The H.P. Lovecraft Reading Club

[Stormbringer]

Well, shall we do another?

I'm thinking...

1. Somebody mentioned the Shining Trapezohedron was first made on a place called "dark Yuggoth"? Where is that?
2. Does anything else interesting come from Yuggoth?
3. Who are these "Old Ones" who brought the Shining Trapezohedron to earth?
4. Blake mentioned The Haunter is an "avatar of Nyarlathotep". Who is that again?
5. Creepy cults in old churches -- can we have more of that please?
6. What was that about "crinoid things in Antarctica?" Who are/were they?
7. Magical glowing stones containing secrets of the universe are cool -- can we do another?
8. Ah, I love a good timely catastrophic bolt of lightning! More please!
9. There's nothing better than wandering through the back-streets of old cities, looking for the eldritch secrets they may conceal...

[Sly Boots]

5 or 9 for me

[Snowy]

Happy to roll with the flow.

Another thing that struck me about Haunter was the seeming big deal about the distance. If I saw something from my window that interested me a couple of miles distant, I would not wait until it turned into an obsession to go and seek it out. I wonder if that is more telling about HPL the person who I believe was fairly sickly and had an aversion to people.

This was quite interesting as a random find.

[Sly Boots]

Happy to roll with the flow.

Another thing that struck me about Haunter was the seeming big deal about the distance. If I saw something from my window that interested me a couple of miles distant, I would not wait until it turned into an obsession to go and seek it out. I wonder if that is more telling about HPL the person who I believe was fairly sickly and had an aversion to people.

This was quite interesting as a random find.

I mean, he was American... ¬_¬

[Sly Boots]

This was quite interesting as a random find.

That's pretty interesting, particularly, for me, the part about night terrors - something I experienced quite regularly in adolescence and even to this day on rare occasions. On one such occasion during an episode, I saw something very much like the 'nightgaunts' he described standing over me.

[Snowy]

He really was batshit gaga though wasn't he?

[Sly Boots]

He really was batshit gaga though wasn't he?

The sad truth is that you don't have to be mad to be a horrible racist.

[Snowy]

It isn't just the racism though.

"Our modern worship of empty ideals is ludicrous. What does the condition of the rabble matter? All we need do is to keep it as quiet as we can. What is more important, is to perpetuate those things of beauty which are of real value because involving actual sense-impressions rather than vapid theories. "Equality" is a joke -- but a great abbey or cathedral, covered with moss, is a poignant reality. If (it) is for us to safeguard and preserve the conditions which produce great abbeys, and palaces, and picturesque walled town, and vivid sky-lines of steeples and domes, and luxurious tapestries, and fascinating books, paintings and statuary, and colossal organs and noble music, and dramatic deeds on embattled fields -- these are all there is of life: taken (sic) them away and we have nothing which a man of taste or spirit would care to live for. Take them away and our poets have nothing to sing -- our dreamers have nothing to dream about. The blood of a million men is well shed in producing one glorious legend which thrills posterity and it is not at all important why it was shed. A coat of arms won in a crusade is worth a thousand slavering compliments bandied about amongst a rabble.

Reform? Pish! We do no want reform! What would the world be without its scarlet and purple evil! Drama is born of conflict and violence...god! Shall we ever be such women as to prefer the blond-bearded warrior? The one sound power in the world is the power of a hairy muscular right arm!

Yah! How I spit upon this rotton (sic) age with its feeble comforts and thwarted energies -- its Freuds and Wilsons, Augustines and Heliogabali, -- rabbles and perversions! What these swine with their scruples and problems, changes and rebellions, need, is a long draught of blood from a foeman's skull on the battlements of a mountain fortalice!"

Utterly cuckoo. As to his claims in the passage following this one to be a viking berserker, or maybe descended from a Roman officer as he happens to like cheese ("But as a classical and ancient Latin, I enjoy cheese, which was a leading feature of the Graeco-Roman diet") when in reality he was a sickly individual and a recluse...

That said, I can happily put his personal politics aside and enjoy his work for what it is.

So - moar HPL direction please Doug.

[Stormbringer]

So if you had to choose between 5 and 9, guys, which one has the edge?

[Stormbringer]

Also:

The one sound power in the world is the power of a hairy muscular right arm!

I have read this letter before, as well as many others outlining his social theories and racial paranoia. He is certainly an interesting study in questionable mental health, but the quote about the hairy muscular right arm sounds like it was pulled directly from Ragnar Redbeard's Might Is Right, which I have no doubt that HPL read (it was published when he was 6) and very likely wholeheartedly agreed with.

To be fair to him, while HPL's views were extreme for the time, he did live in an age where such views were easily harboured and not readily opposed, and his own particular life circumstances and conditions would only have exacerbated such thoughts. And, given his family's mental health history, I would not be surprised if he was a little unhinged.

[Sly Boots]

So if you had to choose between 5 and 9, guys, which one has the edge?

We can't have both?

I'm happy either way honestly, if there's a particular standout choice for one over the other then go with that

[Stormbringer]

We could do both. Why not? Let's do a New York City tour.

We shall start with The Horror at Red Hook!

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/tex ... n/hrh.aspx

BEWARE! The xenophobia is strong with this one...

[Snowy]

Only whets the appetite more, for the fun we will have with the dissection

[Sly Boots]

Read this last night. Doug wasn't exaggerating

[Stormbringer]

Wow, that was quick! I better get reading...