Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown Page #8

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their lack of payment convinced Lovecraft that he should never stray far from the known quantity of "Weird Tales"

they would be the only magazine he formally submitted to for the rest of his life

during a 1928's excursion to Massachusetts, Lovecraft happened on a ring of stones

oldest of all are the great rings of rough-hewn stone columns on the hill-tops

more generally attributed to the Indians than to the settlers

along with talk of witch blood, the eerie cries of the whippoorwills

and the ever present Old Ones, Lovecraft shaped "The Dunwich Horror"

it was in the township of Dunwich, that Wilbur Whateley was born on the 2nd of February 1913

Lavinia Whateley had no known husband, but according to the custom of the region

made no attempt to disavow the child

there is an inbreeding between, you know, gods and man, and they produced

you know, whatever you produced, you got this half-god half-man thing

Wilbur Whateley's grandfather is old wizard Whateley

he's an eccentric New England hick, what's his motivation is he trying to end the world

because he is some kind of sadie and nihilist, no, he just needs a few extra bucks

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And Yog-Sothoth agrees to give him a pirate blossom fee to pimps out his daughter to him

At the age of 10 Wilbur Whateley attained an unnatural size, that of a fully grown man

his facial aspect, too, was remarkable for its maturity

exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy

there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips

large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair

and oddly elongated ears

what troubled the residents of Dunwich even more

was a number of cattle purchased by Old Whateley without ever increasing the size of his stock

and the dreaded something being kept in the upper part of the Whateley farm house

they are twins when they were born to Lavinia and that, you know

one is a normal, mostly normal looking, you know, 8 foot tall goat-ish looking man

and a half thing, you know, an invisible half brother which is much more like his father

soon, a mysterious thunder was heard in the woods

livestock and eventually entire family's disappeared

and Wilbur Whateley was discovered breaking into Miskatonic library

in search of a complete "Necronomicon", one that contains the rites for the Old Ones' return

Yog-Sothoth knows the gateYog-Sothoth is the gate

Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate

past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth

"The Dunwich Horror" earned Lovecraft his biggest pay day from "Weird Tales": 240 dollars

but again, Lovecraft failed to capitalize on his success, and would not write for more than a year

this time Lovecraft's reticent was due to a desire for artistic growth

There are my Poe pieces and my Dunsany pieces, but alas, where are my Lovecraft pieces

Lovecraft's writing on the surface appears to be imitations of other writers

if you see the early stories, there is a much more constrain sense of scope

and towards the end of his life he was gaining as a writer I think, and gaining as an artist and as a human being

and his view of the world became more ample

and I think when Lovecraft shed the influence of Dunsany

and started writing like Lovecraft that's when things take off

he was writing much better fiction, he was witting much more contemporary fiction

in many senses, I mean in the sense that the language was more contemporary and the settings were more contemporary

you can even see how some of his descriptions has started becoming more specific, you know

they go from being "unnamable of seen things" to being described as

a cucumber body with thrones or tentacles with proboscis

you know he really started relishing that and

he started to give a sense of dignity and history to these creatures that I think is unique

with Providence as a life line, Lovecraft was emboldened to venture further and further in art and in life

hHis correspondence engaged in healthy discussions

on race, man and civilization

the more Lovecraft exposes himself to other opinions and places

the more his views and phobias began to soften

this self improvement did not extent to his marriage, however

since his return to Providence, Sonia has seen very little of her husband

while she remained in New York for the sake of a career, Lovecraft favored his cherished city

on March 25th 1929, after constant pleads from Sonia, the Lovecrafts filed for a divorce

Sonia went on to Europe, a place Lovecraft had always long to visit but never did

later she moved to California where she remarried and led a full life until 1972

in 1930, Lovecraft had begun work on a new tale

by the time it was published in August of 1931, the changes in Lovecraft could be glimpsed on the page

well you need to celebrate "The Whisperer In Darkness"

because the astronomers now have taken the planetary status away from Pluto

which is to say, you know, Yuggoth, Black Yuggoth on the rim

and in fact, "The Whisperer In Darkness"

this was Lovecraft's reaction to the discovery of a new planet

after a rash of unprecedented floods in Vermont

misshaped cadavers washed up along the river banks

they were pinkish things about five feet long;

with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins

or membraneous wings and several sets of articulated limbs

Albert N Wilmarth, of the Miskatonic University

begins to investigate the origins of these alien things

the blasphemies that appeared on earth, came from the dark planet Yuggoth

but this was itself merely the populous outpostof a frightful

interstellar race whose ultimate source

must lie far outside even the Einsteinian space-time continuum

it's actually one of Lovecraft's most restrained stories, there are very few that runs of agitates

most of it is done as a sense of letters, um, something I imagine

he probably learned, there's some example there from the novel Dracula, which he greatly admired

through the first hand contact with his colleague Henry Akeley,

Wilmarth learns of the dark intention behind the buzzing creatures

what Akeley deems are deadly danger, however turns out to be something else entirely

in the last stage of Lovecraft's career, when he began to write the best stories, in spite there being

what I called "inert" earlier, you can see him taking a different angle of vision

And masters of the heart what is known as "The Mythos"

"The Whisperer In Darkness", probably the first story in which one begins to see this shifting attitude

They are still frightening, and

and when their voices are recorded on tape ,they are intensely scary beings

but they may not be completely inimical to the human race

in fact the fungi from "Yuggoth" wish to expand man's senses

to enable his exploration of the cosmos and its secrets

this process however, involves removing the brain and placing it in a cylinder for the journey

all in the spirit of discovery, but hardly harmless

it's all a scam it's like people today that say, oh there is no problem with these lamofascism

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