The H.P. Lovecraft Reading Club

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Snowy » Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:36 am

I read it a few days back but have been busy busy. Fly off on my hols today so probably won't get a chance to post till tomorrow.
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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:19 am

I should have this read by lunchtime. It's been builder and children's school holiday madness at my place so available free time has largely been spent catching up with the work I couldn't do during the days.

However, I should be on my own from about 11 for a few hours so I plan to read it then (I'm already about halfway through).

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Stormbringer » Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:22 am

How about you, Mantis? ¬_¬
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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:50 am

Done :)

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Mantis » Mon Sep 03, 2018 11:32 am

Stormbringer wrote:
Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:22 am
How about you, Mantis? ¬_¬
Finished it last night but won't be around properly until tonight due to work today.

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Stormbringer » Mon Sep 03, 2018 2:35 pm

Excellent.

Well, I think that means everyone in the club has read it! Discussion time!

Here are my thoughts & observations:

Spoiler
This one's quite unusual in the sense of it being written from the point of view of an overheard conversation, rather than in the form of a written testimony or diary entry as many of HPL's other stories are. There's a notable lack of the elaborate purple prose this time, possibly because this is supposed to be an actual person speaking in an actual Boston bar*, and nobody talks about being chased down "illimitable corridors of eldritch phantasy" in real life. Well, you'd hope not...

As well as the mention of ghouls, there is a further similarity with The Hound in that all the characters in the story are apparently members of a community of macabre art enthusiasts. The Spanish artist, Goya, is mentioned yet again in this tale, among the classic examples. Perhaps St John and his friend would have benefited from selling their ancient estate in England and moving to Boston to join this group. If they grew tired of that society, I'm sure Richard Upton Pickman could have introduced them to some of his more interesting "underground" friends...

Again, like last time, we have a situation where macabre art is enjoyable for the protagonist -- even something of an addiction -- to the point of him going out of his way to see an exclusive tour of some more "extreme" examples which are shunned by the more respectable members of Boston society. But, once shit starts getting a little too real he screams like a girl and cuts off all contact with Mr Pickman. However, he seems to come away from it all fairly unscathed for a Lovecraft protagonist. An aversion to taking the subway is pretty good as far as lasting psychological damage is concerned!

There's nothing at all related to The Necronomicon in this tale, but we are exposed to some of Lovecraft's fixation on colonial New England and especially the Puritans of the early 18th century and the associated art, architecture and superstitions of the era -- particularly that of witches and witchcraft. The tour of the Boston backstreets into progressively older styles of buildings is something that we will see again in more of Lovecraft's city-based tales. We're also shown a glimpse into what might be Lovecraft's own fear of underground passageways and catacombs, and the potential inhabitants thereof.

I quite liked the revelation that ghouls are real and tangible and live beneath us (or at least beneath Boston), though also, potentially, among us, as ghoul-babies are apparently selectively cradle-swapped with human babies, so ghouls can both infiltrate human society while simultaneously bringing human babies into their fold. It's also interesting to note that ghouls are mentioned as being essentially a sub-species of human, rather than either a form of living dead or a separate "monster" species. This is quite different indeed from the more supernatural terror of The Hound. I had actually forgotten, since I last read this tale, that Lovecraft's ghouls do actually ambush and kill living humans. I had somehow misremembered them as being friendly and that the only horrifying thing about them was their diet (i.e. dead humans).


So, here are some questions:

1. What do you think of the style of writing -- a one-sided conversation? Would it be better if it were delivered as a written letter, as in Lovecraft's other tales, or if it were a proper two-way conversation, with Eliot actually responding to Thurber's wild account?

2. Why do you think Thurber is so fascinated by the macabre, yet when confronted with macabre as reality, he wants nothing more to do with any of it? Is this a similar theme to the protagonists of The Hound?

3. In the story, we are given some descriptions of some of the paintings that Pickman shows to Thurber in his house. Which one of these is your favourite and why?

4. Do you think it's wise to take coffee black? ¬_¬

5. Do you find this story scary?



*I am guessing the bar is actually a speakeasy, as this story takes place during the Prohibition era
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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Sep 03, 2018 3:25 pm

Spoiler
I think you've covered off a number of the points I was going to raise Doug - among the notes (or rather aides memoires) I took during reading were "naturalistic - flow of conversation", "Goya mentioned again, as in The Hound" and then a bit that amused me about the idea of swarming foreigners and 'Dagoes" in particular :lol:

Overall I probably preferred reading this one as opposed to The Hound as I felt the narrative flowed a lot more naturally not being forced into a Gothic homage and as to the first question I thought it worked really well, actually. I quite enjoyed the image of this Thurber gradually relaying his tale to a companion while bolstering himself with various restoratives. And I don't think we miss Eliot's responses, I'm not sure what they would add really.

I actually didn't really get the sense - and it's possible I'm wrong here as it was the first time I'd read it - but I didn't get the impression that their art club was devoted to the macabre, indeed both Thurber and Pickman seem at pains to explain how people were appalled when he did start to exhibit his stranger works, which Thurber found tame, and obviously he then found that he did have limits in that respect. I also see our protagonist as someone who prides himself on not being faint of heart and curious as to the darker side of life and its mysteries, rather than being a devotee of the macabre like Pickman and The Hound's protagonists. With them I think they only found their limit when their lives were in immediate danger, whereas Thurber was horrified by paintings and would likely have "cut" Pickman upon leaving the house even had he not had a (sort of) confrontation with the ghouls. The idea that what was depicted might be representative of reality was abhorrent to him.

The subway painting sounded intriguing. Of them all that was probably the one I'd have been most interested to see in reality, though I enjoyed all the descriptions.

Coffee can be taken black - as someone with a lactose intolerance I'm often forced to do so when out and about, although sugar is a must to take off the bitter edge :)

Again, not a story I found particularly scary, though I did think it was good and overall the better of the two we've read so far.

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Mantis » Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:25 pm

Spoiler
The style of having a narrator recount the story and then having another character within it delivering various lines of dialogue to explain things even further is something that Lovecraft does a few times in his stories. Alongside the general style of his writing I think it requires a little more attention to be paid, but it isn't all that hard to follow if you're reading intently. What it does do though, I think, is add an interesting layer of doubt into the whole story and actually makes the narrator unreliable. How is it that the narrator is always able to so accurately recall such specific conversations where another character has explained something to them in such detail? Maybe they just have a good memory, or perhaps they're embellishing things a little; and if they're embellishing that part of the story then it begs the question of what else are they embellishing? Perhaps he's recounting things how he wants to believe them because he was terrified and not thinking clearly at the time? So his mind made the connection from being taken down a dark cellar with a few paintings to clearly thinking the beasts were real and that it wasn't just rats coming up from the well.

Given what we know about Lovecraft's fictional world, obviously to us it is likely that the photograph of the Ghoul was real, that Pickman is really seeking them out to better study and paint them, perhaps he even has witnessed the scenes of death and carnage when they hunt which has so vividly informed his paintings. But on the basis of what is revealed in this story alone; what are the chances that Pickman is just a rather morbid individual with a taste for the Gothic, and he is reclusive because he knows that his paintings would be shunned? He has ancestors who were burned for witchcraft, perhaps he's rightfully cautious to reveal his darkest curiosities to the public; and maybe that's all they are, curiosities and a twisted imagination based on old ghost stories. The only thing in the story that actually backs up the possibility of the Ghoul's being real is the photograph at the end, which the narrator has handily burned and can't offer as evidence.

What else supports the notion that this story is just the over-active imagination of a man whose fear of sinister paintings, dark alleyways and cellars got the better of him? Well, he's telling his tale whilst knocking back booze at a bar. It's a good little horror story to rile people up with over a few drinks don't you think?

Like the narrator, though for different reasons, I want the Ghouls to be real. Whereas for the narrator I feel like he's willing them to be real because, in his own words, he's "no mollycoddle", and would prefer to think that his scary experience was owed to the beasts really scuttling up that well; I want them to be real because it makes for a better horror story and makes the world that Lovecraft was building all the more interesting.

1. See above. I like this style because it throws a few new questions into the mix. It also doesn't read all that differently from one of his more typical 'written account' stories.
2. I think the big difference between this and The Hound is that the narrator in The Hound is seemingly cursed by his unhealthy quest for morbid artifacts, whereas this narrator is more in line with one such as from The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward, where he witnesses seemingly awful things but never actively commits any heinous acts himself* and so is spared the grizzly ending. In essence, this narrator got out before he went too far, whereas for people like St John. and the narrator from The Hound, they were doomed as soon as they succumbed to the temptation to start robbing amulets from graves.
3. Most of the paintings described were all of a very similar nature. I did really like the one depicting the regular family with the Ghoul child resembling Pickman though. It showed just how twisted his mind was, that he either believed he was or yearned to be the offspring of Ghouls placed into a human family. Even if it isn't as macabre as that, it's a nice little metaphor for how he saw himself as different from society, never entirely fitting in because of his dark interests.
4. Yes. But only good coffee where you can taste the flavours. I drink instant coffee with a light splash of milk. But instant is best avoided, if you're wise.
5. Not so much scary, but I do think this one is very interesting as it manages to conjour up all this dark imagery simply from one man showing another a few paintings. There is no real overt horror that I find scary in it.

*Not entirely true, the narrator in TCCOCDW does do some pretty horrific things, but he's never the main architect of their endeavours.

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Gibby » Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:50 pm

Spoiler
I loved this story and thought it flowed really well. Like Sly, I didn't get the impression that the Art Club was specifically about the macabre. More that they were a general art club with a certain tolerance for the macabre in the same way a snooty literature club might have a certain tolerance for fantasy.

I like the style of the narrator seemingly telling someone this story in real time. The lack of replies from Eliot serves to make his telling seem more frantic, and I did chuckle at the image of him shakily refilling his glass from the tumbler whilst ranting about a scary picture he saw :lol:

That said, I think he is a solid fellow (a veteran of the Great War from his references to France.) I think we have to remember that Lovecraft always assumed that simply finding out the existence of horrors beyond our reckoning would be the most terrifying aspect of any monster encounter, rather than the monster itself.

The descriptions of the Ghouls and the paintings were masterfully written. I liked best the final one that looked like it was poised to leap out of the scene for a "juicier morsel" as I believe it was written.

I can only surmise that Eliot was known to be intolerant to dairy, unless Thurber is just so fanatically fond of taking his coffee black that he is driven to violence if he sees others that don't :lol:

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Gibby » Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:51 pm

Say, Mantis, who is Pickford? ;)

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Sep 03, 2018 7:04 pm

The possibility of an unreliable narrator is an interesting take Mantis (I know you were floating the idea rather than ascribing to it personally per se), and whether or not that was the intent it raises intriguing questions.

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Mantis » Mon Sep 03, 2018 7:10 pm

I doubt it was intended on Lovecraft's part, given that for the most part his stories don't usually have that much subtext to them. But when you consider that all of his narrators are always psychologically scarred, you've got to consider the possibility that some of them might just be letting their trauma fill in the gaps for them.

What if in most of his stories the characters are just suffering from schizophrenia, depression, PTSD or are just plain mad, and none of these ghoulish things ever happened?

He was writing pulp horror, so I know that's not the case, but looking back on it a century later it's interesting to see how that theory can fit into certain stories.
Gibby wrote:
Mon Sep 03, 2018 6:51 pm
Say, Mantis, who is Pickford? ;)
Woops. -_-

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:23 pm

Also, reading the wiki, apparently there's a character in Fallout 4 based on Pickman who lives in a house with similar overtones. I don't remember that one, anyone else?

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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Stormbringer » Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:58 pm

Spoiler
Good observation from Gibby that Thurber is a WW1 veteran (along with Eliot) and has thus seen plenty of horror and carnage, which no doubt has impacted his mental state.

It's an interesting idea, Mantis -- the whole PTSD thing -- and I did actually write out a post last week (which I deleted) where I tried to suggest that the narrator of The Hound was the one who actually murdered St John (probably chopped him into bits with a shovel the same way he did with that vulture) and also the family in Rotterdam -- he killed them all. All the flappings and bayings and scratchings and muttering in Dutch were all in his head; he just imagined that St John heard them too and St John just played along as he thought it all part of some macabre joke. It's quite amusing if you read the story in that light, actually. However, I deleted it as I thought it was perhaps stretching things a bit, but in light of what Mantis says, it could still be a credible reading if one wanted to completely rationalise the mythos and not take any of the fantastical elements literally.

My favourite painting in Pickman's house is also the Subway Accident. The first time I read the story I remember being quite chilled by how I imagined that painting to look. Though, this time around I have to say I was a little creeped out by the painting of a ghoulish child with Pickman's features, listening to his "father" read the Scriptures in the family he'd been planted into.

Here is where I am going to jump in and say: "SPOILERZ! Pickman actually is a ghoul! This is revealed in one of HPL's Dreamlands tales (The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath), where Pickman has transformed completely into a canine-faced, rubbery-skinned, flesh-eating creature and is something of a leader of their kind. The question is, how did Pickman manage to convince humans that he was once human? Was he deliberately planted into a human family (with the real human baby named Richard Upton Pickman now living as a ghoul in the graveyards and catacombs of Boston), or are ghouls just very good at impersonating humans? In Dream-Quest, Pickman remembers a little English, it says, but has mostly lost it since he has been living among his own kind for so long since his disappearance from Boston. I suspect the painting of the ghoulish boy sitting in the home of the Puritan family is actually an ancestor of Richard's from way back.

It does make me wonder who Pickman's "father" is, though, the one who still lives in Salem, even after Pickman's disappearance, and is the current owner of Pickman's painting entitled Ghoul Feeding that nobody wants to exhibit or buy. Does he know the truth about his son? Is he in on it? Has the Pickman family had dealings with the ghouls since the late seventeenth century, when his ancestor has hanged in Salem as a witch? That's what I'm guessing; they've been a family of ghoul collaborators for many generations.
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Re: The H.P. Lovecraft Appreciation Society

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Sep 03, 2018 10:15 pm

Stormbringer wrote:
Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:58 pm
Spoiler
Good observation from Gibby that Thurber is a WW1 veteran (along with Eliot) and has thus seen plenty of horror and carnage, which no doubt has impacted his mental state.

It's an interesting idea, Mantis -- the whole PTSD thing -- and I did actually write out a post last week (which I deleted) where I tried to suggest that the narrator of The Hound was the one who actually murdered St John (probably chopped him into bits with a shovel the same way he did with that vulture) and also the family in Rotterdam -- he killed them all. All the flappings and bayings and scratchings and muttering in Dutch were all in his head; he just imagined that St John heard them too and St John just played along as he thought it all part of some macabre joke. It's quite amusing if you read the story in that light, actually. However, I deleted it as I thought it was perhaps stretching things a bit, but in light of what Mantis says, it could still be a credible reading if one wanted to completely rationalise the mythos and not take any of the fantastical elements literally.

My favourite painting in Pickman's house is also the Subway Accident. The first time I read the story I remember being quite chilled by how I imagined that painting to look. Though, this time around I have to say I was a little creeped out by the painting of a ghoulish child with Pickman's features, listening to his "father" read the Scriptures in the family he'd been planted into.

Here is where I am going to jump in and say: "SPOILERZ! Pickman actually is a ghoul! This is revealed in one of HPL's Dreamlands tales (The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath), where Pickman has transformed completely into a canine-faced, rubbery-skinned, flesh-eating creature and is something of a leader of their kind. The question is, how did Pickman manage to convince humans that he was once human? Was he deliberately planted into a human family (with the real human baby named Richard Upton Pickman now living as a ghoul in the graveyards and catacombs of Boston), or are ghouls just very good at impersonating humans? In Dream-Quest, Pickman remembers a little English, it says, but has mostly lost it since he has been living among his own kind for so long since his disappearance from Boston. I suspect the painting of the ghoulish boy sitting in the home of the Puritan family is actually an ancestor of Richard's from way back.

It does make me wonder who Pickman's "father" is, though, the one who still lives in Salem, even after Pickman's disappearance, and is the current owner of Pickman's painting entitled Ghoul Feeding that nobody wants to exhibit or buy. Does he know the truth about his son? Is he in on it? Has the Pickman family had dealings with the ghouls since the late seventeenth century, when his ancestor has hanged in Salem as a witch? That's what I'm guessing; they've been a family of ghoul collaborators for many generations.
Spoiler
I did read that in the same wiki I referenced above, but (not knowing the subsequent story in question) hadn't thought that Pickman was a ghoul at the time of this story, I guess I thought that perhaps over the years he'd consorted with them more and more until he became like them. I guess I also wondered why if he was a ghoul he would have shot one that came up the well during Thurber's visit (or so we assume... maybe he didn't? Or maybe there is little or no feeling of kinship among their kind?)

Although reading your post above does throw a new light on a passage in this story, where Thurber is recounting what the doctor (sorry, I don't recall the name) said about Pickman's features starting to look inhuman. He scoffs at the idea, brushing it off as the flights of fancy of someone recently obsessed with anatomy who'd been spooked by the eeriness of a painting. But in light of what is revealed in that later story, perhaps we assume the doctor had the right of it all along.

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