Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown Page #10

---

there is to be sure a kind of racist or xenophobic under current to that story

but I think it's very subtle and very indirectly expressed

I'm now begin to think it must be one of Lovecraft's one or two best stories

and he does something that you don't see a whole lot of Lovecraft doing: writing action scenes

I still think the escape from the Gilman Hotel is a marvelous action scene and running across

and running into the parade of horrific frog-fish things

it's it's just wonderful and not the sort of thing that he did a lot

Lovecraft never formally submitted "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" for publication

partially, Lovecraft marginalized himself

cause he was never become merry of his own work

but I think readers and critics neglected to see

the imagination worked behind what he wrote

it would be a few more years before modern tastes turned in his favor

at the end of 1935, New York agent Julius Schwartz

was able to sound the previously rejected "At The Mountains Of Madness";

thanks to the efforts of Donald Wandrei,

"The Shadow Out Of Time", sold soon after,

giving Lovecraft his highest combined payday a total of 595 dollars

by the end of 1936, just as success seemed a possibility

Lovecraft's health began to diminish

in many ways I think if Lovecraft had preserved his health

he would have become a well-known writer in the 40s and 50s, if he had lived that long

I think Lovecraft really dead at the pinnacle of his talent

Lovecraft had been suffering from a small collection of ailments, including digestive trouble

by the time he submitted to a doctor's diagnosis, the cancer has spread through his small intestine

H.P.Lovecraft died on the morning of March 15th, 1937

he was 46 and a half years old

although he knew himself celebrated in a small circle

he never broke through to the public in any sense at all, and

therefore when he died he would have been justified and thinking himself as a failure or as a very very obscure writer

if it weren't for Lovecraft's disciples he would have been forgotten

it was people like Derleth and Robert Block and so forth that kept Lovecraft alive and

they went out and actually got his books published

in 1939, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei

two of Lovecraft's most earnest supporters

achieved what known had been able to do in Lovecraft's life time:

they founded "Arkham House" and released a selections of stories entitled

"The Outsider And Others" by HP Lovecraft

well "Arkham House" came into being virtually out of Lovecraft's death, I mean

almost immediately on the news of Lovecraft's death reaching August Derleth

it existed initially to publish Lovecraft

and then continued with an astonishing record as a small press

falling down a bit and decided to do more Lovecraft and then indeed to do

and more of the other great writers form Weird Tales Fritz Leiber for instance And Donald Wandrei himself

you know the "Arkham House" books became, for the most part incredibly valuable incredibly quickly that was sought after by book collectors

not because they were rare, but because they were good

for certainly over a decade or more there was no publisher other than the Arkham House

specialized in mainly supernatural horror and

very small snatch in science fiction

it was a cheap, disposable literature

and "Arkham House" was one of the very first places

to actually say some of these stuff needs to come out, respectably

since the success of "Arkham House"

many writer have continued to expand "The Cthulhu Mythos"

in fact this was a practice Lovecraft encouraged when he was alive

it's part of the Lovecraft game:

it's you know, it's like, you get it, and you want to add to it and passed it on

and it's been part of the Lovecraft's game from the very beginning

that Firtz Lieber's, the Bloch's, umall of these people and August Derleth

they took a little of this, took the story added to it, passed it on

and so then we started doing it

the problem when I was a teenager was, you know I read Lovecraft, I thought, this is how you'll do it

but unfortunately what I meant by this to myself was, you know, this is how you limited it

and were still, I'm the one never been more than twenty miles away from Liverpool, in England

I've set these stories in Massachusetts,you know, in Arkham and places like that, in Kingsport

and it was painfully obvious that I've never been very far from Liverpool

particularly when the, the rustics opened their mouth

if you read story like "The Mist", King's novel, that's pure Lovecraft

it's about these tentacle things breaking through from some other dimension

and terrorizing grocery store guests in Maine

that's pure Lovecraft, I am sure

I did this story called "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar"

in which I have two Loveraftian spices complaining about Lovecraft as a writer

but the truth is, that we only parody things that have life

there is no point in parodying something dead, there is no point in parodying something in which one has no interest

and there is no point parodying or making fun of something that doesn't matter

and almost 100 years after his death, Lovecraft still matters

and it is a passion that continued to this day

even in the face of criticism

well, there's always gonna be a kind of snobbery about supernatural horror fiction I think

you know, I mean the writer needs to be dead for maybe 100 years before he is fully taken and associated

every creator that dwells in the genre, must assume

his work will not be appreciated as if he was doing straight stuff

it's been ghettoized

it's really not the proper the proper occupation of a serious writer

I mean look at what happened with Stephen King with that war with him years ago

people, I mean they started to put him down, cause he wasn't writing serious stuff

it's very easy for us now to forget

in a world in which you know, as a fantasy horror science fiction whatever the hell I am, author

my books are gonna come out in the hum back just like anybody else is and

they gonna be on shelves like anybody else is, that didn't used to be the case

but I think probably at the moment we saw Lovecraft

in the Penguin Modern Classics I think

there is no question whatsoever that is fully established and about time too

he is being translate into something like 25 languages around the world, from Czech to Polish

to Japanese, Korean there's a Bengali edition

a lot of people had kind of being introduced to Lovecraft without even knowing it was Lovecraft, you know, you've got things like

you know, "Hellboy", which is you know which is borrowing very heavily you know from the Lovecraft mythos

and even things like "Pirates Of The Caribbean", Davy Jones looking like you know, he had just crawl out of Lovecraft's

you know, looks like "Cthulhu"

you look around these days and you got the plush Cthulhu phenomenon

you get Cthulhu slippers, you get funny Cthulhu hats

one of the things I think is so amazing is, I've met a group of people who

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes