 Horror/Scary: August 05, 2015 Issue [#7132] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: Lovecraftian Horror Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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Lovecraftian Horror
Author Stephen King said: "Now that time has given us some perspective on his work, I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."
If you've never read him, you're in for a treat. The man could describe the most terrifying scenes I've ever read.
So who is H.P.Lovecraft?
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, known as H. P. Lovecraft, was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction.
Born: August 20, 1890, Providence, RI. Died: March 15, 1937, Providence, RI.
Influenced by: Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, and H. G Wells, just to name a few.
Much of Lovecraft's influence is secondary, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many authors who would gain fame through their creations. Many of these writers also worked with Lovecraft on jointly-written stories. His more famous friends and collaborators include Robert Bloch, author of Psycho; Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian; and August Derleth, who codified and added to the Cthulhu Mythos.
Subsequent horror writers also heavily drew on Lovecraft's work. While many made direct references to elements of Lovecraft's mythos, either to draw on its associations or to acknowledge his influence, many others drew on the feel and tone of his work without specifically referring to mythos elements. Some have said that Lovecraft, along with Edgar Allan Poe, is the most influential author on modern horror.
By the late 20th century, Lovecraft had become something of a pop-culture icon, resulting in countless reinterpretations of and references to his work. Many of these fall outside the sphere of Lovecraftian horror, but represent Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture.
Lovecraft's work, mostly published in pulp magazines, never had the same sort of influence on literature as his high-modernist literary contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, his impact is still broadly and deeply felt in some of the most celebrated authors of contemporary fiction. The fantasias of Jorge Luis Borges display a marked resemblance to some of Lovecraft's more dream influenced work. Borges also dedicated his story, "There Are More Things" to Lovecraft, though he also considered Lovecraft "an involuntary parodist of Poe." The controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq has also cited Lovecraft as an influence and has written a lengthy essay on Lovecraft entitled H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life in which he refers to the Cthulhu cycle as "the great texts".
Lovecraft's penchant for dreamscapes and for the biologically macabre has also profoundly influenced visual artists such as Jean "Moebius" Giraud and H. R. Giger. Giger's book of paintings which led directly to many of the designs for the film Alien was named Necronomicon, the name of a fictional book in several of Lovecraft's mythos stories. Dan O'Bannon, the original writer of the Alien screenplay, has also mentioned Lovecraft as a major influence on the film. With Ronald Shusett, he would later write Dead & Buried and Hemoglobin, both of which were admitted pastiches of Lovecraft.
From the 1950s onwards, in the era following Lovecraft's death, Lovecraftian horror truly became a subgenre, not only fueling direct cinematic adaptations of Poe and Lovecraft, but providing the foundation upon which many of the horror films of the 1950s and 1960s were constructed. For instance Caltiki - the Immortal Monster has been considered Lovecraftian in subject matter and approach.
Ten Things You Didn't Know About Lovecraft
1. Both his mother and father were separately committed to the same mental institution
Winfield Scott Lovecraft was committed to Butler Hospital after being diagnosed with psychosis when HP Lovecraft was only three years old. He died in 1898, when HP was eight. To this day, rumours persist that Winfield had syphilis, but neither HP nor his mother ever displayed symptoms.
Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft was later committed to Butler in 1919. She remained in close correspondence with her son for two years, until she died of complications after surgery.
2. He wanted to be a professional astronomer but never finished high school
As a sickly child, Lovecraft only attended school sporadically and was essentially self-educated. He was drawn to astronomy and chemistry, and the writings of gothic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe. Due to what he termed a “nervous breakdown”, Lovecraft never finished high school and instead only dabbled informally in his passions.
3. He rarely went out in public during daylight
Lovecraft would only leave the house after sunset, staying up late to study science and astronomy and to read and write. He would routinely sleep late into the day, developing the pale and gaunt bearing he is now known for. Lovecraft’s mother reportedly called him “grotesque” during his childhood and warned him to hide inside so people couldn’t see him. In 1926, he wrote:
"I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous - that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn’t."
4. He was best buddies with Harry Houdini
In 1924, Lovecraft was asked by the editor of Weird Tales to ghostwrite a column by magician Harry Houdini. After hearing from Houdini his apparently true tale about being kidnapped by an Egyptian tour guide and encountering the deity who inspired the Great Sphinx of Giza, Lovecraft concluded it was complete rubbish - but settled for a big advance and wrote the story. “Under the Pyramids” was published later that year, much to Houdini’s delight, who kept seeking out work for Lovecraft until his death in 1926.
5. He wrote an estimated 100,000 letters in his lifetime
If this figure is correct, it would place HP Lovecraft as second only to French writer Voltaire. Lovecraft regularly wrote to friends, family and enthusiastic amateur writers, many of whom adopted themes, style and even characters from his work. His most regular correspondents were fellow writers Robert Bloch (author of Psycho), Henry Kuttner (The Dark World), Robert E Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and the poet Samuel Loveman.
6. He really didn’t like sex
After his death, Sonia Lovecraft told a Lovecraft scholar that he was a virgin when they married in 1924, aged 34. Before their marriage, Lovecraft reportedly bought numerous books about sex and studied them in order to perform on their wedding night. Sonia later said she had to initiate all sexual activity, saying:
"The very mention of the word sex seemed to upset him. He did, however, make the statement once that if a man cannot be or is not married at the greatest height of his sex-desire, which in his case, he said, was at age 19, he became somewhat unappreciative of it after he passed thirty. I was somewhat shocked but held my peace."
7. He suffered night terrors
No, not nightmares: HP Lovecraft began experiencing the parasomnia ‘night terrors’ from the age of six. Night terrors cause the sufferer to physically move or scream to escape waking dreams, and are estimated to affect 3% of adults. HP dreamed of what he called “nightgaunts” which later appeared in his books as thin, black, and faceless humanoids that tickle their victims into submission.
Lovecraft’s affliction fed into his dreamlike, nightmarish prose, but also fuelled it. In a 1918 letter, he wrote:
Do you realise that to many men it makes a vast and profound difference whether or not the things about them are as they appear?... If TRUTH amounts to nothing, then we must regard the phantasma of our slumbers just as seriously as the events of our daily lives...
8. He inspired Batman, Black Sabbath, South Park and more
Or Batman’s city, at least. Batman puts his dastardly criminals away in Arkham Asylum, Arkham being the name of the fictional city HP Lovecraft created as a setting for many of his stories. Cthulu appeared in an episode of South Park and killed Justin Bieber. Black Sabbath’s album Behind the Wall of Sleep is named for a Lovecraft short story. The Book of the Dead, discovered in a cabin in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films, is based on Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. Today you can find the Necronomicon in all good bookstores, without unleashing a zombie apocalypse.
9. HP Lovecraft isn’t buried under his headstone
Lovecraft died of cancer of the small intestine in 1937. In keeping with his lifelong fascination with science, he kept a detailed diary of his eventually mortal illness. When he died, Lovecraft was buried in Swan Point Cemetery and listed on his mother’s family’s monument. This wasn’t enough for Lovecraft’s fans: in 1977, a group funded and installed a separate headstone. In 1997, a particularly avid fan attempted to dig up Lovecraft’s corpse under the headstone, but gave up after finding nothing from digging three feet.
10. Cthulhu is pronounced ‘khlul-loo’ (because we’ve all wondered at some point)
In a 1934 letter to amateur writer Duane W Rimel, Lovecraft explained how to pronounce the name of his alien creation:
The name of the hellish entity was invented by beings whose vocal organs were not like man’s, hence it has no relation to the human speech equipment. The syllables were determined by a physiological equipment wholly unlike ours, hence could never be uttered perfectly by human throats... The actual sound – as nearly as any human organs could imitate it or human letters record it – may be taken as something like Khlûl’-hloo, with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The u is about like that in full; and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, hence the h represents the guttural thickness.
Until next time,
willwilcox
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Ask And Answer: this is the section of the newsletter where you the readers get to participate, ask questions and reply to what you have read. It is of the utmost importance that we, as editors, know what you are feeling and thinking. If you have an idea for a newsletter, or an interesting story to tell, just send it in and your editors will address it. I get lots of fan mail, but since it's for the Horror/Scary Newsletter I simply call them . . . .
DEAD LETTERS
artinum
There is no such thing as Truth. Some things are true, but often subjectively. It's "true" that I am a writer, except sometimes I don't write (curse you, sleep!) and, more complex than that, the concept of "I" is a bit woolly. The bits that physically make up "me" are constantly being swapped with other bits, and it's not even clear which bits are "me". What about my hair? Once it's cut, is it still part of me? If not, was it part of me while it was still on my head? If it's still my hair after it's cut, when does it stop being mine?
Even a simple statement like "it is half past seven" is only briefly true. Mere minutes later, it's not even remotely true - and time zones are always a nuisance.
But there are some absolute Truths. The only things that are always true - logical axioms, and tautologies. "All unmarried men are bachelors" - true. "The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees" - true. These truths are self evident, and utterly boring. We don't write about those, because no-one wants to read about them.
So write lies. Write glorious, outlandish works of fiction. That's what most of our "truth" is, anyway.
So true . . . and well said. Thank you, my friend, and oh, is this your hair?
Quick-Quill 
I love taking a true story and using it as a basis for a more interesting one. My first MS is about an unsolved murder along the Columbia River in OR. It was great fun to write and I'v been thinking on going back to do a rewrite since I've come across new information. My novel is based on a true event. I took the event and began asking why? Its been a well loved book. News stories, family stories, things we read about are all fodder for a new story. Keep writing.
A good thought, but another good thought is, I was only in Oregon for a few days, please stop trying to solve this murder. 
Specter 
W.D., it’s not a question of philosophy but of reality. Willingly or unwillingly, people have been deceived for generations. Truth is close to impossible in this make-believe world.
We’re writing fiction while we are living fiction, never to learn truth. We think to know the truth, but we don’t. Human beings are an enigma brought forth out of the cradle of time. And time keeps passing by without explanation in why we are here. I think absolute truth would be unbearable to mortal beings because they desire no more than what they can see or hear. This has been their downfall from the beginning. Our first instinct was to care. Than reaching maturity, knowledge. So has our knowledge failed us because of misunderstanding the life-force? Truth delves right into the matter of life. But a vicious tongue unravels many lies--lies that lead to war.
We the people have allowed ourselves to hide the truth from ourselves, whether it has been spoken to us, or if we have spoken in repetition.
Ever since 1984 I was such a seeker of truth and my anger melted me into tears.
I am angry myself. Where are the philosophers of our age, the leaders, the heroes?
LJPC - the tortoise
Hi Will, I guess truth, like most other things, is subjective. I love the truth, so it's too bad there can't be scientific ways to "prove" everything. Then everyone would have to agree - and no more fighting. But we all know that's impossible...
~ Laura
pinkbarbie
Sometimes the truth can be more terrifying than fiction. Once again, thank you for featuring my story 
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