The H. P. Lovecraft Library

[Chris Nahr]

Just found this Lovecraft library site (http://www.gizmology.net/lovecraft/) while searching for Dagon, a wonderfully campy horror film by Stuart Gordon loosely based on Lovecraft's world that I stumbled across just recently.

Anyway, the site has online editions (HTML and PDF) of a vast number of Lovecraft's works, as well as biographies, book recommendations, film reviews, etc. Very nice if you always wanted to read classics like Call of Cthulhu but never got around to buy a Lovecraft book...

[Ergo]

Nice site, and it appears to be legal if what the Copyrights section says is true.

I recommend The Colour Out of Space and The Dunwich Horror to those unfamiliar with his work.

[Miramon]

I prefer the Dream Quest for Unknown Kadath to most of Lovecraft's other works. Doomed struggles against cosmic horror are just not all that interesting to me... though I concede he is a good writer, indeed a much better writer than he is generally given credit for. Certainly Lovecraft's horror stories are better than that of any of his imitators or hangers on from Derleth forward, and they're better than his contemporaries or predecessors for that matter, including Poe. But the Dream Quest book is more of a "dark fantasy" I suppose, and is rather humorous to boot.

[Bub, Andrew]

His non-Cthulhu stuff is more accessible: The Stranger, The Rats in the Walls. The dream stuff is popular with fantasy fans: Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Silver Key, etc.,

But I usually recommend The Shadow Over Innsmouth (which is pretty much the reason why I thought Dagon, though good, could have been so much better).

Personal faves: Innsmouth, The Rats in the Walls, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, The Thing on the Doorstep, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

[Don Quixote]

w00t. I'm a huge HPL fan, and I never get tired of threads like this. :)

If you like HPL's fantasy stuff, look into Lord Dunsany- he was a huge influence on HPL, and once you read some of his stuff, it really shows. Lots of it it in the public domain by now, you can find it if you look around the web a bit.

I didn't find the movie Dagon 'wonderfully campy'= quite the contrary, actually. It was a good flick, and the best translation of a Lovecraft story to the screen yet (pretty close to the the aforementioned Shadow over Insmouth), but I just didn't like the slapstick, camp-horror elements. In the Mouth of Madness would have been good for 'non-specific-story' Lovecraft-inspired horror, but Carpenter's usual crappy direction mucked it up. Bah, what I wouldn't give for a Lovecraft movie done right and well.
:?

[Ergo]

I would LOVE to see a movie version of At the Mountains of Madness.

[Don Quixote]

Supposedly, ATMOM is being worked on by Guillermo del Toro (Chronos, Mimic, Blade 2, and the Hellboy movie mentioned in another thread around here) as soon as Hellboy is finished. He's referred to it as his 'Titanic' in a few interviews. I have high hopes for that one.

[Anonymous]

He's referred to it as his 'Titanic' in a few interviews.

In fact, in film's climactic scene, HP Lovecraft stands at the front of a ship, wearing nothing but pink women's undergarments and shouts out, "I'm king of the netherworld!"

[Toddy]

Don't we discuss this every month? I'm not much of a Lovecraft fan, but Andrew's recommendation of "The Rats in the Walls" is a great one. It's a thousand kinds of creepy, from the ancient Roman temple buried beneath the castle to the rotting tapestries on the walls.

[Miramon]

I know there is vast adulation for Lord Dunsany as a precursor writer for pretty much all of modern fantasy, and his influence is cited for pretty much anyone important.

I've read a couple of his books -- King of Elfland's Daughter, et al -- and well, they're not bad -- not bad at all -- but I think there is better out there from his successors. I think HPL's best is superior to Dunsany's, though perhaps his average is arguably inferior. If you strike out the stories where HPL gets carried away with his quaint olde diction, and his more boring "prosaic horror" stories (as compared to cosmic horror stories, as it were) his average would go up some. I even prefer William Morris, affected precious style and all, to Lord Dunsany. And later fantasists like my prewar favorite, James Branch Cabell, are to my mind better still. OTOH, I prefer Dunsany to Chambers, to Machen, and to several of the other "early fantasy writers" people often cite who I can't think of offhand :), and he is clearly superior to pulp writers like ERB or HRH.

[Miramon]

While as I said I prefer HPL's fantasy to his horror, I once had a tape of a great reading (with effects) of The Rats in the Walls. That was a very creepy performance indeed. I have no idea at this date who produced it, but it would be worthwhile to buy if you could find it anywhere.

[Sparky]

I made a Chia Cthulhu (http://www.phobe.com/chiacthulhu.jpg) ("As Seen In Horrific Visions"), but haven't put the seed mixture on him yet. Unfortunately, he may end up looking more like "Hair Club For Men Cthulhu", because I had to use holes instead of the usual Chia ridges.

[Anonymous]

octopi and hair don't mix

[Chris Nahr]

I made a Chia Cthulhu (http://www.phobe.com/chiacthulhu.jpg) ("As Seen In Horrific Visions"), but haven't put the seed mixture on him yet. Unfortunately, he may end up looking more like "Hair Club For Men Cthulhu", because I had to use holes instead of the usual Chia ridges.

Why Sparky, that's the cutest little Cthulhu I've ever seen! :D

[Kyle Wilson]

Why Sparky, that's the cutest little Cthulhu I've ever seen! :D

Yeah... what a cthutie!

[Bub, Andrew]

My 2-year old daughter plays with a stuffed Cthulhu I bought from Pagan Publishing. I bought the blue one with the pink cosmic swirls. My wife didn't mind it until the baby started chanting "Ai Cthulhu Fatgn!" and what she did to Barbie is just unspeakable.

Now the doll is in charge over here.

help

[Sparky]

My 2-year old daughter plays with a stuffed Cthulhu I bought from Pagan Publishing.
I just got the recent stuffed Nyarlathotep (http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/nyarlethotep.html), it's the cthutest. I should send you a copy of my children's bedtime story, Goodnight, Nyarlathotep - you could read it to your daughter!

Well, not if you ever want her to SLEEP again. :twisted:

[Bub, Andrew]

Do they make a "Chicken Dance Nyarlathotep"?
"The piping! The PIPING!"


I should send you a copy of my children's bedtime story, Goodnight, Nyarlathotep - you could read it to your daughter!


"Goodnight madness, goodnight mush"
If you're not kidding, I'd love to read this. I can't just dismiss this as a joke, since Sparky is someone who actually makes Chia Cthulhu and includes a hilarious monster haiku section in their gamesite.

[Sparky]

I should send you a copy of my children's bedtime story, Goodnight, Nyarlathotep
If you're not kidding, I'd love to read this. I can't just dismiss this as a joke.
It is true! Just have to illustrate it (er, when TCFH is done). Not sure whether to do 3D renderings - so they look like David Kirk's Miss Spider series - or scratchy pen and ink. Since the "book" itself is supposed to be rather old (written by the wife of a professor at Miskatonic University, before he was tragically lost in the MU Antarctic Expedition of 1930-31), it should probably be the pen and ink. It will make a lovely gift for all my friends' little ones -- after all, who loves the Old Ones, if not the little ones?

...the horrors from Primordial goo
Do not have bedtimes, like you do.

[Anonymous]

If you fancy reading Stephen King ripping off 'The Rats in the Walls',read his short story 'Jerusalem's Lot' from 'Nightshift'.The first half of the story is almost plagiarism.I bought the three volume hardcover collection of Lovecraft short stories on 'Arkham House' sometime in the '80s--a tremendous buy,but I was curious if they were still available?

[Captain Cookiepants]

I should send you a copy of my children's bedtime story, Goodnight, Nyarlathotep
If you're not kidding, I'd love to read this. I can't just dismiss this as a joke.
It is true! Just have to illustrate it (er, when TCFH is done). Not sure whether to do 3D renderings - so they look like David Kirk's Miss Spider series - or scratchy pen and ink. Since the "book" itself is supposed to be rather old (written by the wife of a professor at Miskatonic University, before he was tragically lost in the MU Antarctic Expedition of 1930-31), it should probably be the pen and ink. It will make a lovely gift for all my friends' little ones -- after all, who loves the Old Ones, if not the little ones?

...the horrors from Primordial goo
Do not have bedtimes, like you do.

You know Sparky, I would PAY good money for a tour of your mind. It must to be a facinating, scary, place. Go with the scratchy pen and ink.

[Ben Sones]

I bought the three volume hardcover collection of Lovecraft short stories on 'Arkham House' sometime in the '80s--a tremendous buy,but I was curious if they were still available?

I haven't been able to find them, though I'd like to. They were pretty nice editions, and the only hardcover Lovecraft editions that I've recently seen.

[Kyle Wilson]

It's been years since I read Lovecraft. I recall really liking the texture of his prose, but usually being let down by the payoff, and being unimpressed with his protagonists, who all seemed to be pasty and frail New England intellectuals who at the first glimpse of something unpleasant promptly went mad and fled stuttering and jabbering about "tentacles" and "eyes", etc.

As a muscular and heroic type with a number of semiautomatic firearms, who faces Cthulu-like source code (ancient, serpentine, chaotic, unspeakably evil) on a daily basis, I just find it hard to identify.

[Anonymous]

I bought the three volume hardcover collection of Lovecraft short stories on 'Arkham House' sometime in the '80s--a tremendous buy,but I was curious if they were still available?

I haven't been able to find them, though I'd like to. They were pretty nice editions, and the only hardcover Lovecraft editions that I've recently seen.

They are the only hardcover editions I've ever seen also.I still have the price tags in my books(I bought them at a local comic book/book store),$18.75,which was a lot of dough when you're in college and eating Ramen noodles several days a week!I remember having to save up and buy them one at a time.

[Chris Nahr]

Reviving this thread a bit, please wait a second...

Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE - L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH

...there it is again! :)

I'm wondering if anyone's ever made a good Necronomicon? Should be easy enough for a mediaevist or orientalist with some knowledge of Lovecraft and ancient occultism to piece together a nice illustrated coffee-table book looking close enough to a real historical document. But the published ones are apparently all more or less crappy, either mere jokes or lame Lovecraft ripoffs. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Good Christ! What the hell is "mediaevist"? Did you have a seizure on your keyboard?

[Chris Nahr]

Good Christ! What the hell is "mediaevist"? Did you have a seizure on your keyboard?

Seizure on the keyboard? CTHULHU FHTAGN!!!

A mediaevist is someone who studies all things medi(a)eval, obviously enough. Actually that's a German word, Mediävist, describing a thoroughly decent and honourable (if slightly obscure) academic specialisation.

Doesn't this word exist in English? I usually save the time to get a dictionary and just use a German word (with Anglicized spelling) if it looks as if it might exist in English. :)

[Anonymous]

Ah, no. It's not a real word. My apologies to the Lovecraftians.

[Anonymous]

The English word you're looking for is medievalist.

[DrCrypt]

X:Com - Terror from the Deep (http://www.hplovecraft.com/popcult/games/computer.htm) was a Cthulu game?!?!? Bitching.

[Ergo]

I just got my own Nyarlathotep in the mail. It is now perched on top of my monitor next to my Cthulhu. The pitiful humans at my office are trembling in fear.

[Russ]

I just got my own Nyarlathotep in the mail. It is now perched on top of my monitor next to my Cthulhu. The pitiful humans at my office are trembling in fear.
That's about the geekiest thing I've read all day. Good job.

[Kyle Wilson]

That's about the geekiest thing I've read all day. Good job.

Yeah, but you posted that at 6:51 a.m.

[Ergo]

I just got my own Nyarlathotep in the mail. It is now perched on top of my monitor next to my Cthulhu. The pitiful humans at my office are trembling in fear.
That's about the geekiest thing I've read all day. Good job.
Mission accomplished!

[Chris Nahr]

I'm still learning to be as geeky as you guys are, and right now I've made the discovery that the Conan inventor Robert E. Howard was a pen pal of Lovecraft who wrote some Cthulhu Mythos stories of his own! And the foreword to that book ("Nameless Cults" by Chaosium Books) says that Norman Bates of Psycho/Hitchcock fame was invented by another friend of Lovecraft's. Were all the 20th century's best fantasy and horror stories, with the exception of Lord of the Rings, written by Lovecraft and his handful of friends?

[Bub, Andrew]

And the foreword to that book ("Nameless Cults" by Chaosium Books) says that Norman Bates of Psycho/Hitchcock fame was invented by another friend of Lovecraft's.

The "Lovecraft Circle" was pretty big. I've never heard that Howard was a member actually, but Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp were. Yeah, a very young Robert Bloch (Psycho) was a penpal of Lovecraft. In fact, Lovecraft's character Robert Blake, who gets killed in one of the stories, is a homage to Bloch.

[Toddy]

The Robert E. Howard Cthulhu stories are actually pretty good, too. Really pulpy and cheesy -- a lot of adventurer type stuff that reminds me of old movie serials -- but nice and creepy. Just re-read a few of those stories this week (I've had a paperback of Howard's collected Cthulhu stories for years) right after re-reading At the Mountains of Madness (inspired by this thread, as was the purchase of a Beach Cthulhu doll -- so MasterCard thanks you guys). Enjoyed the Howard a lot more than the Lovecraft. Even aside from the whole adjective thing and lack of dialogue, Lovecraft was a terrible, terrible writer. I think he works "mountains of madness" into at least two sentences on every page of the story, for example. I couldn't even finish it, and it's one of my favorite Lovecraft pieces.

[Miramon]

Lovecraft was NOT a terrible writer. His style was deliberately old-fashioned, and he was reacting against the modernism and realism that was avant-garde at the time. He was actually quite a good stylist in many stories. There were admittedly some stories in which he went overboard with the quaint locutions, and others which were a bit too convoluted even from an old-fashioned point of view. Read some, I don't know, one of the Jameses for example, or maybe some of Poe (who I think was really a worse writer in many respects) to see where he's coming from. Look at say William Morris for another example of affected old-fashioned writing style that actually can work for you if you let it, but that looks pretty weird if you don't want to make the effort for it....

Anyway within the framework of the deliberate style he chose, I think Lovecraft generally did a good job. If you don't like the style, though, that is a matter of taste and is a perfectly legitimate reason not to read his stuff.

[Chris Nahr]

The style probably reminded Brett of a time when servants used to call their masters "Master", and he just hates that. :wink:

I agree that Lovecraft's style is excellent -- deliberately antiquated but very convincingly so. Howard is another very good writer but in a very different way.

[Bub, Andrew]

Sure, there are better writers than Lovecraft. Howard included and Bloch certainly. Where I disagree with Brett, completely, is that I think Lovecraft is far more effective than any other horror writer. His clumsiness, his antiquated style, his vague and arcane descriptions, amount to something that feels unsettling, "sanity-blasting," and in keeping with the undescribable weird horror he's writing about.

Oddly, I could make this same argument (with a few alterations) in favor of Tolkien's overwrought yet effective style.

[Toddy]

LOL Good one, Mr. Nahr.

But come on, guys. There's nothing antiquated or creepy about mentioning the same phrase over and over and over again. It's the sign of a hack who badly needs an editor, not the mark of some kind of spooky stylist. "At the Mountains of Madness" is awful with this sort of repetition. Lovecraft repeats that phrase again and again, starting about a third of the way through, I think. Also, the overwrought stuff doesn't really fit through about 90% of the story, considering that a bunch of stone ruins in Antarctica hardly call for the narrator to go on about "mind-blasting horror" and the like. After about 20 pages of this I started to wonder if Lovecraft could even make a sandwich without thinking of ominous vast evil from beyond the stars. Ah, the horrible darkness of the bread box! The slime-coated hideousness of the rarely cleaned butter tray! The shambling terror of the cold cuts!

As an aside, I love the 19th century novel, so I've no problems with antiquated writing styles and somewhat florid prose as long as it's good. And Lovecraft's stuff isn't good. He couldn't even handle dialogue -- any dialogue -- so it's rather amazing that people still debate his literary merits. I see these annotated Lovecraft editions by that Joshi guy and I can't help but laugh.

[Chris Nahr]

Lovecraft actually preferred 18th century writing above all else, so he's even more antiquated than that -- ocassionally he even writes "shew" instead of "show". As for dialogue, it's part of the antiquated style that any direct speech is a deliberate rhetorical construct, not something anyone would actually have said, so it fits in well.

The repetitions do exist but I think they're entirely intentional as well. Lovecraft mostly writes from the perspective of some upper-class gentleman whose sanity has been shattered by unbelievably outrageous cosmic terrors such as, er, walking fish or giant squids. You might say Lovecraft records the frenzied stammering of a man who is too well educated to actually stammer. In my opinion, this technique works extremely well and turns even his most laughable creatures (such as the aforementioned walking fish) into terrifying monsters.

[Miramon]

Actually, Lovecraft's style wasn't 18th century or 19th. It was an affected style that never really existed at all as a type.

From early Greek comedies to the Tale of Genji, from Chaucer's stories to those of modern writers like say Jane Austen (a full hundred years before Lovecraft), pretty much all these have had more realistic fictional situations and dialogue, and many of these even may seem more modern and accessible in style (at least when a modern editor steps in and provides some paragraphs.) There have rarely been any attempts at fiction or storytelling as unrealistic as Lovecraft's. not just regarding implausibility, but also in terms of the characters' attitudes and behavior, and also of course with respect to the dialogue.

That doesn't mean Lovecraft is bad though, unless you are a Chandleresque curmudgeon who thinks that literature is valueless unless it is entirely realistic; and in that case you have no business reading fantasy or science fiction in the first place, much less horror stories.... Of course there is nothing wrong with simply preferring a modern realistic-style colloquial voice in fiction. If you reject Lovecraft's style (a perfectly reasonable matter of taste, by the way, kind of like the way I dislike abstract expressionism in art) then you can say you don't like it, but I don't really think you can say it is bad. Saying Lovecraft is bad because the dialogue is unrealistic is like saying P. G. Wodehouse is bad for the same reason. In both cases, they do in fact have ridiculously implausible dialogue and absurd unrealistic situations and characters, but that has no bearing on their status as writers.*

Anyhow, while I don't really think Lovecraft's dialogue stands up all that well even in the context of his affected style, there are plenty of narrative sections that I think are very well done indeed, particularly in those dark fantasy stories I mentioned as being my favorites, like the Dream Quest for Unknown Kadath, as well as in some of the horror stories.


*However, P. G. Wodehouse was a better writer than Lovecraft :)

[Ergo]

Brett--

You're just a grumpy old man.

[Toddy]

Grumpy young man. For a little while yet.

Anyways, I'm not saying that Loveraft's affectations don't work well in spots. As I said earlier, I still love "The Rats in the Walls." But man, nobody with any sort of real skill repeats phrasing over and over again. There's no way to justify that, unless you're doing something with characterization--which Lovecraft most certainly isn't, considering that all of his narrators speak with the same voice, women don't exist in his fiction, etc. BTW, how can you criticize Lovecraft's dialogue for being unrealistic? There really isn't enough of it to examine.

[DrCrypt]

I'm rereading some Lovecraft right now for the first time since I was about 11 and springing taut erections at the "giving head" scene in Re-Animator. Oddly enough, I thought Lovecraft was a terrible writer then, but I kind of like him now.

Without really wanting to go into fun garbage like Lovecraft with my pipe stuffed full of literary jargon fuming, I will say that he is very effective at what he is trying to do... but what he is trying to do isn't really fiction. H.P. Lovecraft writes plotless, logic-less nightmare scenarios that brood on primal, chthonic fears. Not stories - he's really a scenario writer. His "stories" don't have plots or characters, they sometimes don't even have protagonists ("Call of Cthulhu" is a good example) and his style is based more on overwhelming atmospherics than the traditional concept of illuminating ideas or themes through carefully tuned prose. In a lot of ways (and I don't mean this to be lifting Lovecraft on a pedestal), what he tries to do in his stories is more along the lines of the emotional impact of poetry than fiction writers.

This works pretty well in horror stories, because the most effective horror stories are the ones that remind us of nightmares. He's not a very good storyteller, but he's a pretty effective horror writer, because he is effective in rendering dreams straight onto the page and retaining a lot of their oneiric emotional pull in the transition. Dreams don't really make effective "stories", except in horror stories and pornography. I like to think, as lack-luster a story teller Lovecraft might me, he makes a good horror writer, and would have made a kick-ass pornographer. I'm discounting, of course, his good-standing as a pornographer in Japan, where Cthulhu is a Ron-Jeremy prolific star on local adult video shelves.

[Eduardo X]

I'm writing a paper on Call of Cthulhu and racism, and I'm wondering if anybody can think of other stories of Lovecraft's that contain some sort of racial element. Hints?

Also, sorry for the thread necro. Call me Hebert West, I guess.

[Tom Chick]

I don't know about racism so much as archaic language, but be sure to check out the name of the protagonist's cat in The Rats in the Walls.

-Tom

[Eric P]

I'm writing a paper on Call of Cthulhu and racism, and I'm wondering if anybody can think of other stories of Lovecraft's that contain some sort of racial element. Hints?

http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Howard_Phillips_Lovecraft

Scroll down to the section on Racism where it lays out a number of examples.

This post contains links to the complete HP Lovecraft fiction works in a few formats for easy searching.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/03/lovecraft-favorite-words-free-ebook


be sure to check out the name of the protagonist's cat in The Rats in the Walls.

Bonus Lovecraft fact, per the Annotated Lovecraft (edited by ST Joshi), that fictional cat's name shares the name with Lovecraft's actual cat.

[Eduardo X]

http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Howard_Phillips_Lovecraft

Scroll down to the section on Racism where it lays out a number of examples.

This post contains links to the complete HP Lovecraft fiction works in a few formats for easy searching.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/03/lovecraft-favorite-words-free-ebook


Bonus Lovecraft fact, per the Annotated Lovecraft (edited by ST Joshi), that fictional cat's name shares the name with Lovecraft's actual cat.

Thanks Eric! This is a lot of help.

Does anyone know where I can find all of Lovecraft's poems? I got "The Collected" by Derleth, but they are not collected, just selected by Derleth. The REAL complete poems is not available through the University of Illinois library system (no inter-library loan, either) and it's like $50 used elsewhere.

[Lizard_King]

Thanks Eric! This is a lot of help.

Does anyone know where I can find all of Lovecraft's poems? I got "The Collected" by Derleth, but they are not collected, just selected by Derleth. The REAL complete poems is not available through the University of Illinois library system (no inter-library loan, either) and it's like $50 used elsewhere.

I haven't confirmed it contains the poetry, but the reformatted project gutenberg (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php?do=getall&order=asc&sort=ebook&ltr=L&forumid=128&page=9) stuff has some good collections for free.

[Bluto]

Oh god, just read The Horror at Red Hook.

[anaqer]

Yup, that one's pretty bad. (Also, the servants in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward spring to mind.)

[RDansky]

Yup, that one's pretty bad. (Also, the servants in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward spring to mind.)

Levy's take on Lovecraft tends to wallow in the racism angle, and Levy's about as big a Lovecraft fan as you can get.

[RDansky]

Thanks Eric! This is a lot of help.

Does anyone know where I can find all of Lovecraft's poems? I got "The Collected" by Derleth, but they are not collected, just selected by Derleth. The REAL complete poems is not available through the University of Illinois library system (no inter-library loan, either) and it's like $50 used elsewhere.

You want The Ancient Track (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Track-Complete-Poetical-Lovecraft/dp/1892389150), from Night Shade. It's the complete poetry, edited by S.T. Joshi.

(and if you're really going completist, here's (http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/528659-poems-not-in-the-ancient-track.html) a guide to hunting down the fragments)

Highlights are "The Fungi From Yuggoth" and the Eliot parody "The Waste Paper". Lovecraft's poetry was...pretty up and down, and in a lot of cases showed a lot more enthusiasm than poesy.

[RDansky]

The "Lovecraft Circle" was pretty big. I've never heard that Howard was a member actually, but Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp were. Yeah, a very young Robert Bloch (Psycho) was a penpal of Lovecraft. In fact, Lovecraft's character Robert Blake, who gets killed in one of the stories, is a homage to Bloch.

Howard and Lovecraft were frequent correspondents. Bloch's correspondence with Lovecraft began when, as a teenager, he wrote Lovecraft a letter asking permission to bump him off in a story, and Lovecraft was so amused that he wrote back granting permission in a letter "witnessed" by all of his fictional identities (the Altantean priest Lhuv-Kerapht, etc.). The story in question, if memory serves, was "The Shambler From The Stars". Lovecraft then returned the favor with the doomed Mr. Blake of "The Haunter of the Dark".

Yes, I did my thesis on Lovecraft. Why do you ask?

[Abilio Carvalho]

Also Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, where there's a marriage to an "african Ape Princess".

[_Poe_]

I'm writing a paper on Call of Cthulhu and racism, and I'm wondering if anybody can think of other stories of Lovecraft's that contain some sort of racial element. Hints?

Also, sorry for the thread necro. Call me Hebert West, I guess.

This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but the documentary that barstein posted in the movie lovecraft thread is very interesting and touches on some of the race issues in Lovecrafts writing. http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/lovecraft_fear_of_the_unknown/

[Staff Sergeant]

Also Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, where there's a marriage to an "african Ape Princess".

Yeah it's debatable whether the big shock ending to that is referring to actual apes or just black people. Was Lovecraft really racist enough that he thought discovering an african among your ancestors would warrant setting yourself on fire?

[John Many Jars]

I know there is vast adulation for Lord Dunsany as a precursor writer for pretty much all of modern fantasy, and his influence is cited for pretty much anyone important.

I've read a couple of his books -- King of Elfland's Daughter, et al -- and well, they're not bad -- not bad at all -- but I think there is better out there from his successors. I think HPL's best is superior to Dunsany's, though perhaps his average is arguably inferior. If you strike out the stories where HPL gets carried away with his quaint olde diction, and his more boring "prosaic horror" stories (as compared to cosmic horror stories, as it were) his average would go up some. I even prefer William Morris, affected precious style and all, to Lord Dunsany. And later fantasists like my prewar favorite, James Branch Cabell, are to my mind better still. OTOH, I prefer Dunsany to Chambers, to Machen, and to several of the other "early fantasy writers" people often cite who I can't think of offhand :), and he is clearly superior to pulp writers like ERB or HRH.

With Dunsany it's all about the short stories, not the novels at all. And the late short stories aren't as good. I love The Gods of Pegana and Time and the Gods. The King of Elfland's Daughter is negligible.

[BlueJackalope]

I'm writing a paper on Call of Cthulhu and racism, and I'm wondering if anybody can think of other stories of Lovecraft's that contain some sort of racial element. Hints?

Also, sorry for the thread necro. Call me Hebert West, I guess.

If you can find an unedited version of Herbert West - Reanimator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_West%E2%80%93Reanimator) there is a chapter about re-animating the body of a boxer that is wildly racist.

[Universal Leader]

IIRC "The Horror at Red Hook" has some unkind words about immigrants as well.

[John Many Jars]

When I was a Boy Scout in the early 80s, one of the two resident dogs at Broad Creek Scout Reservation in Maryland was named [N-word]. And I've seen some old British movie where that's the name of an RAF company mascot. I think in our grandparents' time it was probably a fairly common name for a dog. :/

[Universal Leader]

My parents used to refer to Brazil nuts as "[N-word]toes" and those licorice candies as "[N-word]babies," so the casual racism of H.P. Lovecraft's worldview is not so far back in time as we might like to think.

I still cringe when my kids say "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" because of what I expect to hear them say. Thank God they've never heard the racist version of the rhyme.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I had a guy on a dive boat explain the alternate name for Brazil Nuts to me. He prefaced his remark by saying it was "not politically correct." It's funny how some people hide behind that phrase.

[Eduardo X]

My parents used to refer to Brazil nuts as "[N-word]toes" and those licorice candies as "[N-word]babies," so the casual racism of H.P. Lovecraft's worldview is not so far back in time as we might like to think.

I still cringe when my kids say "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" because of what I expect to hear them say. Thank God they've never heard the racist version of the rhyme.

Lovecraft was no casual racist. I don't think he went out of his way to hurt the lives of people of color or Jews or Catholics, but he was very outspoken about his racism. I'm reading an autobiography in letters of his, and it's pretty vile.

[Morberis]

My parents used to refer to Brazil nuts as "[N-word]toes" and those licorice candies as "[N-word]babies," so the casual racism of H.P. Lovecraft's worldview is not so far back in time as we might like to think.

I still cringe when my kids say "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" because of what I expect to hear them say. Thank God they've never heard the racist version of the rhyme.


Catch the tiger by the toe?

Ok I'll bite, never heard the racist version but I'm only 25 - though I can take a guess it sounds something like a brazil nut instead.

[Creole Ned]

The racist version uses the n-word. I remember hearing it as a kid but I'm 46, so this may illustrate the difference between generations.

I really enjoy Lovecraft's writing but the racism is pretty naked. Fortunately it doesn't permeate too many of his stories.

[Tom Chick]

I'm Ned's age, and from Arkansas to boot, but I don't ever recall hearing it as anything but "catch a tiger by the toe". I've also never heard the one about Brazil nuts or licorice candy.

The one that I do remember is the act of knocking on someone's door or ringing the bell, and then running away, preferably to a hiding spot where you can watch the occupant open the door and see that no one is there! Oh, man, what a royal prank that was to a 12-year-old. And it was known for some reason as "[n-word] knocking". Go figure.

-Tom

[kerzain]

I'm Ned's age, and from Arkansas to boot, but I don't ever recall hearing it as anything but "catch a tiger by the toe". I've also never heard the one about Brazil nuts or licorice candy.

The one that I do remember is the act of knocking on someone's door or ringing the bell, and then running away, preferably to a hiding spot where you can watch the occupant open the door and see that no one is there! Oh, man, what a royal prank that was to a 12-year-old. And it was known for some reason as "[n-word] knocking". Go figure.

-TomI'm not quite the same age as you two, but this was also known as "ding dong ditch 'em" in SoCal back when I was young.

Oh, and in case you wanted to see some of Lovecraft's earlier examples of racism, there's this short poem he wrote in 1912 (http://alturl.com/ymhc8), which also includes a write up about it (link probably isn't safe for work because of language).

I changed the link to a truncated url because the title of the link, which is the title of the poem, contains racist language and for all I know will set off some alarm at various workplaces.

[MattKeil]

I'm pretty sure my dad told my friends and me about the original "catch a ____ by the _____" when he heard us recite the tiger version as kids. I always thought a tiger was a weird substitution, since grabbing a tiger by the tail seemed likely to have fairly negative consequences whether or not you let him go. I never heard the original version recited by anyone my age, and the doorbell gag was known as "door ditch" or "doorbell ditch."

[Mike O'Malley]

I'm Ned's age, and from Arkansas to boot, but I don't ever recall hearing it as anything but "catch a tiger by the toe". I've also never heard the one about Brazil nuts or licorice candy.

The one that I do remember is the act of knocking on someone's door or ringing the bell, and then running away, preferably to a hiding spot where you can watch the occupant open the door and see that no one is there! Oh, man, what a royal prank that was to a 12-year-old. And it was known for some reason as "[n-word] knocking". Go figure.

-Tom

I grew up in beautiful SW PA, which exposed me to the N version of the rhyme, N knocking as Tom mentioned, and small spinning fireworks named N chasers (later called tiger chasers). If you accidentally broke something, it was standard procedure to rig it so that the next person to touch it thought that he was responsible for the damage; this was called N fixing.

Looking back, it was pretty bad.

[Morberis]

The doorbell gag was known as "door ditch" or "doorbell ditch."

Nicky Nicky Nine Doors aka running the frack away as someone chased you with a bat.

[RDansky]

The racist version uses the n-word. I remember hearing it as a kid but I'm 46, so this may illustrate the difference between generations.

I really enjoy Lovecraft's writing but the racism is pretty naked. Fortunately it doesn't permeate too many of his stories.

At the risk of sounding like an apologist or a Monty Python character, it got better when he grew up, and by "grew up" I mean "hit his 30s and moved back to Providence". The roots of his racism, above and beyond the obvious, grew out of his eccentric (read: self-directed; he was prone to fits and thus couldn't matriculate at Brown) education and the fact that his family went from wealthy to the poorhouse at the time that Providence's demographics were visibly changing, hence phrases like "nautical-looking negroes" being associated with things going downhill, fast. Moving to Brooklyn was another shock, and it produced the mess that is "Horror at Red Hook", but it also kick-started Lovecraft's philosophical evolution. By the time he died, he was apparently a card-carrying Socialist, and while his racial views never worked around to what you might call "enlightened", he definitely seemed to abdicate a lot of his earlier positions. To quote his friend Paul Cook:


"He came back to Providence a human being - and what a human being! He had been tried in the fire and came out pure gold."

Again, where Lovecraft ended up is a long way from what's considered reasonable today, but I give him a few points for actually evolving. It shows up in the later fiction as well - compare the "devolution" motifs in "Arthur Jermyn" with those in "Pickman's Model", for example, and pieces like "At the Mountains of Madness" take the position that all of human life is transient, accidental and insignificant. Against that backdrop, the earlier obsession with race tends to fade.

None of which excuses the racist claptrap, of course, but it does provide some interesting context.

[liquidben]

I grew up in beautiful SW PA, which exposed me to the N version of the rhyme, N knocking as Tom mentioned, and small spinning fireworks named N chasers (later called tiger chasers). If you accidentally broke something, it was standard procedure to rig it so that the next person to touch it thought that he was responsible for the damage; this was called N fixing.

Looking back, it was pretty bad.

Also a native of SW PA, my little upriver town also featured N knocking. I'm familiar with the other terms, but can't recall where I heard them. Now I live on a street with mixed race couples and Somali refugees that wear beautiful headscarves, so at least that worked out.

I do have to say that "nautical-looking negroes" sounds like it could be street slang for someone that's as big as a boat. I hear Biggie's voice in my head when I read it.

[Damien Neil]

At the risk of sounding like an apologist or a Monty Python character, it got better when he grew up, and by "grew up" I mean "hit his 30s and moved back to Providence".

I prefer to view Lovecraft as a hopeful example of people's ability to grow out of their fears. As you say, he did get much better.

It's interesting the degree to which his xenophobia defines his fiction. The essence of Lovecraftian horror is a story in which an educated, white man discovers that educated, white men aren't very important in the grand scheme of things.

[SlyFrog]

I'm Ned's age, and from Arkansas to boot, but I don't ever recall hearing it as anything but "catch a tiger by the toe". I've also never heard the one about Brazil nuts or licorice candy.

The one that I do remember is the act of knocking on someone's door or ringing the bell, and then running away, preferably to a hiding spot where you can watch the occupant open the door and see that no one is there! Oh, man, what a royal prank that was to a 12-year-old. And it was known for some reason as "[n-word] knocking". Go figure.

-Tom

I grew up in Wisconsin, and heard both the eeny meeny miny moe one and the Brazil nuts one (as well as the door knocking one and several others). In fact, it wasn't until I was probably roughly 7-8 years old that I did not know that wasn't the way you should probably say that. (I literally did not know the correct name for Brazil nuts until I was in my teens.)

[SlyFrog]

octopi and hair don't mix

And for best calling out ever of an 8 year old piece, I present:

http://www.polls.newsvine.com/_vine/images/users/nws/helenaspopkin/6556417.jpg

Cthulhu Hat (http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2011/04/29/6556070-facebook-cthulhu-hat-a-bold-choice-for-royal-wedding-)

[Gus_Smedstad]

Wait, that hat was real? I thought it was just another internet meme.

[Tom Chick]

This thread is so uncomfortably educational about so many things.

-Tom

[Eduardo X]

I'm not so sure Lovecraft really reformed. There were plenty of socialists in the US at the turn of the century who were racist. Lovecraft, who called himself a "fascistic socialist," was pretty happy to back Hitler in 1933. "As for the question of superiority and inferiority - when we observe the whole animal kingdom and note the vast differences in capacity betwixt different species and sub-species within various genera, we see how utterly asinine and hysterically sentimental is the blanket assumption of idealists and other fools that all the sub-species of homo sapiens must necessarily be equal."
He goes on, "Therefore just this much of Hitler's basic racial theory is perfectly and irrefutably sound."

[SpanishInquisition]

Yes, he goes on the same letter:

"I am far from a Nazi, & would probably get kicked out of Germany for my opinions regarding the universe, the facts of science, & the rights of free aesthetic expression—but at the same time I refuse to join in the blind herd-prejudice against an honest clown whose basic objects are all essentially sound despite the occasionally disastrous extremes & absurdities in his present policy. It may be that Hitlerism’s function will be to point out certain needs which wiser heads & hands will ultimately rectify in a more moderate way—not only in Germany but in other nations where similar needs or problems exist." -September 25, 1933

For all his faults, Lovecraft was not a typical nazi anti-semite, but rather a very elaborate xenophobe. Bear in mind that DNA/genetics and more accurate ancient history were still to be discovered in the 1930s.

Had he survived to see WW2 and the true extremes of "Hitlerism", I don't think he would have been very happy about it.

(I found the complete text of this letter in one of those despicable racist websites. I would appreciate if someone can point me to a more nice and reliable source)

[Eduardo X]

Yes, he goes on the same letter:

"I am far from a Nazi, & would probably get kicked out of Germany for my opinions regarding the universe, the facts of science, & the rights of free aesthetic expression—but at the same time I refuse to join in the blind herd-prejudice against an honest clown whose basic objects are all essentially sound despite the occasionally disastrous extremes & absurdities in his present policy. It may be that Hitlerism’s function will be to point out certain needs which wiser heads & hands will ultimately rectify in a more moderate way—not only in Germany but in other nations where similar needs or problems exist." -September 25, 1933

For all his faults, Lovecraft was not a typical nazi anti-semite, but rather a very elaborate xenophobe. Bear in mind that DNA/genetics and more accurate ancient history were still to be discovered in the 1930s.

Had he survived to see WW2 and the true extremes of "Hitlerism", I don't think he would have been very happy about it.

(I found the complete text of this letter in one of those despicable racist websites. I would appreciate if someone can point me to a more nice and reliable source)
S.T. Joshi has written a TON of books about Lovecraft and I got this one from his "Lovecraft: Lord of a Visible World," which is an autobiography in letters.

I think he was a pretty horrible racist, but I also LOVE his stories. I tend to expect the insane racism and don't mind it when I read his stuff.

[BlueJackalope]

I think he was a pretty horrible racist, but I also LOVE his stories. I tend to expect the insane racism and don't mind it when I read his stuff.

There are some risible stereotypes throughout Robert E. Howard's works as well. I'm petty sure they were endemic to 30's pulp fiction*. (http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/spicy-adventure-stories)

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/spicy-adventure-stories/4-1.jpg

*Which isn't to excuse either of them.

[Hanacker]

I still cringe when my kids say "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" because of what I expect to hear them say. Thank God they've never heard the racist version of the rhyme.

My grandma often tells the story about how she had to apologize after the "political activist" mother of a black family that recently moved into town (Fresno, CA) complained after she used the racist version of that song when she was an elementary school teacher. My grandma didn't think it was a big deal. This must have been around the late 1930s - early 1940s.

[kerzain]

There are some risible stereotypes throughout Robert E. Howard's works as well. I'm petty sure they were endemic to 30's pulp fiction*. (http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/spicy-adventure-stories)

*Which isn't to excuse either of them.Not sure if it has been established in this thread yet, but Howard and Lovecraft were pretty much best friends -- to the degree that any two pen pals could be.

[Eduardo X]

There are some risible stereotypes throughout Robert E. Howard's works as well. I'm petty sure they were endemic to 30's pulp fiction*. (http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/spicy-adventure-stories)

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/spicy-adventure-stories/4-1.jpg

*Which isn't to excuse either of them.

They were actually good friends and collaborators. They also shared ideas about race, eugenics, and so on.

[Mark Asher]

I'm Ned's age, and from Arkansas to boot, but I don't ever recall hearing it as anything but "catch a tiger by the toe". I've also never heard the one about Brazil nuts or licorice candy.

The one that I do remember is the act of knocking on someone's door or ringing the bell, and then running away, preferably to a hiding spot where you can watch the occupant open the door and see that no one is there! Oh, man, what a royal prank that was to a 12-year-old. And it was known for some reason as "[n-word] knocking". Go figure.

-Tom

My grandmother on my mom's side used to say the eenie meenie rhyme with the N word. At some point I think my parents took her aside and talked to her because she then used tiger.

My great-grandfather actually ran the Confederate Soldiers Retirement Home in Higginsville, MO. I looked at a family history book a relative complied once and saw that I have a bunch of slave-owner ancestors.

[RDansky]

(I found the complete text of this letter in one of those despicable racist websites. I would appreciate if someone can point me to a more nice and reliable source)

Try the S.T. Joshi-edited Letters. Mind you, there are five volumes of them. Lovecraft wrote a lot of letters. Necronomicon Press actually published an index to 'em, IIRC.

And just to muddy the waters a bit further, I should probably point out that Sonia Greene, a.k.a. Mrs. Lovecraft, was Jewish, as was a member of Lovecraft's "KaLeM" writing circle, Samuel Loveman. The closer of "The Statement of Randolph Carter" was derived from a dream; it was originally "You fool, Loveman is dead."

So I guess some of his best friends really were Jewish.

[Universal Leader]

And, while not trying to defend or minimize Lovecraft's racism, because it truly is indefensible, poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were of the same era and held similar racist and antisemitic views.

[anaqer]

I still think the underlying condition was pure xenophobia, which often presented itself as racism... anyway, let's go to a relevant musical interlude (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqq0lMhPTb4).

[Eduardo X]

I still think the underlying condition was pure xenophobia, which often presented itself as racism... anyway, let's go to a relevant musical interlude (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqq0lMhPTb4).

I bet that is a picture of him holding Nigger Man.

[Rasputin]

This thread is so uncomfortably educational about so many things.

-Tom

No shit. I didn't even know "Eeny meeny miny moe" had a racist, non-tiger origin/version. Crazy.

[Gus_Smedstad]

No shit. I didn't even know "Eeny meeny miny moe" had a racist, non-tiger origin/version. Crazy.
It seems unlikely the N-word version is the original. At least, that's the conclusion drawn in the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe).

[MattKeil]

They were actually good friends and collaborators. They also shared ideas about race, eugenics, and so on.

It can also be very easily argued that Howard's Conan stories take place in the same universe as Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Many similarities between their celestial outlooks, so to speak.

[RDansky]

It can also be very easily argued that Howard's Conan stories take place in the same universe as Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Many similarities between their celestial outlooks, so to speak.

Howard wrote a decent pile of stories (http://www.amazon.com/Nameless-Cults-Complete-Cthulhu-Fiction/dp/1568821301) set in Lovecraft's fictional space, some of which included his stock characters.

[RepoMan]

Meanwhile I'm all freaked out now that the poster that shall not be named actually was all over page 1 of this thread. Spoooooooooooky.

[John Many Jars]

You know the Agatha Christie mystery Ten Little Indians, titled after the nursery rhyme? Guess what the original title was, after the original nursery rhyme?

[kerzain]

The HP Lovecraft Dress Code
http://i.min.us/illIwK.jpg

[Houngan]

No shit. I didn't even know "Eeny meeny miny moe" had a racist, non-tiger origin/version. Crazy.

Depends on where you grew up. I didn't hear the tiger version until I was in my teens.

H.

[Eduardo X]

22 pages later, my paper is done. And missing like 20-30 pages of content.
Every paper I write in grad school feels like it should be an entire book. This one didn't have room to talk about Robert E. Howard, explore pulp fiction and weird tales in a decent way, talk about stories aside from Call of Cthulhu, explore recent adaptations in depth, or even mention board games. Oh well, back to writing poetry.