sonia was born (March 16, 1883). Since Sonia was named Sonia
Haft Shafirkin, I assume that Grandma was married to a Mr. Shafirkin
(of whom I had never heard).
1
Furthermore, the inclusion of the Haft
name in Sonias implies to me that Grandmas maiden name was
Haft. This fits with my memories of the Haft family connections in
New York during the 1920s, of which there is more later.
S. T. Joshi (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life 262, note 4) mentions that
Grandma left Sonia with her brother in Liverpool. I have never heard
of Grandmas brother, but that is more likely than the inference that
the brother referred to is Sonias. So I have to assume my grand-
mother had a brother of whom I never heard.
I do remember two cousins of the Morris W. Haft family who
worked for them in their New York offices in the 1920s. These two
men were, as I remember it, Jack and Jules Friedman. I remember
that they definitely had English accents! Thus, I wonder if they
were descendants of that brother.
Apparently, my grandmother arrived in New York sometime be-

1. S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon
Press, 1996), p. 262. I have to say that Mr. Joshis book has been most inter-
esting for information that I never knew about my family.
28 Martin H. Kopp
tween 1883 and 1892. As she was a widow, alone, but a member of
the Haft family, I have long pondered how she was supported.
I knew of the Morris W. Haft & Brothers coat and suit manufac-
turing company as a leading business on Seventh Avenue in New
York City all through the 1920s, and even later. Their trade name was
Donnybrooke. In business with Morris were at least two brothers:
Harry and Jules. But their relationship with and friendship toward my
mother, Anna, has always led me to think they were first cousins. If
they were my grandmothers wealthy cousins, which seems most
likely, I would have to suppose they made sure she was provided for.
In retrospect, I believe they made sure she was okay.
Picture this: Rachel Haft, a widow, with a pre-teen age daughter,
needs a husband. Somehow, she is matched up with a guy from the
Sevastopol region on the Black Sea who now (1892) lives in Elmira,
N.Y. He is a widower, with a daughter and two sons, and needs a
wife. And Grandma marries Solomon Moseson. They lived in a fine
big house at the comer of John and Water Streets. They then had
two more children: my mother, Anna (born September, 1894) and
Sidney (born in 1897).
Of course, there is a mystery in how Grandpa Moseson got to El-
mira. Not only did he get there, but so did his sister Sarah (who mar-
ried a Mr. Linker, the Elmira train station telegrapher), and his
brother, Mike. Thus, there were a lot of Mosesons in Elmira, N.Y, in
the early 1900s.
But all was not happy in this new family. Apparently, Grandpa
was an overpowering, dominating Orthodox man, and here was
Grandma, the product of a very cultured, urbane family environment.
It must have been an interesting situation: six children, etc.
The oldest of Grandpas children from his first wife was Max. He
ran away from home at the age of fourteen. Somehow, he enlisted in
the U.S. Navy just before 1898 and the Spanish-American War. To
avoid detection, he changed his name to Morrison.
By 1910, Grandma finally gave up and took her two children from
this marriage to New York. I believe that Grandpas other two chil-
dren, who were young adults by this time, were also living in New
York. In fact, Jenny married an architect whose last name was
Suskind. She and Mr. Suskind had four children, two boys and two
girls. Regrettably, Mr. Suskind was killed in a subway accident, leav-
ing Jenny with Henry, 8, Milton, 6, Rena, 4, and Norma, 2. The shock
was too much for Jenny and she wound up in Rockland State Hospi-
tal for the Insane for the rest of her life. The other son from
Grandpas first marriage was Mike. Uncle Mike undertook to bring
up the four kids, and did so successfully, but he never married. Inter-
estingly, he and Uncle Sidney, became very close in their later years.
In the meantime, Sonia had left Elmira for a career in New York.
It was there, in 1899, that she married Samuel Seckendorff and my
cousin, Florence, was born March 19, 1902. Their name was changed
sometime later to Greene. He died sometime in 1916, the year I was
born.
I have no memories of him ever being mentioned. Nor did I ever
hear of a baby boy (who only lived three months). I do have a mem-
ory of meeting Florence. But she vanished from connections some-
time thereafter (Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life 333).
I do remember that Aunt Sonia worked for the millinery firm
Ferle Heller, and that she was well paid. The Parkside Avenue ad-
dress that Mr. Joshi refers to in his study is a vaguely familiar one. My
memory is that Sonias mother lived on the upper floor of that place.
My mother and Sonia were very close. I remember occasions
when Sonia visited with us in our home at 117 Coligni Avenue in
New Rochelle, N.Y., and I remember her steaming hats with feathers,
etc. on the kitchen stove.
There is a reference in Mr. Joshis text (on page 335) to some real
estate that Sonia and Mr. Lovecraft bought in Yonkers, N.Y. I can
remember a trip from New Rochelle when my mother drove us over
there for Sonia to have some business dealing at the Homewood
Company. Perhaps it really was Homeland company. Anyway, my
memory was that it was a cemetery, and involved burial plots! Wow!
But I had to be about eight to ten years old at the time.
Grandma died around 1925. She lived with us in New Rochelle at
the time. I remember Uncle Sidney coming to her funeral, but I have
no memory of Aunt Sonia in that connection.
Nonetheless, she and my mother continued their close relation-
ship. This was evident to me, since Aunt Sonia would take me on
trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Zoo, etc.
And, despite the depression, she paid for my first (and only) se-
mester at the University of Pennsylvania from September 1933 to
January 1934: a sum of $400.00, for which she asked nothing in re-
turn, except that I succeed as a student. (I then transferred to CCNY
30 Martin H. Kopp
at night until I graduated in June 1941.)
It may be of interest to know that Sidneys grandson is J. J. Gold-
berg, the author of a powerful book Jewish Power. He is also the edi-
tor of the Jewish Daily Forward, published in New York City.
Jenny has a grandson, Ira Russell Suskind, who is a prominent at-
torney in Newark, Ohio.
I have never heard of any descendants of Florence. It would be in-
teresting to learn of them if there are any.
Sonia moved to California around 1933 where she met and mar-
ried Nathaniel Abraham Davis.
Interestingly, Aunt Sonia attended a gathering during Word War
II in Los Angeles at which a Boy Scout Troop presented the colors.
And who was their Scout Master? He was Sonias step-brother, the
runaway Mike! And she recognized him! He was now the highest
ranking Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy! But nothing came of
their meeting except that it happened.
I also heard that Sonia located Florence, who, as I remember it,
was living in the San Francisco area. This was after World War II.
They finally met. It was a disaster, and Sonia returned to the Los An-
geles area, and never discussed the matter again.
31
Letters to Lee McBride White
H. P. Lovecraft
Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz
Lee McBride White, Jr., was born on June 24, 1915, in Monroe, North
Carolina, the son of a Baptist minister. In his early years his family
lived in Jacksonville, Florida, but it moved to Birmingham, Alabama,
in the summer of 1932, where White attended his final year of high
school at John Herbert Phillips High School. It is likely that he con-
tacted Lovecraft in the autumn of 1932 through Weird Tales.
In 1933, after his graduation from high school, White went to How-
ard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham, graduating with
a B.A. in English in 1937. He worked on a number of college publica-
tions at Howard, including The Howard Quill (at least one issue of
which he sent to Lovecraft), Campus (also sent to Lovecraft), The
Crimson, the colleges weekly newspaper, and the 1937 edition of the
college yearbook, The Howard Crimson. White also acted in a number
of college stage productions, as did his younger brother Harvey.
White then did graduate work at Harvard (working with Howard
Mumford Jones) and Columbia, then returned to Birmingham, where
he worked on the Birmingham Age-Herald. He enlisted in the armed
forces on June 27, 1941, and during World War II he was in the Air
Force, staying in North Africa until 1945. He then moved to Mont-
gomery, Alabama, where he worked as the editor of a paper, Folsoms
Forum, for Alabamas Governor Jim Folsom. He married Anne Mary
Trebing on May 31, 1947, and eventually had four children, two sons
and two daughters. The couple moved to Atlanta, where in 1950
White began working at the regional headquarters of the Communi-
cations Workers of America; in 1957 he moved to the central office
in Washington, where he lived until his retirement in 1980. For the
Bicentennial he edited a book, The American Revolution in Notes,
32 H. P. Lovecraft
Quotes, and Anecdotes (Fairfax, VA: L. B. Prince, 1975). He died on
February 5, 1989, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
White had one of the greatest private collections of 78-rpm jazz re-
cords of his day, and was also a voluminous book collector.
Lovecrafts correspondence with White probably did not consist
of many more than the nine surviving letters we have. The first ex-
tant letter dates to September 1932. After an early hiatus of two and a
half years, they reestablished contact in May 1935. Although Love-
crafts letters to White are short, infrequent, and somewhat imper-
sonal, they reflect his literary tastes and reading, even his general
awareness of modern literary works and modern sentiments about
writers from other periods of history. We find that in 1932six years
after he wrote Cool AirLovecraft could still say that Poe proba-
bly continues to [influence me] more than any other one author.
And it is amusing to know that the blue-nosed Lovecraft could rec-
ommend bookstores where one could purchase what was euphemis-
tically termed curiosa (i.e., erotica).
The letters by H. P. Lovecraft to Lee White are printed by per-
mission of Robert C. Harrall of Lovecraft Properties LLC and the
John Hay Library, Brown University. For information on White, the
editors are grateful to Lee Whites widow, Anne (Trebing) White,
and Whites brother, Harvey O. White.

Abbreviations
ALS autograph letter, signed
JHL John Hay Library, Brown University
LL S. T. Joshi, Lovecrafts Library: A Catalogue, 2nd ed. (Hippo-
campus Press, 2002)
SHL The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature (Hippocam-
pus Press, 2000)
WT Weird Tales

[1] [Letter non-extant.]

[2] [ALS]
10 Barnes St.,
Providence, R.I.,
Septr. 12, 1932
Dear Mr. White:
I found yours of the 3
d
awaiting me upon my re-
turn from a combined eclipse expedition & antiquarian pilgrimage to
points north of here.
1
The eclipse was highly impressive as seen from
Newburyport, Mass. (a picturesque & ancient town well within the
zone of totality), & I afterward visited Montreal & Quebec
2
the lat-
ter being perhaps the most delightful 18
th
century survival on this
continent with the possible exception of Charleston, S.C. When in
the Boston zone I did not fail to visit my favourite seaport village of
Marbleheadwhich remains today much as it was two centuries ago,
& which is the prototype of the Kingsport mentioned in my tales. I
think I told you that I am a confirmed amateur antiquarian whose
chief delight is to visit places where reliques of the past survive.
I am glad you agree with me regarding Poe, especially the merit of
SilenceA Fable,
3
which I have long considered notable both as a
piece of visual imagery & as a triumph of musical language; Poe has
influenced me since early youth& probably continues to do so
more than any other one author. I first came across Dunsany in 1919,
& was prodigiously influenced by himmore, really, than I ought to
have been; since my own tales became almost imitative of his during
the next six or seven years. Now, however, I am trying to be more
independent in style.
Baudelaire is certainly a titanic figure, & has greatly influenced
Clark Ashton Smith, whose magazine work you doubtless know.
Smith has vividly translated Baudelaire, though the translations are
still unpublished except for minor items.
4

YesAristophanes is surely an important figure; & Petronius &
Apuleius are permanent enough, though on a somewhat minor level.
5

Among the cheaper modern writers A. Merritt is surely one of the
most distinctivehis Moon Pool in its original version
6
being al-
most a landmark of weird magazine fiction. I have never read the fa-
mous Justine of de Sade,
7
or the equally famous Venus in Furs of
34 H. P. Lovecraft
von Masoch.
8
Both are undoubtedly significant in the history of psy-
chology, though perhaps less so as works of art. Probably they can be
obtained at any time from dealers in so-called curiosa like the Fal-
staff Press or Esoterika Biblion of New York. I have read parts of
Maldoror,
9
which is certainly a triumph of impassioned chaos
exceeding even Rimbauds Bateau Ivre
10
in delirious intensity. I dont
know where a copy would be obtainableindeed, I have forgotten
where I saw the extracts I did. Marpessa is by the late Stephen Phil-
lips,
11
(author of Herod) & ought to be obtainable without difficulty
at any public library.
Ill send you a copy of At the Mts. of Madness very shortlyalso
any other tales of mine which you may wish to see. Enclosed is a list
of my various attempts on which you can check, in pencil, the items
that interest you. Some of them, though, are rather crude & poor. I
wish you the best of luck in your own literary ventures, & would be
interested to see some of your work. Your activities at the camp
must have been pleasant & piquant indeed.
Just now I am expecting a visit from Donald Wandrei, whose
weird tales & verses you have doubtless seen in various magazines.
12

He has a great deal of unpublished material, including a weird
novelDead Titans Waken.
13

With all good wishes,
Yrs most cordially & sincerely,
H. P. Lovecraft
Notes
1. HPL and W. Paul Cook had gone to Newburyport on 31 August to see the
solar eclipse (cf. SL 4.63).
2. HPL visited Quebec on 26 September; it was his second trip to Quebec
(the first was in 1930), and his first trip to Montreal.
3. The Masque of the Red Death, SilenceA Fable, and ShadowA Par-
able are assuredly poems in every sense of the word save the metrical one,
and owe as much of their power to aural cadence as to visual imagery (SHL
45). Cf. also SL 2.70.
4. It appears that Smith translated Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal
nearly in its entirety (most poems remaining only in preliminary literal prose
translations), but few of his verse translations appeared in print, most nota-
bly in his column in the Auburn Journal and in Sandalwood (1925).
5. Aristophanes (450?385? B.C.E.), Greek comic playwright; T. Petronius
Arbiter (1st century C.E.), author of the Satyricon (LL 688); Lucius Apuleius

(2nd century C.E.), author of The Golden Ass (LL 37).
6. All-Story Weekly, 22 June 1918 (LL 17). HPL listed it among his ten favor-
ite weird tales.
7. Donatien Alphonse Franois, marquis de Sade (17401814), Justine; ou, Les
Malheurs de la vertu (1791); first Eng. tr. as Justine; or, The Misfortunes of Vir-
tue (1889). Cf. SL 3.106.
8. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (18351895); Venus im Pelz (1870); first Eng.
tr. as Venus in Furs (1921). Cf. SL 3.108.
9. Comte de Lautramont (18461870) [pseud. of Isidore Ducasse], Les
Chants de Maldoror (1868).
10. Arthur Rimbaud (18541891), Le Bateau ivre [The Drunken Boat].
HPL owned Edgell Rickwords Rimbaud, the Boy and the Poet (1924; LL 735).
11. Stephen Phillips (18681915), Marpessa (1900); a poem. The drama
Herod was also published in 1900.
12. Wandrei visited HPL in mid-September 1932 (cf. SL 4.6869).
13. The original version of The Web of Easter Island (1948).
[3] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.
May 31, 1935.
Dear Mr. White:
Very good to hear from you again! Your story is
interesting & well-written, & seems to me to indicate marked prom-
ise for a fictional career. You have a vivid way of putting things, & a
flow of words bespeaking competence & assurance. There is, too, a
sense of drama & of climax which augurs well. Later on perhaps you
will choose to emphasise modern technique a little less, & to substi-
tute more ordinary phases of life for the extremely dramatic mo-
ments here representedbut the best course to follow is that of
natural evolution. You are certainly started splendidly& perhaps
the newspaper columning will prove a benefit in the end, because of
the training it gives in observation & narrative values. Your extensive
reading is all in the right direction& I trust that the general college
curriculum has not been quite so barren of benefit as you may at the
moment assume.
Your impressions of Shakespeare are not far from those which I
have entertained at various times. Ultimately, though, one has to con-
cede the bards vast superiority as a whole over any of his contempo-
36 H. P. Lovecraft
raries. He had a breadth & insight& a tremendously apt mode of
characterisationwhich none of the others could parallel. Of course
he was very uneven, so that many dull & mediocre passages can be
found in his works. Some of his plays are undeniably less effective
than various single plays of others. But in spite of all this, a general
survey of his achievements will easily demonstrate his superiority.
The idolatry given him during the 19
th
century was perhaps exces-
sivebut after all allowances are made, he remains clearly the pre-
mier reflector of human nature so far as our civilisation is concerned.
D. H. Lawrence, on the other hand, is almost certainly overrated
at present. He had, of course, great powerbut his fame was fortui-
tously boosted by the fact that he was a biassed neurotic in an age
generally permeated by the same neurosis.
1

I have seen reviewsall favourableof the work of Howell
Vines,
2
but have not yet read any of his books. I surely must repair
this omission before long. Most of the vital writing in America seems
to come from the South nowadaysa condition which I think will
increase rather than decrease. A settled, homogeneous people has
much to say & generally says it powerfully.
I think you have Swinburne sized up about right. He tried to
make a few inches go a long way& really got by largely because of
his matchless melody, & because of the fatuous Victorian notions
from which he was luckily free. Henry James was assuredly solid, but
I cant bring myself to like him intensely. His care in expressing pre-
cise states of mood & meaning often becomes fumbling & old-
maidish& he had an unfortunate habit of confining his attention to
certain very artificial (& basically not very significant) human types. I
havent read much of Aldous Huxley, since literary smartness does
not appeal to me. That kind of writing seems to involve values & per-
spectives of very doubtful reality or permanence. However, Ill admit
that Aldous is an arresting social thinker when he chooses to be. Ac-
curate thinking runs in the family!
3

I have not read Ulysses, but believe that the principle of the
stream-of-consciousness method is a valuable onedestined to influ-
ence fiction in the future. However, I doubt its value as an exclusive
method of narration.
4
It will probably work best when assimilated to
the main stream of fictionsupplementing objective narration in
places where thoughts or inner life are at variance with external
manifestations. Hope your friend can put his novel across success-

fullythat kind of thing makes a good beginning even when one
grows beyond it or builds upon it.
I liked George Meredith in youth, for he seemed to deal with real
people & eventsa refreshing contrast to the sentimental caricaturist
Dickens, whose work Ive always detested. Now I can see how essen-
tially Victorianhow influenced by artificial & erroneous concep-
tionsMeredith was. But he did try to put serious psychology into
fiction. Galsworthy I admire rather than relish. Bennett I dont care
for. George Moore doesnt interest me greatlythough perhaps I ha-
vent read his best specimens. Hardy strikes me as overratedthere is
an underlying pomposity & sentimentality in him. The fact is, I dont
think our race is very successful in fiction. The French are the real
masters of that fieldBalzac, Gautier, Flaubert, de Maupassant,
Stendhal, Proust . . . Nobody can beat them unless it is in the 19
th

century RussiansDostoievsky, Chekhov, Turgeniev& they reflect
a racial temper so unlike ours that we really have much difficulty in
appraising them. On the whole, I believe that Balzac is the supreme
novelist of western Europe. Many try to put Proust ahead of him to-
day, but I believe Proust is too narrow in his field & too specialised
even abnormalin his psychology to take first rank. Balzac hasnt yet
met his match.
The drama certainly fills an important niche. I used to enjoy it
vastly, though latterly pure narration seems to captivate me more.
Acting is assuredly a major artas creative in its way as composi-
tion. It has not, however, the infinite breadth & depth of composi-
tionsince it always involves the interpretation of what someone
else has conceived & recorded. That is, unless one acts in ones own
plays.
Your assistant editorship has undoubtedly been excellent practice,
& I hope youll remain in college & edit the magazine next year. Edit-
ing exercises ones literary judgment as few other things can do.
Clark Ashton Smiths address is Box 385, Auburn, California. Im
enclosing a circular of his brochure of fantastic stories
5
which I ad-
vise you very strongly to get if you havent it already. He is easily the
leader of all the writers in W T, & these stories (rejected by Wright)
are better than any which have appeared in the magazine.
W T is pretty mediocre lately, though something passable appears
now & then. So you saw that Gates of the Silver Key?
6
Ill confess I
dont think much of itit doesnt represent any original impulse of
38 H. P. Lovecraft
mine, & tends to be artificial & mechanical. I simply cant collaborate
successfully. Since then I have written two more stories, but have not
sent them in for publication.
7
Wright has rejected my best things, & I
doubt whether he has much more use for my work. There has been
talk of a collection of my stories in book formDerleths publishers,
Loring & Mussey, having asked to see my stuff
8
but all this seems to
be coming to nothing. By the waydid you see the little magazine
devoted to the discussion of weird fictionThe Fantasy Fanduring
its brief career (Sept. 33 to Feb. 35)? If not, Ill send you one or two
issues of which I have duplicates. Another little publication of the
same sortFantasy Magazinecarries my brief autobiography &
portrait in its current issue.
9
And have you seen William Crawfords
Marvel Tales? I can let you have a copy of that.
Hope youll see New Orleans sooner or laterthough as I may
have said, I vastly prefer Charleston. Charleston is, in my opinion, the
most delightful & fascinating city in the United States. Nowhere else
had the mellow beauty of the past so completely survived. Other
towns which I prefer to New Orleans are St. Augustine, Savannah, &
Natchez. St. Augustine, with buildings going back to the 1570s &
1580s, is something utterly unique.
My trips since last writing you have included one to ancient Que-
bec in Aug.Sept. 1933, & one to De Land, Florida (where I visited
the young weird tale enthusiast R. H. Barlow for nearly 2 months) in
May & June, 1934. On the latter trip I also stopped in Charleston, Sa-
vannah, St. Augustine, Richmond, Washington, Fredericksburg,
Philadelphia, & N.Y. It is possible that I shall visit Barlow again very
shortly, though straitened finances will cut down intermediate stops.
In Sept. 1934 I visited the island of Nantucket (only 90 miles from
here) for the first time in my life, & found it an infinitely quaint &
unspoiled survival of New England whaling days. Around New Years
I visited Long in New York, & met several others of the weird
groupincluding Barlow, who was up from the South. The present
spring has been an atrociously late one in the north, & I have had very
few outings so far. Just now some real warmth seems to be coming
so that, even if I dont get to Florida, I can probably resume my open-
air programme before long.
Wellagain let me congratulate you upon your excellent story.
Keep it up, & Im sure youll be able to do something serious in fic-
tion. I suppose you know that Derleth is really getting into the liter-

ary worldmaking Scribners & the Atlantic,
10
& being about to have
his 4
th
novel published.
11
Only 26 years old, too.
All good wishes
Yrs most cordially,
H. P. Lovecraft
Notes
1. Writers Id call morbid are D. H. Lawrence & James Joyce, Huysmans &
Baudelaire (SL 3.155).
2. Howell Vines (18991981), author of A River Goes with Heaven (1930)
and This Green Thicket World (1934).
3. HPL refers to Thomas Henry Huxley (18251895), biologist and philoso-
pher, grandfather of Aldous Huxley (18941963) and his brother Sir Julian
Sorell Huxley (18871975), biologist and humanist.
4. James Joyces Ulysses (1922) was banned in the U.S. from its publication
until 1933. HPL himself sparingly employed stream-of-consciousness tech-
niques in accordance with this dictum, for example, in the closing para-
graphs of The Haunter of the Dark (1935).
5. The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies (Auburn, CA: Auburn Journal
Press, 1933; LL 810).
6. HPL and E. Hoffmann Price, Through the Gates of the Silver Key, WT,
July 1934.
7. The Thing on the Doorstep (August 1933) and The Shadow out of
Time (November? 1934March 1935).
8. Cf. SL 5.111. The collection was rejected (SL 5.317).
9. F. Lee Baldwin, H. P. Lovecraft: A Biographical Sketch, Fantasy Maga-
zine 4, No. 5 (April 1935): 10810, 132. The portrait is a linoleum cut by
Duane W. Rimel.
10. August Derleth, Crows Fly High, Scribners Magazine 96, No. 6 (De-
cember 1934): 35862; Now Is the Time for All Good Men, Scribners
Magazine 98, No. 5 (November 1935): 29598. For Derleths appearance in
the Atlantic Monthly, see letter 6, n. 2.
11. Place of Hawks (New York: Loring & Mussey, 1935; LL 235).
[4] [ALS]
Ancient San Agustin
August 20, 1935.
My dear White:
As you may perceive, I am on my way at last! I ac-
companied the Barlows to Daytona & helped them settle in the flat
40 H. P. Lovecraft
they are to occupy for a fortnight. Then the diligencia for ancient San
Agustin! It surely is good to see centuried gables & facades & balco-
nies & garden walls& hear the sound of tinkling fountains at twi-
light, & of cathedral chimes cast in 1682after 2 months & 9 days of
rural modernity! Am revelling in the atmosphere of a 370-year-old
citya city founded when Shakespeare was a year old, & still con-
taining houses which had 40 years behind them when the first settlers
landed at Jamestown. Im staying a weekat my usual hotel, the
cheap but cleanly Rio Vista on the bay front& cutting my food bill
down to a minimum. I spend most of my time absorbing ancient vis-
tas & writing atop the venerable fortress of San Marcos. Moving north
at midnight August 256& will get 5 hours in Savannah before
striking my beloved Charleston . . . the most fascinating town of this
continent (north of Mexico, at least) except Quebec. Am so short of
cash that my stay in Charleston will be badly cut down& hopes of
stopping anywhere north of that grow dimmer & dimmer. However,
it surely has been a great trip, all in all! I left home on the 5
th
of
June& heaven knows how Ill get all the accumulated papers read
up upon my return!
Now about your story. Bless my soul, but you are arriving! Hon-
estly, this is a tremendous piece of workwith surprising fidelity to
human nature, & tremendous cleverness in manipulating turns of
emotion. One of the best touches is at the very lastwhere you dis-
appoint the anticipations of the mediocre reader, who expects the
hero to end it all in the river after his disillusionment. No charge for
borrowing my sentiments toward the northern winter, my prefer-
ences in Floridan zones, & my hateful task of revising bum MSS.!
1

The whole thing is natural without being tame, & is full of vividly
original illustrative touches. The only change I could possibly suggest
is a slight toning-down of places where the quest for originality tends
to torture idiom into Euphuism, or to dictate obscure words (genicu-
late, phantuscular, nemophily, &c.) which are really less effective
than ordinary words because of their lack of mellow associations.
But these matters are trifles. The point is, that the story is really
powerful & admirablea conclusive testimony of your writing abil-
ity. I return it as per request& with a goodly quota of thanks &
admiration.
Regarding your Saddypost experimentsbefore you put great
amounts of time & energy into them, I wish you would read Edward
J. OBriens Dance of the Machines, & the introductions to his vari-

ous year-books of the short story.
2
For the fact is, that this slick sort
of story is really very far from being authentic artforming, rather, a
mere artificial device to gratify the expectations of an unreflective &
un-analytical bourgeois public. Plot, in the common sense of com-
plex events artificially arranged to produce certain clashes, interac-
tions, & climaxes, is an utterly meretricious device unworthy of
employment by any serious man of letters. It is a distortiona con-
coction of things without a counterpart in actual life. Action in the
overspeeded sense is closely akin. Dialogue can be an artistic me-
dium of narrationbut seldom is as employed by the popular com-
mercial writers. The trouble with Satevepost junk is that it simply
follows an empty formuladeliberately twisting, obscuring, & mis-
representing human values & motives. It is clever but meaningless.
Certainly, it is hard enough to writebut it is tragic that so much
human energy & intelligence should be wasted on a frivolous & ir-
relevant object instead of going into actual aesthetic creation. How-
everdont let me preach!
YesI must get a look at Lust for Life. Ouroboros is a favour-
ite of mineI must look up Eddisons latest.
3
You size up Jurgen
4

pretty wellI must pass that observation on to Barlow! As for a
Bierce-Hearn resemblancewell, I suppose they did have a certain
common stylistic element derived from 19
th
century journalism; but
Hearn soon outstripped his contemporary in all the subtleties & mu-
sical graces of expression. NoI never heard of a book by Wallace
Smith.
5
If he can write as well as he draws, his Mexican tales ought to
be worth reading!
Congratulations on discovering a source of old magazines! Im tell-
ing Barlow about ithe has files of Argosy, Cavalier, &c. which he
might possibly commission you to fill out. YesI do very much want
extra copies of my tales for lending purposes, & will empower you to
pick up any that dont cost too much. Just now, however, Im so
broke that I wouldnt dare contract a bill for a quarter! Im eating on
20 to 25 per diemwith nickel cans of beans as a basis!
Fine weather so far in St. Augustine. I dread the plunge northward
(Salzor
6
has nothing on me!), but shall at least have good furnace heat
furnished within a month. Old bones need to be thawed out . . . to-
day is my 45
th
birthday!
Thanks for permission to retain the cutting. Im very glad to have
a likeness of you for my private Hall of Fame!
42 H. P. Lovecraft
All good wishes, & renewed congratulations on the excellence of
your story
Yrs most sincerely
H P L
Notes
1. White had sent HPL another story in his letter of 17 August. He wrote
therein, I regret to say it is not what it was meant to be. I used your feeling
for New England winter, and your liking for the central portion of Florida,
which I hope you will not mind (ms., JHL).
2. Saddypost refers to the Saturday Evening Post; HPL felt that the stories it
published were trite and conventional. Edward J. OBrien (18901941), The
Dance of the Machines: The American Short Story and the Industrial Age
(1929; LL 651); cf. SL 3.32; 4.73, 91. OBrien edited The Best Short Stories of the
Year from 1915 to 1941.
3. Irving Stone (19031989), Lust for Life (1934), a fictionalized biography of
Vincent Van Gogh; E. R. Eddison (18821945), The Worm Ouroboros (1922; LL
291); Eddisons latest was Mistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia (1935).
4. James Branch Cabell (18791958), Jurgen (1919). The book was the sub-
ject of an obscenity trial in 1920. Cf. The Omnipresent Philistine (1924):
That censors actually do seek to remove . . . legitimate and essential matter,
and that they would if given greater power do even greater harm, is plainly
shewn by the futile action against Jurgen, and the present ban on Ulysses,
both significant contributions to contemporary art (CE 2.77).
5. Wallace Smith (18881937) was primarily an artist, illustrating, among
many other things, Ben Hechts Fantazius Mallare (1922). HPL refers to
Smiths The Little Tigress: Tales out of the Dust of Mexico (1923).
6. Possibly a character in the story by White mentioned earlier in this letter.
[5] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,
Octr. 28, 1935
Dear White:
Wellmy total incarceration didnt begin so early as I
feared it would, since the autumn has been distinctly above the average
in warmth. Possibly I mentioned my visit near Boston Sept. 2023,
when my host & I took many delightful side-trips to places like rocky
Nahant, ancient Marblehead, brooding, hilly Wilbraham [the Dun-
wich of my story], & sandy, willow-decked Cape Cod. On Oct. 8 I had
a trip to New Havena place which I had never thoroughly explored

before. Though not as rich in colonial antiquities as Providence, it has a
peculiar fascination of its own& I explored it quite thoroughly, see-
ing all the old houses, churches, college buildings, &c., & visiting 3 mu-
seums & 2 botanic gardens. The most impressive sights of all, perhaps,
are the great new quadrangles of Yale Universityeach an absolutely
perfect reproduction of old-time architecture & atmosphere, & forming
a self-contained little world in itself. The Gothic courtyards transplant
one in fancy to mediaeval Oxford or Cambridgespires, oriels,
pointed arches, mullioned windows, arcades with groined roofs, climb-
ing ivy, sundials, lawns, gardens, vine-clad walls & flagstoned walks
everything to give the young occupants that massed impression of their
accumulated cultural heritage which they might obtain in Old England
itself. To stroll through these quadrangles in the golden afternoon
sunlight; at dusk, when the candles behind the diamond-paned case-
ments flicker up one by one; or in the beams of a mellow Hunters
Moon;
1
is to walk bodily into an enchanted region of dream. It is the
past & the ancient mother land brought magically to the present time
& place. The choicest of these quadrangles is Calhoun Collegenamed
from the illustrious Carolinian
2
(whose grave in St. Philips churchyard,
Charleston, I visited only 2 months ago), who was a graduate of Yale.
Nor are the Georgian quadrangles less glamorouseach being a magi-
cal summoning-up of the world of two centuries ago. I wandered for
hours through the limitless labyrinth of unexpected elder microcosms,
& mourned the lack of further time. Certainly, I must visit New Haven
again. But this was not all. On Oct. 16 my friend Samuel Loveman
came on from New York, & we proceeded at once to Boston to absorb
books, museums, & antiquities. Stayed 3 days, & had a very enjoyable
time. It is just possible that I shall have one trip morea ride over the
Mohawk Trail & just into Vermont in a friends
3
well-heated Chevro-
letbut Im not counting heavily on that.
Congratulations on your notable record of academic attendance
a record which I hope will not soon be marred! Your studies sound
interesting & congenial, & Id like to see that Gothick tale essay of
yours some day. If you have a spare copy, Ill wager young Barlow
would be eager to use it in his amateur paper, The Dragon-Fly.
4
Have
you, by the way, received a copy of this latter? If not, Ill try to in-
duce the editor to send you one. A very high-grade venture despite a
trifle of mechanical crudity.
Glad your musical library is growing, & hope the radio will soon
be restored to working order. I prefer silence for reading or writing of
44 H. P. Lovecraft
any kind, but can imagine how some might find a melodic accompa-
niment agreeable. Glad also that you have had opportunities for cho-
reographic observation. I cant appreciate the dance, but realise that it
has a secure place among the arts. Sorry you were disappointed in the
cinematic Anna Kareninaa production I have not seen.
5
Glad
Marvel Tales was of some interest. Sarnath is an old storywritten
in 1919& differs vastly from any of my recent efforts. It shews the
Dunsany influence to a marked extent.
6

Coming to my overcrowded programme, I have read very little
this autumnthough a formidable pile of borrowed books still
adorns my library table. What Im going to tackle nowafter I wade
through Derleths new detective novel & tell him what I think of it
is the Wells-Huxley Science of Lifea really important contribu-
tion to the popular understanding of biology, if critics report aright.
7

Your own reading sounds very sensible & solid& I want to get hold
of The Shape of Things to Come
8
some day. Sorry H G is trying
cheap tricks to attract attention& he doesnt need to! The place of
Wells in pure literature is distinctly problematical. As a thinker he is
unsurpassedbut most of his works lack a certain imaginative con-
vincingness. They are too didacticremaining as abstract intellectual
problems instead of coming alive. I read Anthony Adverse a year or
two ago.
9
An excellent panoramic glimpse of the late 18
th
century,
though full of curious drawbacks such as the childish overworking of
coincidence, the excessive plastering on of sentimentality & naively
obtrusive philosophising, the primitive acceptance of the idea of
fate, & a general slowing-up & letdown during the final thirdafter
the passage of the Alps & entry into France.
Good luck with your stories& hope the novel will eventually
surpass your present expectations. Ive never tried a full-length novel,
though some of my stuff reaches novelette length. The much-
rejected Mountains of Madness comes to about 38,000 words.
10

W T is rather lousy of late. In the Sept. issue Vulthoom &
Shambler from the Stars barely save it from being a total loss, while
Cold Grey God & Last Guest perform a similar service for the
Oct. number.
11
In one of the Sept. stories the author spoke of New
Orleans as a full-fledged citycathedral & allin 1720, whereas of
course the site was scarcely cleared at that early date.
12
As for the
coversI never yet saw one that was worth the coloured inks ex-
pended on it. Of course the luscious & irrelevant nudes are rabble-

catchers & nothing else butan attempt by Wright to attract two
publics instead of one.
13
A similar attempt is represented by the
ringing-in of cheap detective junk with a thin, pseudo-weird veneer.
What will ever become of the magazine Im hanged if I know! By the
wayhave you seen The Phantagraph, published by one Wilson
Shepherd of Oakman in your own state & edited by Donald A. Woll-
heim of 801 West End Ave., N.Y.C.? Crudely printed by William
Crawford, but not so bad as to contents. It is endeavouring to take
the place of the lamented Fantasy Fan.
Derleth has another detective novel outThe Sign of Fear.
14

Price is starting out on a motor trip to Mexico& will visit Robert E.
Howard en route. Youll be sorry to hear that Clark Ashton Smiths
mother died Sept. 9a not unexpected event, yet no less a blow on
that account. W. Paul Cook has gone to St. Louis to engage in a
neighbourood newspaper venture.
Im enclosing a circular & application blank of the National Ama-
teur Press Associationan organisation which sometimes proves very
helpful to the literary experimenter, & in which Ive been active for
21 years. It is with this society that Barlows Dragon-Fly is affiliated.
Despite its occasional crude spots, I think youd find membership
very pleasant and encouraging, hence I hope youll utilise the blank. I
am now a verse critic in the association, & have just prepared my re-
port for the official organ.
15

All good wishes
Yrs most cordially & sincerely,
H. P. Lovecraft

P.S. Just had word of the acceptance by Astounding Stories of my long
novelette At the Mountains of Madness, previously rejected by
Wright. Dont know when it will appear.
Notes
1. The first full moon following the harvest moon, which is the full moon
occurring nearest the autumnal equinox.
2. John C. Calhoun (17821850).
3. Edward H. Cole.
4. Whites essay was not published in the Dragon-Fly.
5. Anna Karenina (MGM, 1935), produced by David O. Selznick, directed by
Clarence Brown; starring Greta Garbo and Fredric March.
46 H. P. Lovecraft

6. The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919), Marvel Tales of Science and
Fantasy 1, No. 4 (MarchApril 1935): 15763; orig. The Scot (June 1920).
7. H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and G. P. Wells, The Science of Life: A Summary
of Contemporary Knowledge about Life and Its Possibilities (192930; 3 vols.).
See letter 6; cf. SL 5.256. The book was lent to HPL by J. Vernon Shea.
8. H. G. Wells (18661946), The Shape of Things to Come (1933).
9. Hervey Allen (18891949), Anthony Adverse (1933). Cf. SL 4.379, 390.
10. HPL had submitted At the Mountains of Madness (1931) only to WT. By
much-rejected he refers to the generally cold reception of the story by his
correspondents.
11. WT, September 1935: Clark Ashton Smith, Vulthoom; Robert Bloch,
The Shambler from the Stars; WT, October 1935; C. L. Moore, The Cold
Gray God; John Flanders, The Mystery of the Last Guest.
12. Ethel Helene Coen, One Chance.
13. Both covers were by Margaret Brundage (19001976). Her artwork was
featured on virtually all covers of WT from mid-1933 through mid-1936.
14. Sign of Fear: A Judge Peck Mystery (New York: Loring & Mussey, 1935;
LL 236).
15. Some Current Amateur Verse, National Amateur 58, No. 2 (December
1935): 1415.
[6] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,
Dec. 20, 1935.
Dear White:
Thanks for the congratulations& you can double
em if you like, for no sooner had the Mts. of Madness incident sunk
into my consciousness than I was given a second pleasant surprise . . . .
in the form of another cheque from Street & Smith. It seems that
Donald Wandrei, to whom I had lent my newest novelette The
Shadow out of Time, had taken the liberty of submitting the MS. to
Astounding without my knowledge& through some inexplicable
coincidence the editor was favourable again! This certainly was a life-
saving windfall, & it is needless to say that I feel tremendously en-
couraged by the incident. I know that such winning streaks dont
keep upbut the impression is pleasant while it lasts. This dual
stroke gave me such a psychological boost that Ive just written a new
talea short specimen called The Haunter of the Dark. From what
I hear, the Mts. will be a 3-part story in the February, March &

April Astounding. Ive no idea when the Shadow will appear.
1

YesDerleth certainly is landing big! I must see his Atlantic
piece.
2
It is very probable that Scribners will henceforward be his
publishers, & that he will embark on a series of historical novels deal-
ing with his native Wisconsin background. In preparation for this se-
ries he is conducting a course of antiquarian research which puts me
to shame. He is going exhaustively over all the old records, newspa-
pers, & diaries he can find in local files, libraries, & attics, & is hiring
people to copy headlines & topics from the Milwaukee papers of 50
or 75 years ago. He means to know those times as intimately as if he
had lived in them& the result will be apparent when he comes to
write the novels. Of all our group, Derleth is certainly making the
greatest progress toward a solid place in literature.
Congratulations on the further Quill placementsyoull be giving
Derleth a run for his money before long! Dont be discouraged be-
cause your present work fails to satisfy you. Every new effort is in-
valuable practice, & one by one you will overcome the various
problems of composition. From what I have seen of your work, Id
tend to say that you are making an unusually good start& the ex-
tent of your reading is also a favourable element.
Commiserations on the loss of your one first-rate professor!
3

That surely is a blowbut with the start you have I fancy youll be
able to extract considerable from the course as it is. Meanwhile let
me congratulate you upon securing material from Howell Vines. I
simply must get hold of something of hisfor he seems to be the
sort of chap I respect . . . . a man who writes honestly, not pleas-
antly, & who will not make himself trivial with the artificial, jack-
in-the-box device called plot! I can sympathise with his inability to
write when worried& also with his perpetual brokeness! Poverty
& anxiety certainly areas he would saythe goddamdest sons of
bitches!
You surely were lucky to get that haul of 16 records for 80! I can
imagine what a boon the phonograph is to a discriminating music
lover. In these latter years I fancy the instrument is acquiring a new
dignity and statusbecoming a fixture among persons who wish to
hear particular selections at particular times, rather than an indis-
criminative purveyor of jazz to the herd. The radio has largely ab-
sorbed the old-time army of casual phonograph-users.
Glad you have some new bookcases. Dont worry about the
48 H. P. Lovecraft
empty spacestheyll fill up before you know it, so that a fresh
problem of congestion will be on your hands. I keep getting new
bookcases, but the volumes pile up & overflow despite all I can do.
Nowadays I try to get the sort of cases which take the least space
plain, shallow ones which can be piled atop one another. The effect is
that of mere shelvingbut of course the cases can be moved, whereas
shelving cant. I also have ancestral bookcases of a more pretentious
sort, some of them with glass doors. One of the latter has its upper
shelf reserved for curiositiesan Aztec image, an Egyptian ushabti,
4
a
primitive African idol, & so ona museum in miniature, as it were. I
really need more space for this kind of thing, & wish I had a regular
display case. Quaint, ancient, & exotic objects exercise a strong fasci-
nation upon me.
Your bibliothecal accessions strike me as very sensible on the
whole. I seem to have read most of themthough oddly enough, Ive
never read Rabelais! Incidentally, I lost my copy of Sartor Resartus
5

when moving into
#
66dont know where it slipped to, but it was
the only missing item when the great rearrangement was completed.
Peter Schlemiel
6
disappointed me when I read it a decade ago. It
had been very strongly recommended, but I found it curiously flat.
On the other hand, Im an enthusiastic Undine
7
fan. I can under-
stand the fascination exerted upon you by the pictures in historical
manuals. They have always charmed me, & I could point to dozens
which seem to open gates into a magical world of the past. A couple
of years ago I found a marvellous set of 10 books at Woolworths
all pictures, but covering British history from neolithic times to the
present in considerable detail. Everything illustratedevents, persons,
architecture, landscape, costume, articles in common usea veritable
pictorial museum. It would be a marvellous aid if one were compos-
ing a story with a bygone setting. It is indeed seldom that we can cap-
ture from our youthful fairy-tale reading the same thrill that we
derived when 4 or 5 years oldalthough Ill confess that the Arabian
Nights (Andrew Langs edition)
8
still gives me a kick. What dupli-
cates best the glamour & adventurous expectancy of juvenile reading
in my case is Dunsany. A Dreamers Tales,
9
when I discovered them
at the age of 29, gave me precisely the same feeling that Langs Ara-
bian Nights did when I was 5. Proust is certainly solid & important
the greatest figure, without question, of the early 20
th
century. Ive
read Swanns Way & Within a Budding Grove, & mean to go

through the whole series some day.
10
It certainly forms a rich & vivid
picture of an ageor one angle of an age. You are certainly right in
believing that one should know the standard older authorsmust
have, that is, a sympathetic understanding of the whole literary
stream which has moulded our perspective & modes of expression
in order to write intelligently & well. One of the unfortunate things
about the present age is its plethora of raw, crude booksthings
written without background or grace, & with the superficial, fum-
bling diction of the ignorant & traditionless.
Glad you had an opportunity to see Cornelia Otis Skinner
11
who
is now in Providence, & of whose work my late elder aunt was espe-
cially fond. Her father was certainly a great old boyI recall him in
such things as Kismet. He must be getting toward 80 now, but is
still active in many ways. Not long ago I read an article of hiseither
in Harpers or the Atlantic.
12
I never saw a performance of Miss Skin-
ners, since I am curiously unappreciative of dramatic readings. I re-
quire a full cast and scenery to get my imagination really working. In
late years my interest in drama has greatly waned, & I see very few
cinemas. Like you, I deplore the inability of cinema performers to
sink themselves in their parts. I agree concerning the merits of
Charles Laughton, whom I have seen as Nero, Henry VIII, Dr.
Moreau, Edward Moulton-Barrett, & Inspector Javert.
13
His Henry
was surely magnificent, & his Nero scarcely less distinctive in its way.
Speaking of Nero & books about himhave you read The Bloody
Poet, by Desider Kostolanyi,
14
which was published 7 or 8 years ago?
It got at the frustrated artist side of the poor old scab rather well.
Further anent the theatreI heard a pretty good lecture on the re-
cent work of Shaw by the critic Bonamy Dobre the other night.
Also was invited to see the Le Gallienne repertory company last
monthin two clever & surprisingly traditional comedies by the
brothers Quintero. Smooth but undistinguished. They had Rosmer-
sholm
15
the next night, which Id a damn sight rather have seen. Just
my luck to get invited to the wrong show!
Hope the Frentz performance didnt disappoint you. My aunt
went to hear Kreisler the other night, but I didnt.
No especial events hereabouts& winter is obviously at hand.
5-inch snow Nov. 23earliest in the history of the local weather bu-
reau. I am reading the Wells-Huxley biological outlineThe Science
of Life& find it a truly monumental piece of popular exposition.
50 H. P. Lovecraft
All good wishes
Merry Christmas & Happy New YearYrs most cordially
H P L
Notes
1. Astounding paid HPL a total of $630 for the two stories, $350 (less $35
commission to Julius Schwartz) for At the Mountains of Madness and $280
for The Shadow out of Time (June 1936).
2. August Derleth, The Alphabet Begins with AAA, Atlantic Monthly 156,
No. 6 (December 1935): 73439.
3. August H. Mason.
4. A gift from Samuel Loveman (see SL 4.347).
5. By Thomas Carlyle. An edition was found in HPLs library (see LL 154).
6. Adelbert von Chamisso (17811838), Peter Schlemihls wundersame
Geschichte (1814); tr. as Peter Schlemihl. The novel was mentioned in the
original version of Supernatural Horror in Literature (Recluse, 1927), where
HPL says of it: [It] tells of a man who lost his own shadow as the conse-
quence of a misdeed, and of the strange developments that resulted.
7. Friedrich Heinrich Karl, freiherr de La Motte-Fouqu (17771843), Undine
(1811). HPL had an edition with Sintram and His Companions and other
works (LL 513).
8. The Arabian Nights Entertainments, selected by Andrew Lang (New York:
Longmans, Green, 1898; LL 38), given to HPL by his mother on Christmas
1898.
9. By Lord Dunsany (LL 273).
10. HPL never read the final four novels of A Remembrance of Things Past.
11. Cornelia Otis Skinner (19011979), actress and author of several books of
humor.
12. Otis Skinner, Sneak Music, Harpers 171, No. 6 (November 1935): 74853.
13. HPL refers to several movies starring Charles Laughton (18991962): The
Sign of the Cross (1932), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Island of Lost
Souls (1933), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), and Les Misrables (1935).
14. Dezs Kosztolnyi (18851936), A vres klt (1921); tr. as The Bloody
Poet (1927).
15. Henrik Ibsen (18281906), Rosmersholm (188586; first American pro-
duction 1904). HPL saw A Sunny Morning (one-act play) and The Women
Have Their Way (two-act play) by Serafin and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero,
starring Eva Le Gallienne.

[7] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,
Feby. 10, 1936
Dear White:
My tardiness in acknowledging yours of Jany. 9 & the
interesting issue of The Quill springs from an unfortunate combina-
tion of circumstances. First I was crowded to the breaking-point with
an accumulation of more tasks than I could possibly perform, & then
came down with an attack of grippewhich leaves me still rather
shaky & easily fatigued. I am surrounded by mountains of unanswered
mail, & have had to shelve or transfer many labours which I ought to
perform. Therefore besides being late, this epistle may likewise be
very disjointed, stupid, & inadequate.
I enjoyed the Howard Quill
1
very much& can scarcely recall
seeing a better student publication. The proportion of really vital &
well-written material is surprisingly high, & I certainly congratulate
all connected with it. The cover, too, is very harmonious in design &
colour. I was very glad to get a first glimpse of Howell Viness work,
& enjoyed his closeness to the atmosphere & folklore of his native
soil.
2
That is what important novels grow out of. Leonard Clint-
stock
3
also rings truewhile So South the South
4
very justly points
out an especially irritating phase of popular literary hokum.
Michaely
5
overdoes ultra-modern mannerisms a trifle, but the au-
thor shews that he has an ample fund of images for soberer use later
on. Your own story
6
is an excellent psychological studya bit highly
coloured, perhaps, but full of the insight which distinguishes the sin-
cere fiction writer. The verse in the magazine includes some splendid
stuffyour departing preceptor Mason being especially powerful.
7

As you say, Shakespeares Father
8
is highly unusualindeed, all the
verse seems to reach a gratifyingly high level. Your brief columnar
lines are very clever!
9
Thanks immensely for this delightful glimpse of
contemporary university journalism. Hope youll do equally well with
the future issuesin all of which I wish you the very best of luck.
Your latest bibliothecal additions seem to be as well-chosen as the
earlier onesincluding several which I lack, & 3 or 4 which Ive never
read. Before long your walls will consist mostly of shelves! Glad you
have read Seven Pillars of Wisdom
10
I must some day. I became ac-
quainted with The Decline of the West
11
just a decade ago, & believe
52 H. P. Lovecraft
it is one of the most important books of the century. There is certainly
a great deal of truth behind Spenglers central thesesthat agricultural
cultures are healthier than industrial-commercial cultures, that cultures
have or tend to have a natural rise, summit, & decline, & that our exist-
ing civilisation is on the down-grade. Mixed with the truth is a great
deal of extravaganceas in the attempt to treat a culture as a typical
biological organismbut this is characteristic of all philosophic sys-
tems. As you remark, the amount of massed erudition which Spengler
puts into his work is almost bewildering. Many an ordinarily well-
educated man rises from a perusal of The Decline of the West with a
feeling of helpless ignorance & scholastic humility!
Your postscript
12
puts me in rather a difficult position, since I am
a most emphatic opponent of the critical attitude it embodies. I have,
however, tried to comment (on the other sheet) as best I canat
least explaining my own position, which you will probably deem ab-
surd. My notes on& tentative changes inyour really excellent
poem must be regarded only in the light of suggestionsto be put
aside, no doubt, as the biassed dodderings of fossilised & unreceptive
old age. They at least illustrate a point of view& may or may not
prove vaguely helpful in one way or another.
Speaking of poetryheres an advertisement listing the collected
verse of my friend Samuel Loveman, published last month.
13
You
would probably consider the verse reprehensibly traditional & classi-
cal, but I regard it as great stuff. Loveman knowsor at least used to
knowyour fellow-Donnite Allen Tate.
Glad you had a pleasant Yuletide. We had a tree heregiving
quite a momentary illusion of restored childhood. Around New
Years I visited Long in N.Y.seeing most of the old group & meet-
ing a number of science-fiction authors (Arthur J. Burks, Otto Binder,
&c.) who were new to me. We had several gatherings at various
places, & I attended a dinner of the Am. Fiction Guildwhere I saw
good old Seabury Quinn for the first time since 1931. Long, Morton,
Loveman, Talman, Kline, Kleiner, the two Wandrei boys, Leeds, Ster-
ling, Kirk, &c. &c. (some names may be known to you, others not)
were on deck, & weird literature received quite a bit of discussion.
Fortunately the weather was not as cold as it has since been, & I was
not feeling quite as run down.
On two occasions I visited the new Hayden Planetarium of the
Am. Museum of Natural History, & found it a highly impressive de-

vice. It consists of a round, domed building of 2 storeys, joined at one
point to the museum edifice. On the lower floor is a circular hall
whose ceiling is a gigantic orreryshewing the planets revolving
around the sun at their proper relative speeds. Above it is another
circular hall whose roof is the great dome, & whose edge is made to
represent the horizon of N.Y. as seen from Central Park. In the mid-
dle of this upper hall is a projector which casts on the concave dome
a perfect image of the skycapable of duplicating the natural appar-
ent motions of the celestial vault, & of depicting the heavens as seen
at any hour, in any season, from any latitude, & at any period of his-
tory. Other parts of the projector can cast suitably moveable images
of the sun, moon, & planets, & diagrammatic arrows & circles for ex-
planatory purposes. The effect is infinitely lifelikeas if one were
outdoors beneath the sky. Lecturesdifferent each month (I heard
both Dec. & Jan. ones)are given in connexion with the apparatus.
In the annular corridors on each floor are niches containing typical
astronomical instruments of all agestelescopes, transits, celestial
globes, armillary spheres, &c.& cases to display books, meteorites, &
other miscellany. Astronomical pictures line the walls, & at the desk
may be obtained useful pamphlets, books, planispheres, &c. The insti-
tution holds classes in elementary astronomy, & sponsors clubs of
amateur observers. Altogether, it is the most complete & active
popular astronomical centre imaginable. It seems to be crowded at all
hours, attesting a public interest in astronomy which did not exist
when I was young.
The latter half of the winter is proving wretchedly cold & snowy
hereabouts (I havent been out of the house since Jany. 13), & believe
that even our generally milder region has suffered somewhat from the
universal chill. It surely cheers me to realise that the vernal equinox
will be reached in a month & ten days!
All good wishes, & thanks again for the Quill which speaks so well
for your editorship!
Yrs most sincerely
H P L

[P.S.] As an anti-Donnite I fear I cant be of much real help regarding
your versesbut I can at least offer a few concrete suggestions
probably to be rejected at once as the quaint mouthings of an archaic
54 H. P. Lovecraft
fogy. In the first place, I think you have rather outdone Donneor
out-Donned Donne!in deliberate ruggedness. His lines always re-
tained some resemblance to the metres from which they diverged&
I cant recall that he carried his principles into blank versewhich
always needs greater regularity. Secondly, it seems to me you have
gone too far in the use of technical & prosaic terms (infra &c.)a
characteristic fault of this age. In trying to offer suggestions for im-
provement, I have endeavoured not to alter the general atmosphere
of the poemwhich is really excellent. Because of the blank verse
medium, I have felt obliged to make the lines closer to iambic pen-
tameter, & in one or two places I have straightened out diction which
seemed to me wilfully & unmotivatedly (& therefore inartistically)
obscure or inverted. I may have bungled everythingbut here are the
suggestions to heed or reject at will.
Not sweet, this man: more he implacable:
Unreconciled to sugar of Shakspere,
Or music of the mighty-lined Marlowe
Combined of rare components, he remained
Supple, infrangible, with prism-perception
Of a vast world and of himself in it.
Below, above, beyond, this man; his view
Wide, metasensual; his rugged words
Dimensioned by mind, soul, bodybound
By four stern walls of closely coffined space.
All shining metal, this mans leaping verse
The mercury of fluid lyric love
Silver of resonant God-pointing hymn,
Rough ore of youthful satire, grating harsh. . . .
Nor ever sags the bold arc of his flight:
A force centrifugal keeps tautly strung
The thin cool wires of subtle intellect.
Of bright & sudden tangent-thought composed
This man, light-winged, eccentric of good things:
Body of woman, mind of man, Gods soul
Long time before his fire shall flicker out,
Yet molder now the canons he defyd.*

*A sentiment with which, in any permanent sense, I basically disagree!

I approach this Donne business with much trepidation, since I am on
the other side of the fence. While appreciating the depth, subtlety, &
penetration of Dr. Donne, I cannot in any way endorse his manner &
medium. He was not primarily a poetbut rather a thinker & min-
ute analyser of human nature. Poetry must be simple, direct, non-
intellectual, clothed in symbols & images rather than ideas & state-
ments, & above all limpid & musical& employing the familiar, tra-
ditional words which have had a chance to pick up centuries of half-
latent overtones & associations. If it isnt all thisor largely soit
simply isnt poetry. It is prosepsychological analysis, philosophy, or
what have youmasquerading as poetry but using the appeal &
channels of prose. Wilde knew what he was talking about when he
pulled that famous motMeredith is a prose Browning, & so was
Browning.
14
Donne was the typical product of a decadent agethe
petering-out of Elisabethanism. He thought that the poets had said
everything that could be said about anythinghence began to ex-
periment with minute analyses & intellectual subtleties which are not
really poetry at all. He transferred the atmosphere of the Euphuistic
conceit to verse& founded a whole school of rhyming metaphysi-
cians whose cleverness was enormous, but whose products were not
poetry. Of course there was poetic feeling & material in Donne, but
his mode of embodying it & his manner of uttering it detracted
enormously from its net force. There was no excuseno real rea-
sonfor his harsh & careless diction. Some of his poems are great in
spite of it, but none because of it. He simply neglected & rejected one
of the most valuable adjuncts to poetic expression. Dryden (who ad-
mired him) once very sensibly spoke of the need of translating Donne
into English verse.
15
For remember this always: harshness, obscurity,
verbal inversion, far-fetched allusions, thin-spun conceits, &c. never
serve any useful end in themselves. They are a dead weight to be car-
ried by the poetry unfortunate enough to possess them. Donne was
on the wrong trackShakespeare, Milton, Shelley, & Keats on the
right track. Irrespective of temporary fashions cropping up in ages
akin to Donnes own in decadence, this is what posterity has con-
firmed & always will confirm in the long run. Youll live to see the
truth reaffirmedfor good taste generally comes back in the end.
I am fully aware of Donnes present wave of popularitywhose
beginning 20 years ago interested me greatly.
16
Undoubtedly the rest-
less, unpoetic, over-analytical taste of this jaded & bewildered age
56 H. P. Lovecraft
an age upset by the fall of its hereditary illusions through scientific
discovery, the reorganisation of its ways of life through mechanical
development, & the threat of collapse inherent in its sociological mal-
adjustmentfinds a kindred voice in the old metaphysical poetbut
that is the fault of the age rather than the virtue of the bard. This age
is too scientific & intellectual to be aesthetic, & all the arts exhibit a
pitiful sterility which no amount of radical experimentation & ex-
travagance can conceal. Eliot confesses as much in his Waste Land. I
feel little hesitation in betting that the most recent trends in poetry
represent a blind alleyto be rejected in another generation or two
in favour of the main line. The wise man, I think, is the one least
swayed by fashion. A slave to no one age, but an impartial surveyor
of western aesthetics from the beginning.
Notes
1. The Howard Quill 8, No. 1 (Winter 1936), edited by Lee White.
2. Howell Vines wrote an article in the issue entitled In a Novelists Note-
book (pp. 14).
3. A story by Harold R. Dunnam (p. 8).
4. A story by Hugh Frank Smith (pp. 2425).
5. A story by Morrison Wood (pp. 45).
6. Out of Sorrow (pp. 2627).
7. August H. Mason, Geography Is Good (p. 21).
8. A poem by LeRoy Mooney (p. 9).
9. White had contributed a brief humorous poem, Look at Your Thumb,
in a section entitled A Page for Woollcott (p. 23).
10. T. E. Lawrence (18881935), Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1926).
11. Oswald Spengler (18801936), Der Untergang des Abendlandes (191822;
two vols.); tr. as The Decline of the West (192226; two vols.). HPL read the
first volume no later than February 1927 (SL 2.103).
12. As a postscript to his letter of 9 January, White attached his untitled
poem about John Donne:
Not sweet, this man: more he implacable:
Non-reconciled to sugar of Shakspere
Music of Mighty-lined Marlowe
Combined of rare component,
Supple, infrangible, prism-perception
Of a vast world and of himself in it.
Infra-ultra, this man metasensual;
Dimensioned by mind, soul, body

Bound by four walls of coffins.
All metal, verse of this man
Mercury of fluid love lyric
Silver of God-pointing hymn,
Rough ore of youthful satire.
Never sagged the arc of his flight:
The centrifugal force keeps taut
The thin cool wires of intellect.
Of bright sudden tangent-thought this man
Eccentric of good things:
Body of woman, mind of man, soul of God:
Long time before flash of his fire shall be dying
Yet molders the canon of his defying.
See HPLs revised version in the postscript.
13. The Hermaphrodite and Other Poems (Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers,
1936; LL 550).
14. The statement is in the first section of Wildes The Critic as Artist (1891).
HPL quoted this in his Preface to John Ravenor Bullens White Fire (Athol,
MA: The Recluse Press, 1927), which he edited.
15. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy
enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers,
and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. Discourse
concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693), dedicated to Charles,
Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.
16. Reinterest in Donne can be traced to Edmund Gosses The Life and Let-
ters of John Donne (1899; 2 vols.).
[8] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,
July 12, 1936
Dear White:
Glad to hear from you againthough as the fates
would have it, the last few months have been such a nightmare of ill
health, congested work, & nervous exhaustion that I could hardly
have done justice to an earlier letter had I received one. Even now I
fear my reply will seem sadly sketchy & inadequate. I believe I was
rather down with grippe when I wrote in February. That was only
the beginning of 1936s disasters! My aunt soon developed a case infi-
nitely worse than mine, so that I was at once reduced to the state of a
combined nurse, secretary, butler, market-man & errand-boy. Later
the patient had to go to the hospitalbut since April 21 she has been
[In margin, HPL has written:]
Dont drag in scientific jar-
gon. Simplicity & directness
are what make poetry.
58 H. P. Lovecraft
back & is steadily recovering. I myself have been miserable. The cold
spring kept my energies at a low ebb, & the hopelessly crowded state
of my programme nearly reduced me to a nervous breakdown. My
aunts illness & financial complications made a vacation impossible
so that in general 36 has been a hell of a year so far! I did obtain a
time-extension on the heaviest revision job, but am still uncertain
about my ability to get it done.
Glad the novel-notes have been progressing well, & hope the
magnum opus will be taking shape ere long. Congratulations on the
library! One can get some excellent bargains in the second-hand
shops if one knows just where to look. Most of the standard works of
literature are to be found on 10 & 25 counters, so that even a very
moderate sum will go a long way unless one is fastidious about the
physical appearance of the volumes.
Regarding DonneI trust I didnt do him an injustice in my re-
marks of last winter. His status is surely secure enough, but I was ques-
tioning the wisdom of using him too exclusively as a model &
inspiration, as some of the moderns are inclined to do. Poetry, after all,
must be essentially emotional & imaginative rather than intellectual; &
I believe that some of the modernly despised romantics were far truer
artistsusing their medium in the way it was meant to be usedthan
any of the thinkers who have tried to write philosophy in verse.
I must read Vardis Fisher
1
& Thomas Wolfe some dayfor they
seem to be accepted as especially authentic voices of the present.
Upholders of the genteel tradition accuse Fisher of bad taste
which probably means that he is a serious writer with something to
say! By the wayyour Communion verses are very clever!
Amidst the prevailing chaos my own reading has been very scant,
& even now I am engulfed by tons of unread borrowed books. Re-
cently Ive perused two biographies of Roger Williams,
2
plus George
Santayanas Last Puritan
3
the latter a splendid study of the mori-
bund culture amidst which I grew up. Not a mere piece of cheap de-
bunkingbut a sympathetic study which praises strong points while
shewing up weak points. In general, such a work as one would expect
from the greatest living philosopher.
I hope you will find it possible to enter Princeton after your gradua-
tion. An academic career would, it seems to me, be admirably appro-
priate for one with your vital & spontaneous devotion to literature.
This has been a bad year for fantasy in general as well as for cer-

tain of its devoteesboth M. R. James (aet 73) and George Allen
England (aet 59) being on its recent necrology roll.
4
Most tragic of all
from the standpoint of our little circle is the suicide of Robert E.
Howardwho shot himself on June 11 when told that his mother
would not recover from her illness. She died the next day without
knowing of his act. The blow to his fathera physicianis terrific.
His books will be given to his alma mater (Howard Payne College,
Brownwood, Texas) as the nucleus of a Robert E. Howard Memorial
Collection. Weird fictions loss is irreparablefor no other popular
magazine fantaisistes work had half the zest & power & spontaneity
of his. Poor old Two-Gun Bob!
All good wishes
Yrs most cordially
H P L
Notes
1. Vardis Fisher (18951968), prolific regional novelist.
2. Emily M. Easton, Roger Williams, Prophet and Pioneer (1930); James Ernst,
Roger Williams, New England Firebrand (1932). See HPL to R. F. Searight, 27
August 1936, H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to Richard F. Searight, ed. David E.
Schultz and S. T. Joshi (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1992), p. 84.
3. George Santayana (18631950), The Last Puritan (1935); cf. SL 5.31215.
4. James died on 12 June 1936 (one day after Robert E. Howard), England on
26 June 1936.
[9] [ALS]
Rock Bluff on the Edge of a Woodland
Tarn in the Forest of Quinsnicket, some 6
Miles North of 66 College Street., Prov. R.I.
Oct. 15, 1936
Dear White:
One of my last afternoon outings, with work & corre-
spondence along in the inevitable black bag. Autumn closes down
early in this sub-arctic zone, & tropical-constitutiond old gentleman
cant enjoy sitting in the open very much after this time of year. Oh,
to be in Charleston, now that autumns here!
1

Glad you have been managing to have a reasonably good time de-
spite minor worries & wearinesses. Dont mind occasional unproduc-
tive or even un-studious spells. The best of minds have to lie fallow
60 H. P. Lovecraft
now & then, & are all the better after their periods of restful idleness.
Hope youre rid of asthmatic troubleswhich, by the way, always
bothered Ambrose Bierce.
Things hereabouts go much as usual. Barlow left for the west Sept.
1
st
,
2
pausing in N Y to see Long, Howard Wandrei, & others of the
weird fiction group, & calling on Miss Moore in Indianapolis.
3
Ive had
several guests since thenshewing each the usual round of antiquar-
ian sights. Busy as the devil with revisionworked 60 hours without
sleep a fortnight ago on a job whose deadline loomed perilously
close.
4
My aunt is still improving, & Im as tolerable as might be ex-
pected with cold weather leering threateningly ahead.
And so you are sampling the celebrated Gertrude Stein! I must
admit that Ive never read any book of hers, since scattered fragments
in periodicals discouraged any interest I might otherwise have ac-
quired. I suppose she has been an influence, or something of the
sortotherwise substantial literary figures would not take her so
quasi-seriously. But I cant think that she counts very heavily in the
long stream of continuous English tradition. As steins go, I think Ill
do my betting on Ein!
I wish my camera were of the right size & focussing potentialities
to get good views of Klarkash-Tons grotesque miniature carvings.
Donald Wandreiwith a better apparatusdid photograph them, &
if I can worm a set of prints out of him Ill be delighted to let you see
them. C A S does better in three dimensions than in two, & some of
these sculptural horrors are imaginatively provocative indeed.
Glad ideas for tales & novels are not lacking & hope youll have a
chance to develop the best of them. Contact with Howell Vines
must be inspiring & beneficial& I hope Vines will have better liter-
ary luck in the future than in the past. The part played by commer-
cialism in writing is infinitely discouraging. Little, Brown, & Co. surely
have a curious attitudewillingness to publish but not to pushbut
thats at least better than unwillingness to publish at all. Hope the
new agent will be able to bring about better conditions.
I havent read Eyeless in Gaza, but greatly admire Aldous Hux-
ley as an honest & vigorous thinker. He & Julian are certainly nobly
upholding the traditions of their grandsire! The picture of Proust
surely lacks nothing in force & concrete imagery, & probably does
form a cruelly just criticism of Prousts weaker side. It is, however,
undoubtedly unjust to Proust on the wholefor the old boy cer-

tainly did manage to grind out a tremendously graphic picture of
various phases of society & various aspects of human nature. Proust is
a veritable idol of sundry friends & correspondence of mine
especially Derleth, Barlow, & J. Vernon Shea. Otherslike Long
have no use for him.
5
I take a middle ground (from a very limited ac-
quaintanceonly the first two books)which is none the less fa-
vourable enough to place P. at the top of 20
th
century novelists.
Glad the acrostic
6
sounded passable for a mechanical thing of its
kind. That half-hours churchyard pastime has had an amusing series
of echoesmore of which, perhaps, are still to come. Although it
would never have occurred to Barlow & me to submit our results for
publication, old de Castro did& secured an acceptance from W T!
After that, Bob & I did send our results inbut they were turned
down because Wright had already taken one. Now that the ball has
started rolling, well probably let one or another of the fan maga-
zines have our specimens. Meanwhile correspondents began to emu-
late. Young Henry Kuttner devised a splendidly poetic acrosticbest
of all because written at leisure. And an old friend M. W. Moe of
Milwaukeea high-school teacher who visited here in July & to
whom I shewed the hidden hillside churchyardprepared a very
clever academic variant & is about to incorporate all the acrostics
into a hectographed booklet for use in his English classes. Nor is that
all. Derleth is editing a Wisconsin Poetry Anthology for the publisher
Henry Harrison, & having seen Moes acrostic decided to include it in
the volume. All this from little Bobby Barlows idle notion of writing
an acrostic (his original idea was to have each of us contribute parts
to a single poem, but this soon proved impracticable) while seated on
a tombstone on a summers afternoon!
7

NoI havent read The Circus of Dr. Lao.
8
Thanks abundantly
for the proffered loan, of which I trust I may ultimately take advan-
tage. If I borrowed it now, though, Id have to keep it an indefinite
time, since my heaps of unread borrowed books come near to hitting
the ceiling. This has been the most feverishly rushed year in my re-
cent annals, & many departments of my activities have perforce
lapsed into utter chaos.
By the wayI can understand Vines preference for the pen over
the typewriter. I cant bear the process of typing, & simply couldnt
think coherently with a machine in front of me. Well-patterned
phrases with me take form only when I can mould them by hand
62 H. P. Lovecraft
with the traditional equipment of the writer.
The other night I attended a meeting of a local society of amateur
astronomersloosely connected with Brown University& was as-
tonished by the scope & seriousness of their activities. There was an
address on early Rhode Island astronomy, & a reflecting telescope
used in 1769 was exhibited. I was half-tempted to joinsince astron-
omy used to be a specialty of mine.
Best wishes
Yrs most cordially
H P L
Notes
1. Robert Browning (18121889), Home-Thoughts, from Abroad, (1845), ll.
12, but read England for Charleston and April for autumn.
2. R. H. Barlow visited HPL in Providence from 28 July to 1 September.
3. I.e., Catherine L. Moore.
4. The job was Well Bred Speech: A Brief, Intensive Aid for English Students
by Anne Tillery Renshaw ([Washington, DC: Standard Press, 1936]; LL 726).
Much of HPLs work (including the essay now titled Suggestions for a
Reading Guide) was excised from the final work. Cf. SL 5.42122.
5. HPL gave a copy of Swanns Wayan appropriately sophisticated
Christmas presentto Long in 1928, with the accompanying poem, An
Epistle to Francis, Ld. Belknap . . . (see SL 2.25557).
6. I.e., In a Sequesterd Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walkd
(1936).
7. Moes acrostic was published in August Derleth and Raymond E. F. Lars-
son, ed., Poetry out of Wisconsin (New York: H. Harrison, 1937). All five
acrostics were published in David E. Schultz, In a Sequesterd Churchyard,
Crypt of Cthulhu No. 57 (St. Johns Eve 1988): 2629.
8. Charles G. Finney (19051984), The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935).
[10] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,
Nov. 30, 1936.
Dear White:
Congratulations on the first issue of your consolidated
magazine enterprise! Campus
1
truly presents an admirable blend of
good appearance & well-selected contents, & I hope its announced

policy
2
may develop with complete success. I read the entire contents,
& cannot find any point on which to dissent from the opinions you
have expressed. I would say that your own Huxley review
3
& Masons
stream of reflections
4
form the genuine high spots. Both of these seem
to me tremendously thoughtful & well-expressed. The news & other
items are competent & piquant, while the verse all reflects cleverness
& wit. There is a certainly a gratifying absence of crude or conspicu-
ously mediocre spots. I was especially tickled by the column of weary
words,
5
since one of my recent jobs has involved compiling a set of
typical stock phrases.
6
I wish I had had this column before I prepared
my list! Glad to note items concerning your dramatic progress,
7
& to
see the pleasant-looking snapshot of you in the gallery of celebrities.
8
I
appreciate the originality of the consolidation idea, & congratulate you
on the honour of launching this innovation as editor-in-chief. It surely
must, though, have been a devastating jobconsidering the complex-
ity & diversity of elements involved!
No very striking events have distinguished the programme here-
aboutsthough autumn has brought sundry lectures at the college &
kindred things to compensate for the waning of outdoor opportuni-
ties. The season was not quite as bad & prematurely arctic as I had
feared it would beoccasional good days persisting far into October.
Oct. 20 & 21 were phenomenally warm, & I went exploring on both
daysfinding a fascinating forest three miles away which I had never
seen before. This placeof which I had heard vaguely in the past, but
which happens to be between my usual routes of explorationis
called the Squantum Woods, & lies down the east shore of Narra-
gansett Bayin the town of East Providence. It is now a state reser-
vation, & was made accessible by the cutting-through of the
Barrington Parkway. dopol, but what Ive missed for almost half a
century! Still, Im almost glad that some new discovery at my very
doorstep was held in reserve for my later years. It renews the illusion
of youth & of adventurous expectancy to come upon something fresh
& unexpected when one had thought all such things were past! Great
oaks & birchessteep sloped & rock ledges& on both occasions a
magnificent sunset beyond the trees. Then glimpses of the crescent
moon, Venus, & Jupiter& the lights of far-off Providence from high
places along the parkway. Another goal for next years rural rambles!
Snow fell as early as Nov. 24unusual even for this subarctic
zone& I fear the winter may be a trying one. Hibernation of greater
64 H. P. Lovecraft
or less rigidity is my lot from now on.
My Shadow Over Innsmouth is now out
9
but as a first cloth-
bound book it doesnt awake any enthusiasm in me. Indeed, it is one
of the lousiest jobs Ive ever seen30 misprints, slovenly format, &
loose, slipshod binding. The solitary redeeming feature is the set of
Utpatel illustrationsone of which, on the dust wrapper, saves the
appearance of the thing as it lies on the library table.
With all good wishes, & renewed appreciation of Campus,
Yrs most sincerely,
H P L
Notes
1. Campus: The Newsmagazine of Howard College 1, No. 1 (October 1936),
ed. Lee White and Hugh Frank Smith.
2. The policy was enunciated in an unsigned editorial, The Beginning: Vol-
ume One, Number One: As it is, this magazine is a combination of The
Crimson, student weekly newspaper, The Quill, literary journal, and The
Alumnus, alumni quarterly (p. 1).
3. For Aldous Huxley (p. 25) by Lee White, a review of Eyeless in Gaza.
4. August H. Mason, Words on a Sawmill Air (pp. 1718).
5. Weary Words about Campus People (p. 10), an unsigned humorous arti-
cle in which various individuals on the campus are described with trite
phrases (John Hollingsworth is building castles in the air).
6. This was a chapter entitled Bromides Must Go for Renshaws Well Bred
Speech but not published there; it survives in ms. at JHL.
7. An unsigned news article, Masquers play set for Nov. 13 (p. 7), notes
that White will be acting in a production of Oscar Wildes The Importance of
Being Earnest.
8. Whites photograph appears in a montage on p. 9.
9. The Shadow over Innsmouth (Everett, PA: The Visionary Publishing Co.,
1936).
65
The Negative Mystics of the
Mechanistic Sublime: Walter Benjamin
and Lovecrafts Cosmicism
Jeff Lacy and Steven J. Zani
In recent years, a small but significant number of H. P. Lovecrafts crit-
ics have begun to address the question of language in his fiction. Lan-
guage has always been an issue with Lovecrafts detractors, and anyone
familiar with his criticism knows the legacy of critiques of his verbosity
and ambiguity. Lovecrafts early antagonistic reception in the world of
critical scholarship was no doubt due in part to his deliberate affect of
language and perhaps in part to the generally low opinion of weird
fiction held by many critics. But it is less our intention to address those
old discussions here than to help advance the front of a new one. In
John Langans postmodern, language-oriented article, Naming the
Nameless: Lovecrafts Grammatology, he delivers the argument that
Lovecrafts language in fact embodies the ideas that drive his fiction
(27). For the new inheritors of the Lovecraft critical tradition, language
is the essential question of Lovecraftian texts, and the critical process of
this generation should manifest itself in attempting to understand how
that language operates. To that end, this essay offers a view of Love-
crafts texts through the ideological lens of Walter Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin is a Frankfurt School Marxist whose influence ex-
tends, among other places, to translation studies. Benjamins account of
translation, published in his article The Task of the Translator, is
(in)famous in translation studies for its own verbosity and obscurity. In
it, Benjamin challenges the traditional notion of translation (i.e., the
transmission of information in a different language), stating, a transmit-
ting function cannot transmit anything but informationhence, some-
thing inessential (69). To Benjamin, the essential qualities of a work of
literature are the unfathomable, the mysterious, the poetic (70).
66 Jeff Lacy and Steven J. Zani
Thus, rather than imparting information or giving the same content as
the original, the act of translationin the Benjaminian senseshould
do something else: seek out the pure language that is only hinted at
by the original text. Pure language is, in essence, a sort of Platonic
ideal of what the author of the original text meant but inadequately
described in the texts limited content. The translator, then, follows the
cues of the original text to apprehend that pure language and point to
it using the literary tools available in another language.
For Benjamin, the process of translation is useful because it opens
up a question of the limitations of language. In sum, he argues, It is
the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure lan-
guage which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language
imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work (80). The prob-
lem of translationhow to say the same thing in a different lan-
guagebecomes a manifest question of the meaning behind the texts
themselves. In the words of Ian Almond, what Benjamin initially
calls the echo of the original is actually the voice of the translator
(190). When attempting to translate a text, restating the intention of
the original author is impossible since the translator can only (re)state
a conjecture of what the original authors intention might have been,
based on a reading of the original text. The actual meaning of the text
is something of an indeterminate, understood only by virtue of a
number of doublings and redoublings that occur when a message is
expressed, received, and understood. As Benjamin notes, the trans-
lated text is a growth from, an echo of, or a tangent to the original
text. Following Almonds argument, the original text has a similar re-
lationship the authors own inspiration or intentbesides acting as a
point of origin, there is not necessarily any direct correlation of the
authors intent and the original text.
This idea is especially applicable to Lovecraft criticism, where
critics often translate his epistolary statements into his fiction. As
Benjamin indicates, however, translation from one mode of expres-
sion to another liberates the language from the limitations of the
original. This liberating project is what goes on in Lovecrafts fiction,
or, at the very least, in the process of trying to figure out what that
fiction means. Lovecrafts fiction, delivered by narrators who recollect
fragments of texts and who speak of unspeakable things, deliberately
enacts a process of indeterminacy in translation, leading readers to a
different relationship to language and, hence, to Lovecrafts version of

a mystical truth. As we shall see, truth in Lovecrafts fictional uni-
verse is always revealed as a mystical truth with a negative twist; it is
a truth whose meaning is nonmeaning.
II
Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that com-
mon human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or sig-
nificance in the vast cosmos-at-large.
H. P. Lovecraft, Letter to Farnsworth Wright (SL 2.150)
Horror in Lovecraft is essentially cosmic indifference. It is the realiza-
tion that there is no purpose to the universe.
David Clements, Cosmic Psychoanalysis:
Lovecraft, Lacan, and Limits (6)
Lovecraft himself and numerous critics agree that one of the major
themes in his fiction is the revelation of a philosophy of cosmic indif-
ference. Critics also note the importance of Lovecrafts nonfiction
(especially Supernatural Horror in Literature and Some Notes on a
Nonentity) and his copious letters as sources of supplementary in-
formation to help understand his fiction. Lovecraft foresaw the chal-
lenge his themes might pose. In a letter to Farnsworth Wright, editor
of Weird Tales at the time, Lovecraft comments, I presume that few
commonplace readers would have any use for a story written on
these psychological principles (SL 2.150). A review of Lovecrafts
critical reception, Lovecraft Criticism: A Study by S. T. Joshi, ad-
dresses the complaints of several early critics for whom this presump-
tion proves true. This lack of understanding may have more to do
with Lovecrafts prose style, however, than the shortcomings of
commonplace readers. For instance, whereas Finnish critic Timo
Airaksinen frankly admits that Lovecraft is a problematic stylist,
several of Lovecrafts defenders, such as James Arthur Anderson, take
it upon themselves to demonstrate that much of what are mistak-
enly perceived to be flaws in Lovecrafts work are really essential
components of his overall theme and meaning (Airaksinen 3, Ander-
son iiiii). Likewise, in an article titled Lovecraft and Adjectivitis: A
Deconstructionist View, Donald R. Burleson attempts to explain
how Lovecrafts apparent misuse of adjectivesoften discussed by
Lovecrafts detractorsis actually an effective literary device. Suffice
to say, then, with so much controversy over its effectiveness, that
Lovecrafts fiction is challenging at best.
Compared to his fiction, however, Lovecrafts nonfictional texts
are very straightforward, explanatory, and declaratorysuch as the
fundamental premise comment in the above epigraph. Little won-
der, then, that Lovecrafts defenders often find it necessary to cite his
nonfiction and his letters to help make their cases. For example, both
Timo Airaksinen and S. T. Joshi make testament to the importance of
encountering Lovecrafts ideas in his nonfiction to properly under-
stand his fiction. According to Airaksinen, Lovecraft . . . develops a
comprehensive literary theory, a personal philosophy, and a meta-
physics which he follows in his fiction. . . . Without knowledge of
this background philosophy, to discover what he is writing about is
difficult (3). S. T. Joshi claims that Lovecrafts essays and letters pro-
vide invaluable information on the understanding of Lovecrafts
thought and, hence, his fiction, that Lovecrafts world view is worth
examining in some detail so that we can then see how precisely and
systematically the fiction is an expression of it, and that [the] failure
to read Lovecrafts letters has in particular caused problems for cer-
tain critics (Decline 170, 171, 229).
When critics employ his letters and nonfiction to understand his
fiction, they are in effect employing a method of translation, but it is
not a Benjaminian translation. The intent of this intertextualism is to
interpret the content of Lovecrafts fiction as if it were a translation of
the ideas expressed in his nonfictionwhat Benjamin might call an at-
tempt to understand the transmission of information, i.e. to understand
what really is not essential to the work. If Lovecrafts fiction and non-
fiction say the exact same thing in a different way, there would be no
point in reading one after reading the other. One could simply read
Lovecrafts letters or Supernatural Horror in Literature to get his
cosmic philosophy and not trouble with his complex and problematic
fictional texts. This is assuredly not the case, however; surely there is
some value in the differences between Lovecrafts modes of writing.
Lovecrafts fiction expresses his philosophy differently than his nonfic-
tion. The qualities that make Lovecrafts fiction so challenging are ex-
actly those same qualities that, in Benjamins opinion, are essential to
the literary work: the unfathomable, the mysterious, the poetic (70).
According to Benjamins principles, Lovecrafts fiction should be

able to stand well apart from his nonfiction. Perhaps, by employing a
Benjaminian method, readers may be able, as S. T. Joshi suggests, to
forget this body of peripheral material and read again the stories as
stories (Decline 229). In Benjaminian terms, Lovecrafts (and, for
that matter, any authors) work attempts to enact a revelation of
pure language. If one reads his fiction as such a process, that reading,
as such, is not much different from any number of other recent
postmodern critics of Lovecraft. However, applying Benjamin allows
one to dismiss Lovecrafts nonfiction as the apparent origin of mean-
ing for his fiction, and replaces this author-centered, intertextual
critical view with a more language-oriented methodology that ex-
plains just why Lovecrafts fiction is worthy of critical attention in
the first place without the need to supplement of Lovecrafts addi-
tional texts and explanations.
III
Of the supposed problems or flaws of Lovecrafts writing, the one
that may be most responsible for hindering the comprehension of his
cosmic themes is the misunderstood outlook of his narrators. Despite
Lovecrafts claim that scene, mood, and phenomena are more impor-
tant in conveying what is to be conveyed than are characters and plot,
the character of his narrators are of key importance in his fiction
(Some Notes on a Nonentity [MW 562]). Deborah DAgati touches
on this idea in her article The Problems with Solving: Implications for
Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft Narrators. Lovecrafts narrators tend
to be very rational. As they encounter the uncanny, they conduct a
search dictated by rational inquiry (57). Some readers criticize Love-
crafts narrators for being too logical, claiming that the narrators seem
to possess an unrealistically tenacious hold on logical but implausible
explanations for uncanny events rather than concluding that the super-
natural is at work. As DAgati explains, however, the narrators have no
reason not to expect logical answersin their empirical and materialist
worldviews, supernatural explanations are just not a thinkable option.
The narrative voices of these empiricists are often so appropriately dry
and objective that readers may forget that there is, in fact, a character
with a particular worldview narrating the story.
To be fair, reader expectations also play into this quandary. Upon
encountering a Lovecraft story, especially if it is contained in a con-
text such as an issue of Weird Tales, the reader understandably ex-
pects the uncanny, unnatural, and weird to occur. One may assume
that the readers of Weird Tales and its ilk in fact want to read about
aliens, ghosts, monsters, and whatnot. Indeed, such elements would
be the whole point of the story to most readers of weird fiction. How-
ever, since readers of weird fiction assume, expect, and want the
presence of supernatural entities and paranormal forces, the appear-
ance of such entities or forces is not as shocking and horrible to the
reader as they are to the unsuspecting narrators. As DAgati notes,
Lovecrafts narrators are stunned because they find the opposite of
what they expect (59). Because of this discrepancy in expectations,
many readers have been unable to easily identify with Lovecrafts nar-
rators and thus fail to understand the mystic quality of the narrators
tales. To be sure, Lovecraft writes fiction in the language of the mys-
tic; his narrators encounter what lies outside of the mundane sphere
of human experience and attempt to explain the unexplainable, de-
scribe the indescribable, and name the unnamable. In short, his narra-
tors experience the ineffable and struggle to communicate it.
Lovecrafts stories, then, express cosmic indifference via illustra-
tion and demonstration, as opposed to the version of cosmicism pre-
sent in his letters and nonfiction, where he reveals his philosophy in
simple declarations or explanations. As Fritz Leiber states the case,
readers of Lovecrafts fiction encounter confirmation rather than
revelation (56; emphasis in original). Thus, Lovecrafts fiction, in a
sense, is what Airaksinen calls a sacred text: The vision is apocalyp-
tic but at the same time liberating, just like the touch of holiness
must be. . . . The Lovecraftian text robs the world of its meaning, yet
forces his reader to cling to it, as the only road to salvation (21718).
Lovecrafts stories, then, often fail to adequately express his cosmi-
cism because what he is attempting to do, in fact, is relate a mystical
experience, or at least what would pass for a mystical experience in
his mechanistic fictional world, which is somewhat different from
mystical experiences in our world.
Epistemologist Bimal Krishna Matilal explains the mystic view-
point as follows: Mysticism has been loosely used for an assortment
of views. The salient feature of these views is that they envision an
integrated picture of the cosmos and promote a special type of hu-
man experience that is at once unitive and nondiscursive, at once

self-fulfilling and self-effacing (143). Christian philosopher William P.
Alston defines as mystical any experience that is taken by the sub-
ject to be a direct awareness of (what is taken to be) Ultimate Reality
or (what is taken to be) an object of religious worship (80). Thus,
the mystic experience is a confrontation with reality such as it is,
typically an event perceived as a coming to terms with universal to-
tality or connection. The experience is self-fulfilling because it pro-
vides a sense of place and purpose, and self-effacing because it does
away with individual identity as one connects with the sublime.
Didier T. Jans article on mysticism in fantastic literature discusses
the mystical experience as a kind of unsettling confrontation with the
cosmos which forces a new understanding of its laws and rules. For
Jan, this confrontation originates in disquieting art: The disquiet-
ing art object forces or presumes in the spectator a revision or recon-
sideration of the everyday laws of nature (110).
These definitions of mysticism put Lovecrafts fiction well within
the mystical paradigm. In regard to Jan, consider the numerous ex-
amples of disquieting art found in Lovecraft. To name but a few:
the wild viol playing in The Music of Erich Zann, the idol and
strange architecture in The Call of Cthulhu, and the mural sculp-
tures in At the Mountains of Madness. Just as Jan states, these art ob-
jects influence Lovecrafts narrators to reconsider their understanding
of the world.
1
The narrators eventually apprehend what Alston terms
Ultimate Reality. In Lovecraft, this Ultimate Reality is a single
truth, a terrible truth from the human point of view: namely, that
mankind is but a tiny insignificant speck, without hope and without
meaning. The more we learn, Lovecraft says, the smaller we become
(Anderson 166). While the notion of mysticism in Lovecraft falls in
line with Jan and Alston, it diverges from Matilals definition at this
point. As the quote from Anderson notes, Lovecrafts mystical ex-
perience is indeed self-effacing; the narrators sense of self is suitably
sublimated. The difference, also illustrated by Andersons quote, is
that Lovecraft offers no self-fulfillment. It is because of this distinc-
tion that Lovecrafts narrators are negative mystics. Lovecrafts narra-
tors become chagrined instead of fulfilled, despondent instead of
hopeful, disillusioned instead of content.

1. By the same token, Lovecrafts work in itself is disquieting art, forcing
readers to reconsider their worldview.
Reading mysticism into Lovecraft is by no means entirely new.
Bradley A. Will and Richard E. Dansky, for example, both explore
Lovecrafts inside/outside cosmology in some detail. Lovecrafts in-
side is the limited realm of human experience; the outside is the
cosmic. Lovecraft often refers to the cosmic as the beyond, which is
apropos since it is actually what is beyond human ken. This cosmol-
ogy is also characteristic of mysticism: [the] world as we know it is a
delusion that hides the true nature or state of things, or else it is no
delusion at all, revealing all there is, if only we could see. The mystic
thus learns to see the world in this double perspective (Jan 107).
This is exactly what happens to Lovecrafts narrators. Wills article
H. P. Lovecraft and the Semiotic Kantian Sublime compares Love-
crafts cosmic vision with Kants description of the apprehension of
the sublime. Kant concludes that encountering the noumenal (or sub-
lime) sphere results in a sense of awe and wonder for that which is
greater than ourselves. Lovecrafts version of the noumenal sphere
the cosmicis mechanistic and material rather than spiritual, but it
is mechanistic beyond human comprehension (Will 16). Dansky, in
his article Transgression, Spheres of Influence, and the Use of the
Utterly Other in Lovecraft, discusses Lovecrafts fictional universe in
terms of Mikhail Bakhtins epic (immutable) and novel (mutable)
spheres and how Lovecraftian narrators transgress between the two.
Lovecrafts fiction, then, consists of narrators attempting to ex-
press their version of a mystical truth, to discuss in the human sphere
that which lies beyond it, to approach the limitless pure language
within the limits of language. Going back to Benjamin, the only way
to understand such content is to understand that it cannot be trans-
lated, to understand that it attempts an approximation of the ineffa-
ble, of what lies outside of comprehension altogether. This untrans-
latability is obviously a crucial element in Lovecrafts work. Further-
more, psychoanalytic critic David Clements argues that a narrator
struggling to express the ineffable is not just an element of Love-
craftian fiction but is rather precisely what defines a work as weird
fiction:
the narrator cannot entirely repress the knowledge gained in the tale.
He will therefore turn to writing this story. Writing is Lovecrafts so-
lution as well; it allows Lovecraft to both express the absolute truth
of cosmic indifference while simultaneously reveling in a jouissance.

This is the special mixture that results in weird fiction. (10; emphasis
in original)
Thus proceed a great number of Lovecrafts narrations. They are ex-
pressions of cosmic indifference that reveal what expressing things
with dry, criticalone might say indifferentlanguage cannot, pri-
marily the fact that a true revelation of cosmic indifference is some-
thing that is so totally antithetical to normal human conception, and
hence so horrifying, that it cannot be stated dryly or critically. The
mystical experience, in short, is one to which one cannot be indiffer-
ent, objective, and critical.
Quite often, a Lovecraft narrator offers a cautionary tale and a sal-
vation narrative all in one. Unlike traditional mystical and/or sacred
writings, however, the salvation lies entirely in avoiding, not embrac-
ing, the forces that provide a transcendent meaning to the world. The
difference between Lovecraft and, say, St. John of the Cross, then, is
that while their texts have the same purpose structurallythey offer
a new ontological vision of the world and humanitys relation to it
one structure is the negative image of the other. John (or Teresa of
Avila, or any other traditional mystic) urges belief in order for the
reader to gain admittance to Gods infinite love and compassion.
Lovecrafts narrators, too, urge belief, but it is a negative beliefa be-
lief in a godless universe that bears infinite indifference to humanitys
actions. In the world of Lovecrafts fiction, the positive belief that
one lives in a world where ones motives and proceedings are sub-
stantive lays the foundation for horrific peril when the narrative of
self-importance comes undone. The stories prove to the characters
that not just faith, but reason, too, is false and the narrator is damned
both spiritually and logically.
In the mystic tradition, to be enlightenedto learn of the big
picture of the cosmosis to be saved or to be one with the uni-
verse. However, in Lovecrafts fiction, to be enlightened is to be
damned to hopelessness. In order to believe that one is saved or at
one with the universe, one must maintain ignorance of the cosmic
reality. Lovecrafts narrators often pine for such ignorance, which in
this case is literally blissful. Ignorance is the only path to salvation.
Consciousness, then, is fundamentally based on denial. It is in this
sense that our everyday world, our daytime world of consciousness, is
a buffer, a blanket of merciful ignorance (Clements 28). The offering
of salvation emphasizes Airaksinens opinion that Lovecrafts fictional
texts have sacred qualities. However, the stories expose the audience
to truths that should remain hidden and, thus, the audience is
damned by the very text that would offer salvation. If the purpose of
traditional mystics is to spread the gospel,
2
or good news of what
they have known, then the Lovecrafts narrators should endeavor to
keep their mahspel,
3
or bad news, to themselves.
If these stories are, in effect, the mahspel expressing the negative
mystical experience of the narrators, then it should be obvious that
Lovecrafts fiction creates a much more potent and nuanced vision
than his nonfiction. According to Alston,
no statements, not even rough, imprecise ones, are possible with re-
spect to mystical experience or its objects. In mystical literature, lan-
guage is limited to evocative or expressive uses. Mystics should be
understood as saying what they do in order to evoke in the hearer
some faint echo of the mystical experience and/or to express that
experience or their reactions thereto. (82; emphasis in original)
This is exactly why it is a mistake to equate the ideology found in
Lovecrafts letters with the meaning of his fiction: rational, explana-
tory prose can offer nothing but rational, explanatory comprehension.
Lovecrafts fiction, in contrast, does something very different and
Lovecrafts narrators offer something more because, in short, Love-
craft does not have the same kind of mystical experience that his nar-
rators do. Lovecraft himself comes about his cosmic philosophy based
on information within the human sphere. His narrators come to simi-
lar, but subtly more profound, conclusions by acquiring information
from outside the human sphere. They offer absolutely bleak and ni-
hilistic revelations that come from having confronted the outside of
rationality. Lovecrafts letters and essays, which by their genre classifi-
cation as nonfiction hold an implicit assumption of truth and pres-
ence of meaning, can only build up that which his negative fiction
tears apart by archaic and obscure language, hints, and suggestions. To
put this argument another way, it is a mistake to translate the mes-
sage of Lovecrafts letters into his fiction because reason is everything
and serves as the solid basis of the cosmicism in his nonfiction, but

2. From the Old English god, meaning good, and spell, meaning tale.
3. As above, but formed the Old English mah, meaning bad.

reason is paradoxically nothing and everything in his fiction. In his fic-
tion, while the story serves to probe that rationality is nothing, the
message of the negative mystic is that rationality is indeed everything,
for it is all one has left to which to cling.
IV
No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no
symphony for the listener.
Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator (69)
My object is such pleasure as I can obtain from the creation of cer-
tain bizarre pictures, situations, or atmospheric effects; and the only
reader I hold in mind is myself.
H. P. Lovecraft, Letter to Edwin Baird (MW 506)
Perhaps it is impossible for a critical attempt to accomplish the same
thing as the fiction it criticizes. At best, all that a critical essaysuch
as Lovecrafts own Supernatural Horror in Literature or the one you
are now readingcan offer is the transmission of content, the ines-
sential. That being said, however, what can be done in an essay is at-
tempt to understand how Lovecrafts stories go beyond mere content.
They point to the outside of content, which is where Benjamins
translation project seems best suited with Lovecraft, particularly
since critics have proclaimed Benjamins own project an ambiguous
and ineffable one:
Thus readers cannot use The Task of the Translator as a secondary
reference at all, since what it says at any given point is always provi-
sional, and often contradicted elsewhere in the text. To read Benja-
min is too hard for anyone to sustain. . . . His writing cannot be
narrativized, organized and applied and worked out onto a literary
text. As such, it is completely unusable as a theoretical basis for es-
tablishing a critical reading. (Frche 105)
Benjamins unusable methodology works well with Lovecraft, how-
ever, not just because of the apparent symmetry in critical frustration
that arises from reading them (a fairly standard trait in postmodern
writing, after all), but because invoking the language of Benjamins
translation allows us to stop looking for meaning in either the Love-
craft mythos that has sprung up around his works, or in the appar-
ent connection(s) of those works to the worldview espoused in his
letters and essays. Instead, we can look at the fiction in and of itself,
in the function and structure of its language.
One aspect of Lovecrafts fiction that virtually asks to be read in
light of Benjamin is its apparent audience. Looking strictly at the text
itself, then, who is Lovecrafts apparent audience, and what does it
mean to be not the intended reader so often discussed in critical
works, but rather to be exactly who we aresome person who, ac-
cording to the interior structure of the work itself, is an incidental
reader who has come upon a text not addressed to them? This shift
in critical perspective, if it is not already clear, reveals that Lovecrafts
texts often, and not coincidentally, mirror themselves in structure
and content. To wit, a narrator slowly and shockingly discovers that
his own projects and values are meaningless, while those who receive
that narration similarly find that the message is not even intended for
them, revealing their own lack of consequence or relational value.
Both Benjamin and Lovecraft, then, purport that a text is not really
written for its receiver; only it is Lovecraft who deliberately enacts this
message in his fiction. This structure is best revealed with a look at
what Lovecraft considered my best story, the novella At the Moun-
tains of Madness (SL 4.24). The text begins out of necessity, I am
forced into speech, and the rest of the narrative contains the same
frantic urgency implied by those first words, not unlike the urgency of
a preacher exhorting his congregation to become saved, for it becomes
eventually clear that salvation is at stake in the narrative (MM 3). The
explicit goal of the narrator is that his story will be read by those who
have control over future expeditions to the Antarctic, expeditions that
would be disastrous for mankind. However, regardless of when or how
the reader first comes upon Lovecrafts story, that reader is assuredly
not one of those expedition organizers. The effect is striking, and one
that seems to have been overlooked by a number of critics in the his-
tory of Lovecrafts reception. Not only does any given reader learn of
mankinds ineffective and inconsequential position in the scheme of
reality, she learns about it by virtue of a narrative structure that simi-
larly displaces her from being capable of effecting that truth.
Hence, again, the subtle but significant difference between tradi-
tional mystical writing and Lovecrafts negative mysticism is evident.
Mysticism offers a displacement of identity and, through that very

displacement, the possibility of a future reconciliation with sacred
meaning. It invokes a pure language lost to historyIn the begin-
ning was the Wordthat promises the pure presence of a future
reality. The negative mystic, however, reveals that pure language is
ultimately only a pure absence, a referential structure that is always
only revealed in an abridgment. In At the Mountains of Madness, the
narrator states that his story is such an abridgment, noting, [the] full
story . . . will shortly appear in an official bulletin (MM 61). Likewise
are the sculptured walls of the alien city an abridgment of an ancient
races history. The translation is but an echo of the original, and as
with traditional mysticism, reconciliation with the sacred is always
only a promised future event. In the negative mystic experience,
however, those who truly glimpse the truth (and not just its
sketches), such as unhappy Danforth in the narrative, reach only
eventual madness. Revealing that Danforth has seen something that
he will not tell even me, the narrator evokes signs of absence rather
than presence (MM 33).
Lovecrafts circularity in language and structure is significant, too.
Airaksinen discusses Lovecrafts circularity at length, stating that the
circularity emphasizes the sacred quality of Lovecrafts texts and that
Lovecrafts major stories are circular such that the snake always eats
its own tail, creating the perfect form, a circle, which cannot be
doubted or criticized. The form of the text is a holy mystery (218). It
is worth mentioning another detail that emphasizes this combination
of circularity and negativity: even the very identity of the Mountains
narrator, just like Danforths secondhand vision, is revealed only as a
secondary textual admission. That is, the reader discovers the narra-
tors name, Dyer, not from the primary source of the narrator himself,
but as an aside written in a letter within the narration, as Dyer is ad-
monished for having tried to stop the fateful trip (MM 22). The nar-
rative, told by a man whose name we know only from the writings of
another, gives a preliminary sketch of a race of beings that he himself
understands through their artistic productions. When Dyer and Dan-
forth finally both see their pursuer in only a half-glimpse, a flash of
semi-vision, it is discovered that even that fateful, final vision is but
a shoggoth (MM 99). As a beast of burden of the Old Ones, the shog-
goth is yet another manufactured production, rather than a revela-
tion of the thing itself (MM 62).
Within Dyers narrative we have yet another detail that reinforces
the negative truth of the next. The negative mystic produces a tale of
desire, but always of negative desire. As Dyerwho is revealed in the
text as a man against the Antarctic project both during and after the
initial eventurges that further expeditions not go ahead, he reveals
an attitude that is the ultimate negative position: he wants for some-
thing not to occur rather than an active positive event. Negative mys-
ticism reveals the signs and symbols of an outside of human
availability, but those who receive the message are urged to be con-
tent solely in the sign itself, to dwell within an absence that substi-
tutes for a presence, since the coming of that presence would
invalidate all meaning whatsoever. This language of negation and de-
ferral is an element that, in an extended sense, is present in a great
number of texts that precede Lovecraft, and are part of a tradition
that he exemplifies and maintains.
Perhaps it is because of Lovecraft that we can now better under-
stand just how a novel such as Mary Shelleys Frankenstein or Mat-
thew Gregory Lewiss The Monk operates. In the gothic Romantic
tradition, as in Lovecraft, there are countless epistolary revelations,
stories within stories, and secondhand narratives. But besides this dis-
tancing of the narrator from event, there is another element of Ro-
manticism that is present in Lovecraft, correspondent with the
negative mysticism argued here. For every nineteenth century poem
and novel encouraging an encounter with the moral truth of nature
and the positive influence of powerful feelings (which is to say, texts
that encourage the apotheosis of a mystical encounter) there are cau-
tionary tales in novels, plays, and poems (such as Samuel Taylor Col-
eridges Christabel, Joanna Baillies Orra, among many others) that
reveal the madness and despair that will result from such an event.
4

In response to extreme emotion and the encounter with the un-
known, Lovecrafts narrators offer negation and deferral. In fact, the
entire text itself is offered as that exact deferral; Lovecrafts narrators
are not without their own tools of recuperation, tools designed to of-
fer an alternative for living in relation to madness. Constantly in the
text of Mountains, Dyer offers a barrage of seemingly irrelevant facts
and figures. It may seem odd that the narrator would be so specific,

4. For a much more thorough account of Lovecraft and Romanticism ad-
dressing at least some of the concerns listed here, see Donald R. Burlesons
Lovecraft and Romanticism in Lovecraft Studies Nos. 19/20 (1989): 2831.

for example, in providing directions to a place he does not want any-
one to visit: Latitude 82, E. Longitude 60 to Latitude 70, E. Longi-
tude 115, yet this citation is but one example of many in the text
(MM 70). Besides repetitive references to locational directives, Dyer
makes use of geological language for descriptions, Jurassic, lower
Eocene to upper Cretaceous, Pleistocene, Pliocene, Coman-
chian, et al (MM 52, 60, 64, 69, 71). There is no necessary purpose
for including these details. In fact, if the purpose of the narrative is to
discourage investigation, giving specific locations and tantalizing,
groundbreaking geological information is highly inappropriate. This
evidence, however, can be understood as an effect of the negative
mystic impulse. While a traditional mystic eschews the world of real-
ity in favor for a Platonic world of eternal forms, trading the world of
man for the world of God, the negative mystic embraces physical de-
tails and rational construction as the only possibility of salvation. The
reliance on such details in what Roland Barthes calls presenting the
discourse of the real;
5
the text proclaims its own evidential reality
and offers that as the authenticity of its meaning (142). Why these de-
tails are negative is that they act as the focus for a narrator who is
attempting to concretize and organize his world. They are the struc-
tural referent and binary opposite to the world of madness and disso-
lution that is embraced in the mystical arena.
V
By using negative mysticism as a paradigm for understanding Lovecraft,
and addressing these issues of translation in the search for sacred writ-
ing, we can perhaps explain, as well, some of the history of Lovecrafts
reception. Glen St. John Barclay is a fine example of a critic who un-
derstands Lovecrafts negative mystical narrators all too well, and per-
haps in some perverse sense is one of the few people who actually
reads Lovecraft correctlybecause, unlike most Lovecraft fans and
critics, he is truly horrified by what he has read. Barclay writes:

5. The article that addresses this function that is the most correspondent
with a reading of Lovecraft is Barthes Textual Analysis of Poes Valdemar,
a reading of the Poe short story The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Poe
uses detail to a similar effect in the story.
Lovecraft is in fact an essentially tragic and ineffectual figure, pos-
sessed of virtually insane prejudices, and almost totally alienated from
human sympathies or human experience, who contrived with the aid
of a limited imagination to construct thoroughly artificial images in-
tended to be horrific, but lacking any element of physical or psycho-
logical credibility to make them convincing. The fact that it is still
possible to talk of a Cthulhu Mythos at all is due far less to Love-
crafts own efforts, than to those of three men without whose inter-
ested endeavors Lovecraft himself would be the most unlikely ever
to have achieved publication. (91)
Barclays reaction to reading the work is to produce a desperate
frontal assault on all aspects of Lovecrafts abilities as a writer. His
frenzy reveals that he has encountered the pure language that is the
goal of the narration. Like a post-Antarctic Dyer, he urges his reader
to discontinue his projects, and marshals a great deal of evidence
Lovecrafts poor imagination, insanity, prejudice, etc.to support his
work. After reading Lovecraft, Barclay has, in effect, become a Love-
craftian narrator!
Even some of Lovecrafts admirers act like his characters. Take, for
instance, readers such as August Derleth, who obviously admire yet
misinterpret Lovecrafts work. As Robert M. Price discusses in Love-
crafts Artificial Mythology, Derleth and others seek to establish a
pantheon of gods based on Lovecrafts fictional entities and, further,
to write more stories to flesh out the background mythos of this
pantheon, so that Lovecrafts tales have become merely source
documents, raw materials for the systematicians art (247). The char-
acters of Lovecrafts fictional world, often informed by ancient texts
such as the Necronomicon, see the Old Ones as gods or devils . . . be-
cause they refuse to see the terrible truth that the Old Ones are sim-
ply beings that do not care about humans (249). The alien entities
are just that: alien entities. Both the writers of texts such as the Ne-
cronomicon and the more modern cultists and investigators in Love-
crafts stories cannot face the terrible human-minimizing implica-
tions of the existence of the overshadowing aliens and take supersti-
tious refuge in religion, deifying the Old Ones as gods (249). Like
Dyer in At the Mountains of Madness (and Barclay), Derleth and his
ilk attempt to counter, intentionally or unintentionally, the negative
mysticism implied by Lovecrafts texts. The counter to negative mys-

ticism, naturally enough, is mysticism. So where Lovecrafts charac-
ters fixate on gods and devils, Derleth, et al., likewise fixate on a fic-
tional pantheon to catalog and systematize. The reason for their
devotion can be understood as a following of the mystical impulse,
albeit a misguided one.
Corresponding to the original argument on translation, it is inter-
esting to note that, according to Price, Derleths misinterpretations
begin when he attempts to translate Lovecrafts nonfiction into his
fiction. Or, in this case, what he thinks is Lovecrafts nonfiction. As
Price discusses in his article, Derleth bases much of his interpretation
of Lovecraft on the now infamous but misappropriated black magic
quote, where supposedly Lovecraft says his stories are based on the
fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time
by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold
and were expelled. Derleth receives this quote second-hand
through Harold S. Farnese, who evidently passed on his own transla-
tion of Lovecrafts themes. In a sadly vicious cycle foreshadowed by
Benjamins theories, Farnese thinks he ascertains the pure language
of Lovecraft, communicates this to Derleth, who then reinterprets
Lovecraft in light of it. This progression, with the chicken ever com-
ing before the egg, further illustrates the dangers of reading any text
as an interpretation of another.
Unlike Lovecraft, we do not have the skill to reveal the pure lan-
guage of the Real, so it seems unlikely that anyone will read this arti-
cle and become Barclay, or even Derleth, nor would we urge them to
do so. Today, the task of the Lovecraft critic is to think about the
limits of Lovecrafts fiction, not to critique his supposed limitations as
a writer. In doing so, we will understand what it means to encounter
the endpoint of our own thinking, our own projects. The result is a
cruel revelation of an inherently meaningless world. But to think oth-
erwise, as Lovecrafts negative mystics tell us, would be to rush head-
long towards the mountains of madness without even knowing that
we journey there.
Works Cited
Airaksinen, Timo. The Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft: The Route to
Horror. New York: Lang, 1999.
Almond, Ian. Different Fragments, Different Vases: A Neoplatonic
Commentary on Benjamins The Task of the Translator.
Heythrop Journal 43 (2002): 18598.
Alston, William P. Literal and Nonliteral in Reports of Mystical Ex-
perience. In Katz, Mysticism and Language. 80102.
Anderson, James Arthur. Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Ap-
proach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Ph.D.
diss.: University of Rhode Island, 1993.
Barclay, Glen St. John. The Myth That Never Was: Howard P. Love-
craft. In Anatomy of Horror: The Masters of Occult Fiction. Lon-
don: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1978. 8196.
Barthes, Roland. Textual Analysis of Poes Valdemar. Trans. Geoff
Bennington. In Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, ed.
Robert Young. Boston: Routledge, 1981. 13361.
Benjamin, Walter. The Task of the Translator. In Illuminations. Ed.
Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, 1968.
6982.
Burleson, Donald R. Lovecraft and Adjectivitis: A Deconstructionist
View. Lovecraft Studies No. 31 (Fall 1994): 2224.
Clements, David Cal. Cosmic Psychoanalysis: Lovecraft, Lacan, and
Limits. Ph.D. diss.: State University of New York at Buffalo, 1998.
DAgati, Deborah. The Problems with Solving: Implications for Sher-
lock Holmes and Lovecraft Narrators. Lovecraft Studies Nos.
42/43 (Autumn 2001): 5460.
Dansky, Richard E. Transgression, Spheres of Influence, and the Use
of the Utterly Other in Lovecraft. Lovecraft Studies No. 30
(Spring 1994): 514.
Flche, Betsy. The Art of Survival: The Translation of Walter Ben-
jamin. SubStance 28, No. 2 (1999): 95109.
Jan, Didier T. Mysticism, Esoterism, and Fantastic Literature. In
The Scope of the FantasticTheory, Technique, Major Authors: Se-
lected Essays from the First International Conference on the Fantas-
tic in Literature and Film, ed. Robert A. Collins and Howard D.
Pearce. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. 10511.
Joshi, S. T. Lovecraft Criticism: A Study. In H. P. Lovecraft: Four
Decades of Criticism. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980. 2026.
. H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West. In The Weird
Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R.
James, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1990. 168229.

Katz, Steven T., ed. Mysticism and Language. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Langan, John P. Naming the Nameless: Lovecrafts Grammatology.
Lovecraft Studies No. 41 (Spring 1999): 2530.
Leiber, Fritz, Jr. A Literary Copernicus (1949). In H. P. Lovecraft:
Four Decades of Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi. Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1980. 5062.
Matilal, Bimal Krishna. Mysticism and Ineffability: Some Issues of
Logic and Language. In Katz, Mysticism and Language. 14357.
Price, Robert M. Lovecrafts Artificial Mythology. In An Epicure in
the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P.
Lovecraft, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. Rutherford, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991. 24756.
Will, Bradley A. H. P. Lovecraft and the Semiotic Kantian Sublime.
Extrapolation 43 (2002): 721.

Briefly Noted
Timothy H. Evans has recently written several impressive pieces of
Lovecraft scholarship. The most notable is A Last Defense against
the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of
H. P. Lovecraft, Journal of Folklore Research 42, No. 1 (JanuaryApril
2005): 99135. An earlier article is Tradition and Illusion: Antiquari-
anism, Tourism and Horror in H. P. Lovecraft, Extrapolation 45,
No. 2 (Summer 2004): 17695. Professor Evans has also written a cor-
dial review of Robert H. Waughs The Monster in the Mirror in Ex-
trapolation 47, No. 1 (Spring 2006): 16466.
Lovecraft continues to be fodder for academicians. Several articles
have appeared recently in academic journals, but they have not been
seen. These include: Wouter J. Hanegraaf, Fiction in the Desert of
the Real: Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos, Aries 7, No. 1 (2007): 85109,
and James Kneale, From Beyond: H. P. Lovecraft and the Place of
Horror, Cultural Geographies 13, No. 1 (January 2006): 10626. Any
readers who have had access to these articles are advised to contact
the editor, who is preparing an exhaustive revision and updating of
his 1981 bibliography of Lovecraft and Lovecraft criticism.

84
Unity in Diversity:
Fungi from Yuggoth as a Unified Setting
Philip A. Ellis
Enough words have been spent on looking at Fungi from Yuggoth as a
coherent and linked narrative, both pro and contra, and not enough
have been spent looking at the wider issues of unity within a more
general sense. To what degree, we may ask, are the sonnets unified,
and how does this unity create a sense of a singular narrative to the
sonnets? By looking at how the sonnets are unified, and, in a sense,
why, we can begin to understand the basis behind seeing the sonnets
as a narrative. We can begin to see why the unity displayed in the
sonnets stimulates this reaction. Further, we can begin to ask further
questions of both the sonnets, and the other poems of H. P. Lovecraft.
S. T. Joshi, in his essay Lovecrafts Fantastic Poetry (203), points
out that the sonnets display an utter randomness of tone, mood and
import. He goes on, in the same place, to state that they have
miniature horror stories . . . cheek by jowl with autobiographical vi-
gnettes . . ., pensive philosophy . . ., apocalyptic cosmicism . . ., and
versified nightmares, and that he cannot see any continuity or
story in this cycle as R. Boerem and Ralph E. Vaughan purport to
do. This question of continuity, story, within the sonnets is, though
ultimately unimportant, integral to a better understanding of them. Is
it possible that they are unified, while lacking such a continuity?
Quite clearly, in no sense is there a unified I behind the poems. The
I of the first three sonnets, who writes I entered, charmed, and
from a cobwebbed heap / Took up the nearest tome (The Book,
AT 64, ll. 910), is not the same who writes, in The Gardens of Yin
(AT 71, ll. 1314): I hurriedbut when the wall rose, grim and great,
/ I found there was no longer any gate. Even if it were the case that
each I of the sonnets was the same, not all the sonnets are in the
first person: some sonnets, such as Zamans Hill, Nyarlathotep, and

The Elder Pharos, dispense with the narrative I, being in the third
person, for example. The overall impression is, surely, a collection of
disparate poems, unified by factors other than a simple or complex
narrative. There is no unity among them that can account for an
overarching narrative structure beyond the initial three sonnets,
which are an aborted, failed narrative.
1

To look more closely at the initial sonnets, we can see clearly the
point at which a supposed narrative breaks down. It is true that the
first three sonnets are coherent, and a clear narrative is present. All
three have a unified I, and all three give us the start of a first-person
narrative: the narrator enters a bookshop, steals a book, and returns
home, followed by a mysterious being. Then, immediately, the scene
switches, in Recognition. The setting is not the same as that of the
earlier sonnets, but Yuggoth. Here the narrator sees himself con-
sumed by alien beings that (AT 66, l. 10) were not men; the shift
here is too great, too abrupt, for a coherent narrative, and thus any
attempt to find one will fail. We see these abrupt shifts, in mood, in
tense, in voice, and in narrative thereafter, through the entire se-
quence. No attempt is made to unify or link the sonnets on the level
of narrative or symbology. Clearly, what we have here is a collection
of disparate sonnets, though unified by other, differing factors. It is to
these factors that we must now turn our attention, to see why the
problem of a narrative seems so attractive to scholars.
Yet there is a question as to why there is unity in the first place.
What factors in these sonnets make us see the collection, as a whole,
as a tight, close-reading experience? Briefly, there are four main areas
that demand investigation, and which lead to greater unity. There are,
of course, others, but these four should serve for the moment. The
first is a shared body of allusions and references outside of the sonnets
themselves. The second is a shared vocabulary, which creates a
greater sense of unity through both word choice and mood. Third,
shared tone helps unify various sonnets, though not all, within the
greater collection. Fourth, the question of the sonnets creation leads
to closer ideas of unity. All four interact and help create a unified set-
ting for the individual sonnets. All four, furthermore, help contribute
in their own way to the magnificence that is the achievement of the

1. These three sonnets form the basis of a later, equally abortive narrative,
The Book. See Joshi, Life 54243.
86 Philip A. Ellis
cycle as a whole. Therefore, it is important to look at the first of
these areas, the question of shared allusion.
There are two ways in which the shared allusions of the sonnets
can be categorised. First are those allusions to the external world,
second are those to an external body of writings. Of these first allu-
sions, the process is such that the reader and narrator relate the de-
tails of the sonnet to a shared experience of a world, and thereby help
create the sonnets import. The use of Egypt and Egyptian motifs is
illustrative. Briefly, by referring to Egypt, certain sonnets create a rela-
tionship with the authors real Egypt and the narrators assumed
Egypt. For example, The Lamp (AT 66, l. 2) has a chiselled sign no
priest in Thebes could read, and the later reference in the same
poem of forty centuries relates the lamp to a perceived antiquity.
There is no precise date for the events of the poem; we can assume
that it is set, as so many others of the cycle seem to be, in contempo-
rary times, although the use of the word priest leads me to see it as
set in antiquity. Thus, although in this way the setting leads away
from a unified narrative, it leads to further unity with another, later
sonnet. This is Nyarlathotep. The first line sets the scene: Nyar-
lathotep himself has come from inner Egypt (AT 72). This shared
allusion to the real Egypt is important. Both The Lamp and Nyar-
lathotep, then, rely in part on our personal construction of what is
Egyptian, in order to convey its intended meanings. This process of
external allusion then lends an air of reality, whereby we in some
measure see the events and features of the sonnets as related to real,
external phenomena and places, and, henceforth, as somehow more
plausible. Thus, we receive a notion of antiquity, through the line
(The Dweller, AT 76, l. 1) It had been old when Babylon was new;
and we can easily imagine from our own experiences the old farm
buildings of Continuity (AT 79, l. 10) that help make more vivid
that particular sonnet. By referring in these ways, and others, to the
real world, Lovecraft makes the sonnets as a whole more unified,
and creates in many of them a sense that the events depicted are, or
could be, as real as the world in which they seemingly occur.
This leads in turn to the allusions to a shared body of writing. In
various sonnets, we find references to various places and beings of
Lovecrafts wider writings. Thus, we have Arkham in The Port (AT
67, l. 1), Innsmouth in The Port (AT 67, ll. 4, 9) and The Bells (AT
72, l. 7), night-gaunts and shoggoths (Night-Gaunts, AT 72), Thok

(again in Night-Gaunts, l. 9), and Yuggoth in both Recognition
(AT 66, l. 12) and Star-Winds (AT 70, l. 10). We also have the
wider use of a shared vocabulary. Thus, for example, the word fan-
tastic appears not only in the sonnets Star-Winds (AT 70, l. 5) and
The Dweller (AT 76, l. 7), but also in other poems, such as The Ei-
dolon (AT 38, l. 14) and Clouds (AT 41, l. 3), and other fiction and
letters. This sharing of places, beings, and other vocabulary bring to
mind the concept of intertextuality, and it unifies further these son-
nets into the larger body of Lovecrafts work. Thus, they achieve a
form of unity by their shared essence with other works, leading us to
read them as part of a wider body of writing, where aspects of Love-
crafts fiction, for example, can be expected in the sonnets.
The aspect of the shared language in general with other texts leads
necessarily to the shared language within the sonnets as a whole. As
we have seen, both Innsmouth and Yuggoth appear twice within the
sonnets. Since, for example, we encounter Innsmouth in The Port,
the later appearance in The Bells leads us to read these two sonnets
as unified by setting, and thereby enabling us to postulate a unity of
setting in the other sonnets. Similarly, in the more general language of
the sonnets themselves, terms recur, leading us to associate the son-
nets with each other. Thus, taking again the example of fantastic,
we read Star-Winds and The Dweller as unified in some closer
way, even if subconsciously. Of course, there will always be an
amount of shared vocabulary that fails to gain significance. Such basic
words as the various articles, or prepositions, among others, are
shared by most English texts; they remain structural words, around
which more significant words, such as various substantives or adjec-
tives, are set. It is only through such a tool as a concordance that a
fuller understanding of the sonnets shared vocabulary can be made.
2

These questions of vocabulary lead in turn to other aspects of the
poems, namely, mood and tone. Neither aspect is uniform. The po-
ems themselves vary considerably, and some seem more pensive, for
example, than others. Thus, we find that the mood and tone of
Background is pensive, philosophical, being concerned with the

2. Although I have assembled a concordance of the sonnets, it awaits a deci-
sion as to whether it will be published or not. A wider concordance, cover-
ing the complete poetic works of H. P. Lovecraft, is currently under
construction.
88 Philip A. Ellis
poets worldview upon old things that cut the moments thongs and
leave [him] free / To stand alone before eternity (AT 76 ll. 1314).
Azathoth, on the other hand, is both cosmic in its outlook and lacks
pensiveness; it is concerned, basically, with conveying a sense of un-
ease, disquiet. Yet each poem has a degree of relationship with other
poems. The mood and tone of any one poem is shared to a degree by
others. Thus, the pensiveness of Background is taken up not only in
the expected Continuity, also similar in subject and a fitting end to
the cycle as a whole, but also in the immediately preceding Nostal-
gia, which is, however, more fantastic and elegiac in tone. The first
three sonnets are also a case in point. Their prominence from the
bulk of the later sonnets, despite similarities of tone and mood with
many of them, is highlighted by their relationship as a multi-sonnet
narrative. This narrative is heightened by the unity of both tone and
mood, and this unity helps lead us to expect that the relationship be-
tween the later sonnets is as close and involved as that of the first
three. These considerations of how unity is achieved lead into the fi-
nal ones, those involving the composition of the sonnets. These con-
siderations, these questions of creation, need to be addressed before
we can look at why the unity creates the reaction that the sonnets are
a unified narrative.
Briefly, the bulk of the sonnets of Fungi from Yuggoth were writ-
ten between December 27, 1929, and January 4, 1930. This brief time
period is, I feel, significant toward looking at the unity of the sonnets.
As a poet, I find that work produced in a very short burst, over a
matter of days rather than weeks or months, tends to have a higher
degree of unity than other works separated over a period of time.
Thus, it is not surprising that, producing an average of four poems a
day for over a week, there is a higher degree of unity than otherwise.
Indeed, it is possible to speculate that the initial three sonnets are the
product of the first day of writing, stimulating in turn the following
days work on the others. Of the sonnets, only Recapture was not
produced in this burst of writing. Its presence in the sonnets, and the
ease with which it assumes its place, speaks more for the sonnets as a
product of a general period, rather than a specific one: they share
much, that is, with the other poems created around that time, and
should be seen more readily within that wider context.
3
As a result,

3. Unfortunately, such other poems are beyond consideration in this essay.

then, of the short period of creation, the poems share a degree of
similar vocabulary, mood and tone, since these are factors of the au-
thor at the time of creation. Just as vocabularies and concerns de-
velop and change over time, so too do the basic productions of an
author. What the sonnets represent is, rather than a wide period and
diversity of an authors output, a detailed segment, a slice of life cen-
tred closely upon one highly creative period, caught between the
older creations and what will become his later, more mature work.
So, then, why does this unity lead scholars to read the sonnet as a
unified narrative? Briefly, the first three sonnets lead us to expect a
unified narrative, since they set up this expectation within the reader.
As the second and third follow on, clearly and unambiguously, from
their predecessors, then the others must have a similar relationship to
those preceding them. Thus, for example, R. Boerems attempt to
find in the sonnets a sequence of seven groupings that make the son-
nets as a whole a dream journey which in turn, reflects upon reality
to give it a new appeal (224). However, although such attempts are
interesting, they nonetheless fail, because the simplest and best ex-
planation for the sequence as a whole is that, although initially started
as a narrative, as evinced by the first three sonnets, the sequence as a
whole is a disconnected collection of poems unified by such factors as
allusions, vocabulary, tone, and mood, and that this unity lends the air
of a greater unity of narrative, such that it remains tempting to con-
struct such a narrative from the poems. What we are seeing, then, is
the propensity of the human mind to seek order in disconnected
fragments, in this case, the sonnets.
What, then, can we gather from the sonnets, looking at this ques-
tion of unity, and applying what we learn to other aspects of Love-
crafts work? Clearly, we understand that the circumstances of a
works creation can play a part in our construction of its meaning.
Where we know the circumstances of a given group of poems crea-
tion, we can gain a degree of understanding of their relationship other
than that purely derived from superficial similarities of theme and
authorship. We can, further, look more closely at the prose works
and see their relationships in a similar manner, how texts produced in
close proximity relate to and reflect upon each other, especially in
regard to the development of Lovecraft as a writer. Further, we can
better understand the relationships between the various works of
Lovecraft, such as his poetry, fiction, essays, and letters, in relation to
90 Philip A. Ellis
each other, and not just to themselves. If we start to do this, a wider
understanding, not only of Lovecraft, but his works, is possible.
Demonstrating that such a unity is possible here, on a microscopic
scale, is important before demonstrating it on a macroscopic scale.
Works Cited
Boerem, R. The Continuity of the Fungi from Yuggoth. In H. P.
Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi. Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1980. 22225.
Joshi, S. T. H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon
Press, 1996.
. Lovecrafts Fantastic Poetry. In Primal Sources: Essays on
H. P. Lovecraft. New York : Hippocampus Press, 2003.

Briefly Noted
The H. P. Lovecraft Forum, an annual conference held at the State
University of New York at New Paltz, is planning a substantial con-
vention for October 1920, 2007. Planned events are tours of the
Lovecraftian sites in the area (Lovecraft visited the nearby towns of
Kingston, Hurley, and West Shokan on several occasions), panel dis-
cussions, and much else. Such leading scholars as Peter Cannon,
Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Ben P. Indick are expected to attend.
Michael Cisco is the writer guest of honor; S. T. Joshi is the critic
guest of honor. For further information, please contact John Langan
(langanj@newpaltz.edu) or Robert H. Waugh (waughr@newpaltz.edu).
One of the most innovative discussions of Lovecraft occurs in Jason
Colavitos The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial
Pop Culture (Prometheus Books, 2005), which maintains that Love-
crafts fiction was critical in the proliferation of extraterrestrial inva-
sion accounts in the decades following his death. Although perhaps
anticipated by Charles A. Garofalo and Robert M. Prices Chariots of
the Old Ones? (Crypt of Cthulhu, Roodmas 1982), Colavito presents
exhaustive evidence of the similarities in the work of Lovecraft and
that of such writers as Erich von Dniken, Louis Pauwels, and others.
Colavito is careful to indicate that Lovecraft was a complete disbe-
liever in the possibility of extraterrestrial invasion by alien species.
91
They Have Conquered Dream:
A. Merritts The Face in the Abyss and
H. P. Lovecrafts The Mound
Peter Levi
H. P. Lovecraft was profoundly influenced by Abraham Merritt, read-
ing and admiring all his tales. Lovecraft was clearly influenced by
them; for example, Merritts The Moon Pool played a role in the
genesis of The Call of Cthulhu). One such influence that has gone
hitherto unnoticed is that of Merritts The Face in the Abyss on
Lovecrafts revision, The Mound.
Merritts tale first appeared in the Argosy in 1923, later to be re-
hashed (Lovecrafts word) as The Snake Mother in 1930. Lovecraft
owned the story in its 1931 novelization (LL 603), and admits that he
bought the 1923 Argosy issue containing the earlier version.
1
Lovecraft
wrote The Mound in 192930, and while Merritts work may not
have been fresh in his mind at the time, there are clear correlations
between the two works.
The stories are both told by an unnamed intermediary narrator (in
Merritt a vacationer discovers the hero Graydon [FF 22], while in Love-
craft a researcher finds the records of Pnfilo de Zamacona y Nuez
[HM 113]). Both Zamacona (HM 117) and Merritts Graydon (FF 24) are
treasure-seeking, and both are part of groups with Native guides (HM
117) or followers (FF 25) who know something of the horror ahead.
Both are going to regions known to be haunted (HM 98, FF 25), and
each dismiss the haunting as superstition (HM 99, FF 28). Each of the
regions, the Oklahoma mound and the Cordillera de Carabaya, are
found to be the home of an ancient race who are the ancestors of mod-

1. See Lovecraft to August Derleth, 16 February [1933] (ms., State Historical
Society of Wisconsin).
92 Peter Levi
ern humanity (HM 118, FF 73), and in both cases, anomalously white).
Merritts Yu-Atlanchi are immortal, ancient, living in a region
nearly impossible to find, cut off from outside humanity and ruled by a
snakelike god (FF 73). They use dinosaurs called Xinli (FF 30) and have
part-human, part-insect creatures as servants and for sport (FF 60). In-
visible birdlike beings help defend their land from interlopers (FF 69).
Graydon, Merritts adventurer, learns a great deal from his love-
interest, Suarra of the Yu-Atlanchi. She tells him that the Yu-Atlanchi
are the most ancient people, living in Cordillera de Carabaya because of
the upheavals of land over time, but also enjoying their isolation:
[T]hey let the years stream by while they dreamthe most of them.
For they have conquered dream. Through dream they create their
own worlds; do therein as they will; live life upon life as they will it.
. . . Why should they go out into this one world when they can create
myriads of their own at will? . . . Why should they mate with their
kind, these women and men who have lived so long that they have
grown weary of all their kind can give them? Why should they mate
with their kind when they can create new lovers in dream, new loves
and hates! Yea, new emotions, and forms utterly unknown to earth,
each as he or she may will. And so they arebarren. Not alone the
doors of death, but the doors of life are closed to them, the dream
makers! (FF 7374)
Lovecrafts Xinainan (usually called Kn-yan [HM 113]) are also
immortal and ancient, having come from the stars and begotten man-
kind, from whom they eventually sundered themselves (HM 11718).
They live in isolation underground, the doors to their realm shut,
worshipping Yig, the Father of Snakes, as well as Tulu (aka Cthulhu
[HM 11819]). They use half-human, half-animal servants (called
gyaa-yothn, HM 139), their animated dead, and a subhuman slave
class to run their society (HM 134). The people of Kn-yan are capa-
ble of becoming immaterial (HM 132), and use that state for both
pleasure and defence. Like Graydon, Zamacona develops a local love-
interest (Tla-yub, HM 150), who also helps him attempt to escape
the hidden country. The people of Kn-yan, like the Yu-Atlanchi,
spend their time trying to amuse themselves: He [Zamacona] felt the
people of Tsath were a lost and dangerous racemore dangerous to
themselves than they knewand that their growing frenzy of mo-
notony-warfare and novelty-quest was leading them rapidly toward a

precipice of disintegration and utter horror (HM 147).
I cannot imagine so many similarities are simple coincidence.
However, it is not to be thought that Lovecraft has merely calqued
his story on Merritts. The Face in the Abyss contains no social cri-
tique (except very simplistic moralizing about greed, FF 86), nor does
The Mound contain a sappy romance (Zamaconas thoughts on Tla-
yub as they try to escape are anything but romantic, HM 151). Mer-
ritts tale ends without resolution (we do not know if Graydon suc-
cessfully reunites with Suarra), while Lovecrafts Zamacona suffers a
horrible fate (HM 163).
Merritt, perhaps too pulpish to gain mention in Lovecrafts Su-
pernatural Horror in Literature, was considered highly by him none-
theless. The Mound is much more than what we see in The Face in
the Abyssa horror story that explores Lovecrafts beliefs about so-
ciety and its phases (LL 468). While Lovecraft lifted some images and
elements from Merritt, The Mound is very much his own work.
Works Cited
Joshi, S. T. H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick: Necronomicon
Press, 1996.
. Lovecrafts Library: A Catalogue. 2nd ed. New York: Hippo-
campus Press, 2002. [Abbreviated in the text as LL.]
Merritt, Abraham. The Face in the Abyss (1923). In Famous Fantas-
tic Mysteries, ed. Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and
Martin H. Greenberg. New York: Gramercy Books, 1991. [Abbre-
viated in the text as FF.]

Briefly Noted
Jack Morgans The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film
(Southern Illinois University Press, 2002) is one of several academic
studies of horror literature containing random discussions of Love-
craft but is one of the few that takes account of recent scholarship.
Morgan discusses The Shadow over Innsmouth throughout the vol-
ume, citing in the process the annotated edition prepared by S. T.
Joshi and David E. Schultz (Necronomicon Press, 1994/1997).
94
The Masters Eyes Shining with
Secrets: H. P. Lovecrafts Influence
on Thomas Ligotti
Matt Cardin
Introduction: The Shade of Lovecraft
Jonathan Padgett, the originator of Thomas Ligotti Online, relates the
following anecdote in his Ligotti FAQ: In a phone conversation I had
with Mr. Ligotti in the Spring of 1998, he explained that Lovecrafts
fiction had had the most profound influence on his life rather than his
fiction, as reading HPLs work was the impetus for Ligottis writing
career. Aside from this fact, Lovecraft really has had very little to do
with the subject or style of Ligottis writing. From this, one might
infer that Lovecrafts influence is not readily apparent in Ligottis
work. But if this is so, then what are we to make of the phenomenon
noted by Ramsey Campbell, who in his introduction to Ligottis first
book, the short story collection Songs of a Dead Dreamer, stated, At
times [Ligotti] suggests terrors as vast as Lovecrafts, though the ter-
rors are quite other than Lovecrafts (SDD ix). In other words, if it is
true that Lovecraft really has had very little to do with the subject or
style of Ligottis writing, then how can we account for the fact that,
as Ed Bryant has put it, Hardly anyone seems to discuss or even men-
tion the Ligotti name without evoking the shade of H. P. Lovecraft?
It is tempting to try to answer this question simply by turning to
the available Ligotti interviews and assembling a montage of quota-
tions, since he has spoken repeatedly and extensively about his rela-
tionship to Lovecraft. But a more thorough and satisfying answer can
only come from examining the evidence and extrapolating independ-
ent conclusions from it. This will also give us the opportunity to ex-
amine in depth some of Lovecrafts own writings and representative
attitudes, and to compare and contrast them with Ligottis in order to

arrive at a general understanding of where both men stand in relation
to each other.
We may begin, however, with the aforementioned interviews, and
in perusing them construct a chronology of Ligottis acquaintance
with Lovecraft, and also with the field of horror fiction in general,
that may prove instructive.
I. Dark Guru, Personal Presence:
Lovecraft in Ligottis life
Ligotti was born in July 1953 and, by his own account, had no signifi-
cant exposure to horror fiction, nor any serious desire to read it, until
he was eighteen years old and accidentally discovered Shirley Jack-
sons The Haunting of Hill House at a garage sale in 1970/71. In fact,
prior to this he had never felt much interest in books and literature at
all. In his own words, Until reading Jacksons horror novel, I had read
only a few works of literature in my entire life and almost all of those
were reluctantly scanned under the duties of assignments in school.
Having been something of a burnout in the late 1960s, I never really
learned my way around a library and the concept of bookstores was
wholly alien to me. When he began reading Jacksons novel, it came
as a sort of revelation to him to realize that the book had served as
the basis for a film he had liked, director Robert Wises The Haunting
(1963). Upon finishing the book, he felt a definite hunger for more
horror stories, but not necessarily those of the Jacksonian type. What
he wanted to read were not stories about modern characters set in
modern times, but ones more like the movies he had enjoyed as a
child, the more clichd Gothic horror movies set in the Victorian
era. . . . [T]his was the kind of horror fiction I was seeking, the prog-
eny of Poes tales (Ford 31).
Before going on to describe Ligottis successful search for this type
of story, it is necessary to step back briefly and look to an event that
had occurred prior to all this, and that had laid precisely the right
emotional and philosophical foundation to render him exquisitely re-
sponsive to Lovecrafts fictional vision of the universe. It had oc-
curred when Ligotti was seventeen years old and under the influence
of drugs and alcohol. He himself describes the event, and also his
mindset leading up to it, thus: As a teenager I had a tendency to de-
pression. To me, the world was just something to escape from. I
96 Matt Cardin
started escaping with alcohol and then, as the sixties wore on, with
every kind of drug I could get. In August of 1970 I suffered the first
attack of what would become a lifelong anxiety-panic disorder (An-
gerhuber and Wagner 53). Elsewhere he has described the event as an
emotional breakdown and averred that although it occurred fol-
lowing intense use of drugs and booze, we should not assign a purely
causal role to these intoxicants, since they served only as a catalyst
for a fate that my high-strung and mood-swinging self would have
encountered at some point (Schweitzer 30).
More than a mere panic attack, the episode involved a terrifying
vision of the universe, and of reality itself, that permanently altered
his worldview in a direction that was, although he could not know it
at the time, proto-Lovecraftian. He has made this connection clear in
several interviews, such as the one conducted by Robert Bee, in
which Ligotti described Lovecrafts famous cosmic perspective as
the idea, as well as the emotional sensation, that human notions of
value and meaning, even sense itself, are utterly fictitious, and then
added, Not long before I began reading Lovecrafts stories I experi-
encedin a state of panic, I should addsuch a perspective, which
has remained as the psychological and emotional backdrop of my life
ever since. Similarly, he told Thomas Wagner and Monika Anger-
huber that he discovered Lovecraft not too long after that first at-
tack and found that the meaningless and menacing universe
described in Lovecrafts stories corresponded very closely to the place
I was living at that time, and ever since for that matter (Angerhuber
and Wagner 53).
So: In August of 1970the very month in which, eighty years ear-
lier, H. P. Lovecraft had been borna seventeen-year-old Thomas
Ligotti experienced a horrifying vision of the universe as a meaning-
less and menacing place in which human notions of value and
meaning, even sense itself, are utterly fictitious. Shortly afterward,
near the end of 1970 or beginning of 1971, he discovered Jacksons
The Haunting of Hill House, read it, and hungered for a different type
of horror fiction. Since he was not familiar with libraries or book-
stores, his search took him in an unlikely direction that produced an
equally unlikely, though fortuitous, result: The first place I looked in
my quest for horror literature was the local drugstore, of all places.
What strange luck that contained in its racks was a paperback enti-
tled Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen. And I

soon discovered that this was exactly what I had been looking for
(Ford 31). Shortly after reading the Machen collection, at some point
in 1971, he returned to the same drugstore and bought another book.
It was the Ballantine edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1
(Ford 31; Bryant). And even though he had enjoyed the Machen
book, the experience of reading Lovecraft did what Machen had not:
it set off an explosive sense of identification and inspired Ligotti with
a desire to write horror stories himself.
The reasons for this are various, but they all center around the
overwhelming sense of empathy that he felt for Lovecrafts outlook.
Lovecraft was the first author with whom I strongly identified . . . a
dark guru who confirmed to me all my most awful suspicions about
the universe (Paul and Schurholz 18). Still fresh from the initial at-
tack of his anxiety-panic disorder and still living in the grip of the
horrific worldview it had opened to him, Ligotti felt grateful that
someone else had perceived the world in a way similar to my own
view (Angerhuber and Wagner 53). And although the inspirational
connection may not be obvious or necessary, for Ligotti it was an or-
ganic part of his remarkably intense emotional response to Lovecraft:
When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I
began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to
write horror stories (Wilbanks).
As it turned out, Ligotti did not actually undertake the writing of
fiction or anything else besides school assignments until late in his
college career, when he found the required writing that I was doing
to be very stimulating: it made me high, or at least distracted me
from my chronic anxiety, and I wanted to do more of it (Schweitzer
24). But his path as a writer had already been determined by that ini-
tial experience of responding to Lovecraft from the depths of his be-
ing, in the wake of which there was never a question that I would
write anything else other than horror stories (Angerhuber and Wag-
ner 53).
Recently (as of February 2005), he has provided a bit more expla-
nation about the specific nature of Lovecrafts inspirational influence
upon him:
As soon as a receptive mind discovers the works of someone such as
Lovecraft, it discovers that there are other ways of looking at the
world besides the one in which it has been conditioned. You may
98 Matt Cardin
discover what kind of nightmarish jailhouse you are doomed to in-
habit or you may simply find an echo of things that already depressed
and terrified you about being alive. The horror and nothingness of
human existencethe cozy faade behind which was only a spinning
abyss. The absolute hopelessness and misery of everything. After
publishing his first book in French, which in English appeared as A
Short History of Decay (1949), Cioran learned from that volumes en-
thusiastic reception that his manner of philosophical negation had a
paradoxically vital and energizing quality. Lovecraft, along with other
authors of his kind, may have the same effect and rather than encour-
aging people to give up he may instead give them a reason to carry
on. Sometimes that reason is to follow his wayto communicate, in
the form of horror stories, the outrage and panic at being alive in the
world. (Ligotti 2005)
From what has already been said, it should be obvious that Ligotti is
speaking autobiographically here. Elsewhere, he has stated directly
that he took Lovecraft not only as a literary model, but also as a
model for living itself:
It was what I sensed in Lovecrafts works and what I learned
about his myth as the recluse of Providence that made me think,
Thats for me! I already had a grim view of existence, so there was
no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a
snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write
horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for
years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small
press magazines. Im not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person
or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to as-
pire to. (Wilbanks; emphasis added)
Thus it seems impossible to overstress the importance of Lovecraft to
Ligotti, not just as a writer whose works he loves, but as a human be-
ing with whom he feels a deeply personal sense of kinship. Ligotti
himself has stated the matter definitively: H. P. Lovecraft has been,
bar none other, the most intense and real personal presence in my
life (Paul and Schurholz 18). I dont know what would have become
of me if I hadnt discovered Lovecraft (Wilbanks).

II. Notes on the Horror of Writing: Lovecraft in Ligottis
Work, and vice versa
What remains is the question of whether and how Lovecrafts influ-
ence can be seen in Ligottis actual writing. Darrell Schweitzer offered
a typical observation, and one that echoes Ramsey Campbells senti-
ment expressed above, when he told Ligotti that your stories only re-
semble Lovecrafts in the most tenuous manner, in that you too seem
to depict a bleak and uncertain universe in which human assumptions
dont apply very far. But the more overt Lovecraftisms, from the ad-
jectives to the tentacular Things From Beyond, are conspicuously ab-
sent (Schweitzer 25). This amounts to saying that Ligottis stories
recall Lovecraft purely in terms of mood and worldview, and for the
most part this is correct, although a number of Ligottis stories do in-
corporate specific Lovecraftian names and themes. One example is
The Sect of the Idiot, in which Ligotti mentions Azathoth, the deity
or cosmic principle which Lovecraft created to symbolize the ulti-
mate ontological horror. Another is The Last Feast of Harlequin, the
earliest-written of Ligottis published tales, whose plot motifs explic-
itly recall Lovecrafts The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Festi-
val, and which ends with a dedication To the memory of H. P.
Lovecraft. But even in these and the few other stories in which defi-
nite Lovecraftian elements can be discernede.g., Nethescurial,
The Tsalal, Dr. Locrians AsylumLigotti does not mimic Love-
crafts prose style or call out a litany of fictional gods and monsters in
the manner that has come to typify Lovecraftian mythos fiction. In-
stead, he returns to the same psychological/spiritual source of night-
marish horror that animated Lovecrafts stories, and works it outward
into original tales told in an original style. This style itself may be de-
cidedly non-LovecraftianLigottis stylistic masters, let it be recalled,
are Poe, Nabokov, Burroughs, Schulz, and the likebut the spirit is
Lovecraftian to the core.
And this is all to say that Ligotti nowhere apes Lovecraft, but in-
stead, in a certain (purely metaphorical) sense, embodies him, or at
least a version of him (see below). In my essay Thomas Ligottis Ca-
reer of Nightmares, I have speculated that Ligottis writing may be
taken as a kind of distillation and expression in contemporary terms
of what was best in Lovecraft (Cardin 16). Regarding what qualifies
as Lovecrafts best, Ligotti has expressed a definite preference for
100 Matt Cardin
the earlier, more poetic, dreamlike tales over the later, longer ones
such as The Shadow out of Time and At the Mountains of Madness
in which Lovecraft attempted to build a combined atmosphere of
cosmic horror and scientific/documentary realism. I find Lovecrafts
fastidious attempts at creating a documentary style reality an obsta-
cle to appreciating his work, he has said. To me, reading a horror
story should be like dreaming and the more dreamlike a story is, the
more it affects me (Ford 33).
Given such a literary predilection, we can appreciate why Ligotti
has designated Lovecrafts dreamlike The Music of Erich Zann as his
favorite amongst Lovecrafts works. To me, he has said, it was in
Erich Zann that Lovecraft came up with the perfect model of horror
story (Ayad). He has described this story as Lovecrafts early, almost
premature expression of his ideal as a writer: the use of maximum
suggestion and minimal explanation to evoke a sense of supernatural
terrors and wonders (Ligotti 2003, 82). Erich Zann has long been
recognized as one of Lovecrafts most successful stories, and for our
purposes here, it is important to recall that Lovecraft wrote it in 1921,
only four and a half years into his mature fiction-writing career,
which had begun in 1917 with The Tomb. When we recall his fa-
mous assertion from 1936, just a little over a year before his death,
that Im farther from doing what I want to do than I was 20 years
ago (SL 5.224) and put this together with Ligottis claim that he him-
self has tend[ed] to take more cues from Lovecrafts earlier work
(Bryant), we can at last understand what it really means to say that
Ligottis writing distills the essence of Lovecrafts best. Lovecraft him-
self felt that he had produced his best writing early on, and Ligotti
agrees. Considering the deep affective kinship between the two men,
it seems reasonable to regard Ligottis writing as a continuation of the
type of writing Lovecraft produced early his fiction writing career,
before he made the changes in his approach which hindsight later
represented to him as a misstep.
Perhaps this is the appropriate point to highlight the obvious fact
that not everyone agrees with Ligottis preference for Lovecrafts ear-
lier work, and thus not everyone agrees that Ligottis own authorial
choices have been for the best. In the world of horror literature and
entertainment at large, most people associate Lovecraft with, and
venerate him for, the branch of his writing typified by The Call of
Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow out of Time,

and his other, longer stories told in a realistic tone and mounted as
documentary-type expositions of cosmic and/or supernatural themes,
as opposed to the earlier stories that Ligotti values most. S. T. Joshi is
one prominent figure who believes that Lovecraft produced his most
significant work in this later supernatural realist mode and that,
moreover, this mode has characterized the greatest works in the su-
pernatural horror genre as a whole. Ligottis own tastes notwith-
standing, he has said, few will doubt that Lovecraft initiated the
most representative phase of his career when he adopted the docu-
mentary realism of The Call of Cthulhu in 1926; if he had stopped
writing before that point, we would have little reason to remember
him (Joshi 1993, 152). By contrast, Ligotti believes that Lovecraft
was at his worst when he tried to be convincing in the manner de-
rived from the late 19th century realist-naturalist writers, and that
these attempts failed to achieve the effect Lovecraft had intended.
Lovecraft, he says, always veered off into a highly unrealistic, as
well as highly poetic style, and it is this very deviation from the ideal
of realism that Ligotti finds most laudable and valuable (Schweitzer
26). The upshot of the matter, generally speaking, is that Ligotti
thinks Lovecraft was at his worst in the very stories where Joshi
thinks he was at his best.
What we have here is a case of methodological and even philoso-
phical disagreement, the details of which come out most clearly in
the two mens respective assessments of The Music of Erich Zann.
Joshi, like Ligotti, notices something distinctive about this story. On
the one hand, he praises it, saying that it justifiably remained one of
Lovecrafts own favourite stories, for it reveals a restraint in its super-
natural manifestations (bordering, for one of the few times in his en-
tire work, on obscurity), a pathos in its depiction of its protagonist,
and a general polish in its language that Lovecraft achieved in later
years. And yet he also expresses a reservation, already hinted at in
the parenthetical aside quoted above, about the very nebulous na-
ture of the horror involved in the narrative. There are those, he
writes, who find this sort of restraint effective because it leaves so
much to the imagination; and there are those who find it ineffective
because it leaves too much to the imagination, and there is a suspicion
that the author himself did not have a fully conceived understanding
of what the central weird phenomenon of the story is actually meant
to be. I fear I am in the latter camp. Although Joshi, like Ligotti,
102 Matt Cardin
thinks Lovecraft was sometimes a bit too overexplanatory in his later
stories, in The Music of Erich Zann I cannot help feeling that he
erred in the opposite direction (Joshi 1996, 271, 272). But this is of
course the complete opposite of Ligottis opinion, since Ligotti, as we
have seen, regards the same story as a masterpiece precisely because
of its use of maximum suggestion and minimal explanation to
evoke a specific type of philosophical-aesthetic response. For him,
the storys refusal to give any hint of explanation regarding the pre-
cise nature of its central horror, in tandem with the skill of its telling,
suggest[s] to us the essence, far bigger than life, of that dark universal
terror beyond naming which is the matrix for all other terrors (Li-
gotti 2003, 80), whereas for Joshi the same quality merely hints at the
authors underdeveloped conception of his own theme.
In light of this, we should not be surprised that Joshi has criticized
Ligottis stories for falling short of the ideal of supernatural realism. In
1993 Joshi expressed concern at the fact that Ligotti seems, appar-
ently by design, not to care about the complete reconciliation of the
various supernatural features in a given tale, which, in conjunction
with several other problems Joshi perceives in Ligottis style (includ-
ing obscurity, excessive self-consciousness and self-referentiality, and
a lack of spontaneity and emotional vigour), prevents his work from
ranking with the best in the supernatural horror genre. Joshi opined
that Ligotti needs to produce more completed tales, as opposed to
vignettes and such, and more work in the supernatural realist mode
of the later Lovecraftian stories if he is to join the ranks of Lovecraft,
Blackwood, Dunsany, Jackson, Campbell, and Klein, as he is on the
verge of doing. Among Ligottis works that already fulfill this order,
Joshi counted The Last Feast of Harlequin, Nethescurial, and
Vastarien (Joshi 1993, 15152).
1

1. More recently, Joshi has spoken positively of the increased stylistic realism
evident in Ligottis My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002). In this short novel,
Joshi says, Ligotti has tempered what in the past might have been regarded
as his excessively tortured prose, and has instead evolved a smoothly flowing
narrative style that, if perhaps a bit more spartan in its exotic metaphors
than before, is nonetheless capable of powerful emotive effects (Joshi
2003). The change Joshi notes is indeed prominent in My Work Is Not Yet
Done, and is somewhat surprising in light of Ligottis longstanding, self-
avowed shunning of realism in favor of surrealism and oneiricisma fact
that Joshi also notes. But we may observe that Ligotti has clearly not aban-

Ligotti, for his part, is quite self-aware about the choices he has
made in matters of style and authorial philosophy. He has even em-
ployed a metafictional approach to incorporate his thoughts about
such matters into some of his stories. Nethescurial is one such story,
and ironically (in light of Joshis praise), we can find within it an an-
swer to Joshis criticism of Ligottis supposed over-vagueness.
Nethescurial is constructed as a series of frame stories, and the nar-
rator of the topmost frame is portrayed as possessing a certain savvy
about the field of supernatural horror. In commenting on the con-
tents of a manuscript he has found, which forms one of the lower-
level frames, and which purports to give an account of a supposedly
true quasi-supernatural/metaphysical horror story, he says, The
problem is that such supernatural inventions [i.e. the god Nethescu-
rial, a demonic demiurge] are indeed quite difficult to imagine. So
often they fail to materialize in the mind, to take on a mental texture,
and thus remain unfelt as anything but an abstract monster of meta-
physicsan elegant or awkward schematic that cannot rise from the
paper to touch us (G 82).
Although in this passage the narrator/Ligotti is talking not about
the problem of authorial vagueness, but instead the ontological and
affective barrier that separates the world of written words from the
world of existential reality, we may still read these thoughts as ad-
dressing the former issue as well. This is especially true since the
demonic demiurge Nethescurial, which forms the storys central
metaphysical horror, remains fully and fundamentally as unexplained
in the end as does the nameless horror confronted by Lovecrafts
Erich Zann. Ligottis concluding words at the end of the passage
quoted above may thus be taken not only as an apologia for the
power of literary horror to move us, but also for the power of a
minimally explained supernatural premise to have a similar impact:
Even if we are incapable of sincere belief in [the various stock narra-
tive elements found in supernatural horror stories like the tale of the

doned his commitment to warped and fantastical narrative and prose styles,
as evidenced by such relatively recent stories as Our Temporary Supervisor
(2001), My Case for Retributive Action (2001), and The Town Manager
(2003). Another tale, Purity (2003), represents an interesting hybrid of Li-
gottis typically oneiric thematic content, couched in a realistic narrative
style reminiscent of the one he employed in My Work Is Not Yet Done.
104 Matt Cardin
island cult of Nethescurial], there may still be a power in these things
that threatens us like a bad dream. And this power emanates not so
much from within the tale as it does from somewhere behind it,
someplace of infinite darkness and ubiquitous evil in which we may
walk unaware (G 82).
Not incidentally, these thoughts were prefigured, and Ligottis low
opinion of the value and effectiveness of supernatural realism was
given clear expression, in his words to interviewer Carl Ford in 1988,
three years before Nethescurials first publication:
I discovered some time ago that I am not necessarily interested in fic-
tional confrontations between the so-called everyday world and the
world of the supernatural. If I am affected by a writers vision, it is
never because he has caused me to believe during the course of read-
ing that there is truth to a given supernatural motif. . . . What seems
important to me is . . . the power of the language and images of a
story and the ultimate vision that they help to convey. . . . Lovecrafts
Cthulhu aided his expression of certain sensations that were pro-
foundly important to him. The pure idea of such a creationnot if it
exists or doesntis the only thing of consequence. That idea may be
rendered poorly or with great power, and beyond thatnothing mat-
ters. (Ford 33)
Obviously, Joshi is correct in believing that Ligotti cares nothing
for the complete reconciliation of the various supernatural features
in a given tale. What matters to Ligotti is the evocation of mood and
the conveyance, preferably with consummate literary skill, of an
overwhelming artistic-horrific vision. In fact, we could substitute
Nethescurial for Cthulhu in the above quotation to arrive at a vi-
able statement from Ligotti about his own guiding philosophy as a
writer. (For more on the parallels between Ligottis personal aesthetic
as a writer of horror fiction and his statements about Lovecraft, see
the final section of this essay.)
If it is ironic that Ligotti has answered, after a fashion, some of
Joshis criticisms in one of the very stories that Joshi has singled out
for praise, then it is doubly ironic that Lovecrafts own words indicate
that by the end of his life, he probably would have agreed more with
Ligotti than Joshi on this issue. Although Lovecraft did begin employ-
ing a documentary-realist approach to fiction writing beginning in
1926, his self-stated ultimate goal in the writing of even these realistic

stories was the evocation of mood, not the complete reconciliation
of [their] various supernatural features, which formulation may be
taken as one of the hallmarks of supernatural realism. [Weird fiction]
must, he wrote in 1935,
if it is to be authentic art, form primarily the crystallisation or sym-
bolisation of a definite human moodnot the attempted delineation of
events, since the events involved are of course largely fictitious or
impossible. . . . A really serious weird story does not depend on plot
or incident at all, but puts all its emphasis on mood or atmosphere.
What it sets out to be is simply a picture of a mood, and if it weaves
the elements of suggestion with sufficient skill, it matters relatively
little what fictitious events the mood is based on. (SL 5.158, 198)
In the case of Lovecrafts own writing, the point is illustrated by
his 1931 short novel, At the Mountains of Madness. He wrote this one
in an ultra-realistic tone, complete with a generous overlay of scien-
tific jargon, but as he said in a 1936 letter to his friend E. Hoffmann
Price, at root his goal was simply to pin down the vague feelings re-
garding the lethal, desolate white south which have haunted me ever
since I was ten years old. In other words, he simply wanted to write
a story that would express for him, and that would convey to others,
an undefined feeling. This emotional closeness that he felt to the set-
ting and subject matter of the story may account in part for the fact
that when it received a hostile reception and was subjected to severe
editorial mishandling, he was so discouraged that, in his own words,
the episode probably did more than anything else to end my effec-
tive fictional career (SL 5.223, 224).
The point is reinforced later in the same letter to Price, where
Lovecraft used similar mood-based terms to explain his motivations
for writing The Haunter of the Dark (1935): The sole purpose of
this attempt was to crystallise (a) the feeling of strangeness in a dis-
tant view, and (b) the feeling of latent horror in an old, deserted edi-
fice (SL 5.224). Again, this ideal of mood, and not the achievement of
a successful supernatural-realist effect, was so important to Lovecraft
that his self-perceived failure deeply discouraged him. These words
about The Haunter in the Dark are followed directly by his already-
quoted claim that he was farther from doing what I want to do than
he had been twenty years earlier.
In a more formal vein, in his 1933 essay Notes on Writing Weird
106 Matt Cardin
Fiction, Lovecraft had made the same point when he wrote, My
reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualis-
ing more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmen-
tary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy
which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, at-
mospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art
and literature (MW 113). And if we look to the introduction to his
classic essay Supernatural Horror in Literature (written 192527), we
see him flatly asserting that the one test of the really weirdthat is,
the litmus test for whether a supernatural horror story succeeds or
failsis simply whether it generates the right mood. More specifi-
cally, and to quote Lovecrafts famous words in full, The one test of
the really weird is thiswhether or not there be excited in the
reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown
spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the
beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities
on the known universes utmost rim (D 36869).
At this point, the attentive reader may have begun to think that I
am confusing categories in my argument. Supernatural realism, the
reader might say, is a stylistic approach, whereas Lovecrafts weird-
fictional ideal of evoking mood is a fundamental authorial motivation,
prior to and separate from the selection of a literary style. In other
words, supernatural realism was merely one of several stylistic vehi-
cles that he employed in pursuit of his emotional goal, and therefore
to oppose the two is to commit a category error. In my defense, I do
not think I have committed this error, because what I have been at-
tempting to show is precisely that primacy of his emotional motiva-
tion for writing stories at all. My point is not that his stories can be
discretely divided into mood-based ones and supernatural realist
ones, but simply that he was more emotionally invested in the idea of
writing stories to convey ethereal moods than he was intellectually
invested in the idea of writing stories to create a convincing air of re-
alism or to offer a coherent explanation or reconciliation of super-
natural motifs. When he reached middle age and began to take stock
of his writing, he felt that the work he had produced prior to adopt-
ing the realist approach had more successfully achieved and fulfilled
his emotional goals. And in this opinion, he is at one with Ligotti.
Nor does this identity of opinion stop there. Although an authors
assessment of his or her own work should not always be taken as

valid, it is a telling fact that Ligottis opinion about Lovecrafts fiction
echoes that of Lovecraft himself. Late in life, Lovecraft maintained
that he regarded The Music of Erich Zann and The Colour out of
Space, each of which in its respective way defies the conventions of
supernatural realism by leaving the narratives central horror utterly
unexplained, as his most successful stories. Of course, Joshi, too, ad-
mires The Colour out of Space, specificallyand oddly, in light of
his criticism of The Music of Erich Zannfor the way it captures
the atmosphere of inexplicable horror perhaps more effectively than
any of Lovecrafts other stories (Joshi 1996, 420). Ligotti, for his part,
has said of this story that he admires the way it delineat[es] a condi-
tion of pervasive strangeness and unease, the achievement of which
is necessary for his enjoyment of horror fiction (Schweitzer 27). So on
this point, regarding this story, Ligotti and Joshi are in agreement. But
we have already seen that Joshi holds reservations about what he per-
ceives as the possible overuse of underexplanation in Lovecrafts The
Music of Erich Zann, whereas for Ligotti the same story serves al-
most as an Ur-type template.
The overarching point that I have been laboring to make through
all of this is that Ligottis sense of identification with Lovecraft is so
profound, and their sensibilities are so closely aligned, that the two of
them even share Lovecrafts self-opinion as a writer, no matter
whether this clashes with the expressed opinions of the worlds
foremost Lovecraft scholar or anyone else. If this seems an overstate-
ment, I will at least argue for the heuristic value of the idea by point-
ing out that Ligottis position enables him to offer an explanation for
Lovecrafts late-in-life lament about his self-perceived failure to real-
ize his authorial goals. The answer is really quite simple: Lovecrafts
experimentation with supernatural realism may have produced the
stories that he has become most known for, but they failed to satisfy
him as much as his earlier work had done. For both Lovecraft and Li-
gotti, these later stories failed to approach the same summit of sug-
gestive horror, and failed to capture and express the same delicate
emotions, that his earlier ones had achieved, and thus both men pre-
fer the earlier work to the later. Thus it was natural for Lovecraft to
claim at the age of forty-five that he was farther from producing the
work he wanted to produce than he had been at twenty-five. But
Joshi can only be baffled by the claim and call it an astonishing asser-
tion (Joshi 2000). Or perhaps (and this is more likely) he fully un-
108 Matt Cardin
derstands Lovecrafts subjective reasons for saying such a thing, but
still finds it astonishing because he considers the stories from Love-
crafts supernatural realist period to be patently superior, meaning
more significant, meaningful, and mature, than the earlier ones. In any
event, the question here is not that of the objective literary value of
Lovecrafts pre- or post-1926 work, but of the way that he, along
with Ligotti, felt about such things. And the answer is clear.
Perhaps most telling of all, in the same letter where he averred
that a serious weird tale sets out to be a picture of a mood, Love-
craft reflected on his then-current approach to fiction writing and
expressed confusion over the most effective way to achieve his goals:
Im pretty well burned out in the lines Ive been following . . . thats
why Im experimenting around for new ways to capture the moods I
wish to depict. He specifically classifies The Thing on the Doorstep
and The Shadow out of Time, both of which he had written in his
realist mode, as counting among these experiments, and asserts,
Nothing is really typical of my efforts at this stage. Im simply cast-
ing about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong im-
pressions . . . which persist in clamouring for expression. Then he
makes a most interesting statement: Perhaps the case is hopeless
that is, I may be experimenting in the wrong medium altogether. It
may be that poetry instead of fiction is the only effective vehicle to
put such expression across (SL 5.199).
In this same vein, only a month after writing the letter to Price
from which I have quoted extensively above, he wrote Price another
one in which he disparaged his own earlier work, lamented the influ-
ence of pulp fiction on his thought process and therefore writing
style, and then hinted indirectly, and tantalizingly, that he was grop-
ing toward yet another shift in his writing. And in this second expres-
sion of dissatisfaction, he made it clear that his lament from a month
earlier referred not only to the quality of his work, but to its very
form. [F]iction, he stated, is not the medium for what I really want
to do (emphases in original). But regarding the type of writing he did
want to do, he expressed confusion: (Just what the right medium
would be, I dont knowperhaps the cheapened and hackneyed
term prose-poem would hint in the general direction) (SL 5.230).
Lovecraft, we will recall, had already written four prose poems earlier
in his career: Memory, Ex Oblivione, Nyarlathotep, and What
the Moon Brings. In keeping with the conventions of the form, each

of these pieces is characterized by a poetic, dreamlike tone and an
atmosphere of unabashed surrealism. In fact, we might anachronisti-
cally describe his prose poems as some of the most Ligottian things he
ever wrote.
This is a clue worth following. Certainly, Ligotti himself has made
extensive use of the prose poem form, or something resembling it, in
what Joshi has described as the vignettes, prose poems, sketches and
fragments that so far [as of 1993] constitute the bulk of his output. It
was Ligottis repeated use of this semi-fragmentary form that led
Joshi, with his preference for supernatural realism, to say that Ligotti
will, I believe, have to start writing more storiesas opposed to
[prose poems etc.]if he is to gain preminence in the field (Joshi
2003, 152). Regardless of Joshis judgment here, are we perhaps justi-
fied in speculating, based on the considerations already offered, that
the different medium and/or style for which Lovecraft was blindly
groping; the one that would have expressed to his satisfaction the
poignant and powerful subjective impressions and imaginings that
had dominated his life; the one that would have given him the same
sense of creative fulfillment that his early works gave him in retro-
spectare we perhaps justified in speculating that this new type of
writing which he unsuccessfully sought to conceive may be found to-
day in the works of Thomas Ligotti?
In pursuit of this idea, let us consider Ligottis metafiction Notes
on the Writing of Horror, which stands as his quintessential state-
ment on matters of literary style as they relate to the horror story. In
this tour de force, he expresses, through the voice of the narrator, his
thoughts about the various styles or techniques available to horror
writers. These are, he says, essentially three in number. First is the re-
alistic technique, which is simply another name for conventional su-
pernatural realism. The description that he gives would serve well as
a textbook definition: The supernatural and all it represents, is pro-
foundly abnormal, and therefore unreal. . . . Now the highest aim of
the realistic horror writer is to prove, in realistic terms, that the un-
real is real. The second technique is the traditional gothic technique,
which places characters and plotlines in a recognizably gothic-
fantastic setting and can therefore dispense with the strictures of real-
ism by, for example, employing an inflated rhetoric that would
seem hysterical in a more realistic context. Third is the experimental
technique, which a writer adopts when the first two would fail to tell
110 Matt Cardin
the story rightly, and which is defined by the writers simply follow-
ing the storys commands to the best of his human ability. . . .
[L]iterary experimentalism is simply the writers imagination, or lack
of it, and feeling, or absence of same, thrashing their chains around in
the escape-proof dungeon of the words of the story (SDD 104, 108
9, 11011). By way of example, Lovecrafts The Call of Cthulhu and
Ligottis The Frolic may be cited as instances of the realistic tech-
nique. Lovecrafts The Outsider and Ligottis The Tsalal may be
cited as instances of the traditional gothic technique. For the experi-
mental technique, it is more difficult to pin down a Lovecraft story.
Probably his prose poems are the best ones to single out, and perhaps
The Music of Erich Zann, which also qualifies as gothic. For Ligotti,
so many stories fall into the experimental category that it is impracti-
cal to list them here. Examples include Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech,
The Night School, Mad Night of Atonement, The Red Tower,
the entire contents of The Notebook of the Night (the final section
of his collection Noctuary), and the chapbook Sideshow and Other
Stories.
Given Ligottis assertion that a writer adopts experimentalism
when the more traditional styles prove inadequate, we might specu-
late that it was this style that Lovecraft had in mind when he was
searching for a new means of expression. Statements he made around
the same general period that might seem to contradict this idea by
cementing him firmly and exclusively in the role of scientific realist,
such as his late-1936 claim to Fritz Leiber that one of his cardinal
principles regarding weird fiction had always been the idea that an
air of absolute realism should be preserved (as if one were preparing
an actual hoax instead of a story) except in the one limited field
where the writer has chosen to depart . . . from the order of objective
reality (SL 5.342), may be taken simply as one more sign of the con-
fusion he was then experiencing over stylistic matters, since it was
this very approach that he had been expressing frequent and severe
doubts over, almost to the point of repudiating it, during the preced-
ing months. Moreover, his words to Leiber are perhaps doubly sus-
pect since they echo sentiments he had expressed three years earlier
in Notes on Writing Weird Fiction, where he had counseled pro-
spective weird fiction writers to be sure that all references through-
out the story are thoroughly reconciled with the final design since
Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to over-

come, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of
a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on
the one given marvel (MW 114, 115). Throughout literary history, the
descriptions that writers have given of their own compositional and
creative processes, and also, especially, the prescriptions they have
offered to other writers based upon these, have proven notoriously
unreliable, in that these writers have not really practiced what they
preach, or have not done so as casually and easily as they make it ap-
pear. It almost seems as if the principles and points where writers
present the greatest appearance of self-assurance are those where
they should be most carefully interrogated, since these are the areas
where they privately experience the greatest doubt and confusion.
What we have already seen from Lovecraft should indicate that his
words in Notes on Writing Weird Fiction and in the letter to Leiber
are no exception to this rule, since they resound with a dogmatic cer-
titude that conceals a very real, deep, and sincere uncertainty.
Having said all this, it may not be experimentalism alone that
Lovecraft, or even Ligotti, was/is reaching for. In Notes on the Writ-
ing of Horror, Ligotti/the narrator makes brief mention of another
style that would supersede and obliterate all others. In order to do
full justice to the story of Nathan, the protagonist whose example
story he has been taking through permutations of the three standard
styles, Ligotti/the narrator says he wanted to employ a style that
would conjure all the primordial powers of the universe independent
of the conventional realities of the Individual, Society, or Art. I as-
pired toward nothing less than a pure style without style, a style hav-
ing nothing whatsoever to do with the normal or abnormal, a style
magic, timeless, and profound . . . and one of great horror, the horror
of a god (SDD 112). In other words, he was trying to burst the bonds
of the written word (which recalls the narrators thoughts in
Nethescurial) by writing a horror story that presented pure horror,
the pristine experience in and of itself, on a veritably cosmic-divine
level, and that would therefore be able to invade the readers experi-
ence and become, instead of just a story on a page, his or her existen-
tial reality. The attempt failed, of course, because it was necessarily
founded upon the very unreality (of the world of fiction) that it was
attempting to overcome. That is, the whole idea was a categorical
impossibility. But the passion behind it was and is real in the minds of
both the narrator and Ligotti himself, and also, I think, in the mind of
112 Matt Cardin
Lovecraft, whose passionate desire to give literary expression to his
deepest emotions, and thereby to affect his readers deeply, at least
equaled that of his successor.
Speaking of categorical impossibilities, the idea that I have been
advancingthat the different form of writing the middle-aged Love-
craft inchoately desired to produce may have been the very form of
writing that Ligotti is producing today, and that both may have ulti-
mately longed to write in an impossible godlike styleis of course a
categorically unverifiable conjecture. It is also a somewhat outlandish
one, and I fear that the very articulating of it may seem extravagant.
But for all that, I still feel that it is a worthwhile possibility to con-
sider, if only for the way it illuminates the writings of both men.
And having considered them together, as literary soulmates, it is
now time to recognize their differences.
III. Lovecraft and Ligotti, sui generis
It should be obvious by now that in stating Lovecrafts authorial ideal
as the use of maximum suggestion and minimal explanation to
evoke a sense of supernatural terrors and wonders, Ligotti was stat-
ing his own ideal as well. And this ought to lead us to suspect the ob-
jective validity of his judgment. In truth, it is probably the case that
his understanding of Lovecraft is too strongly colored by his personal
feelings to qualify as objective, and that it is Joshi, the scholar, and
not Ligotti, the literary artist, who can validly lay claim to the most
technically accurate assessment. For my own part, in poring over Li-
gottis essays and interviews, I have gathered the impression that his
response to Lovecraft, and in particular his sense of identification
with Lovecrafts worldview, has been so intense that it has led him to
impute too much of himself to his idol. In other words, he has to a
certain extent reimagined Lovecraft in his own image.
A pertinent example of this can be seen in his descriptive analyses
of Lovecrafts nightmare vision of reality, which are, in my opinion,
entirely Ligottian, but not entirely Lovecraftian. My own reading of
Lovecraft has given me the impression that while he was entirely se-
rious about the cosmic despair and philosophical concerns that un-
dergird his stories, he did not experience precisely the same kind of
existential torture and cosmic-ontological nightmare that character-
izes Ligottis fictional world and personal life. Lovecraft, it seems to

me, was emotionally and intellectually focused on the horror of
cosmic outsideness, of vast outer spaces and the mind-shattering
powers and principles that may hold sway there, and that may occa-
sionally impinge upon human reality and reveal its pathetic fragility.
Even a minimal knowledge of his biography leads to the conclusion
that this was an entirely appropriate focus for him, given his infatua-
tion with, and wide-ranging knowledge of, astronomy in particular
and natural science in general. The same personal interests also indi-
cate that his forays into supernatural realism were far from being a
waste, since they utilized a definite portion of his knowledge and side
of his character that otherwise would have languished in muteness.
Ligotti, by contrast, seems focused more upon the horror of deep
insideness, of the dark, twisted, transcendent truths and mysteries
that reside within consciousness itself and find their outward expres-
sion in scenes and situations of warped perceptions and diseased
metaphysics. As with Lovecraft and his own idiosyncratic themes,
these themes are characteristically Ligottis, characteristically Ligot-
tian through and through, and they have grown out of his life.
Whereas Lovecraft was passionately interested in astronomy, chemis-
try, New England history and architecture, and many other subjects
that found their ways into his fictional writings, Ligottis outside in-
terests include the literature of pessimism, the composing and playing
of music, and the study of religion and spirituality, especially in its
mystical or nondual aspect.
2
Thus the idiosyncrasies of his typical
style and themes are as natural and expectable as were Lovecrafts.
Importantly, despite their significant differences, the Ligottian and
Lovecraftian brands of horror do exhibit manifest family resem-
blances. It may even be that they represent opposite poles on the
same continuum, with Lovecrafts outer, transcendent, cosmic focus
and Ligottis inner, immanent, personal one finding their mutual con-
firmation and fulfillment in each other. But the really important thing
to notice is that the distinction between Lovecrafts and Ligottis re-

2. An important aspect of Ligottis psychological preparation for becoming a
horror writer that I have not yet mentioned in this paper is his Roman
Catholic upbringing, which he himself has cited as an important influence: I
was a Catholic until I was eighteen years old, when I unloaded all of the
doctrines, but almost none of the fearful superstition, of a gothically devout
childhood and youth (Schweitzer 29).
114 Matt Cardin
spective horrific visions, combined with a recognition of their under-
lying kinship, helps to answer our original question about Ramsey
Campbells reasons, in that introduction to Songs of a Dead Dreamer,
for mentioning in the same breath both Ligottis separateness from
and perceptible relationship to Lovecraft.
Another difference that I find between Lovecraft and Ligotti, and
one whose significance is even more foundational, is that Lovecraft,
as both a human being and an artist, was powerfully shaped by a life-
long experience of sehnsucht, whereas in Ligotti this quality, while
present, is overshadowed or even overpowered by stark, staring hor-
ror and a desperate bleakness. Lovecrafts poignant yearning after an
experience of absolute beauty can be seen in many of his stories, such
as The Silver Key, where young Randolph Carter, Lovecrafts fic-
tional alter ego, yearns for a return to the reimagined supernal peace
and beauty of his childhood world; and also in his letters and essays,
where he speaks repeatedly of finding himself overcome by aesthetic
rapture and a sense of longing and adventurous expectancy at the
sight of sunsets, cloudscapes, winding streets, rooftops angled in cer-
tain suggestive arrangements, and the like. The following passage
from a 1927 letter to Donald Wandrei is typical:
Sometimes I stumble accidentally on rare combinations of slope,
curved street-line, roofs & gables & chimneys, & accessory details of
verdure & background, which in the magic of late afternoon assume a
mystic majesty and exotic significance beyond the power of words to
describe. Absolutely nothing else in life now has the power to move
me so much; for in these momentary vistas there seem to open be-
fore me bewildering avenues to all the wonders & lovelinesses I have
ever sought, & to all those gardens of eld whose memory trembles
just beyond the rim of conscious recollection, yet close enough to
lend to life all the significance it possesses. (SL 2.12526)
Or again, from a 1930 letter to Clark Ashton Smith:
My most vivid experiences are efforts to recapture fleeting & tan-
talising mnemonic fragments expressed in unknown or half-known
architectural or landscape vistas, especially in connexion with a sun-
set. Some instantaneous fragment of a picture will well up suddenly
through some chain of subconscious associationthe immediate ex-
citant being usually half-irrelevant on the surface& fill me with a

sense of wistful memory & bafflement; with the impression that the
scene in question represents something I have seen & visited before
under circumstances of superhuman liberation & adventurous expec-
tancy, yet which I have almost completely forgotten, & which is so
bewilderingly uncorrelated & unoriented as to be forever inaccessible
in the future. (SL 3.197)
Additional examples could be multiplied at length, and all would
show, like the above passages, that Lovecraft was gripped by an in-
grained and, we might say, classical sense of sehnsucht, the infinite
longing that is the essence of romanticism, as E. T. A. Hoffmann fa-
mously formulated it. It was precisely this faculty that led him to re-
spond with such intense delight to the mystically charged writings of
Lord Dunsany, which exerted an enormous influence on his own sub-
sequent work. Lovecrafts Dunsanian stories can and should be read
not only as outflowings of his love for Dunsanys aesthetic vision, but
as expressions of his own personal sense of infinite longing.
Lovecraft even went so far as to assert that this feeling of longing,
this heightened responsiveness to beauty that seems to hint at a tran-
scendent world of absolute aesthetic fulfillment, is
the impulse which justifies authorship. . . . The time to begin writing
is when the events of the world seem to suggest things larger than the
worldstrangenesses and patterns and rhythms and uniquities of
combination which no one ever saw or heard before, but which are
so vast and marvellous and beautiful that they absolutely demand
proclamation with a fanfare of silver trumpets. Space and time be-
come vitalised with literary significance when they begin to make us
subtly homesick for something out of space, out of time. . . . To find
those other lives, other worlds, and other dreamlands, is the true au-
thors task. That is what literature is; and if any piece of writing is
motivated by anything apart from this mystic and never-finished
quest, it is base and unjustified imitation (SL 2.14243)
The fact that he made all of these statements after his 1926 conversion
(as we might call it) to supernatural realism demonstrates beyond all
doubt that the longings and mood-based authorial motivations he ex-
perienced during his earlier period were still in full force later on. And
this provides still further explanation for why those later, more realis-
tic stories, with their tendency toward narrative over-explicitness and
116 Matt Cardin
a certain clinical, scientific coldness of style, while they may consti-
tute significant literary works in their own right, appeared to him a
deviations from his true path and desire.
Ligotti is fully aware of all this, of course. No one who has made
even a casual study of Lovecrafts life and works can be unaware of
this aspect of his character, and Ligotti has studied him more seri-
ously and extensively than most. He has read Lovecrafts stories, es-
says, and letters, and has seen his repeated claim that his life was
made bearable solely by virtue of those transcendent intimations of a
supernal beauty. And Ligotti has, I think, responded to this after his
own fashion. At the very least, he has recognized that even in a hor-
ror story like The Music of Erich Zann, Lovecraft captured at least
a fragment of the desired object [i.e., the unattainable goal of that
burning sehnsucht] and delivered it to his readers (Ligotti 2003, 84).
But as mentioned above, in Ligottis fictional world this yearning af-
ter beauty ends up being utterly subjugated to the experience of
cosmic horror. I think it might even be possible to do a chronological
study of the appearance and eventual complete submergence or sub-
version of this impulse in his stories. Early on, in such tales as Les
Fleurs, The Frolic, The Chymist, and The Lost Art of Twilight,
one can sense a world of suggestive beauties, laced with horrors (or
vice versa), being painted in the descriptive passages, and in the hints
of an alternate realm that borders the normal world: the blasphe-
mous fairyland where John Doe frolics with his young victims (cf.
SDD 1213), the opulent kingdom of glittering colors and velvety
jungle-shapes, a realm of contorted rainbows and twisted auroras
where the narrator of Les Fleurs dwells amidst a riotous floral
beauty of hideous luxuriance (SDD 25). The emotional center of this
subset of tales is summed up in a single sentence from Vastarien,
which itself stands as Ligottis most singular, unified expression of
this sort of longing: Victor Keirion belonged to that wretched sect
of souls who believe that the only value of this world lies in its
powerat certain timesto suggest another world (SDD 263). The
very wording, aside from the description of those who are subject to
this longing as wretched, recalls some of the Lovecraft passages
quoted above.
But as Ligottis art progresses, the longing expressed in his stories
mutates, until we are presented with such grim spectacles as The
Tsalal, in which protagonist Andrew Manesss longing is described in

terms that subvert and transmute the desire for beauty into a desire
for gothic horror and bleakness. Andrew, the story informs us, was
conceived as part of a sinister mystical rite that was intended to bring
the Tsalal, a god or principle of ultimate darkness, into this world. As
the seed of that one, he will find that throughout his life he will be
drawn to a place that reveals the sign of the Tsalalan aspect of the
unreal, a forlorn glamour in things (Ligotti 1995, 93). This attraction
takes the form of a longing that still bears certain similarities to Love-
crafts, since it is still based on the desire to see and experience an-
other worldand yet for Andrew Maness, the sights and scenes that
evoke the longing, and the fundamental character of the other world
that he desires, have nothing whatsoever to do with sunsets or mysti-
cal vistas, or indeed with any sort of beauty at all:
Perhaps he would come upon an abandoned house standing shat-
tered and bent in an isolated landscapea raw skeleton in a boneyard.
But this dilapidated structure would seem to him a temple, a wayside
shrine to that dark presence with which he sought union, and also a
doorway to the dark world in which it dwelled. Nothing can convey
those sensations, the countless nuances of trembling excitement, as he
approached such a decomposed edifice whose skewed and ragged out-
line suggested another order of existence, the truest order of existence,
as though such places as this house were only wavering shadows cast
down to earth by a distant, unseen realm of entity.
For this narrator, such grim and spectral scenes inspire the sense of an
imminent, nightmarish transformation being worked upon the world
through the agency of his own being, and this in turn overwhelm[s]
him with a black intoxication and suggest[s] his lifes goal: to work
the great wheel that turns in darkness, and to be broken upon it (N
83). Obviously, this is light years from Lovecrafts vague impressions
of adventurous expectancy coupled with elusive memory
impressions that certain vistas, particularly those associated with sun-
sets, are avenues of approach to spheres or conditions of wholly un-
defined delights and freedoms which I have known in the past and
have a slender possibility of knowing again in the future (SL 3.243).
This difference, not incidentally, has resulted in dramatic differences
in the two mens fictional representations of longing. One need only
compare any of the above-quoted Ligotti passages, or any of a dozen
others, to analogous descriptive passages from Lovecrafts dream sto-
118 Matt Cardin
ries in order to see the difference.
3

Ligotti has inadvertently given us a clue as to how to articulate
this particular distinction between Lovecraft and himself. He has
written, Like Erich Zanns world of beauty, Lovecrafts lay in some
far cosmos of the imagination, and like that of another artist, it is a
beauty that hath horror in it (Ligotti 2003, 84). For Ligotti, the or-
der of primacy is reversed: his other-world is a horror that hath
beauty in it. It is world of horror first and foremost, with its undeni-
able, intermittent beauty standing only as an accident or epiphe-
nomenonand perhaps as a kind of deadly lure. Understanding this,
we will not wonder at the fact that his oeuvre contains nothing even
remotely resembling Lovecrafts Dunsanian stories. He has never
written, or at least never published, anything like Lovecrafts The
Quest of Iranon or Celephas, the first of which is entirely lacking
in horror and the second of which only lightly brushes past it, and
both of which take for their primary themes not gothic darkness but
ethereal beauty and bittersweet poignancy.

3. Consider, for example, the already-quoted passage from Ligottis The
Tsalal with the following passage from Lovecrafts The Dream-Quest of Un-
known Kadath: Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous
city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high
terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls,
temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined
fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and
wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and
ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed
tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cob-
bles. It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of
immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvis-
ited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balus-
traded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-
vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place
again what once had an awesome and momentous place (MM 306). The
parallels and divergences are equally instructive. Both passages present pro-
tagonists who are in the act of surveying and responding to moody architec-
tural scenes. Both are written from the intensity of the respective authors
genuine emotional and artistic visions. But what a titanic difference there is
between their respective tones and intents! The very magnitude of the dif-
ference suggests a fundamental disparity between the respective metaphysi-
cal absolutes which the authors are straining to conceive.

The thematic progression of Ligottis fiction away from any sort of
expressed longing and toward a zenith, which is to say an emotional
nadir, of despair and horror is completed in The Bungalow House,
which portrays the miserable death of the very capacity to yearn. The
protagonist of the story, a solitary librarian, becomes infatuated with
a series of bizarre audio performance tapes that he discovers at a local
art gallery. These tapes contain first person dream monologues nar-
rated by an oddly familiar voice, and the bleak, surreal scenes they
describe touch an emotional chord deep within him, causing him to
respond with the same feeling of euphoric hopelessness described
by the taped voice. Expressing a sentiment that rather recalls Ligottis
closing words in his essay The Consolations of Horror,
4
the narrator
of The Bungalow House says he feels comforted by the tapes, since
they demonstrate that someone else has shared his most private and
powerful insights and emotions. To think, he says with rhetorical
emphasis, that another person shared my love for the icy bleakness of
things (NF 523). But by the storys end, he has been emotionally dev-
astated by a personal confrontation with the owner of the anonymous
voice, and by a twist that has revealed a depth to his own wretch-
edness that he had not previously suspected. The result is that he has
been robbed of that selfsame ability to feel the intense and highly
aesthetic perception of what I call the icy bleakness of things that had
initially attracted him to the tapes (NF 531). The storys closing lines
explicitly describe the nature of his loss:
I try to experience the infinite terror and dreariness of a bungalow
universe in the way I once did, but it is not the same as it once was.
There is no comfort in it, even though the vision and the underlying
principles are still the same. . . . More than ever, some sort of new ar-
rangement seems in order, some dramatic and unknown arrange-
mentanything to find release from this heartbreaking sadness I
suffer every minute of the day (and night), this killing sadness that
feels as if it will never leave me no matter where I go or what I do or
whom I may ever know. (NF 532)

4. This, then, is the ultimate, that is only, consolation [of fictional horror]:
simply that someone shares some of your own feelings and has made of
these a work of art which you have the insight, sensitivity, andlike it or
notpeculiar set of experiences to appreciate (NF xxi).
120 Matt Cardin
This emotional death signals a lasting shift in Ligottis writing; in his
postBungalow House stories, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
find evidence of the same yearning, however dark its character by the
time of The Tsalal, that informed much of his earlier work. This
leads us to suspect a strong autobiographical component to this the-
matic arc, and we are confirmed in our suspicions by Ligottis nonfic-
tional description of his agonized struggles with anhedonia in The
Conspiracy against the Human Race (q.v.).
One of the most fundamental elements of any writers psychologi-
cal makeup is the central impulse that motivates him to write at all.
When we compare Ligottis expressed motivations with Lovecrafts,
we find that this dividing line between themLovecrafts golden
longing contrasting with Ligottis gloomy one that eventually dies in
desolationextends all the way inward to that foundational level.
We have already seen that Lovecraft said he wrote directly out of his
sehnsucht, to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly
and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions
of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy that he derived
from various sources. In the same essay, he went on to explain why
he wrote the particular kind of story that his readers have come to
associate him with, and his words are of paramount significance to
our concerns here:
I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination bestone of
my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentar-
ily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling
limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us
and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond
the radius of our sight and analysis. These stories frequently emphasize
the element of horror because fear is our deepest and strongest emotion,
and the one which best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying il-
lusions. Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely
connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shat-
tered natural law or cosmic alienage or outsideness without laying
stress on the emotion of fear. (MW 113; emphasis added)
The import of this statement for Lovecrafts status as a horror writer
is obvious: he was saying, circa 1933, that he only wrote horror be-
cause it was efficacious for achieving another effect that is not intrin-
sically horrific. In other words, for him, horror was a means and not

an end. It was his poignant, wistful longing after transcendent beauty
and cosmic freedom that animated his authorial lifeand not only
that, but his life in general: in the same letter where he described his
vague impressions of adventurous expectancy coupled with elusive
memory, he claimed that this intense emotional experience was
chief amongst the reasons why he did not commit suicidethe rea-
sons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to
atone for its dominantly burthernsome quality (SL 3.243).
Such an attitude contrasts sharply with the reason, quoted earlier,
that Ligotti has given for going on with life: to communicate, in the
form of horror stories, the outrage and panic at being alive in the
world. He frames this as following Lovecrafts way, and to a degree
he is correct, since the horror Lovecraft expressed in his stories was
entirely authentic. But as we have seen, it was not the whole of his
subjective reality, nor, by his own account, was it the ultimate end of
his creative endeavors. This means it is just one more indication of
Ligottis radical emotional and intellectual appropriation of Lovecraft
when he holds up horror as Lovecrafts real message and meaning,
and for the most part relegates every other aspect of his life, writings,
and character to peripheral status. For Ligotti, horrorthe kind he
experienced at the age of seventeen in that Lovecraftian epiphany of
a meaningless, menacing cosmosis all that is really real, and when-
ever he, Lovecraft, or anybody else departs from living in the full
nightmarish intensity of it, this equates with think[ing] and act[ing]
like every other goof and sucker on this planet (Bee).
5

5. For a general elucidation of this point, see Ligottis words in The Conspiracy
against the Human Race, in the section titled Happiness, where he points out
that even Lovecraft, who in his letters wrote about his nervous breakdowns
and other personal troubles, as well as about the ultimate futility and miser-
ableness of existence in general, more often . . . wrote about what a fine time
he had on a given day or expatiated on the joys of his travels around the
United States and Canada or simply joked around with a correspondent about
a wide range of subjects in which he was well-studied. Ligotti closes the sec-
tion by asserting that the very idea of happiness [is] an unconscionable delu-
sion conceived by fools or a deplorable rationalization dreamed up by swine.
Obviously, he does not think Lovecraft was a fool or a swine, so the implica-
tion is that Lovecraft was merely taking a break, as it were, from his real con-
cernsi.e., he was being just another goof and suckerwhenever he
distracted himself from the final truth of perpetual, horrified misery.
122 Matt Cardin
So we are left with a kind of paradox or contradiction, in that Li-
gotti identifies strongly with Lovecraft as a writer and human being,
and has modeled his own life and writings upon Lovecrafts example,
and yet the aesthetic longing that was central to Lovecrafts character
and writings, and which comes out most clearly in the early stories
Ligotti so greatly admires, is something that Ligotti is forced, by vir-
tue of his own personal vision and experience, to view as peripheral.
A likely explanation for this fact is that when Ligotti first discovered
Lovecraft and fastened upon his writings as expressions of the emo-
tional and philosophical horror that he (Ligotti) was experiencing,
this resulted in his gaining a one-sided understanding. His private pre-
disposition illuminated with stunning intensity an important facet of
Lovecrafts vision, but at the same time it relegated equally important
facets to secondary status. We may view the overall result as ironic,
since the part of Lovecrafts life and work that has hitherto been
overlooked by the reading public at largehis longing after beauty
in favor of framing him purely and solely as a horror writer (witness
the contents of the 2005 Library of America volume, which omit en-
tirely the dream and Dunsanian stories), is also obscured by the
overwhelming horrific focus of Ligotti, who is widely recognized as
one of Lovecrafts most prominent literary heirs.
IV. Conclusion: The Enchanting Nightmare
Having gone on at such length about Ligottis appropriation of
Lovecraft, let me now hasten to add that I do not consider his subjec-
tive attitude to be at all inappropriate. Far from being a detriment, it
is the proper attitude for any artist who comes under the sway of a
powerful, life-changing forebear. Indeed, it recalls the response of
Lovecraft himself to the writings of Lord Dunsany. Lovecraft first
read Dunsanys A Dreamers Tales in 1919, and later said the first
paragraph had arrested me as with an electrick shock, & I had not
read two pages before I became a Dunsany devotee for life (SL
2.328). He felt that Dunsany was saying everything that he, Lovecraft,
had hitherto wished to say as an author, and four years later he still
claimed a thorough sense of identification with the man: Dunsany is
myself. . . . His cosmic realm is the realm in which I live; his distant,
emotionless vistas of the beauty of moonlight on quaint and ancient
roofs are the vistas I know and cherish (SL 1.234). Far from injuring

or cheapening his work, Lovecrafts love affair with Dunsany served
as a catalyst for the crystallization of thoughts, emotions, and a narra-
tive style that were already imminent in his own writing. His felt
identification with the man acted as a midwife for his own birth into
creative maturity.
I cannot think but that Ligottis position with regard to Lovecraft
is analogous. Intellectually, he probably has as balanced an under-
standing of Lovecraft as any scholar, but this necessarily takes a sec-
ond place to his emotional response. As an artist, his primary calling
is not to pursue the strict scholarly accuracy of a Joshi, but to bear
witness to what he sees, feels, and knows within the depths of his be-
ing. And even though his understanding of Lovecraft is intensely sub-
jective, it is also for that very reason all the more potent. In an artistic
or spiritual sense, it may even be more accurate than Joshis, the
evidence of which can be seen in the fact, with which we com-
menced this exploration, that while Ligottis stories only resemble
Lovecrafts in the most tenuous manner, they almost invariably
evoke Lovecrafts shade in the minds of his readers. I hope my sto-
ries are in the Lovecraftian tradition, he has said, in that they may
evoke a sense of terror whose source is something nightmarishly un-
real, the implications of which are disturbingly weird and, in the
magical sense, charming (Shawn Ramsey, A Graveside Chat: Inter-
view with Thomas Ligotti, 1989, quoted in Joshi 2003, 142). He has
also said, In my eyes, Lovecraft dreamed the great dream of super-
natural literatureto convey with the greatest possible intensity a
vision of the universe as a kind of enchanting nightmare (Ford 32).
Whether or not he is technically accurate in this assessment of the
deep nature of Lovecrafts artistic visionand in this particular case I
think he is dead-onhis belief that this was Lovecrafts dream has led
him to produce a priceless body of weird fiction. One likes to think
that Lovecraft himself would have been deeply pleased by this show-
ing from his most worthy disciple.
Works Cited
Angerhuber, E. M., and Thomas Wagner. Disillusionment Can Be
Glamorous: An Interview with Thomas Ligotti. In The Thomas
Ligotti Reader, ed. Darrell Schweitzer. Holicong, PA: Wildside
Press, 2003. 5371. Also at The Art of Grimscribe, January 2001.
124 Matt Cardin
<http://home.snafu.de/angwa/Ligotti/interviews/ disillusion-
ment_e.htm> Accessed January 22, 2005.
Ayad, Neddal. Literature Is Entertainment or It Is Nothing: An In-
terview with Thomas Ligotti. Fantastic Metropolis (31 October
2004). <http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/ligotti/full> Ac-
cessed 24 January 2005.
Bee, Robert. An Interview with Thomas Ligotti. Thomas Ligotti
Online. <http://www.ligotti.net/tlo/bee.html> Accessed January
31, 2005. Originally published at Spicy Green Iguana (September
1999).
Bryant, Ed (and others). Transcript of Chat with Thomas Ligotti on De-
cember 3, 1998. <http://www.ligotti.net/tlo/flashpointchat. html>
Accessed 31 January 2005. Originally posted at the online magazine
Event Horizon.
Cardin, Matt. Thomas Ligottis Career of Nightmares. In The Thomas Li-
gotti Reader, ed. Darrell Schweitzer. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press,
2003. 1222. Also at The Art of Grimscribe <http://home.snafu. de/
angwa/Ligotti/essay/essay_cardin_e.htm>, accessed 31 January 2005.
Originally published in The Grimscribe in Cyberspace, a special
Ligotti issue of the email magazine Terror Tales (April 2000).
Ford, Carl. Notes on the Writing of Horror: An Interview with
Thomas Ligotti. Dagon Nos. 22/23 (SeptemberDecember 1988):
3035.
Joshi, S. T. H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon
Press, 1996.
. H.P. Lovecraft. The Scriptorium, at The Modern Word.
Revised 1 June 2000. <http://www.themodernword.Com
/scriptorium/lovecraft.html> Accessed 25 January 2005. Revision
and expansion of the introduction to An Epicure of the Terrible: A
Centennial Anthology of Essays in the Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, ed.
David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickin-
son University Press, 1991.
. Ligotti in Triplicate [review of My Work Is Not Yet Done:
Three Tales of Corporate Horror by Thomas Ligotti]. Necropsy: The
Review of Horror Fiction Vol. VI (Summer 2002). <http://www.lsu.
edu/necrofile/mywork.html> Accessed 21 January 2005.
. Thomas Ligotti: The Escape from Life. In The Thomas Li-
gotti Reader, ed. Darrell Schweitzer. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press,
2003. 13953. Originally published in Studies in Weird Fiction

No. 12 (Spring 1993) and rpt. in The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland, 2001.
Ligotti, Thomas. The Conspiracy against the Human Race. Pre-
publication manuscript. Forthcoming from Mythos Books, Poplar
Bluff, MO.
. The Dark Beauty of Unheard-of Horrors. In The Thomas
Ligotti Reader, ed. Darrell Schweitzer. Holicong, PA: Wildside
Press, 2003. 7884. Originally published in Tekeli-li! No. 4 (Win-
ter/Spring 1992).
. Grimscribe: His Lives and Works. New York: Jove Books,
1994 (1991). [Abbreviated in the text as G.]
. The Nightmare Factory. New York: Carroll & Graff Publish-
ers, 1996. [Abbreviated in the text as NF.]
. Noctuary. New York: Carroll & Graff Publishers, 1995
(1994). [Abbreviated in the text as N.]
. Songs of a Dead Dreamer. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989.
[Abbreviated in the text as SDD.]
Padgett, Jonathan. Thomas Ligotti FAQ. <http://www.ligotti.
net/nightmare/faq.php?mode=ligotti&sid=11c81667a35f12cbe3f193
6c075a5b9e> Accessed 24 January 2005.
Paul, R. F., and Keith Schurholz. Triangulating the Daemon: An In-
terview with Thomas Ligotti. Esoterra No. 8 (Winter/Spring
1999): 1421. Also at Thomas Ligotti Online. <http://www.ligotti.
net/tlo/esoterra.html> Accessed 31 January 2005.
Schweitzer, Darrell. Weird Tales Talks with Thomas Ligotti. In The
Thomas Ligotti Reader, ed. Darrell Schweitzer. Holicong, PA:
Wildside Press, 2003. 2331. Originally published in Weird Tales
No. 303 (Winter 1991/92).
Wilbanks, David. 10 Questions for Thomas Ligotti. Page Horrific,
February 2004. <http://home.earthlink.net/~dtwilbanks/ligotti10.
html> Accessed 22 January 2005.
126
Thomas Ligottis Metafictional Mapping:
The Allegory of The Last Feast of
Harlequin
John Langan
For Fiona, Without Whom . . .

Up to now, Thomas Ligotti has achieved his considerable success
writing horror fiction through the media of the short story and no-
vella. Nor does he seem likely to write anything else, having ex-
pressed his doubts about his ability to write a successful horror novel
in an interview. I find this form too difficult for me, Ligotti has said,
attributing the difficulty to the realist novel . . . [making] . . . certain
demands that are entirely alien to supernatural literature as I under-
stand its aims and possibilities (quoted in Joshi, Modern 8). The
best Ligotti believes he could achieve with the novel would be to
produce a mystery or suspense narrative with a supernatural plot mo-
tive. But, Ligotti adds, such a work bears little resemblance to the
masterpieces of the form that its been my ambition to ape (Modern
8).
1
These masterpieces include The Fall of the House of Usher,
The Willows, The White People, and The Colour out of Space
(Modern 8), all examples of what Ramsey Campbell has termed the
tradition of visionary horror fiction (Campbell vii).
Leaving aside the question of whether Ligottis observations are ac-
curate (no small matter, given his position within the horror genre), we
come to his 1991 collection Grimscribe, which seems to me his most

This essay is forthcoming in the second edition of The Thomas Ligotti
Reader, edited by Darrell Schweitzer (Wildside Press).
1. Ligottis short novel My Work Is Not Yet Done (2002) falls under the des-
ignation of the suspense novel.

serious attempt so far to work at the very length he writes of in his
remarks above. Grimscribe, I contend, represents Ligottis effort to
solve the problem of book-length horror in a way that is faithful to his
conception of the genre. He does so by employing the short-story cy-
cle, a group of stories held together through use of common characters
and/or themes. He thus transforms what might otherwise be little
more than a grouping of thirteen interesting stories into a whole that is
greater than the sum of its parts.
2
Grimscribe is not the first attempt by a
horror writer to employ the short story cycle: such works as Skipp and
Spectors Dead Lines (1988) and Cleggs Nightmare Chronicles (1999)
have preceded it, but it is among the most effective. Where Dead Lines
and The Nightmare Chronicles try to unify their various stories by plac-
ing them within a framing narrative to which they have no real link,
Ligotti makes the telling of the stories in his collection the central in-
terest. He does so principally through his Introduction. In the Introduc-
tion, an unnamed narrator meditates on the identity of a being whose
name is a mystery to him but whose voice he has always known (Li-
gotti ix). This voice he recognizes even if it sounds like many different
voices . . . because it is always speaking of terrible secrets. It speaks of
the most grotesque mysteries and encounters, sometimes with despair,
sometimes with delight, and sometimes with a voice not possible to
define (ixx). Everyone needs a name, the narrator declares, and
then, in a clever rhetorical twist, asks, What can we say is the name of
everyone? (x). In reply to his own question, the narrator declares, Our
name is Grimscribe, adding, This is our voice (x).
Grimscribes Introduction makes the collection into something
more: not the broken-backed novels of In Our Time and Go Down,
Moses, perhaps, but a work with greater unity than a simple sampling
of stories.
3
The stylistic congruences that mark the contents of any
story collection as the work of a single author here become evidence
of the great voice of Grimscribe speaking with a multiplicity of

2. Indeed, the importance of treating Grimscribe as a whole is underscored
by Ligottis including the entire collection in his 1996 retrospective, The
Nightmare Factory (although, interestingly, without its Introduction).
3. Ligotti appears to find the form of the short story cycle a congenial one, as
witnessed by his continuing use of it in such series as In a Foreign Town, In a
Foreign Land (1997) and My Work Is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate
Horror (2002).
128 John Langan
tongues. In a sense, Grimscribe is Ligottis aggrandizing and mytholo-
gizing himself as a writer, since he is the voice behind all the voices,
the face behind all the masks. At the same time, the Introduction
suggests that Ligotti himself may be no more than another role Grim-
scribe is playing. Thus Grimscribe jeopardizes Ligottis own identity
as a writer, as an individual author.
Indeed, the collection returns time and again to questions of au-
thority and identity. Its stories are full of older characters who relent-
lessly threaten and betray their younger charges. This is perhaps most
dramatically the case in The Last Feast of Harlequin, which drama-
tizes such themes more strikingly than any other story in the book.
The first and longest story in Grimscribe, its concerns continue to
resonate throughout the tales that follow it, making it a particularly
fitting story on which to focus our discussion. S. T. Joshi has re-
marked on Ligottis facility for writing stories that metafictionally
enunciate his concerns, and The Last Feast of Harlequin confirms
this insight (Joshi, Escape 32). As Robert Scholess Fabulation and
Metafiction shows us, however, there are different varieties of meta-
fiction, and it will help our understanding of Ligottis work if we can
identify the kind of metafictional frame around which he constructs
his story (Scholes 14). In The Last Feast of Harlequin, the frame
Ligotti employs is that of allegory. It is possible to read the story with
no awareness of the subtext boiling beneath its surface and enjoy it
greatly. A series of clues placed throughout the story, however, point
to its subterranean concerns. The story encodes the general problem
of the influence of the past, and the more specific dilemma of literary
influence, particularly that of H. P. Lovecraft. As such, the story
represents Ligottis attempt to engage Lovecrafts continuing presence
in the horror genre in a way that goes beyond mere imitation or pas-
tiche. Rather than simply adopting or adapting Lovecrafts themes,
locations, or objects, Ligotti writes about the actual experience of in-
fluence itself. In this way, he succeeds admirably in doing something
new with Lovecrafts continuing presence in the horror genre.
The most obvious signpost pointing us beneath the storys surface
is its dedication, To the memory of H. P. Lovecraft, which, interest-
ingly, is not listed until its very end, as if it were the storys true con-
clusion (Ligotti 48). With The Last Feast of Harlequin, Ligotti
places himself in a tradition that stretches back to Poe, taking in
Blackwood and Machen on the way, with Lovecraft very much at its

center. Such affiliation is fraught with peril. In positioning yourself
within a tradition, there is the danger that it will overwhelm you,
that your new family will swallow you whole, that you will become
just another face in the family portrait hanging over the fireplace,
your own identity as a writer lost in the sepia crowd.
The view of literary relations I invoke here is a more sinister one
than we might be used to. In this regard, I myself am influenced by
the ideas of Harold Bloom. In The Anxiety of Influence, Bloom formu-
lates the view of literary influence as anything but benign. As it were,
the younger writer does not receive the torch of literary greatness
from her/his predecessor, to pass it on in turn to her/his descendent;
rather, Bloom contends, influence has more in common with the
Freudian Oedipus Complex (Bloom 8). Faced with a great predeces-
sor, the younger writer feels a sense of her/his own belatedness, that
s/he is too late, that the older writer has been there first, done that
first, written what could be written as well as was possible (6). The
only course available to the younger writer is one of struggle with the
older writers priority. This struggle does not take the younger writer
away from the predecessors influence; instead, the younger writer, if
s/he is sufficiently strong, ends up writing a kind of variation on a
theme, plunging into the very heart of the older writers work and
rewriting it (1516). At best, the younger writer may be able to pro-
duce the illusion in the reader that the lines of influence flow back-
wards, that s/he is in fact the one doing the influencing, which is to
say, through deep engagement with the predecessors work, the
younger writer may cause us to see it in a new way (16).
Bloom presents influence, and literature in general, as a claustro-
phobic, self-referential affair. His theories remain controversial, and I
do not want to suggest that we accept them wholeheartedly.
4
They
are useful to us for the model of authorial relations they establish, a
particularly Gothic model in which, to paraphrase Gothic scholar Ju-
dith Wilt, enjoyment is the province of the old, suffering that of the
young (Wilt 29). Every writer, Bloom argues, is under threat from

4. I do believe, however, that given his day job doing editorial work for the
literary criticism division of Gale Research, there is a good chance Ligotti
would have been exposed to Blooms ideas at greater length and depth than
most readers (Schweitzer 70). My argument does not hinge on this being the
case, however.
130 John Langan
those who came before; at the beginning of her/his career, every
writer is really little more than a mask for her/his predecessor(s). In
Blooms formulation, the danger for a writer is that s/he will remain
such a mask, never achieve any kind of identity (however circum-
scribed such an identity may, in the end, be). For anyone, the thought
of being nothing but the mouth for someone elses speech would be
horrifying; for the writer, whose identity is founded in the expression
of her/his self in the creative act, it is an especially terrible prospect.
It is this fear that drives The Last Feast of Harlequin.
The story relates the quest of an unnamed, first-person narrator to
discover the inner workings of the Winter Festival of the Midwestern
town of Mirocaw. An anthropologist with a particular interest in the
figure of the clown, the narrator is intrigued to discover that the town
and its festival were the subject of a scholarly article by his old teacher,
Dr. Raymond Thoss. Attending the festival himself, the narrator is in-
trigued to notice the presence of two types of clowns among the enter-
tainers. The first are the subject of acts of spontaneous abuse by the
festivals participants. The second, who all appear to hail from the
poorer part of town, inspire the opposite effect: the onlookers con-
spicuously avoid them. Disguising himself as one of the second group
of clowns, the narrator travels with a group of them by truck to a spot
outside the town proper, where they leave the truck to descend a tun-
nel winding deep under the earth. At the tunnels end is a great cavern,
where the narrator discovers his old instructor, Dr. Thoss, presiding
over a ritual that transforms the clowns into giant worms that fall on
and devour the girl chosen to be the Festivals Winter Queen. Horri-
fied, the narrator flees, to be pursued by Thosss echoing remark that,
He is one of us. He has always been one of us (Ligotti 48).
As both Robert Price and S. T. Joshi have pointed out, Ligottis
story draws on two stories by Lovecraft: The Festival (1923) and
The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931) (Price 29; Joshi, Escape 33).
Its connections to The Festival are particularly strong. Lovecrafts
story is also a first-person narrative related by a nameless young man
who returns to his ancestral home to be part of its Yuletide festival.
His activities include a descent under the earth with a man who is
probably his many-times-great-grandfather (or what used to be him,
anyway), and a confrontation with monstrous creatures and a mon-
strous ceremony. The story ends with a worm-ridden quotation from
the notorious Necronomicon: For it is of old rumour that the soul of

the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and in-
structs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life
springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and
swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where
earths pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that
ought to crawl (Lovecraft 118). The Last Feast of Harlequin, then,
can be read as Ligottis updating of the earlier story.
5

The horror of Ligottis narrative, however, runs deeper, to a vision
of the relationship between generations, between the past and the
present, old and young; with those who have come before us
teachers, mentors, models, parentspresented as at best impotent
and at worst actively malevolent. In addition to its dedication, there
are three principle features of the story that indicate its concern with
influence, Lovecrafts in particular. They are the descriptions of Mi-
rocaws landscape, its townspeople, and of Dr. Thoss. Taken together,
they lead us to what waits beneath the storys skin.
Our first clue to the storys allegorical concerns comes long before
we have reached its dedication, in its imagery. The narrator describes
the towns irregular topography, and comments on the effect it has
on his perception of Mirocaw:
Behind some of the old stores in the business district, steeply roofed
houses had been erected on a sudden incline, their peaks appearing at
an extraordinary elevation above the lower buildings. And because
the foundations of these houses could not be glimpsed, they con-
veyed the illusion of being either precariously suspended in air,
threatening to topple down, or else constructed with an unnatural
loftiness in relation to their width and mass. This situation also cre-
ated a weird distortion of perspective. The two levels of structures
overlapped each other without giving a sense of depth, so that the
houses, because of their higher elevation and nearness to the fore-
ground buildings, did not appear diminished in size as background
objects should. Consequently, a look of flatness, as in a photograph,

5. I must note here a faint echo of Hamlets remarks concerning the supper
where Polonius does not eat but where he is eaten by a certain convoca-
tion of politic worms (Shakespeare 4.3.2021). I am unsure what to make of
such resonance, but suspect it connects to Shakespeares plays concern with
generational struggle. The narrator of Liggotis story would figure as a kind of
Hamlet manqu.
132 John Langan
predominated in this area. (Ligotti 56)
What should be reduced in perspective, the houses behind, is not;
rather, it looms over what is in front of it. The houses seem lofty,
without foundation, sinister castles in the air. So, too, does the past
loom over the present in the story; specifically, so does the narrators
old teacher overshadow him. This overshadowing defeats depth, frus-
trating perspective in both a literal and figurative sense, giving the past
more significance than it should have. To readers familiar with Love-
crafts efforts at representing strange and distorted landscapes in his fic-
tion, the passage is clearly Ligottis attempt to mine the same vein. The
passage is noteworthy because it symbolizes its own status: it bears the
influence of an earlier writer while giving us a trope for that same in-
fluence. Later, the narrator will write, Mirocaw has another coldness
within its cold. Another set of buildings and streets that exists behind
the visible towns faade like a world of disgraceful back alleys (23).
This impression of more lurking behind the surface of things resonates
with the earlier description, transforming the tangible houses leaning
over the shops into something intangible, something that cannot be
seen yet whose presence can be felt lurking behind everything. The
narrator draws an x across the page in an effort to repress such
thoughts, but, in the end, they can not be denied. X marks the spot.
Our second indication of the storys subtext comes in the descrip-
tion of the towns inhabitants. The characterization of Mirocaws
population as solidly midwestern-American, the probable descen-
dents in a direct line from some enterprising pack of New Englanders
of the last century, as well as the suggestion that there might be a
Middle Eastern community in the town, also point in Lovecrafts
direction (9). The great majority of Lovecrafts stories are set, of
course, in New England, so for Ligotti to stock his town with trans-
planted Yankees is for him to suggest that he is re-imagining the older
writers concerns in a new locale. Ligotti follows up this reference to
New England with another, even more provocative one, which oc-
curs while the narrator is summarizing an article Dr. Thoss published
on the Mirocaw festival. It is the festivals link to New England that
nourished Thosss speculations. He wrote of this patch of geography
as if it were an acceptable place to end the search. For him, the very
words New England seemed to be stripped of all traditional conno-
tations and had come to imply nothing less than a gateway to all

lands, both known and suspected, and even to ages beyond the civi-
lized history of the region (16). The narrator admits he can some-
what understand this sentimental exaggeration due to his own
acquaintance with the region (16). There are, he declares, places
that seem archaic beyond chronological measure, appearing to tran-
scend relative standards of time and achieving a kind of absolute an-
tiquity which cannot be logically fathomed (1617). If we were to
change the name in this passage from Thoss to Lovecraft, we might
be reading a slightly overwritten piece of literary criticism. The pas-
sage distills Lovecrafts sense of place, his use of the deus loci. That
sense of place supercharges certain areas with meaning because of
their ability to stir the imagination; in this regard, there are interesting
connections to be made to Faulkner and Lawrences uses of the idea.
As a rule, it is not a technique Ligotti himself particularly emulates,
either in this story or others. He favors strange and alien landscapes
that do not evince the added qualities of antiquity and particularity
that so appealed to Lovecraft. It is possible to locate the originals for
Arkham and Innsmouth; I am not sure it would be possible for us to
do the same for Mirocaw (in fact, I rather doubt it). The rituals that
are celebrated in The Last Feast of Harlequin are old, but the place
where they are observed is not. There is an implicit contrast between
Lovecraftian New England, which in ironic contradiction of its name
is soaked in history, and the storys Midwest, whose history lies more
lightly upon it. Still, if Ligotti does not employ his own sense of place
in the story, he succeeds in evoking Lovecrafts.
In similar fashion, the suggestion that the horrors under Mirocaw
have a connection to the Levant (a connection bolstered by reference
to a sect of Syrian Gnostics [12]) references Lovecraft, who in such
figures as the notorious Abdul Alhazred locates the sources of his
horrors in the exotic other. As is the case with his use of sense of
place in the story, Ligotti does not develop his references to the ex-
otic; again, it is as if they are more significant for the way they bring
Lovecraft into the story.
With the figure of Dr. Raymond Thoss, Ligotti gives us his most
complex figure for influence. As we have glimpsed already, Thoss
emerges as the storys substitute for Lovecraft, and for the more gen-
eral past leaning over the storys present. Thoss is associated with
writing, and that connection runs deep. He is introduced to the story
through reference to his article on the Mirocaw festival, The Last
134 John Langan
Feast of Harlequin. The story we are reading is thus the second
document both to bear its title and treat its subject.
6
Thoss is brought
into the story, then, as the one who was there first, the man the nar-
rator is trying to emulate. An anecdote the narrator relates indexes
the difficulty, if not outright impossibility, of ever bettering Thoss:
during one of Thosss lectures, the narrator offered a differing inter-
pretation of the material at handin this case, the tribal clowns of
the Hopi Indiansand sought to bolster his argument through his
personal experience as an amateur clown (11). In response to this
challenge, Thoss revealed that he had actually acted the role of one
of these masked tribal fools and had celebrated with them the dance
of the kachinas (11). Not only has Thoss been there first, he has had
a fuller, more authentic experience while he was.
Thosss article makes two significant allusions. The first is to Poes
poem The Conqueror Worm, a loaded reference. Most obviously, it
foreshadows the storys climax, when the symbol of the conquering
worm is made hideous reality. It invokes Lovecraft in two ways: in
the more general sense of his well-known fondness for and esteem of
Poe, and in the more specific sense of the ending of The Festival,
which might be taken as another gloss on the notion of the conquer-
ing worm. Finally, naming Poe brings him into the story as another
statue in Ligottis gallery of influences, albeit one who stands a bit far-
ther in the distance. Poe is an influence who is reached, as it were,
through Lovecraft.
7

The articles second significant allusion is to Roman god Saturn,
who enters the story through reference to the modern Christmas
celebration, which of course descends from the Roman Saturnalia, as
well as to that early sect of the Syrian Gnostics who called them-

6. There is a difference, of course between the order in which we as readers
experience these events and the order in which the characters do so. None-
theless, the reference to the second title causes us to revisit and revise our
understanding of the first, making it seem to us as if we had encountered the
first reference secondly.
7. There is more to be done with this allusion; indeed, an essay might be de-
voted to exploring the specific connections between The Last Feast of Har-
lequin and The Conqueror Worm. I note here that Poes poem makes
reference to a play, to mimes, and of course to the eponymous conquer-
ing worm (Poe 8889). The poem presents another great production that
ends in horror; it also presents the image of God being played by a mime.

selves Saturnians (1213). Given the storys festival setting, the invo-
cation of Saturn and his principle celebration is not surprising: Satur-
nalia was a time of unrestrained festivity, when full license was given
to its revelers, so allusion to it helps to present the Mirocaw festival
as one in which similar license is granted, to perform acts that would
have made even the Romans blanch (Websters). It is interesting to
note that when Christmas is named, it is brought into the story as an-
other example if influence, something else whose identity is not fully
its own. The more significant sense of the reference, though, is to
Saturn himself, whom the Romans identified with the Greek
Chronos. Saturn/Chronos was the father of Jupiter/Zeus, and, as
such, the god who devoured his own children for fear that one of
them was going to overthrow him (Hamilton 8081). In the end, this
was exactly what happened to him. He is thus a symbol of the past,
and of the devouring past in particular, the past that eats its own get
in an attempt to forestall the future. Saturns role as evil father inter-
sects nicely with Blooms Oedipal model of literary influence: he is
the Freudian father, all his metaphoric terror made literal. As such, he
is the prefect god to preside over the telling of this story.
The style of Thosss article, like that of the lectures the narrator
once attended, is described as marked by its authors characteristic
and often strange obscurities, and by the somber rhythmic move-
ments of his prose and . . . some gloomy references he occasionally
called upon (Ligotti 12). As was the case with the evocation of
Thosss sense of place, change the name in this quotation to Lovecraft
and we might be reading a somewhat vague extract from a critical
article. As is the case with Lovecrafts work, Thosss article ultimately
gives the impression that he knew more than he disclosed (13).
8

Thoss always knows more, occupies a position to which the narrator
may aspire, but never reach. The idea of hidden knowledge is, of
course one of the hallmarks of horror fiction. The narrators sense of
this hidden knowledge contributes to his decision to attend Miro-
caws Festival and discover its secrets. What he discovers, beyond the
horrors under the earth, is that Thoss still knows more. Indeed,

8. To be more precise, such a description would be most accurately applied
to Lovecrafts early work, what S. T. Joshi has identified as his Dunsanian
phase (Joshi, Magick 72). Given Ligottis admitted esteem for this period in
Lovecafts work, the description makes particular sense (Joshi, Escape 33).
136 John Langan
Thosss climactic recognition and description of the narrator at the
storys end demonstrate the reach of his knowledge.
It is during that climactic vision of Thoss that the narrator makes
his most telling remarks regarding Thosss influence over and impor-
tance to him. Looking at Thoss dressed in his white ceremonial robe
with its abysmal folds, the narrator asks, Had I really come to chal-
lenge such a formidable figure? (42). He proceeds, The name by
which I knew him seemed itself insufficient to designate one of his
stature. Rather I should name him by his other incarnations: god of all
wisdom, scribe of all sacred books, father of all magicians, thrice great
and morerather, I should call him Thoth (42). Thoth was the god
associated with the very invention of writing. To re-name your pro-
fessor/predecessor after such a deity is to make a dramatic statement
about his relation to the written word, namely, that he made it, that
he is its point of origin.
9
To do so is to envision his influence on you
as absolute, overpowering, and irresistible. At the crucial moment,
the narrator loses his Oedipal struggle; loses it, really, before he even
attempts it. His reference to the abysmal folds of Thosss robe in-
dexes the limitless depths of the older mans knowledge, as well as
the professors knowledge of the limitless depths.
It is for this reason that I disagree with Robert Prices assertion
that [i]t is absolutely clear that the narrator of The Last Feast of
Harlequin is his mentor Raymond Thoss at a later time, simply a re-
currence of the same note in a later symphony (Price 30). Granted, it
is possible to take the narrators descent under the earth as a symbolic
journey down into his own subconscious. What he finds there, how-
ever, is not himself, but another. Price suggests that this other repre-
sents a self sundered from itself by a psychotic break, but this does

9. I must confess to wondering if Ligottis reference to Thoth incorporates a
more subtle allusion to Jacques Derridas seminal essay, Platos Pharmacy.
Derridas essay references the Platonic parable, found in the Phaedrus, of the
invention of writing by Thoth. When Thoth presents writing to the king of
the gods, it is denounced as a pharmakon, a word that can be translated as
both medicine and poison. Derridas essay turns on an extended considera-
tion of this ambiguity in the word, and in writing itself. As such, it would be
a fitting text for Ligotti to invoke in his story. Again, given his work with
Gale Research, there seems a fair possibility Ligotti would be aware of Der-
ridas essay. Cf. Jacques Derrida Platos Pharmacy in Disseminations (1983,
trans. Barbara Johnson).

not fit with what we have seen of the story (30). It makes more sense
to say that the narrator discovers his self as little more than the mask
for another self, which will wear him as a hand wears a glove.
This discovery returns us, once more, to Blooms notions of influ-
ence (not that they have been that far). Individual will plays an impor-
tant part in Blooms theory, since it is only through the exercise of such
will that the young writer can struggle with the older. For Ligotti,
however, will is not the province of the narrator; indeed, rarely is it the
province of any of his narrators. Rather, in best Gothic fashion, will in
Ligottis work is reserved mostly for the old.
10
The best the young can
do is flee, as the narrator does at the storys end. Even then, there are
still Thosss words, the words of his teacher, his predecessor. With
them, Thoss claims the narrator as his own. In terms of the allegorical
subtext we have been exploring, the narrator is marked as a horror
writer. In such an identity, he will always be under his old teachers
sway, little more than a mouth for someone elses voice. The story
mentions Gnosticism, and Robert Price has considered some of the
more cosmic implications of that reference (2829). He does not men-
tion, however, that Gnosticism also involves knowledge of the self, the
journey into the self.
11
S. T. Joshi has praised the story for its evocation
of ancient and loathsome rituals that have survived into the present
(Joshi, Escape 35). I would suggest that the storys deeper horror lies
in its plumbing of the depths of the self only to discover it as no more
than a vessel whereby another writer continues to work out his strange
obsessions, a space wherein the loathsome rituals of someone elses
creativity are made manifest.
Thus far, we have kept to those aspects of The Last Feast of Har-
lequin that most clearly demonstrate its allegorical subtext, its concern
with influence, Lovecrafts in particular. As we conclude our discussion
of the story, and make our way back to Grimscribe as a whole, there is
one more feature that requires our attention, and that is the storys use
of the clown. With this figure, Ligotti appears to depart most strikingly
from Lovecraft. Early in the story, the narrator tells us that he has au-
thored an article on The Clown Figure in American Media, which has

10. The role of will in Gothic fiction has been discussed especially well by
Judith Wilt in her Ghosts of the Gothic: Austen, Eliot, and Lawrence (cf. esp.
her discussion of Gothic fathers in chapter one).
11. See Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1989).
138 John Langan
been published in the Journal of Popular Culture (Ligotti 3). By the
storys end, he has come to understand the figure of the clown in a
new, much less pleasant way, as have we along with him. Given the
storys extensive exploration of influence, it is reasonable to suppose
that the clown has some relation to that concern.
The clown features in the story in three ways. The first is in the
title, which references the Harlequin, a character from Renaissance
Italian commedia dellarte (Websters). A youthful trickster, Harlequin
stars in dramas that pit him against the older Pantaloon, a caricature
of the staid, stolid middle class, with Harlequins object the hand of
Columbine (Smith 12, 202). Pantaloon is mocked and humiliated at
the hands of Harlequin, old age defeated by youth. Given the age dif-
ference between the narrator and Thoss, it is reasonable to associate
him with Harlequin, and Thoss with Pantaloon. Such an association
ironizes the references, since it is Thoss who stands triumphant at the
storys end, Pantaloon who has routed Harlequin. The only figure
who might play Columbine is the young girl elected to be Mirocaws
Winter Queen, who appears in the story just long enough to be the
main course at its hideous feast. The storys concern with influence,
then, infects and perverts its first and most obvious allusion.
12

In similar fashion, the clowns who feature in the festival itself re-
verse conventional notions of the role. Rather than figures of fun and
laughter, these clowns are sources of contempt and of terror. Two
types of clowns wander the festival: the first hail from Mirocaws
more affluent neighborhoods and wear a costume of red and white
with matching cap, and the face painted a noble alabaster. It almost
seemed, the narrator observes rather acidly, to be a clownish incar-
nation of that white-bearded and black-booted Christmas fool (Li-
gotti 27). These clowns are the targets of random abuse by the
festivals participants. This playful roughhousing appears to have
humiliation as its purpose (29, 28). The clown is thus transformed
from comedian and fool to scapegoat.
The second type of clown originates in Mirocaws underside. Its
clothes were shabby and nondescript, the narrator tells us,

12. The resonance of the Harlequin allusion extends beyond the abbreviated
treatment of it I have given here, and a more detailed consideration of it is in
order.

almost in the style of a tramp-type clown, but not humorously exag-
gerated enough. The face, though, made up for the lackluster cos-
tume. I had never seen such a strange conception for a clowns
countenance.The thin, smooth and pale head; the wide eyes; the
oval-shaped features resembling nothing so much as the skull-faced,
screaming creature in that famous painting (memory fails me). This
clownish imitation rivaled the original in suggesting stricken realms of
abject horror and despair: an inhuman likeness more proper to some-
thing under the earth than upon it. (30)
The conclusion of the narrators description is ironically accurate, as it
is these clowns who will be gathered up and transported under-
ground, where they will transform into the great worms that will
feast on the Winter Queen. While they wander its streets they are
avoided scrupulously by the townspeople, each clown surrounded, as
it were, by an invisible circle. These clowns transform the role from
one of laughter to one of screaming, from joy to terror.
The narrator intuits a relation between the two species of clown,
noting Saturn, whose significance we discussed earlier, is also the
planetary symbol of melancholy and sterility, a clash of opposites
contained within that single word (30). The two clowns represent a
conflict within the winter festival itself, one that appeared to be
that secret key (to the festivals significance) which Thoss withheld in
his study of the town (30). The presence of the second type of
clown seems to him nothing less than an entirely independent festi-
vala festival within a festival (32). In his journal, the narrator
speculates that, Mirocaws winter festival . . . appeared after the fes-
tival of those depressingly pallid clowns, in order to cover it up or
mitigate its effect (32). The bright clowns of Mirocaw who are
treated so badly, the narrator notes, appear to serve as substitute
figures for those dark-eyed mummers of the slums. Since the latter
are feared for some power or influence they possess, they may still be
symbolically confronted and conquered through their counterparts,
who are elected precisely for this function (34).
It is with these clowns that the story becomes most challenging,
its allegory veering towards opacity. The temptation exists to see the
two kinds of clowns as halves of a whole, as representing, say, a fun-
damental divide in human consciousness. What we are being given,
however, is an elaborate figure for self-knowledge and the lengths to
140 John Langan
which we will go to escape it. To describe the matter spatially, the
two types of clowns do not stand beside each other so much as the
bright clowns struggle in vain to keep the dark clowns hidden from
view. And the bright clowns have much more to hide than the dark
clowns final metamorphosis. That horrific transformation is forecast
much earlier, in Thosss article on the Festival, with its reference to
the sect of Syrian Gnostics. Those Gnostics believed that mankind
was created by angels who were in turn created by the Supreme Un-
known. The angels, however, did not possess the power to make
their creation an erect being and for a time he crawled upon the earth
like a worm. Eventually, the Creator remedied this grotesque state of
affairs (13). Humanity is no more than a worm that walks upright;
thus, the clowns final transformations are actually a return to human-
itys true origins. Rather than disguising them, the dark clowns cos-
tumes call attention to the impoverished state of humanity.
Saturnalia, with its emphasis on the throwing off of human custom,
becomes the perfect time to throw off the custom of humanity.
Such a revelation is, needless to say, too much to be borne, and so
the necessity for the bright clowns. In their resemblance to Santa
Claus, these clowns are associated with gift-giving, with sentiment
and sentimentality, with all those shining decorations we put up
against the winter darkness. Despite such associations, however, the
bright clowns are the subject of abuse. It is abuse of a particularly ig-
norant kind: when the narrator asks a group of young men why these
clowns are the recipients of such violence, none of them can tell him
the reason. For them, this is the way things are. The men do note,
however, that there is nothing special about the role, that any of the
towns inhabitants can and probably will play it at some time or an-
other. If these bright clowns are supposed to oppose or counter the
dark clowns, they do so in a rather unique way, one marked by its
passivity. The narrator is correct in his assertion that the bright
clowns are the townspeoples effort at symbolically mastering the
dark clowns; they take the violence the townspeople feel toward the
other clowns onto themselves. Since the dark clowns represent what
it fundamentally means to be human, though, the violence the
townspeople project against them is actually violence against them-
selves, against the horror that is human nature. Thus, the significance
of the young mens remark about the universal availability of the
bright clowns role: anyone can assume it because everyone has some-

thing to hide. Since the knowledge with which this displacement
deals is intolerable, the ritual is wrapped in an ignorance one suspects
to be very deliberate.
Needless to say, such a view of human nature is one of the hall-
marks of the visionary horror tradition with Ligotti has aligned him-
self, especially of Lovecrafts work. Indeed, it is in this regard that
The Last Feast of Harlequin shows most strikingly the influence of
Lovecrafts Shadow over Innsmouth. In a sense, Ligotti goes Love-
craft one better: when Lovecrafts narrator discovers the horror at the
root of his existence, it is that he is a human-monster hybrid; Ligottis
narrator discovers horror in his humanity alone.
The presence of the two clowns, then, is an effort to escape iden-
tity. Through their association with human origins, the dark clowns
represent the awful past that continues to live amongst us; that is us,
really. In this regard, they may be seen as the background against
which Thoss has his being. Thoss, of course, does not flee that past,
but embraces it, and in so doing rises to master it. It is tempting to
see the dark clowns as symbols of the horror writer, who is in some
sense more in tune with the darker part of humanity than others.
This is especially true of the horror writers to whom Ligotti referred
above, as well as of those others for whom he has expressed his admi-
ration, a list that includes Aloysius Bertrand . . . Georg Trakl and
Bruno Schultz . . . Samuel Beckett, Dino Buzzati, and Jorge Luis Bor-
ges (Schweitzer 69). If such is the case, though, the allegory becomes
somewhat hard to follow. What are we to make of the bright
clowns? Do we take them to be other writers in general? And if so,
then why are they visited with so much abuse by their fellows? As a
rule, we do not witness such displacement in the pages of the New
York Review of Books. I must admit the urge to identify the bright
clowns with those popular(ist) writers of horror fiction Ligotti paro-
dies in Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story (1985). In such a
configuring, the bright clowns would suffer for trying to make more
agreeable what cannot be made so. Such an interpretation verges on
the needlessly obscure itself, however, and so is unlikely. It seems
simpler to say that the two kinds of clowns represent the horror that
is our nature and our past, which continues to walk among us even as
we try to cover it over. The clowns thus give the storys concern with
influence an added layer of resonance.
The third and final way in which clowns function in The Last
142 John Langan
Feast of Harlequin centers on the narrator. As he tells us early on, he
is an amateur clown himself, and part of his reason for attending the
Mirocaw Festival is so that he can break out his own clown makeup
and participate in the Festival from, as it were, the inside out (Ligotti
34). In so doing he imitates Dr. Thoss, who is famous for researching
his subjects in a similar manner (including, we are told, an insane asy-
lum in Massachusetts: another nod to Lovecraft [11]). Near the storys
end, this leads to the narrators making himself up as one of the dark
clowns, a richly ironic action. Where the narrator believes he is dis-
guising himself, he is, as we have seen, only revealing his true, loath-
some humanity: paradoxically, by putting on his white clown
makeup, the narrator discloses his essential self. He does not disguise
himself from Dr. Thoss, as Thosss climactic pronouncement about
him reveals. His imitation of his predecessor fails. If the clown is a
kind of fool, then the narrator succeeds in achieving the role, but,
needless to say, in a way he did not anticipate. The joke is on him.
The narrators clown makeup figures in one of the more impor-
tant moments in the story, when he returns to his hotel room to find
its door open and a riddle written across his mirror in his makeup
pencil: What buries itself before it is dead? (36). In the context of
the story, the answer seems obvious: the worm. There is another an-
swer open to us, however, and that is indicated by the surface on
which the riddle is written, by the mirror: the narrator himself. In de-
scending under the earth he will bury himself alive literally, and in his
role as representative of the young writer he buries himself alive by
wrestling with the influence of his predecessor. The image of the rid-
dle written on the mirror is key to the story: it recalls the end of
Lovecrafts Outsider (1921), in which the mirror is essential to re-
vealing that narrators identity. This mirror serves a similar function,
but with a difference: there is writing on it. That writing both asks a
question and, through what Jacques Derrida calls its subjectile, the
substance on which the question is written, provides its own implicit
answer (Derrida 61). Writing is thus what causes the self to question
itself, unpleasantly at that, and it is what points to that questions an-
swer. We should add that the riddle seems most likely to have been
scrawled on the mirror by none other than Raymond Thoss. So, fol-
lowing this scene, when the narrator makes himself up as a clown,
using that same makeup pencil on himself, there is a sense in which
he is disguising himself with Thosss medium, with his language. In

this regard, it is no wonder that Thoss should be able to recognize the
narrator, as he is wearing, as it were, Thosss words, making the narra-
tors disguise still more ironic. The storys third and final use of the
clown returns us to influence, giving us a striking and subtle figure for
it in the riddle written on the mirror.
13

It is clear, then, that the clowns in The Last Feast of Harlequin
are more than ornament, more than mere caprice on Ligottis part.
Their presence in the story adds depth and complexity to its concern
with influence; indeed, it is through the clowns that Ligotti achieves
many of his most memorable tropes for the presence and pressure of
the past, that is allegory achieves some of its most memorable mo-
ments.
With The Last Feast of Harlequin, Thomas Ligotti has succeeded
in writing a story that transforms a traditional Gothic plot form, the
revenge of the past, into a figure for the writing process. Given more
time and space, we could consider the myriad of ways the other stories
in Grimscribe approach the same theme. In particular, we might exam-
ine Nethescurial (1991), in which Ligotti engages and rewrites Love-
crafts Call of Cthulhu (1926) as part of his continuing exploration of
the Providence writers influence. Even without such additional con-
sideration, though, Ligottis profound engagement with not just the
tradition of horror fiction, but with what it means to be so engaged, is
obvious. Because of its use of non-realistic images and plots, fantastic
fiction in general is already a step closer to romance and allegory, to the
metafictional, than most genres. While a few horror writers have rec-
ognized this proximity and explored it, in many ways it remains undis-
covered country.
14
With his fiction, Thomas Ligotti joins the company
of the new cartographers of horror, mapping the genres blank spaces
with each story he writes.

13. For these insights, I am grateful to Professor Robert Waugh of SUNY
New Paltz, who first suggested to me the importance of the writing on the
mirror.
14. I have in mind principally Peter Straub (especially in Ghost Story [1979]
and The Hellfire Club [1996]) and Jonathan Carroll (especially The Land of
Laughs [1980] and A Child across the Sky [1989]; although all Carrolls work
is metafictional). I might add here that, from a critical standpoint, the impli-
cations of such metafictional moves by horror writers remain in need of fur-
ther study. As well, we need to consider the cultural context against which
such moves have been made. Much work is to be done.
144 John Langan
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Campbell, Ramsey. Midnight Sun. New York: Tor, 1991.
Derrida, Jacques. To Unsense the Subjectile. In The Secret Art of An-
tonin Artaud. Trans. M. A. Caws. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1998. 60157.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown, 1942.
Joshi, S. T. The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.
. A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Love-
craft. 1996. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press, 1999.
. Thomas Ligotti: The Escape from Life. Studies in Weird
Fiction No. 12 (Spring 1993): 3036.
Ligotti, Thomas. Grimscribe: His Lives and Works. New York: Jove,
1991.
Lovecraft, H. P. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Ed.
S. T. Joshi. New York: Penguin 1999.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. New York:
New American Library, 1996.
Price, Robert M. Thomas Ligottis Gnostic Quest. Studies in Weird
Fiction No. 9 (Spring 1991): 2731.
Scholes, Robert. Fabulation and Metafiction. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1979.
Schweitzer, Darrell. Speaking of Horror: Interviews with Writers of the
Supernatural. San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1994.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
New York: Pocket Books, 1976.
Smith, Winifred. The Commedia dellArte. New York: Arno Press,
1964.
Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Lan-
guage.
Wilt, Judith. Ghosts of the Gothic: Austen, Eliot, and Lawrence.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
145
Reviews
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ. H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World,
Against Life. Translated by Dorna Khazeni. Introduction by Stephen
King. San Francisco: Believer Books, 2005. 247 pp. $18.00 tpb. Re-
viewed by Kevin Dole.
Is it possible that H. P. Lovecraft has not only been finally accepted
by the mainstream literary establishment, but is for the moment ac-
tually hip?
There has been something of a buzz about Lovecraft as of late. In
2004 we saw the publication of The Dreams in the Witch House and
Other Weird Stories, the last in a well-received series of Penguin edi-
tions annotated by S. T. Joshi, as well as the re-release of Joshis de-
finitive biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life by Necronomicon Press.
The February 2005 issue of a Lovecraft volume by the Library of
America, edited by Peter Straub and called simply Tales, apparently
only further cements Lovecrafts place in the canon of American lit-
erature, and now in May 2005 we have H. P. Lovecraft: Against the
World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq, perhaps the most con-
troversial contemporary novelist in France if not all Europe. The Eng-
lish translation by Dorna Khazeni of Houellebecqs critique-cum-
tribute has been released by Believer Books, a division of
McSweeneys, one of the trendiest publishers around.
This may be as hip as Lovecraft will ever become, however, for he
is, in his way, still unknown. At least other reviewers seem to think
so, seeing as they feel the constant need to reintroduce him. As with
Joyce Carol Oatess initial 1996 review of A Life in the New York Re-
view of Books (a piece that later served as the foreword to Tales of
H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Oates herself), reviews of the Library of
America edition have invariably served as introductions to Lovecraft,
in which the reviewer trots out familiar anecdotes and repeats the
occasional myth. I shall not continue this trend here, since anyone
146 Reviews
reading this periodical is presumably familiar with the Providence au-
thor whose name graces its cover and because Houellebecqs piece is
something of an introduction to Lovecraft in itself.
Although it at times treads familiar ground, Against the World,
Against Life is a pleasure to read. In addition to being exceptionally
well-written, it is as passionate and creative a piece of criticism as
you are likely to find, offering original insight and fierce partisanship.
Houellebecqs titular essay is padded with an enjoyable, if inconse-
quential, foreword by Stephen King, a pro forma chronology of Love-
crafts life and work, a bibliography of Lovecrafts writing available in
French, and two of Lovecraft's stories (The Call of Cthulhu and
The Whisperer in Darkness), but the treatise is substantial enough
to stand on its own, regardless of length.
In Another Universe, the first of three sections, Houellebecq
makes the flattering and provocative claim that Lovecraft is unique
among virtually all other authors because we find in his fiction a much-
needed supreme antidote against all forms of realism. Testament to
Lovecrafts impact can be found in the cultlike devotion his work in-
spires in other authors, who slavishly work to continue to his litera-
ture, something unheard of in literature, Houellebecq notes, since
Homer. He finds this especially impressive considering that [t]here is
something not really all that literary about Lovecraft's work.
According to Houellebecq:
Lovecrafts body of work can be compared to a gigantic dream ma-
chine, of astounding breadth and efficacy. There is nothing tranquil or
discreet in his literature. Its impact on the readers mind is savage,
frighteningly brutal, and dangerously slow to dissipate. Rereading
produces no noticeable modification other than that, eventually, one
ends up wondering: how does he do it?
In Technical Assault Houellebecq seeks to answer that question.
This second chapter is divided into six subsections, each honing in on
a specific element of Lovecrafts technique. His narrative innovation,
rejection of the mundane, use of architectural description, achieve-
ment in sensory imagery, scientific precision, and cosmic scope are all
analyzed with admirable precision and insight. And as a sort of a pe-
culiar bonus, the subsection titles form a poem:
Attack the story like a radiant suicide

Utter the great no to life without weakness
Then you will see a magnificent cathedral
And your senses, vectors of utter derangement,
will map out an integrated delirium
That will be lost in the unnameable architecture of time
Houellebecq compares Lovecrafts vision of a scientifically objec-
tive horror to Kants attempts at formulating a system of universal
ethics. Much like Kant, Lovecraft rejected the worldly in the pursuit
of the transcendent. But unlike Kant, Lovecraft was an atheistic ma-
terialist who expected nothing of the universe. Here the question
long laid implicit becomes explicit: why would one so firmly
grounded in reality as Lovecraft feel the need to escape it? For one of
Houellebecqs disposition (Against the World, Against Life begins
with the statement life is painful and disappointing) the answer is
self-evident, but for Lovecraft the explanation is a bit more complex.
Houellebecq lays out his most provocative (perhaps unfortunately
so) theory in the books final chapter, Holocaust.
In Against the World, Against Life Houellebecq identifies two phe-
nomena that induced in Lovecraft an almost hallucinatory trancelike
state. The first of these is architecture, Lovecrafts passion for which is
well known. The second phenomenon is race, specifically the non-
Anglo-Saxon variety, Lovecrafts passionate disdain for which is equally
well known. Lovecrafts relation to both these phenomena hit a sort of
boiling point in New York, Houellebecq theorizes, and from these de-
ranged fascinations comes his greatest work: It could be posited that a
fundamental figure in [Lovecraft's] body of workthe idea of a giant,
titanic city, in whose foundations crawl repugnant nightmare beings
sprang directly from his New York experience.
The impact of New York on Lovecrafts life and work is un-
doubtedly significant, but never before have I seen it put quite this
way. Still, it is hard to argue with Houellebecq here. The stories that
he correctly identifies as The Great Texts began directly after the
New York period, the massive city Lovecraft once thought beautiful
he now calls monstrous, and in a letter to Frank Belknap Long we
find descriptions of New Yorks immigrant population match those
of his most hyperbolic horrors.
148 Reviews
Consider the following, which is only a brief excerpt of a much
longer tirade:
They were monstrous and nebulous adumbrations . . . amoebal,
vaguely moulded from some stinking viscous slime of earth's corrup-
tion. . . . I thought of some avenue of Cyclopean and unwholesome
vats . . . about to burst and inundate the world in one leprous cata-
clysm of semi-fluid rottenness.
Despite this display, Houellebecq shows great sympathy for Lovecraft
during this period, especially when relating his marriage to Sonia
Greene and his crushing inability to make ends meet, for it is here
that he finds the source of Lovecrafts rejection of life. Lovecraft was
already likely predisposed, but after trying to embrace a normal exis-
tence and failing his apathy was transformed into antipathy. The
steady march of society toward pluralism and modernism that had
once merely been an annoyance became intolerable, and Lovecraft
had to retreat to maintain his sanity. His protagonists are not just
autobiographical in their interests and background, Houellebecq says,
but also in their total victimization by forces they hardly understand
and that are wholly beyond their control.
It is ironic, and portentous, Houellebecq believes, that Lovecrafts
popularity continues to increase in what seems to be direct propor-
tion to the spread of that which he loathed. Houellebecq also be-
lieves that Lovecrafts genius and dedication allowed him to achieve a
sort of late transcendence, not just in the success of his writing after
his death, but in the way he lived. In its totality, Houellebecq views
Lovecrafts rejection of life as a sort of philosophical victory: To offer
an alternative to life in all its forms constitutes a permanent opposi-
tion, a permanent recourse to lifethis is the poets highest mission
on this earth. Howard Phillips Lovecraft fulfilled this mission.
Is Houellebecq right? Aside from one niggling factual error
(Houellebecq repeatedly cites as evidence of Lovecrafts complete
asceticism not one reference to money in Lovecrafts entire oeuvre,
which is technically not true), he is never incorrect. His argument,
however provocative, is never slanderous or mendacious, and is suffi-
ciently supported. And whether provable or not, there is certainly
room for this type of hypothesis. However modest or stoic his self-
portrayal, H. P. Lovecraft was an exceedingly complex figure whose
body of work is open to broad interpretation: if the man or his writ-

ing were at all facile I would probably not be writing for a publica-
tion called Lovecraft Annual.
So with Lovecraft now readily accessible to the public, we can
safely assume that Against the World, Against Life, a well-written
treatise by a leading contemporary novelist, published by a fashion-
able press, will serve to introduce to Lovecraft to a whole new read-
ership. But given this conclusion of this introduction, that the
cornerstone of modern horror is the therapeutic spleen of a patho-
logical racist, perhaps a sort of phantasmagoric The Turner Diaries, I
suspect that any period of hipness enjoyed may be over.
BEN J. S. SZUMSKYJ and S. T. JOSHI, ed. Fritz Leiber and H. P.
Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003.
$19.95 tpb. Reviewed by Phillip A. Ellis.
H. P. Lovecraft has become instrumental in the development of
modern speculative fiction. Not only did he directly influence such
authors as Frank Belknap Long, who played a now-neglected role in
fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and August Derleth, whose most
lasting contribution to the field must surely be Arkham House itself,
he influenced at second hand many others, such as Ramsey Campbell.
Yet none of these influences was to have quite the effect of that be-
tween Lovecraft and his young acolyte, Fritz Leiber, Jr.
Like Lovecraft, Leiber was to prove among the more talented in
the field of weird and speculative fiction. He was instrumental in the
fields of heroic fantasy, urban horror, and comic science fiction, and
this instrumentality is the result of the fortuitous combination of his
native talents and the influence of his brief yet productive relation-
ship with Lovecraft.
This book presents both that relationship and its results. It exhibits
the relationship by gathering together what remains of the correspon-
dence between Lovecraft and Leiber. Although, unfortunately, it is in-
completethe letters between the two are limited to partial transcripts
of Lovecrafts correspondence, with none of Leibers survivingit still
reveals the importance of the relationship thereby conveyed, to both
Lovecraft and Leiber. The Lovecraft that we see, or read, is open, gen-
erous, intimately interested in the life and work of his correspondents,
and this is a counterweight to any misguided notions of him as a recluse.
150 Reviews
This warmth and openness is reflected in turn in the remainder of
this book. The central portion consists of Leibers fiction, written as a
result of his friendship with Lovecraft, and in commemoration of it.
The version of Adepts Gambit herein is illustrative of the initial
outpourings of his creativity, and it alone displays the promise evi-
dent in the young Leiber. That he would felicitously fulfill this prom-
ise is evident in the entire body of his work. This is not the Mythos
version, although that has been recently found and will be published
by Midnight House. The Demons of the Upper Air was another
early work seen by Lovecraft. It shows promise, too, but here the
promise is of a shift in weird verse away from an unchallenging for-
malism. It displays, that is, the technical and imaginative possibilities
that Leiber was to offer to the field, and this challenge has been met,
and taken up, by such later poets as Ann K. Schwader, among others.
The later To Arkham and the Stars, in itself a poignant elegy for
Lovecraft, and the wonderful The Terror from the Depths are both
testaments to the later, and more mature, fondness with which Love-
craft was remembered. They are, as with most of the other stories,
evidence of the profound influence that Lovecraft was to play for
Leiber, imaginatively and creatively. Although The Dead Man has
affinities with some of Lovecrafts earlier, less cosmic fiction, its em-
phasis upon the relation of the central characters is most un-
Lovecraftian, and diminishes its relevance, despite Stefan Dziemiano-
wiczs work on highlighting its affinities with The Thing on the
Doorstep. One final note: there is one piece missing, The Dealings of
Daniel Kesserich. This was omitted mainly because of its size and re-
cent publication, hence it is readily available elsewhere. Such an
omission does not diminish this books achievements: the stories serve
to illustrate the relationship between the two writers, and the effect
of both this and Lovecrafts creativity upon Leiber. Their inclusion
more than compensates for the paucity of the correspondence, and it
is proof enough of the strength and importance of this relationship
for Leiber.
Finally, the third section, the essays by Leiber, gathers together
key documents in our contemporary view of Lovecraft as a man and
artist. Although for the most part the arguments contained therein
seem self-evident, this is due to the essays importance and influence
since initial publication. Their age and circumstances of creation are
such that the Derlethian Mythos is countered, and they serve to re-

mind us that Lovecrafts memory owes so much to the friendship and
insight of such figures as Leiber himself. Being able to read them here
reminds us of the basics of Lovecraftian thought and fiction, and it is
a refreshing reminder that should be welcome to most. Like the let-
ters and the stories, these essays are worth the price of purchase
alone; that all three sections are presented here, together, makes this
book indispensable for a fuller evaluation of Lovecraft, and of Leiber.
In summation, this book is well worth purchase. It illustrates the
depth, warmth, and humanity of Lovecrafts and Leibers relationship
directly through the correspondence, indirectly through the stories
and poetry, and, again indirectly, through the essays. It preserves and
presents key texts in our understanding, so that we may in future
trace and ascertain for ourselves the ramifications of their relationship
for ourselves. We should not neglect this book, and the delights
within it, for it is an indispensable volume, a sheer joy to read, and an
important reminder that the friendships we make may have lasting
consequences, both personally and creatively.
PETER CANNON. The Lovecraft Chronicles. With illustrations by
Jason C. Eckhardt. Poplar Bluffs, MO: Mythos Books, 2004. 179 pp.
Reviewed by S. T. Joshi.
It is a testament to H. P. Lovecrafts enduring and ever-growing celeb-
rity that he is not merely the subject of innumerable critical and bio-
graphical studies but that his own life has become the stuff of legend.
As a cultural icon, the gaunt, prognathous-jawed dreamer from
Providence has served as the focus of any number of tales and novels,
from the provocative (Richard A. Lupoffs Lovecrafts Book, 1985) to
the inconceivably awful (David Barbour and Richard Raleighs Shad-
ows Bend, 2000). To some degree, the portrayal of Lovecraft in these
variegated works can at times descend to a caricature: Lovecraft the
eccentric recluse, the unworldly bookworm, the sexless misfitall
of which have some elements of truth, but which are so engulfed in
misleading falsehoods that they end up being parodies of the real
Lovecraft. It takes the analytical talents of the critic and scholar con-
joined with the creative talents of the novelist for any such portrayal
to ring true, and such a fusion of skills, rare enough in the mainstream
literary community, is particularly scarce in the realm of weird fic-
152 Reviews
tion. Thankfully for us, however, there is Peter Cannon.
Cannon has established his bona fides as a scholar with H. P. Love-
craft (1989), a volume in Twaynes United States Authors series, and
the culmination of nearly two decades of his work on the Providence
scribe. With the exception of Donald R. Burleson, he is the only
Lovecraft scholar to excel in the writing of fiction, and Burleson has
not sought to feature Lovecraft as a character in his various novels
and tales. Cannon, meanwhile, has to his credit the pungent if light-
hearted novella Pulptime (1984), in which Lovecraft and Sherlock
Holmes are put on stage, along with the gorgeous Love-
craft/Wodehouse parodies in Scream for Jeeves (1994). With The
Lovecraft Chronicles, he has set a high, perhaps unassailable mark in
the curious subgenre of Lovecraft-as-a-character-in-fictiona mark
that only he himself may be able to eclipse in future.
The Lovecraft Chronicles is not merely a fictionalised biography. It is
what I believe is termed alternate history: that what-if brand of sci-
ence fantasy that conjectures the state of the world if, say, Hitler had
won World War II, or the telephone had never been invented, or
George W. Bush had not stolen the election of 2000. In this case, Can-
non wonders: what if, in 1933, the prestigious New York firm of Alfred
A. Knopf had actually accepted, instead of rejecting, a collection of
tales by Lovecraft? Would Lovecrafts life have changed? Would sub-
sequent historyliterary, political, socialhave changed? Cannon pro-
vides an emphatic yes to the first query, but is a bit more reserved as to
the second. Nevertheless, his conclusion that Lovecraft would have
gone far beyond his forty-six and a half years and lived to a normal life
span of seventy years, dying only in 1960, is unexceptionable.
But the charm of The Lovecraft Chronicles is in seeing exactly how
Lovecrafts life and career changeand change, generally, for the bet-
terwith that Knopf acceptance. The book is structured in three
parts, each narrated by a different person. Each of these personsthe
vivacious teenager Clarissa Stone, the somewhat older Englishwoman
Leonora Lathbury, and the first-year Brown University graduate stu-
dent Bobby Pratthappens to be Lovecrafts secretary, a position he
can now afford given his new-found literary success. The novel, I will
admit, takes a little while gathering steam, but with the Knopf deal
things pick up quickly. One of the stories in the book, Herbert
WestReanimator, becomes a movie from the studio of Hal Roach;
and, still more surprisingly, when Lovecraft goes to Hollywood to be

a possible screenwriter, his stiff and vaguely corpselike features make
him the perfect candidate for a bit part as a reanimated corpse! So
begins Lovecrafts brief career as a Hollywood actor.
It is all good fun, but the experienced Lovecraftian will derive the
greatest pleasure in seeing exactly what liberties Cannon does and
does not take with the historical record. Consider this passage:
During this period [the fall of 1933] H. P. produced two new sto-
ries, one a recasting in prose of some of his Fungi from Yuggoth
sonnets, the other an elaboration of a dream about an evil clergyman
in a garret full of forbidden books. . . . H. P. did not send these new
tales on the rounds of his literary circle, but instead submitted them,
along with The Thing on the Doorstep, directly to the editor of
Weird Tales. [Farnsworth] Wright . . . snapped up these three new
tales immediately.
There is such an exquisite mixture of fact and fiction here that un-
tangling them is nearly impossible. The first sentence is strictly fac-
tual, although Cannon deliberately obscures the fact that that
rewriting of the Fungi sonnets (The Book) is a fragment, not a com-
pleted story. Moreover, the second storyThe Evil Clergyman
was merely an account of a dream included in a letter to Bernard
Austin Dwyer, and it was Dwyer who submitted the story to Weird
Tales after Lovecrafts death. Finally, The Thing on the Doorstep,
although written in August 1933, was not submitted to Weird Tales
until the fall of 1936. Cannon, I repeat, is fully aware of all these facts,
and his manipulation of them is in strict accord with his contention
that Lovecrafts career would have flowered rather than petered out
as the 1930s advanced.
The second part of the book, set mostly in 1936, is to my mind
the most successful. Lovecraft, with his new-found success (he is by
no means a best-selling writer, but now has sufficient means for his
own comfort), fulfils a lifelong dream by travelling to England
where, surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly, given his later po-
litical views), he becomes friends with George Orwell and actually
participates briefly if somewhat ignominiously in the Spanish Civil
War against Franco. But the real heart of this section is his halting
romance with Leonora Lathbury. In part one Lovecraft had managed
to dodge the young Clarissas schoolgirl crush on him, but he is not so
successful with the more mature Leonora. If readers think it implau-
154 Reviews
sible for Lovecraft to be the protagonist of a love story, they should
read how Cannon handles this segment of the novel. It is delicate,
true to character, and entirely without sentimentality. There is a wist-
ful poignancy throughout this section: not only is it heart-warming to
see Lovecraft finally attain his goal of reaching Mother England, so-
cialising jovially with Arthur Machen among others, but in his in-
volvement with Leonora he seems to be ripening emotionally just as
his work is ripening intellectually. How his impending marriage to
Leonora is shattered at the last moment is too good to reveal here.
The third section of the book is the skimpiest both in length and in
substance. One gets the suspicion that Cannon is getting a bit tired.
The narrative skips abruptly to 1960, at which point the ageing Love-
craft has managed to repurchase his birthplace, 454 Angell Street in
Providence and decorate it in the manner he remembered as a boy. He
has written almost no fiction since the 1940s, when Edmund Wilson
harshly reviewed several of his books in the New Yorker, but addi-
tional film adaptations and the generosity of August Derleths Arkham
House allow him continued comfort, if not luxury. Frank Long and his
actual wife, the late lamented Lyda, make a rather buffoonish appear-
ance. Without giving away the ending, I will simply remark that the
conclusion left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
My keenest regret is that The Lovecraft Chronicles was not twice
or three times as long as it is. Cannons literary gifts are of such a high
orderskill at character depiction, an unfailing ability to keep the
narrative moving, a penchant both for dry humour and for pathos
that we would like to see him exercise them to their fullest extent.
Instead of hastily and sketchily summarising the events of the
twenty-four years between parts two and three, why not elaborate
them in detail? Cannons portrayal of Lovecraftnearly all his utter-
ances are cleverly extracted or adapted from statements in his let-
tersrings so true that we would like to see him put Lovecraft on
stage at other key moments in history. What, for example, would
Lovecraft have made of World War II, and in particular the appalling
revelations of the Holocaust, which definitively made the abstract ra-
cism of his earlier years morally indefensible? How would Lovecraft
have adapted to the outwardly staid but inwardly seething 1950s?
What would he have had to say of (or to) James Dean, Joe
McCarthy, Elvis Presley? Or is it possible that Cannon is saving all
these matters for a sequel?

But whatever one may think of the ending, The Lovecraft Chroni-
cles is a book to enchant and captivate everyone who has the least
interest in the dreamer from Providence. How many of us have
wished that he had not been so poor, not eaten so badly, and not
been so discouraged at the rejection of his best work? By all rights,
Lovecraft should have lived to 1960 or even 1970, and enjoyed at
least a modicum of the fame that came to him only after death. Ken-
neth W. Faig once wrote: we would surely all wish for him a better
share of life were he to be given a second round; he surely never
lacked the ability to do hard, careful work and perhaps only his disin-
clination toward self-promotion denied him greater material success.
The Lovecraft Chronicles gives Lovecraft that second round, and
shows that, with only a minimal augmentation of self-promotion, he
might indeed have had the material success that would have made
such a difference in his life. It is that air of what ifthat sense that
Lovecraft was so close, and yet so far, from reaching the goals he had
set for himself as man and writerthat makes The Lovecraft Chroni-
cles the poignant human document that it is.
ROBERT H. WAUGH. The Monster in the Mirror: Looking for H. P.
Lovecraft. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006. 302 pp. Reviewed
by S. T. Joshi.
Robert H. Waugh is a remarkable phenomenon in Lovecraft studies.
No one could have predicted, when he published his first, relatively
brief essay, The Hands of H. P. Lovecraft (Lovecraft Studies, Fall
1988), that he would evolve into one of the most dynamic and chal-
lenging critics of the Providence dreamer in recent years. At a time
when, perhaps through a kind of exhaustion or surfeit, some of our
leading criticsBarton L. St. Armand, Donald R. Burleson, Robert M.
Price, David E. Schultz, even the indefatigable S. T. Joshiappear to
have finished saying what they have to say on Lovecraft, Waugh has
written article after substantial article breaking new ground, not so
much in the accumulation of facts (most of these have by now al-
ready been unearthed), but in the advancement of bold new interpre-
tations of Lovecrafts work.
In a sense, Waughs career mirrors that of Lovecraft himself. Just
as the Providence writer proceeded from rather nebulous, adjective-
156 Reviews
laden sketches and prose-poems to immense, richly complex novel-
las, so have Waughs essays become increasingly longer and denser,
with an exponential increase in their substance and their suggestive-
ness. The radical revision of that first essay, now titled Lovecrafts
Hands, would be sufficient to prove itit has been rewritten so ex-
haustively as to constitute a new piece. I will be honest and say that I
am not always clear on the overall thrust and direction of some of
Waughs essays, but every one of them contains flashes of insight,
sometimes tossed off almost incidentally, that make their reading a
rewarding experience. At times Waugh seems almost to be free-
associating, leading the reader from one topic to another as a bee flits
from one flower to the next; but he does so with such intellectual
rigour that each point is illuminated before the next is approached.
No Lovecraft scholar has read Lovecrafts work (fiction, poetry, es-
says, letters) more sensitively; no one has absorbed the best Lovecraft
scholarship with a due understanding of both its virtues and its short-
comings; and no one has placed Lovecraft in a broader aesthetic and
philosophical spectrum that brings the entire history of Western lit-
erature and thought into play.
There are two original essays in The Monster in the Mirror, and
they constitute the final two essays in the book. The first, Lovecraft
and Leopardi: Sunsets and Moonsets, compares the writings and
thought of Lovecraft and the great Italian poet, essayist, and thinker.
This kind of compare and contrast essay could easily have become
sophomoric, for of course there is no reason to think that Lovecraft
was in any way familiar with Leopardi; one is reminded of Peter
Cannons whimsical essay comparing Lovecraft and John F. Kennedy.
But Waughs analysis is written with such panache and sensitivity
that at times it seems as if Lovecraft and Leopardi are speaking to
each other, discussing their respective views on cosmicism, fantasy,
and human morality in a dialogue that spans the centuries and their
differing languages. Waugh had done the same in an earlier essay,
Lovecraft and Keats Confront the Awful Rainbow, but here it is
managed with still greater verve and subtlety.
The other original essay, one of the longest in the book, is Love-
craft Born Again: An Essay in Apologetic Criticism. The thrust of this
essay is not merely to show that some of Lovecrafts conceptions are
harmonious with Christian thought but that Lovecrafts stories make
some kind of sense . . . to a Christian. I suspect that the great majority

of Christians do not read Lovecrafts stories with the kind of care that
Waugh himself does, and therefore they are not particularly disturbed
with the manifestly atheistic subtext found in themthey read them
as entertaining stories, and that is the end of it. A few readers take
Lovecrafts work much more seriously; a decade or two ago Edward
W. OBrien actually maintained that Lovecrafts tales were evil and
should be avoided by the devoutperhaps an extreme reaction, but
one that at least perceives that there is more going on in those tales
than merely the exhibition of bug-eyed monsters.
In putting forth this partial and tentative reconciliation of Lovecraft
with Christianity, Waugh resurrects the notion (first propounded by
Barton L. St. Armand) that Lovecraft is a kind of aesthetic or philoso-
phic schizophrenic: that he maintains one thing in his letters (the ex-
pression of his philosophical views) and another thing in his fiction. In
this formulation Waugh is not nearly so crude as St. Armand, who
went to the extent of maintaining that Lovecraft was at once a de-
fender and upholder of a strict universe of natural law as well as its se-
cret subverter; but his general tendency is in this direction.
I believe, however, that both Waugh and St. Armand have not
fully grasped the complex rhetoric of Lovecrafts fiction. How is that
fiction an expression of his mechanistic materialist stance? Is it, in
fact, an expression of it? Great care must be taken in interpreting
Lovecrafts statements regarding the nature and purpose of weird fic-
tion. Lovecraft well knew that he could not possibly induce fear in
others if he did not induce fear in himself. What, to a materialist like
Lovecraft, would constitute the most fearful conception he could
imagine? Would it not be the revelation (convincingly expressed in a
work of fiction) of the inadequacy of materialism? In Notes on
Writing Weird Fiction Lovecraft writes: I choose weird stories be-
cause they suit my inclination bestone of my strongest and most
persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some
strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time,
space, and natural law which for ever imprison us and frustrate our
curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our
sight and analysis (CE 2.17576). Waugh quotes this remark but does
not seem to grasp its full implications. If Lovecraft were not, in actual
fact, convinced that the universe is materialistic, then he could not
possibly find any kind of imaginative release in the illusion of its
subversion or violation; and that violation occurs only momentarily
158 Reviews
because it takes place only within the context of a work of fiction.
In a sense, Waugh seems guilty of regarding Lovecrafts tales as
mimeticas reflections of events that could conceivably happen in
the real world. But Lovecrafts brand of weird fiction posits events
that could not possibly happen (SL 3.434). It is not sufficient to say
that Lovecraft did not believe (philosophically) in the literal reality of
Cthulhu; it is that he knew that an entity like Cthulhu could not pos-
sibly exist in our cosmos. It was only the convincing exhibition
(through all the aesthetic means available to him) of the possibility of
a Cthulhu that gave him the imaginative liberation he sought. Con-
sider this passage from a letter of 1930:
I get no kick at all from postulating what isnt so, as religionists and
idealists do. That leaves me coldin fact, I have to stop dreaming
about an unknown realm (such as Antarctica or Arabia Deserta) as
soon as the explorers enter it and discover a set of real conditions
which dreams would be forced to contradict. My big kick comes
from taking reality just as it isaccepting all the limitations of the
most orthodox scienceand then permitting my symbolising faculty
to build outward from the existing facts; rearing a structure of indefi-
nite promise and possibility whose topless towers are in no cosmos or
dimension penetrable by the contradicting-power of the tyrannous
and inexorable intellect. But the whole secret of the kick is that I
know damn well it isnt so. (SL 3.140)
I am not sure that this does not express the sum total of Lovecrafts
aesthetic of weird fictionand that final sentence is the key that
unlocks the entire riddle of Lovecrafts apparent schizophrenia in
seeming to postulate non-materialistic or super-materialistic phe-
nomena in his stories. He knew damn well it wasnt so.
This is why it is highly dangerous to appeal to the stories when at-
tempting to ascertain what Lovecraft believed. Waugh occasionally
falls into this error. When Waugh writes that Lovecraft does believe
in the existence of physical law, its coherence, rationality, and uni-
formitybut breaking with Haeckel he also entertains the idea that
the universe is so large that areas might exist where the universality
of law breaks down, his evidence for this astonishing assertion is . . .
the opening paragraph of The Call of Cthulhu. But that utterance is
made precisely for the purpose of laying down the foundation for the
tales ultimate (fictional and fictitious) subversion of materialism

something Lovecraft knew damn well wasnt so. Consider a passage in
a 1929 letter where he is coming to terms with the theory of relativ-
ity and maintaining (in contrast to a wide array of mystics and relig-
ionists who were attempting to maintain that relativity had suddenly
justified all kinds of outmoded thoughts regarding the existence of
God): We know these [natural] laws work here, because we have ap-
plied them in countless ways and have never found them to fail. . . .
for many trillion and quadrillion miles outward from us the condi-
tions of space are sufficiently like our own to be comparatively unaf-
fected by relativity. That is, these surrounding stellar regions may be
taken as part of our illusion-island in infinity, since the laws that
work on earth work scarcely less well some distance beyond it (SL
2.26465). Similarly, Waugh asserts (from the evidence of the fiction)
that For Lovecraft dreams represent a remarkable evasion of the ap-
pearance of things, but they do nothing of the sort.
In other instances where Waugh attempts to establish that the
philosophic dregs of religion tainted Lovecraft, he comes mighty
close to special pleading. No one is likely to think that Lovecraft is
the more religious simply because he uses names taken from the Bi-
ble, since of course these names are bestowed mostly upon New Eng-
land characters whose nomenclature, derived largely from the Old
Testament, Lovecraft is echoing merely for the sake of verisimilitude.
And when Waugh maintains that the Gardner family in The Colour
out of Space suffers damnation, he seems guilty of a misuse of the
wordfor the notion of damnation cannot possibly be separated
from the notion of some kind of post-mortem punishment, some-
thing entirely absent in the story. The Gardners simply diehorribly
and grotesquely, to be sure, but that is all there is to it. Waugh quotes
a line from the story in which the Gardners walked half in another
world between lines of nameless guards to a certain and familiar
doombut a doom is very different from damnation.
I trust the above remarks sufficiently suggest that, even when one
differs with Waughs analyses and conclusions, they nonetheless
stimulate thought to an exceptional degree and compel one to come
to terms with ones own understanding of the Providence writer.
Substantial as The Monster in the Mirror is, it by no means embodies
Waughs final words on Lovecraft. Several previously published es-
says (to say nothing of the essay included in this number of the Love-
craft Annual) do not appear in the book, and so Waugh already has
160 Reviews
the nucleus of a second volume of essays. It is to be hoped that some
of our leading scholars absorb the variegated intellectual nourishment
this book has to offer, so that they may be reminded that the work of
interpreting Lovecraft is far from over.

Briefly Noted
The fifth and final volume of the Hippocampus Press edition of
Lovecrafts Collected Essays has now appeared. Volumes 1 (Amateur
Journalism) and 2 (Literary Criticism) appeared in 2004; Volumes 3
(Science) and 4 (Travel) appeared in 2005; and Volume 5 (Philoso-
phy; Autobiography and Miscellany) is now available. A CD-ROM
containing the full text of all the volumes, along with a transcript of
the entire contents of Lovecrafts amateur journal, the Conservative
(191523; 13 issues), scanned images of all issues of the Conservative, a
complete chronology of Lovecrafts writings (fiction, poetry, and es-
says), and other matter, will be available shortly. With this five-
volume set, in addition to the four Arkham House volumes of fiction
and revisions, the remaining fiction contained in Miscellaneous Writ-
ings (1995), and the collected poetry found in The Ancient Track
(2001), readers will possess the Collected Works of H. P. Lovecraft,
exclusive of letters. A review of the Collected Essays will probably
appear in the next issue of the Lovecraft Annual.
The Library of America edition of Lovecrafts Tales (2005), aside
from completing his definitive inclusion in the canon of American
literature, was one of the best-selling volumes published by the
Library of America, selling 25,000 copies within the first few months
of publication. It received wide, if mixed, reviews in major news-
papers and magazines, including the New York Times Book Review,
the Wall Street Journal, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Assembled by Peter Straub and using the corrected texts established
by S. T. Joshi, the volume includes 22 stories covering the entire
chronological range of Lovecrafts fiction-writing career, although it
contains none of the Dunsanian fantasies. Perhaps a second volume,
containing some of these stories along with essays, poems, and letters,
should be contemplated.

The Lovecraft Annual No. 1 (2007)

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THE LOVECRAFT ANNUAL

Edited by S. T. Joshi No. 1 (2007)

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