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The course of H .P. Lovecraft's life was
altered by an unfortunate madness.

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In April of 1893, his father, a
commercial traveler from the vicinity of

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was on business in Chicago.

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It was there that Winfield Scott
Lovecraft experienced the general

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the insane.

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Winfield's violent hallucinations would
soon place him in Butler Hospital.

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His troubled wife, Susan Phillips
Lovecraft, was forced to return home to

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family in Providence, Rhode Island.

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With Susie was her two -year -old son,
Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

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Today, the man readers of weird fiction
know as H .P. Lovecraft is ranked

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alongside America's best writers.

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He defined the themes and obsessions of
20th century

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horror and as we chug on into the 21st
century, it doesn't seem to be going

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away. He let drop away all the trappings
of what is called horror and he moved

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into some narrative peculiar to himself.

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He invented his own genre, really.

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Lovecraft tells you...

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about the scale of man in the cosmos.

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So he is really the most articulate
about saying there is an indifference

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the ancient gods to man.

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Lovecraft takes that and ups the ante to
the cosmos.

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If you can think of a kind of
supernatural horror fiction, it's almost

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that at some point in his career,
Lovecraft applied himself to it. And

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got it right, as he often did, nobody
could beat him.

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Cthulhu.

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Azathoth.

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Yog -Sothoth.

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These are the unspeakable names of the
old ones.

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The very heart of Lovecraft's Cthulhu
mythos.

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A loosely connected canon which has gone
on to become one of literature's most

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influential creations.

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I don't know that Lovecraft ever sat
down initially and went, I'm going to

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a grand mythos.

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I think that, yes, it begins and then
everything else sort of fits in.

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It's a very complex sort of inbreeding
of mythologies and essentially what

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the pitch would be that things much
older than mankind, things much older

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Earth, are gazing upon us with
indifference.

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and cruelty.

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Those old ones were gone now, hidden in
distant wastes and dark places all over

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the world, until the time when the great
priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in

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the mighty city of R 'lyeh under the
waters, should rise and bring the earth

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again beneath his sway.

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Instead of it being that there are, you
know, demons coming from hell, there are

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these weird tentacled creatures coming
from other worlds.

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into ours and that they have been
banished and that they will return

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regain what was once theirs the old ones
are the universe the old ones are the

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cosmos they're that force beyond us that
we're incapable of controlling and

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they're that force they're that they're
the universe that is vaster than we can

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ever comprehend prior to lovecraft if
you read horror if you read ghost

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you always have a vision of a world
which is fundamentally hospitable God is

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looking after you. God is looking after
the good people.

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Good people will probably survive horror
stories or ghost stories or whatever.

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Lovecraft redefined things. He took it
away from the ghost story, away from the

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Gothic, and into the vision of a malign
world. The place

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surrounded.

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By evil, mad, horrible, monstrous things
always trying to get in, who frankly

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don't really care about her.

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But what led an old -world xenophobic
gentleman to write these tales of

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abominations and cosmic gods?

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Where bay and tranquil river blend, and
leafy hillsides rise, the spires of

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providence ascend against the ancient
skies.

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And in the narrow winding ways, the
climb o 'er slope and crest, the magic

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forgotten days may still be found to
rest.

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The Phillips House at 454 Angel Street.

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was a vestige of old American values.

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Lovecraft's family was very well -to
-do, and I believe they considered

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themselves to be of the Providence
aristocracy. The Phillips line goes back

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far in Providence history, all the way
as early as the late 17th century.

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The Lovecraft side originates in
England. He could trace that all the way

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to about the 15th century. There were
Lovecrafts or Lovecrofts in Devon.

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He was truly almost a Mayflower specimen
preserved

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in the formaldehyde of New England.

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He was an Anglophile. He was a guy that
definitely did not get laid much.

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And a guy that was an alien amongst us
in the sense that he was

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not a very masculine child.

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After Winfield's death from syphilis on
July 19, 1898, Young Howard was all

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Susie Lovecraft had left.

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She mothered her child, incessantly.

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So much so that she was known to make
friends stoop when walking hand in hand

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with her son, for fear his arm would be
pulled from its socket.

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Despite her over -attention, Susie
Lovecraft's near -puritanical views

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restrained any physical affections
toward her son.

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Lovecraft would later admit to his only
wife that this form of mothering was

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devastating to him.

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His grandfather, Whipple Phillips, was a
very impressive industrialist.

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Lovecraft remembers Whipple telling him
oral ghost stories at the age of four or

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five.

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He tutored him in a number of other
ways, trying to take an interest in his

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education.

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In the attic was an immense library,
presumably collected by his grandfather.

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And Lovecraft went up there as a boy
with a candle secretly and started

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all these old books and fell in love
with the 18th century.

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Lovecraft is more than a product of his
time. He's a product of a couple of

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centuries earlier because he was born
out of time.

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One of the important things for the 18th
century was the code of a gentleman, to

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live as a gentleman with dignity and
honesty and integrity.

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He read the literature of the 18th and
early 19th centuries and said, I want to

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be like those people. I want to be like
Alexander Pope, who wrote poetry just

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for the love of it.

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I've always had the subconscious feeling
that everything since the 18th century

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is unreal or illusory, a sort of...
grotesque nightmare or caricature.

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Lovecraft learned a lot in his
grandfather's house.

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In fact, all the learning that he had, I
think, came from there.

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His schooling was intermittent at best.
Apparently, he had various nervous

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maladies that kept him out of school.

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This was a time before education was
mandatory. You didn't have to send your

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child to school if you didn't want to.

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At the age of eight, he became filled
with a burning love of chemistry.

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Shortly thereafter, he discovered
astronomy, which I think was an even

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important influence. He says it was
through astronomy that he gained a sense

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the boundlessness of the universe and
the insignificance of humanity within

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cosmos.

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There's a phrase that generally I only
encounter it when reading or talking

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people like paleontologists or
geologists.

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um the concept of deep time which is
pretty alien to most people you know

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people tend to think of of history in
terms of years deep time is that time

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before before the comprehension of man
geological time is a way of thinking

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about it where you're working on a time
scale where you talk about things like

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mountains are pushed up and erode
continents shift species evolve and

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extinct but it's not really something
you can process humanity was limited the

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earth which made humanity itself small
and threatened and fragile so because

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he was a threatened and fragile being
himself he populated

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that emptiness with monsters

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frequent visits to the attic

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gave susie the impression that her son
was trying to hide from the world and

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others that he was a vulnerable child

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The relationship of Susie Lovecraft with
her son was problematical at best.

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Clearly she loved him, but I think
because of what had happened to her

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Lovecraft's father, who had died of
syphilis, I think she developed some

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love -hate relationship with Lovecraft,
called him hideous, said to a neighbor

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that he had a hideous face, and that's
why he wouldn't go outdoors much.

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Susie repeated these opinions enough
times that her son actually grew to

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them.

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Insecurity mixed with classical
tendencies segregated young Lovecraft

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others his age.

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But this solitary childhood only kindled
his imagination.

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I used to be tormented constantly with a
peculiar type of recurrent nightmare in

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which a monstrous race of entities
called by me Night Gone.

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You can snatch me up by the stomach and
carry me off through infinite leagues of

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black air over the towers of dead and
horrible cities with vast aggregations

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night black masonry embodying monstrous
perversions of geometrical laws.

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Feeding his taste for the macabre was
the recent discovery of tales by Edgar

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Allan Poe.

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Lovecraft is the most significant
descendant of Poe, and you can see that

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heritage most clearly in those early
stories that evoke effects such as those

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Telltale Heart, say.

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The Telltale Heart could have been
written by Lovecraft.

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He may have wanted to be a little like
Edgar Allan Poe, but he went in a whole

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different direction with his
imagination.

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Poe talked about how a short story
should be, everything should be...

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there to create one particular effect,
whereas Lovecraft, I think, goes for

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more sort of a bigger canvas somehow
than Poe did.

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In his teenage years, Lovecraft would
attempt quite a few stories in the Poe

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style.

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Most, however, were destroyed by
Lovecraft.

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I think too many writers are too hard on
themselves. It has to be said that, you

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know, Lovecraft epitomizes this trend.

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And actually, I think if there's one
positive thing to be brought out from

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other than he was a great writer, I
think, you know, any writer who feels

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about their own work should read
Lovecraft's comments about his own work.

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almost never has a good thing to say
about his own work.

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This may be a kind of version.

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of what he perceived as good manners.

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Because there's no doubt that he would
have thought it very ill -mannered to

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praise his own work.

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I think that Lovecraft was full of
insecurities at that time. He really

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know what to pursue in terms of a
career.

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Maybe he didn't feel he needed a career,
at least in terms of the money, because

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he felt that money would always be
there. But shortly thereafter, he

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the money wasn't going to be there.

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In 1904, Whipple Phillips was already
suffering from poor investments in a

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failed dam project.

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The stress of it all no doubt
contributed to his death on March 28th.

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The house on Angel Street was sold.

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The library that schooled Lovecraft for
12 years went with it.

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He loved that place.

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There he knew the only real security he
ever had.

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Even though it was only three blocks
away, the new home Susie had picked for

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son. was an unknown country.

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Though high school would offer some
enjoyment, Lovecraft was vexed by the

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subjects that escaped him.

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Lovecraft says he had a full -scale
nervous breakdown.

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We don't really know what that means. I
personally believe that it was a result

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of his discovery that his lack of
knowledge or lack of proficiency in

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mathematics prevented him from pursuing
a career as an astronomer.

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In the summer of 1908, he simply left
school and never returned.

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Lovecraft's reclusion would last from
1908 until 1917.

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Judging from his letters, this breakdown
had all the earmarks of a deep

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depression.

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I shunned all human society, deeming
myself too much of a failure in life to

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seen socially by those who had known me
as a youth and had foolishly expected

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great things of me.

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Lovecraft himself was a pretty crazy
person.

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He was kind of nuts, wandering around.

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I don't mean that, eccentric is a better
word.

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Even for his time, he must have been not
only a recluse, but an oddity.

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He would go out occasionally,
apparently, and...

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People saw him walking down the street
in a raincoat with the flaps up to his

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collar and looking straight ahead, not
trying to make eye contact with anybody.

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One activity that endured through this
period was his reading.

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This exposed Lovecraft to the amateur
pulp magazines that would one day be the

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outlet for his own work.

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I think amateur journalism saved
Lovecraft, both as a writer and as a

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being. There was Lovecraft in 1913,
1914, basically rotting away. He clearly

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didn't know what to do with himself.

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And then all of a sudden, here was
this... small world of amateur

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where there are other people like him
trying to be writers but not writing for

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money. And I think at that moment that
was important to Lovecraft because

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amateur journalism was a kind of school
for writers.

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Lovecraft went on to publish his own
amateur magazine, The Conservative.

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In its pages he exhibited a strong
passion for the beliefs he formed during

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isolation, including a pronounced
xenophobia.

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The most alarming tendency observable in
this age is a growing disregard for the

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established forces of law and order.

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Whether or not stimulated by the noxious
example of the almost subhuman Russian

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rabble, the less intelligent element
throughout the world seems animated by a

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singular viciousness.

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Every artist with every work of art is a
product of his or her time. And he

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reflected a lot of very American
feelings.

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The failings he had intellectually with
beliefs in racism and so on are

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reprehensible. They were then as they
are now, and yet in a sense you can't

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expect the guy to leap out of his skin
and have modern sensibilities.

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He had this really archaic, unbudging
idea that

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for society to be stable, then it had to
be homogenous.

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He just didn't like to see the culture
he knew go down the drain, which he felt

226
00:17:05,150 --> 00:17:09,369
would happen just by erosion as more and
more immigrants came. It's almost a Pat

227
00:17:09,369 --> 00:17:10,650
Buchanan kind of a thing.

228
00:17:10,910 --> 00:17:17,730
This absolutely genuine worry of the
evils of breeding, of mixed breeding,

229
00:17:17,990 --> 00:17:23,690
and breeding in general, I suppose, but
the evils of taking purity.

230
00:17:24,250 --> 00:17:26,569
with an almost Aryan sense of pride.

231
00:17:26,970 --> 00:17:31,750
Regardless, the conservative attracted
fellow amateurs both sympathetic and

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00:17:31,750 --> 00:17:35,630
contrary. They were attracted by
Lovecraft's erudite mind.

233
00:17:35,990 --> 00:17:41,290
And as a result, Lovecraft developed
very close ties to a number of these

234
00:17:41,290 --> 00:17:42,290
amateur journalists.

235
00:17:42,410 --> 00:17:46,530
And these became lifelong friends of
his, and they exchanged many, many

236
00:17:46,530 --> 00:17:49,750
even after they had left the amateur
journalism movement.

237
00:17:49,990 --> 00:17:51,830
And he kind of found his home.

238
00:17:52,440 --> 00:17:56,320
in a magazine like that, and other main
fan magazines that he wrote for.

239
00:17:57,500 --> 00:18:01,800
And he found a lot of like -minded souls
out there would read his stuff and

240
00:18:01,800 --> 00:18:02,800
really love them.

241
00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:05,720
And he developed followers.

242
00:18:06,100 --> 00:18:07,960
I mean, it's almost like a cult in and
of himself.

243
00:18:08,420 --> 00:18:14,040
He wrote so many letters at such white
heat and such intensity and at such

244
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:19,880
length that it's easy to suppose that he
sacrificed stories to his

245
00:18:19,880 --> 00:18:25,030
correspondents. I believe he had
something like over 120 ,000 letters

246
00:18:25,110 --> 00:18:28,350
And these letters aren't short pieces,
too. I mean, they're copious.

247
00:18:28,670 --> 00:18:35,270
Pages and pages of details and notes or
suggestions on how to improve their own

248
00:18:35,270 --> 00:18:40,630
writing. As his web of correspondence
grew, it also allowed Lovecraft to test

249
00:18:40,630 --> 00:18:42,550
early stories on respected readers.

250
00:18:43,090 --> 00:18:47,770
In 1919, an amateur journal called The
Vagrant took notice.

251
00:18:49,110 --> 00:18:52,820
Dagon. was the first of Lovecraft's
stories to be printed.

252
00:18:57,280 --> 00:19:02,320
A captured sailor escapes German sea
raiders, only to come aground on a

253
00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:05,140
of sea bottom forced up by a volcanic
upheaval.

254
00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:10,820
The region was putrid with the carcasses
of decaying fish and of other less

255
00:19:10,820 --> 00:19:15,540
describable things, which I saw
protruding from the nasty mud of the

256
00:19:15,540 --> 00:19:16,540
plain.

257
00:19:17,030 --> 00:19:22,730
It's got this awful sense of atmosphere.
The poor guy is out in the middle of

258
00:19:22,730 --> 00:19:27,790
nowhere, surely doomed with the black
sun scowling on him. What an image.

259
00:19:28,030 --> 00:19:33,710
As the sailor explores the reef, he
discovers a cyclopean monolith whose

260
00:19:33,710 --> 00:19:36,290
surface depicts a race of ancient
fishmen.

261
00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:41,740
They were damnably human in general
outline, despite webbed hands and feet,

262
00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:47,660
shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy,
bulging eyes, and other features less

263
00:19:47,660 --> 00:19:48,760
pleasant to recall.

264
00:19:49,530 --> 00:19:54,870
Suddenly all hell breaks loose with this
huge Charlie Tuna character coming out

265
00:19:54,870 --> 00:20:00,150
and embracing this monolith. And then at
the end, what happens is the narrator

266
00:20:00,150 --> 00:20:04,230
just demented. He's now on the other
side of the world, but afraid that old

267
00:20:04,230 --> 00:20:08,910
Charlie's following him. And he's, oh my
God, the thing in the window. Well, has

268
00:20:08,910 --> 00:20:14,350
this creature followed him or is he just
plain nuts? We don't know, but either

269
00:20:14,350 --> 00:20:16,010
way, it's a great little story.

270
00:20:16,490 --> 00:20:21,430
But, you know, you have it there. You've
got the creature from the Cytopean

271
00:20:21,430 --> 00:20:24,490
creature from the sea. It's virtually
Cthulhu in miniature.

272
00:20:25,030 --> 00:20:29,610
Dagon and other stories from this period
would set the Lovecraftian model.

273
00:20:30,410 --> 00:20:35,070
Scholarly people discovering violations
of natural law and being driven towards

274
00:20:35,070 --> 00:20:36,770
madness or death.

275
00:20:39,350 --> 00:20:44,010
It also exhibited Lovecraft's use of
Baroque descriptions and subjective

276
00:20:44,010 --> 00:20:50,010
adjectives. One of the cliché notions of
Lovecraft, propounded by people who

277
00:20:50,010 --> 00:20:53,810
don't very much like his work usually,
you know, is that he only had one style

278
00:20:53,810 --> 00:21:00,330
that consisted mostly of piling on the
adjectives. Like, um, over the

279
00:21:00,330 --> 00:21:06,910
eldritch town of Dulwich, the gibbous
moon hung illuminating the

280
00:21:06,910 --> 00:21:08,730
squamous and batracian inhabitants.

281
00:21:09,310 --> 00:21:12,770
So what he's saying there is just that,
um...

282
00:21:13,320 --> 00:21:18,760
You know, the moon was nearly full over
the weird town of Dulwich and everybody

283
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:20,500
who lived there was bloody peculiar
frog.

284
00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:27,520
But Lovecraft is a Baroque writer in the
sense that he goes in and

285
00:21:27,520 --> 00:21:33,040
carefully modulates this overripe,
incredibly

286
00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:39,440
convoluted phraseologies and sentences
and style, but it's all his own.

287
00:21:39,850 --> 00:21:44,510
If you meet Lovecraft for the first time
as an adult, you do kind of have to

288
00:21:44,510 --> 00:21:45,530
learn how to read him.

289
00:21:46,150 --> 00:21:48,750
It's not a modern style. It's not a
stripped -down style.

290
00:21:49,290 --> 00:21:52,890
It's not a very efficient style. And
there are many, many things about it

291
00:21:52,890 --> 00:21:53,890
are risible.

292
00:21:53,930 --> 00:21:59,570
He will pick a few words and overuse
them appallingly. Eldritch.

293
00:22:00,770 --> 00:22:03,690
Gibber. But a lot of his stories are all
mood.

294
00:22:04,190 --> 00:22:05,190
Nothing happens.

295
00:22:05,650 --> 00:22:07,550
Especially nothing happens to the
narrator.

296
00:22:07,810 --> 00:22:09,210
They're just people who...

297
00:22:09,690 --> 00:22:11,930
Start terrified and they end up
terrified.

298
00:22:12,450 --> 00:22:17,650
And there are other things you can make
fun of him for. The tendency to write in

299
00:22:17,650 --> 00:22:20,630
the first person and to keep writing.

300
00:22:20,910 --> 00:22:27,910
The ultimate parodic Lovecraftian phrase
is somebody going mad while writing

301
00:22:27,910 --> 00:22:32,350
and something's coming up. I can hear
them now coming up the steps.

302
00:22:32,930 --> 00:22:34,090
They're hellish.

303
00:22:34,820 --> 00:22:37,020
Tentacles are squirming at the door.

304
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:40,380
Ayah, Shab -Niggurath, the Beast of the
Thousand Young.

305
00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:41,820
Fatang, Fatang.

306
00:22:42,340 --> 00:22:44,080
And you're done. Dot, dot, dot.

307
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:48,300
You disappear in a burst of ellipses,
metallic.

308
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:52,480
It's a style that is incredibly anal
retentive.

309
00:22:52,700 --> 00:22:57,300
And you know this guy went over it and
over it and over it until he made the

310
00:22:57,300 --> 00:23:02,560
combination that to his taste, which may
be gaudy to some, it was in perfect

311
00:23:02,560 --> 00:23:07,840
balance. One thing that influenced this
purple style was Lovecraft's current

312
00:23:07,840 --> 00:23:10,280
fascination with the writing of Lord
Dunsany.

313
00:23:10,920 --> 00:23:17,180
Dunsany wrote these magical little tales
of dreamlands and gods, and he has this

314
00:23:17,180 --> 00:23:23,120
amazing prose style influenced by the
King James Bible and apparently nothing

315
00:23:23,120 --> 00:23:26,580
else. Lovecraft was very taken by
Dunsany's...

316
00:23:26,970 --> 00:23:30,330
creation of a mythical pantheon of gods.

317
00:23:31,470 --> 00:23:37,110
And Lovecraft eventually admitted that
that's how he came to write the stories

318
00:23:37,110 --> 00:23:41,670
of the Cthulhu mythos. He took those
Dunsanian gods, which are set in a

319
00:23:41,670 --> 00:23:45,410
world, and put them into the real world.
And that's how he came up with his own

320
00:23:45,410 --> 00:23:46,510
cosmic mythology.

321
00:23:47,590 --> 00:23:49,970
The Lovecraft was now a published
author.

322
00:23:50,570 --> 00:23:54,890
Pursuing payment for what was only to be
a personal pleasure was far from his

323
00:23:54,890 --> 00:23:55,890
idea of a gentleman.

324
00:23:56,480 --> 00:23:59,860
an existence that enjoyed being rather
than doing.

325
00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:05,540
His fellow amateurs urged Lovecraft to
go against his anti -commercialism and

326
00:24:05,540 --> 00:24:07,560
hire out his skills as a ghostwriter.

327
00:24:08,340 --> 00:24:14,300
As an invisible author, Lovecraft would
be published many times between 1918 and

328
00:24:14,300 --> 00:24:15,300
1920.

329
00:24:15,460 --> 00:24:20,680
With no practical experience in
commerce, however, Lovecraft charged

330
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:22,400
lower than the standard of the time.

331
00:24:22,970 --> 00:24:26,250
barely clearing a minimum goal of $15 a
week.

332
00:24:26,910 --> 00:24:31,010
Despite meager returns, this was a
prolific time for Lovecraft.

333
00:24:31,250 --> 00:24:34,850
By 1921, he had written close to 17
stories.

334
00:24:35,670 --> 00:24:40,670
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of
childhood bring only fear and sadness.

335
00:24:41,150 --> 00:24:47,170
Wretched is he who looks back upon lone
hours in vast and dismal chambers with

336
00:24:47,170 --> 00:24:50,550
brown hangings and maddening rows of
antique books.

337
00:24:51,260 --> 00:24:56,940
The glory of the outsider is that it is
the story of the thing beyond our ken,

338
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:02,140
briefly coming into the firelight, into
that circle, and then fleeing back into

339
00:25:02,140 --> 00:25:03,140
the darkness.

340
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:07,920
A lone narrator emerges from his
crumbling castle after a long seclusion.

341
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:12,940
He comes onto the surface of the earth
to find people fleeing in terror from a

342
00:25:12,940 --> 00:25:15,960
monstrous thing the narrator can plainly
see before him.

343
00:25:16,620 --> 00:25:19,840
I love the twist ending, so to speak.

344
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:24,140
And that you're reading the story and
the very last line in the story scares

345
00:25:24,140 --> 00:25:28,380
you. I was proud of this guy as he
escaped from these catacombs.

346
00:25:29,060 --> 00:25:33,600
And the moment that the real people saw
him and screamed and he saw his

347
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:37,720
reflection. And in horror stretches out
his hand and touches a mirror.

348
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:40,000
Boom, that's the end of the story.

349
00:25:40,360 --> 00:25:44,740
Oh my gosh, he is a ghoul. He's a
creature from the darkness. Now we must

350
00:25:44,740 --> 00:25:45,379
with him.

351
00:25:45,380 --> 00:25:48,460
And I went back and reread it just to
see how he'd done that.

352
00:25:49,070 --> 00:25:56,050
At its best, Lovecraft is as much an
existentialist as Albert

353
00:25:56,050 --> 00:26:02,790
Camus would be. I know always that I am
an outsider, a stranger in this

354
00:26:02,790 --> 00:26:05,330
century, and among those who are still
men.

355
00:26:05,610 --> 00:26:07,350
This is...

356
00:26:07,770 --> 00:26:14,150
as a strong statement about how I felt
in my teenage years as anything.

357
00:26:14,450 --> 00:26:20,170
He's writing what may very possibly be
disguised autobiography. It does seem to

358
00:26:20,170 --> 00:26:24,170
be about somebody who had an unhappy
childhood and who felt he was physically

359
00:26:24,170 --> 00:26:30,010
repulsive. But did he feel that because
of that he was an object of horror, that

360
00:26:30,010 --> 00:26:31,210
everybody shunned him?

361
00:26:31,500 --> 00:26:35,180
Certainly in terms of his physical
appearance, he was sort of embarrassed

362
00:26:35,180 --> 00:26:40,340
a number of things. He felt he had these
ingrown facial hairs and that he felt

363
00:26:40,340 --> 00:26:42,200
that was a disfiguring factor.

364
00:26:42,700 --> 00:26:47,940
So in a way, he's kind of using himself
as a jumping off point. But I think he

365
00:26:47,940 --> 00:26:54,820
would come off much more as the weirdo
that Colin Wilson makes him if he really

366
00:26:54,820 --> 00:26:58,460
were like these characters in the
stories. And ultimately, I don't think

367
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:05,000
When Lovecraft emerged from his own
isolation, the consensus of Providence

368
00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:09,420
that the house on Angel Street was one
to be avoided, and that Lovecraft and

369
00:27:09,420 --> 00:27:10,720
mother were eccentrics.

370
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:15,860
Though this view could be argued in the
case of Lovecraft, Susie was indeed

371
00:27:15,860 --> 00:27:16,960
cause for concern.

372
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:22,080
Her home life was one of hypertension,
where Susie was known to cause major

373
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:23,980
dramas over the slightest thing.

374
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:26,760
On March 13, 1919,

375
00:27:27,550 --> 00:27:29,930
around the same time her son was
emerging as a writer.

376
00:27:30,470 --> 00:27:34,570
Susie Lovecraft had been admitted to the
same institution that claimed her

377
00:27:34,570 --> 00:27:35,730
husband years before.

378
00:27:36,870 --> 00:27:43,530
Susie Lovecraft passed away on May 24th,
1921, not from nerves, but from a

379
00:27:43,530 --> 00:27:44,930
botched gallbladder operation.

380
00:27:46,210 --> 00:27:50,830
Susie's death was hard on Lovecraft,
both emotionally and financially.

381
00:27:51,270 --> 00:27:55,990
She left her son a meager estate, which
was already meager when she inherited it

382
00:27:55,990 --> 00:27:56,990
from her father.

383
00:27:57,420 --> 00:28:02,280
That inheritance, plus an equally paltry
income from ghostwriting, barely met

384
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:03,300
Lovecraft's expenses.

385
00:28:03,900 --> 00:28:08,740
He made little enough money himself and
used to survive by eating hideous cans

386
00:28:08,740 --> 00:28:09,740
of beans.

387
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:14,820
But I have to wonder about Lovecraft and
whether or not he would have taken any

388
00:28:14,820 --> 00:28:18,160
old job just to be able to make money,
and I don't think he would. He had a

389
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:25,160
certain set of standards, and again, he
had a level of pride that he was

390
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:26,560
a gentleman, he was an author.

391
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:29,280
and he's not going to just take any old
job.

392
00:28:29,900 --> 00:28:34,100
Lovecraft moved in with his aunts,
Lillian Clark and Annie Gamwell.

393
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:36,800
But aunts were no substitute for a
mother.

394
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:38,980
His fiction writing waned.

395
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:42,200
Relief came from one of Lovecraft's
fellow journalists.

396
00:28:42,980 --> 00:28:47,180
Herbert West's Reanimator actually is a
very funny story, and Lovecraft intended

397
00:28:47,180 --> 00:28:48,420
it, I think, to be funny.

398
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:55,020
It was commissioned for a humor
magazine, for which Lovecraft received

399
00:28:55,020 --> 00:28:56,140
per installment.

400
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:02,440
Keep in mind, it was a humor magazine
called Home Brew, founded and edited by

401
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:05,580
one of his amateur friends, George
Julian Houtain.

402
00:29:06,020 --> 00:29:08,700
Houtain said, you can't make them too
horrible.

403
00:29:09,100 --> 00:29:13,200
So clearly Lovecraft was encouraged to
write just the most outlandish,

404
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:15,560
flamboyant horror that he could think
of.

405
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:19,480
Lovecraft chafed under the restrictions
of episodic writing.

406
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:25,200
Still, the series debuted in January of
1922 under the banner Gruesome Tales.

407
00:29:25,740 --> 00:29:29,260
later to be titled Herbert West,
Reanimator.

408
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:36,880
Of Herbert West, who was my friend in
college and in afterlife, I can speak

409
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,520
with extreme terror, holding with
Haeckel that all life is a chemical and

410
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:45,480
physical process, and that the so
-called soul is a myth.

411
00:29:45,940 --> 00:29:51,220
My friend believed that artificial
reanimation of the dead can depend only

412
00:29:51,220 --> 00:29:52,400
the condition of the tissues.

413
00:29:53,180 --> 00:29:58,160
I love the sense of atmosphere on the
Herbert West stories, the sense of

414
00:29:58,380 --> 00:30:04,040
that evidently were not in the movies,
but the sense of history, it gives you a

415
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,820
sense of place and context that is
extremely strong.

416
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:14,100
Now, a lot of people feel that the
influence of Frankenstein is heavy on

417
00:30:14,100 --> 00:30:18,340
story. I disagree, because remember what
Victor Frankenstein was doing was

418
00:30:18,340 --> 00:30:20,840
creating an artificial man from...

419
00:30:21,260 --> 00:30:25,880
different parts of human bodies. What
Herbert West is trying to do is

420
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:29,400
an entire living body after it has
theoretically died.

421
00:30:29,660 --> 00:30:32,040
A very different conception, I think.

422
00:30:32,420 --> 00:30:37,120
West's adventures in reviving corpses
was not among Lovecraft's favorite work,

423
00:30:37,260 --> 00:30:38,480
nor his most profitable.

424
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:43,540
Nevertheless, it was a small milestone
in his career as a professional writer.

425
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:49,280
During this time, Lovecraft also
developed two fascinations incongruent

426
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:50,280
xenophobic personality.

427
00:30:51,610 --> 00:30:53,250
travel, and a woman.

428
00:30:54,790 --> 00:30:58,390
Lovecraft had been lured away from
Providence for a gathering of amateur

429
00:30:58,390 --> 00:30:59,670
journalists in Boston.

430
00:31:00,030 --> 00:31:04,890
The prospect of intellectual discourse
with his compatriots was too rich to

431
00:31:04,890 --> 00:31:05,890
refuse.

432
00:31:06,310 --> 00:31:11,310
Rare trips soon became a habit, even if
Lovecraft preferred to stay within the

433
00:31:11,310 --> 00:31:13,930
Northeast, where familiar traditions
prevailed.

434
00:31:14,530 --> 00:31:20,880
On one such visit in 1921, H .P.
Lovecraft met Sonia Haft Green of New

435
00:31:21,380 --> 00:31:27,080
Born on March 16, 1883, Sonia was far
more experienced in the ways of the

436
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:29,020
having been married once before.

437
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:32,080
He met this woman who was Jewish.

438
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:36,860
One of the things that I found reading
the letters, Lovecraft's letters, was

439
00:31:36,860 --> 00:31:38,040
anti -Semitic he was.

440
00:31:38,460 --> 00:31:41,720
And the idea that he ended up marrying a
Jewish woman, I think, is pretty

441
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:46,240
extraordinary. And she must have looked
at him and decided that she wanted him.

442
00:31:46,540 --> 00:31:49,680
He wasn't the worst sketch in the world.
I suppose he had a certain dignity.

443
00:31:49,900 --> 00:31:52,040
He was kind of tall and thin and bony.

444
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:56,400
She was just the opposite of him. She
was very outgoing and very social, and

445
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:57,400
sounded like she was fun.

446
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:02,980
And she was the one who, as I understand
it, introduced him to sex.

447
00:32:03,500 --> 00:32:07,760
It was a shared passion for the
literary, however, that attracted them

448
00:32:08,620 --> 00:32:13,460
During one of many moonlit walks
together, Lovecraft and Sonia

449
00:32:13,460 --> 00:32:15,020
weird grunting noise in the night.

450
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:20,000
It was an obvious inspiration for one of
his stories, but Lovecraft encouraged

451
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:21,540
Sonia to write it instead.

452
00:32:22,140 --> 00:32:27,660
This encouragement earned Lovecraft a
kiss, his first since childhood, and

453
00:32:27,660 --> 00:32:30,180
a rare sign of physical affection from
his mother.

454
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:36,280
Sonia's story became The Horror at
Martin's Beach and was published in

455
00:32:36,740 --> 00:32:41,320
By that time, she had convinced
Lovecraft to test the waters of New York

456
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:42,720
with a prolonged visit.

457
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:48,540
She knew that Lovecraft had to be taken
out of Providence, that if he was going

458
00:32:48,540 --> 00:32:52,480
to really have a life, that he had to go
out into the world. And she knew how

459
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:56,860
talented he was, and she felt that if he
went to New York, that the magazines

460
00:32:56,860 --> 00:33:02,700
were actually published and could meet
some people, and he could become a

461
00:33:02,700 --> 00:33:03,700
success.

462
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:08,400
But in a growing metropolis teeming with
immigrants, an acute xenophobic like

463
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:10,900
Lovecraft would soon experience
problems.

464
00:33:11,660 --> 00:33:15,250
For the moment, though, Lovecraft had
every reason to be hopeful.

465
00:33:15,630 --> 00:33:17,550
Sonia had entered his life.

466
00:33:17,790 --> 00:33:22,010
And in March 1923, Weird Tales magazine
was born.

467
00:33:22,510 --> 00:33:26,830
As much as science fiction and fantasy
might be marginalized today, it was

468
00:33:26,830 --> 00:33:31,290
certainly a lot more marginalized in the
1920s and 30s. Weird Tales was very

469
00:33:31,290 --> 00:33:32,930
influential as it happened.

470
00:33:33,150 --> 00:33:37,630
It was the best of all the pulp
magazines.

471
00:33:38,270 --> 00:33:42,590
devoted to weird fiction, to horror
stories and a certain kind of sci -fi.

472
00:33:43,370 --> 00:33:46,310
Tales of the Fantastic had been
increasing in popularity.

473
00:33:47,350 --> 00:33:51,810
Publisher J .C. Haneberger saw potential
in dedicating an entire journal to the

474
00:33:51,810 --> 00:33:57,050
genre. There was a market there, as low
-paying as the market might have been,

475
00:33:57,130 --> 00:33:58,990
as marginalized as the magazine might
have been.

476
00:33:59,430 --> 00:34:03,050
Even though it's being printed on toilet
paper, it doesn't matter. There is a

477
00:34:03,050 --> 00:34:06,090
market there, and there are readers, and
there was a place for it to start.

478
00:34:06,750 --> 00:34:13,290
It was virtually a roll call of the
great pulp fantasy writers, and

479
00:34:13,290 --> 00:34:15,830
much better than pulp implied.

480
00:34:16,270 --> 00:34:21,070
Many masters of imaginative fiction got
their start in the pages of Weird Tales.

481
00:34:21,449 --> 00:34:23,870
H .P. Lovecraft was no different.

482
00:34:24,540 --> 00:34:29,060
Well, Lovecraft regarded Weird Tales as
his single market, basically, the one

483
00:34:29,060 --> 00:34:34,239
magazine that he was, well, relatively
proud to write for, even though it has

484
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:39,500
be said that he appreciated that the
average Weird Tales story, perhaps below

485
00:34:39,500 --> 00:34:42,420
average Weird Tales story, was not that
great.

486
00:34:42,780 --> 00:34:47,500
It took a great deal of convincing from
Sonia and other friends, but Lovecraft

487
00:34:47,500 --> 00:34:50,900
finally relented and sent in a selection
of stories.

488
00:34:51,639 --> 00:34:54,000
Weird Tales bought all five submissions.

489
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:56,940
Thus began a lifelong relationship.

490
00:34:58,300 --> 00:35:03,480
On March 3, 1924, Lovecraft embarked on
another relationship.

491
00:35:03,820 --> 00:35:09,280
After an aggressive campaign from Sonia,
Lovecraft finally asked for her hand in

492
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:11,880
marriage. The bride was nearly 41.

493
00:35:12,140 --> 00:35:13,740
The groom was 33.

494
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:19,420
His aunts were outraged by this. They
thought that the girl that he married

495
00:35:19,420 --> 00:35:20,500
completely beneath him.

496
00:35:21,070 --> 00:35:26,050
At huge risk to his sense of security,
Lovecraft would leave Providence to live

497
00:35:26,050 --> 00:35:27,610
with his new wife in New York.

498
00:35:28,630 --> 00:35:33,550
For a virgin recluse of Puritan moral
standards, marriage promised to be an

499
00:35:33,550 --> 00:35:34,710
interesting experience.

500
00:35:35,610 --> 00:35:38,870
Sometimes I feel like she just must have
been something just sort of a saint.

501
00:35:39,110 --> 00:35:44,190
Because what she married was a guy who
refused to work, except on his stories.

502
00:35:44,250 --> 00:35:48,270
This is the one area in which I think
Lovecraft really failed as a human

503
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:53,020
And I think she acknowledged in her own
memoir at some point that she felt like

504
00:35:53,020 --> 00:35:54,020
she could change him.

505
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:57,260
She couldn't change him.

506
00:35:57,900 --> 00:36:04,580
Between 1922 and 1924, Lovecraft's
narrative output was on another upswing.

507
00:36:05,020 --> 00:36:09,940
This included the creation of three
recurring elements of Lovecraft's

508
00:36:09,940 --> 00:36:10,940
mythology.

509
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:12,940
Miskatonic University.

510
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:17,120
The Dark Town of Arkham.

511
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:23,380
and literature's most dreaded grimoire,
written by an alter ego from Lovecraft's

512
00:36:23,380 --> 00:36:28,940
childhood, one inspired by his reading
of the Arabian Nights, The Mad Abdul

513
00:36:28,940 --> 00:36:35,780
Alhazaret. The Necronomicon has become
this strange sort of combination of

514
00:36:35,780 --> 00:36:38,340
urban legend and bad jokes.

515
00:36:39,140 --> 00:36:42,460
First of all, it existed in the mind of
Lovecraft.

516
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:47,000
And then other people used it. It was
one of the easiest things. The

517
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:53,920
Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Alhazred.
Yes, this is the book of

518
00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:55,000
all of the forbidden things.

519
00:36:55,340 --> 00:36:59,260
The Necronomicon was a book that
collected all manner of summoning

520
00:36:59,820 --> 00:37:04,040
Spells that would cause the return of
ancient creatures from unknown worlds

521
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:05,040
dimensions.

522
00:37:05,390 --> 00:37:09,570
Well, the Necronomicon is yet another of
those Lovecraftian concepts that was,

523
00:37:09,630 --> 00:37:12,710
you know, never meant to be fully bodied
for.

524
00:37:12,990 --> 00:37:18,450
It's a series of references that again
imply this much larger tome with more

525
00:37:18,450 --> 00:37:23,630
terrible secrets than Lovecraft can even
hint at. So then other people would use

526
00:37:23,630 --> 00:37:27,390
it. You've got Fritz Leiber and you've
got Bloch and you've got Manly Wade

527
00:37:27,390 --> 00:37:32,870
Wellman and August Derleth, all these
other writers putting it into their

528
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:36,680
So now it feels a little truer, like
maybe it ought to exist.

529
00:37:37,500 --> 00:37:42,420
Another story from this period can be
seen as one of Lovecraft's early best,

530
00:37:42,420 --> 00:37:43,640
Rats in the Walls.

531
00:37:44,500 --> 00:37:48,340
Rats in the Walls was one of two stories
that I read when I was a kid. My father

532
00:37:48,340 --> 00:37:52,340
bought me a book called Great Tales of
Terror and the Supernatural, and it had

533
00:37:52,340 --> 00:37:54,140
all sorts of stories in it.

534
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:58,260
Two from Lovecraft, Rats in the Walls
and The Dunwich Horror.

535
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,280
And he read them aloud to me when I was
a kid.

536
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:03,760
It was mind -blowing.

537
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:09,180
A gentleman of the Delapore family
returns to his ancestral estate in

538
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:14,180
There, he and his black cat, Niggerman,
are disturbed by verminous slithering

539
00:38:14,180 --> 00:38:15,180
behind the walls.

540
00:38:16,060 --> 00:38:22,460
Lovecraft was great at depicting the
moment of discovery by sound or by a

541
00:38:22,460 --> 00:38:23,460
fleeting shadow.

542
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:28,120
And it really put you there and made you
almost...

543
00:38:28,430 --> 00:38:32,670
empathically experience the moment where
you heard the noise behind the

544
00:38:32,670 --> 00:38:38,430
woodwork. More than a lot of the
stories, it literally embodies that

545
00:38:38,430 --> 00:38:44,710
deep time in the sense of as de la Porte
is trying to investigate the source of

546
00:38:44,710 --> 00:38:48,650
the phenomenon in the house, begins to
go through the sub -basement, the sub

547
00:38:48,650 --> 00:38:53,250
-sub -basement, down into these vast
subterranean caverns beneath the house.

548
00:38:53,790 --> 00:38:58,510
That exploration into the depth of the
castle is simultaneously an exploration

549
00:38:58,510 --> 00:39:02,670
into the depth of the past and the
horrors that come out of history.

550
00:39:03,110 --> 00:39:07,610
I seemed to be looking down from an
immense height upon a twilight grotto,

551
00:39:07,610 --> 00:39:12,570
-deep with filth, where a white -bearded
demon, Swineherd, drove about with his

552
00:39:12,570 --> 00:39:17,410
staff a flock of fungus, flabby beasts,
whose appearance filled me with

553
00:39:17,410 --> 00:39:18,790
unutterable loathing.

554
00:39:19,190 --> 00:39:24,980
Then, as the Swineherd paused and nodded
over his task, A mighty swarm of rats

555
00:39:24,980 --> 00:39:30,200
rained down on the stinking abyss and
fell to devouring beasts and man alike.

556
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:35,080
It's one of the stories where Lovecraft
is playing with the classical Gothic

557
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:39,860
trope. You know, you have the family
with the hidden things. You have all of

558
00:39:39,860 --> 00:39:43,460
these sort of early 18th century Gothic
elements to the story.

559
00:39:44,090 --> 00:39:50,530
All of this strange stuff about the
Hexum Priory and this lost world

560
00:39:50,530 --> 00:39:57,210
under the cliff there and these
squealing white flabby beasts and the

561
00:39:57,210 --> 00:40:02,690
characters in the stories being
descended from different lines, the bad

562
00:40:02,690 --> 00:40:07,410
that bred these things and the things
having evolved. What a brilliant,

563
00:40:07,550 --> 00:40:08,970
brilliant work.

564
00:40:09,170 --> 00:40:13,270
It's really creepy stuff. It gets under
your skin.

565
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:20,820
And I think it's kind of obvious. You
tear down the walls of any kind

566
00:40:20,820 --> 00:40:26,200
of civilized person, behind there is
something that's really abominable

567
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,340
Rats were snatched up by weird tales in
1924.

568
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:36,200
The first year and a half of Lovecraft's
marriage was like a tonic.

569
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,400
It was grand. It was a new adventure for
him.

570
00:40:40,590 --> 00:40:44,050
He also made lots of friends there, too.
Frank Long, for example, being one of

571
00:40:44,050 --> 00:40:45,050
his best friends.

572
00:40:45,070 --> 00:40:48,790
Work, however, and Lovecraft's drive to
find it was limited.

573
00:40:49,270 --> 00:40:55,770
I think, A, he didn't want a job, and B,
he knew

574
00:40:55,770 --> 00:41:00,950
that any employment he could find in the
city of New York or elsewhere would be

575
00:41:00,950 --> 00:41:02,230
really bruising for him.

576
00:41:02,690 --> 00:41:06,910
The longer Lovecraft stayed in New York,
the worse his xenophobia became.

577
00:41:07,580 --> 00:41:11,900
almost as a retaliation against the
immigrant outsiders flourishing around

578
00:41:12,440 --> 00:41:17,260
The unraveling of the rug, so to speak,
happened, you know, because of financial

579
00:41:17,260 --> 00:41:18,260
reasons.

580
00:41:18,620 --> 00:41:22,620
Sonia lost her hat shop and eventually
had to look for work in Cleveland.

581
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:28,200
A job offer was greeted with enthusiasm
by Sonia and loathing from Lovecraft.

582
00:41:28,980 --> 00:41:34,280
That was too far from Providence.
Brooklyn was unbearable, but at least it

583
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:35,280
just a train ride away.

584
00:41:35,690 --> 00:41:40,950
By the end of 1924, Sonia had no choice
but to leave for the Midwest, alone.

585
00:41:42,010 --> 00:41:46,190
Sonia would be back and forth to support
her husband, but her influence over

586
00:41:46,190 --> 00:41:47,650
Lovecraft's mood was waning.

587
00:41:48,270 --> 00:41:52,890
His ridicule of the melting pot that was
New York City reached manic, even

588
00:41:52,890 --> 00:41:53,890
racist levels.

589
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:58,980
I certainly hope to see promiscuous
immigration permanently curtailed soon.

590
00:41:59,100 --> 00:42:03,800
Heaven knows, enough harm has already
been done by the admission of limitless

591
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:08,740
hordes of the ignorant, superstitious,
and biologically inferior scum of

592
00:42:08,740 --> 00:42:10,400
Southern Europe and Western Asia.

593
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:16,520
For the most part, Lovecraft kept these
views to himself, knowing full well that

594
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,480
his friends and correspondents did not
share his views.

595
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,620
It wasn't long before his fiction gave
voice to these demons.

596
00:42:24,750 --> 00:42:29,530
Red Hook is a maze of hybrid squalor
near the ancient waterfront opposite

597
00:42:29,530 --> 00:42:30,530
Governor's Island.

598
00:42:30,710 --> 00:42:36,190
From this tangle of material and
spiritual putrescence, the blasphemies

599
00:42:36,190 --> 00:42:38,130
hundred dialects have sailed the sky.

600
00:42:38,910 --> 00:42:43,690
Policemen despair of order or reform and
seek rather to erect barriers

601
00:42:43,690 --> 00:42:46,530
protecting the outside world from the
contagion.

602
00:42:48,250 --> 00:42:53,730
I don't think you can ever correlate
what people think or believe with what

603
00:42:53,730 --> 00:42:59,670
write. or at least I don't think you can
do it on the one -to -one basis so

604
00:42:59,670 --> 00:43:04,250
beloved of literary scholars, academics,
and amateur psychologists.

605
00:43:04,830 --> 00:43:09,730
For modern standards, there is plenty of
racism in Mark Twain. There's plenty of

606
00:43:09,730 --> 00:43:13,930
racism in Edgar Rice Burroughs. There's
plenty of sexism in Edgar Rice

607
00:43:13,930 --> 00:43:19,970
Burroughs. You could fault those works
for belonging to that time, but I

608
00:43:19,970 --> 00:43:23,170
that it's actually a...

609
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:30,560
a fossil record of what a gentleman of
New England would think at the time.

610
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:36,580
very, very easy to look at Lovecraft and
go, OK, well, you know, Cthulhu means

611
00:43:36,580 --> 00:43:43,200
the female genitalia, or all of these
outsiders are really Jews, or

612
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:47,840
black, or, you know, this is what the
Batrachian thing is all about. It's a

613
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:49,080
cunningly disguised racism.

614
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:53,460
He did, however, make overtly racist
statements towards some groups.

615
00:43:53,700 --> 00:44:00,480
And that's certainly no surprise back in
the 20s and 30s. And it's too bad.

616
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:03,840
I mean, that doesn't make it right. But
I just don't think you can take it

617
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:07,820
seriously. It would be funny if it were
not so objectionable. And to a certain

618
00:44:07,820 --> 00:44:11,680
extent, it still is funny, even though
it is completely objectionable. The

619
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:12,680
sheltered.

620
00:44:13,509 --> 00:44:16,890
who took a long, long time to grow. I
was going to say never grow, but that

621
00:44:16,890 --> 00:44:21,990
isn't true. And so he's reacting in an
adolescent fashion to these streams of

622
00:44:21,990 --> 00:44:26,250
people who flooded the streets in
Brooklyn, in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

623
00:44:27,070 --> 00:44:33,090
And I think when he referred to himself
as an unassimilated alien, I think he

624
00:44:33,090 --> 00:44:36,850
understood that when he was in New York,
on some level he understood, despite

625
00:44:36,850 --> 00:44:40,130
all of his protestations, that New York
worked.

626
00:44:40,780 --> 00:44:46,540
Despite his perception of it as this
horrid, chaotic cesspool, it was

627
00:44:46,540 --> 00:44:47,920
that worked. He didn't work.

628
00:44:48,240 --> 00:44:52,960
It became clear to friends that
Lovecraft's exile in New York was

629
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:53,960
breakdown.

630
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:56,020
Some even feared a suicide attempt.

631
00:44:56,740 --> 00:45:01,260
Help came from Lovecraft's aunts,
Lillian and Annie, who found a small

632
00:45:01,260 --> 00:45:03,300
their nephew back in the safety of
Providence.

633
00:45:04,100 --> 00:45:07,560
Sonia offered to buy the house for him,
but this was not New York.

634
00:45:07,780 --> 00:45:10,020
In Providence, propriety would reign.

635
00:45:10,720 --> 00:45:14,880
If Lovecraft could not support his wife,
he would distance himself instead.

636
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:20,840
In April of 1926, Lovecraft returned to
his beloved city.

637
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:26,220
He was released from Brooklyn, and he
went back to his immense, to his almost

638
00:45:26,220 --> 00:45:29,320
unimaginably immense relief, the
Providence.

639
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:33,700
That summer of 1926 was the start of
Lovecraft's richest period.

640
00:45:33,980 --> 00:45:38,360
It started with an idea he had outlined
during those fearful days in New York.

641
00:45:38,910 --> 00:45:42,910
an idea which became the most notable
addition to Lovecraft's fictional

642
00:45:42,910 --> 00:45:47,990
universe. The story of Lovecraft, the
first one I read was The Call of

643
00:45:48,050 --> 00:45:49,910
like most everyone I imagined.

644
00:45:50,270 --> 00:45:56,550
And it just struck me because it was a
combination of cosmology, anthropology,

645
00:45:56,790 --> 00:46:00,490
and horror that was all melded into one.

646
00:46:01,130 --> 00:46:06,350
George Gamal Angel, Professor Emeritus
of Semitic Languages at Brown

647
00:46:07,230 --> 00:46:09,810
is mysteriously murdered on the streets
of Providence.

648
00:46:10,390 --> 00:46:15,030
Sometime earlier, Angel had come into
possession of a troubling clay

649
00:46:15,810 --> 00:46:16,530
The

650
00:46:16,530 --> 00:46:33,070
description

651
00:46:33,070 --> 00:46:35,950
of the monster is...

652
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:40,060
probably better seen on paper than it
would be visualized.

653
00:46:40,700 --> 00:46:45,220
That's the thing about Lovecraft. All
his creatures are really interesting

654
00:46:45,220 --> 00:46:49,140
you read them because your imagination
starts to work on it, and you keep it

655
00:46:49,140 --> 00:46:51,020
amorphous and disgusting.

656
00:46:51,580 --> 00:46:56,180
With the seafood variety that H .P.
Lovecraft describes, I mean, he must

657
00:46:56,180 --> 00:46:58,940
had something about fish that really
bothered him, you know?

658
00:46:59,740 --> 00:47:01,820
Squid and octopus and stuff like that.

659
00:47:03,310 --> 00:47:07,310
Angel's investigations of the graven
image are taken up by his grandnephew.

660
00:47:07,650 --> 00:47:12,130
I mean, here's this guy whose eccentric
uncle died, and he's looking through all

661
00:47:12,130 --> 00:47:17,290
these papers, as I did when Lynn Carter
died. I mean, it's kind of a chore, but

662
00:47:17,290 --> 00:47:19,710
you never know what kind of goodies
you're going to find, and he sees all

663
00:47:19,710 --> 00:47:22,110
crazy things. What the heck was he into?

664
00:47:22,390 --> 00:47:28,250
When you read it, it's sort of an
incredibly clumsy story. It's, here's a

665
00:47:28,250 --> 00:47:31,530
of this, and here's the newspaper
report, and here's a...

666
00:47:32,190 --> 00:47:37,470
It's sort of part journalism and it's
almost anecdotal. It doesn't really have

667
00:47:37,470 --> 00:47:43,450
plot. It's assembled in fragments in a
very interesting way, almost a modernist

668
00:47:43,450 --> 00:47:49,590
way. And what that technique does is to
suggest an aura of mystery in itself.

669
00:47:50,220 --> 00:47:54,860
And before long, he's into it, and
before long, he's expecting the secret

670
00:47:54,860 --> 00:47:58,760
of Cthulhu to come get him. And why is
he even writing this thing, since he

671
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:02,360
doesn't want anybody else to know about
it? It's about that recurring thing in

672
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:07,500
Lovecraft, that fear of science, or just
human knowledge, going where it doesn't

673
00:48:07,500 --> 00:48:13,200
need necessarily to go, of accidentally
uncovering things that either, well,

674
00:48:13,220 --> 00:48:16,100
there's not much point in us knowing
them, or knowing them could lead to our

675
00:48:16,100 --> 00:48:17,100
destruction.

676
00:48:17,210 --> 00:48:23,230
The nephew endeavors to connect reports
of vivid dreams across the world, dark

677
00:48:23,230 --> 00:48:29,130
practices in the bayous of New Orleans,
and the discovery of a corpse city by a

678
00:48:29,130 --> 00:48:30,490
band of innocent sailors.

679
00:48:31,370 --> 00:48:36,670
There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes,
hidden in green slimy vaults, and

680
00:48:36,670 --> 00:48:42,550
sending out at last, after cycles
incalculable, the thoughts that spread

681
00:48:42,550 --> 00:48:43,830
the dreams of the sensitive.

682
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:49,820
Cthulhu is almost like the Paul Revere
of all these deities, you know, or the

683
00:48:49,820 --> 00:48:55,720
King Arthur waiting to come back, you
know, and take over.

684
00:48:57,300 --> 00:49:01,740
He's just a general evil that exists in
another place, but it's like

685
00:49:01,740 --> 00:49:03,020
Christianity in a sense.

686
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:06,980
In a sense, our creator, he's our
destroyer.

687
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:12,440
He's kind of another version of the
devil, I suppose, except slimier.

688
00:49:13,020 --> 00:49:17,380
As elaborate as this story was, the
spelling and pronunciation of the

689
00:49:17,380 --> 00:49:18,860
names was even more so.

690
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:20,800
Cthulhu. Cthulhu.

691
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:27,480
Cthulhu. Cthulhu. Cthulhu. Of course,
the discrepancy on the enunciation of

692
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:30,200
name, this is my fourth language.

693
00:49:31,240 --> 00:49:34,400
Poppy Z. Bright makes fun of the way I
pronounce Cthulhu, but I don't know

694
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,600
another way. I look at the way Lovecraft
tried to pronounce it, and I can't

695
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:38,399
pronounce it.

696
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:42,600
Many of his colleagues apparently didn't
know how to pronounce it or pronounce

697
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:43,600
it wrongly.

698
00:49:44,020 --> 00:49:49,900
And so finally, in a letter of 1934, he
tells a colleague, well, it's really

699
00:49:49,900 --> 00:49:51,700
meant to be two syllables.

700
00:49:52,980 --> 00:49:56,520
You're supposed to put your tongue at
the roof of your mouth and cough it out

701
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:57,520
like cloo -loo.

702
00:49:57,660 --> 00:50:03,120
But he says, you know, the name is an
entirely alien name not designed to be

703
00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:04,620
pronounced by human vocal cords.

704
00:50:05,150 --> 00:50:11,090
The word is only a symbol for something
that is entirely beyond the ability for

705
00:50:11,090 --> 00:50:12,870
humans to make the sound.

706
00:50:13,110 --> 00:50:16,770
So there is no incorrect way to
pronounce it because there's no correct

707
00:50:16,770 --> 00:50:17,709
pronounce it.

708
00:50:17,710 --> 00:50:22,490
Despite Lovecraft's efforts to weave a
rich narrative, The Call of Cthulhu was

709
00:50:22,490 --> 00:50:24,550
initially rejected by Weird Tales.

710
00:50:24,990 --> 00:50:28,830
This was common practice of the
anthology's editor, Farnsworth Wright,

711
00:50:29,010 --> 00:50:33,130
especially when presented with a story
as original as Lovecraft's creation.

712
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:38,500
One of Lovecraft's tricks, of course,
was to take the rejected story, sit on

713
00:50:38,500 --> 00:50:42,000
for a little while, send it back to
Wright saying, well, I've made the

714
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:46,320
you asked for, having not done a single
thing with it. And more often than not,

715
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:48,060
apparently, Wright would fall for this
trick.

716
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:53,520
The Call of Cthulhu was eventually
printed in February 1928's issue of

717
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:54,520
Tales.

718
00:50:55,060 --> 00:50:57,460
Lovecraft's fee for such a seminal work
of fiction?

719
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:00,040
$165.

720
00:51:02,060 --> 00:51:05,620
As Lovecraft's writing began to blossom,
so did the man.

721
00:51:05,980 --> 00:51:10,540
I vastly regret the absence of
traditional accomplishments, fencing,

722
00:51:10,740 --> 00:51:15,520
horsemanship, military service, caused
by my early ill health and lack of

723
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:18,460
appreciation of the quality of well
-roundedness.

724
00:51:19,180 --> 00:51:24,000
Lovecraft began to entertain his friends
once more, including them on long walks

725
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:26,660
through Providence and other New England
excursions.

726
00:51:27,240 --> 00:51:31,100
Lovecraft was even beginning to evolve a
form of tolerance toward the outsiders

727
00:51:31,100 --> 00:51:34,960
around him, especially the many cultures
now living in Providence.

728
00:51:35,300 --> 00:51:40,460
In February of 1927, it was time for his
writing to expand as well.

729
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:45,000
Charles Exeter Ward is the novel in
which he applies all his sense of

730
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:46,000
to that.

731
00:51:46,140 --> 00:51:49,460
long work, and the effect is tremendous.

732
00:51:49,980 --> 00:51:54,660
The beginning of Ward's madness is a
matter of dispute among alienists.

733
00:51:54,940 --> 00:52:00,800
Dr. Lyman, the eminent Boston authority,
places it in 1919 or 1920.

734
00:52:01,540 --> 00:52:06,820
This is certainly born by Ward's altered
habits, especially by his continuing

735
00:52:06,820 --> 00:52:13,260
search for a certain grave dug in 1771,
the grave of an ancestor named Joseph

736
00:52:13,260 --> 00:52:18,340
Kerwin. Joseph Kerwin was an obscure
individual who fled from Salem to

737
00:52:18,340 --> 00:52:20,340
Providence around 1761.

738
00:52:20,980 --> 00:52:25,820
Now the first odd thing about Joseph
Kerwin was that he did not seem to grow

739
00:52:25,820 --> 00:52:31,120
much older than he had been on his
arrival. At length, when over 50 years

740
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:35,580
passed since the stranger's advent, and
without producing more than five years

741
00:52:35,580 --> 00:52:40,660
apparent change in his face and
physique, the people began to whisper

742
00:52:40,660 --> 00:52:45,670
darkly. Alchemy and the Black Arts
proved to be Kerwin's secret.

743
00:52:46,150 --> 00:52:51,030
I think one of the flaws of that story,
and it may be only a flaw to me, is that

744
00:52:51,030 --> 00:52:55,330
it uses a kind of pseudoscience that is
actually a little bit beneath

745
00:52:55,330 --> 00:53:02,210
Lovecraft's acumen. It explains
mysterious and

746
00:53:02,210 --> 00:53:06,210
horrifying events by reference to
certain essential salts.

747
00:53:06,710 --> 00:53:10,850
And by the like method from the
essential salts of humane dust.

748
00:53:11,310 --> 00:53:16,370
A philosopher may, without criminal
necromancy, call up the shape of any

749
00:53:16,370 --> 00:53:21,690
ancestor. And that's a little third
rate. It's like bad science fiction.

750
00:53:22,430 --> 00:53:26,590
A band of raiders confront the doomed
man and his unhallowed wizardry.

751
00:53:26,850 --> 00:53:31,690
That night was never remarked on again
until Charles Ward learned of his

752
00:53:31,690 --> 00:53:37,610
from Kerwin in 1918 and continued his
ancestor's experiments, connecting the

753
00:53:37,610 --> 00:53:38,690
past with the present.

754
00:53:39,210 --> 00:53:41,170
summoning the unspeakable to life.

755
00:53:41,530 --> 00:53:43,890
It's almost like a detective story. Dr.

756
00:53:44,210 --> 00:53:49,450
Willett is really discovering what
happened to Charles Dexter Ward,

757
00:53:49,450 --> 00:53:55,990
about Kerwin and the unfortunate
accidents from the efforts to basically

758
00:53:55,990 --> 00:53:57,310
demons down from the stars.

759
00:53:57,530 --> 00:54:01,230
When they didn't have all the pieces,
when they didn't have all the remains,

760
00:54:01,610 --> 00:54:07,530
terrible awfulness would be brung up and
they'd have to be put somewhere. Of

761
00:54:07,530 --> 00:54:12,110
course, I wasn't quite sure why they
just didn't destroy them, but maybe it

762
00:54:12,110 --> 00:54:16,890
for sport. Who knows? It's one of those
cases where his detractors say, well,

763
00:54:16,910 --> 00:54:21,110
he's writing about unspeakable horrors
and simply telling us that they're

764
00:54:21,110 --> 00:54:25,510
unspeakable. In fact, if that's all you
get out of the moment where Dr. Willits

765
00:54:25,510 --> 00:54:29,990
looks down the well and sees something
that Lovecraft actually certainly finds

766
00:54:29,990 --> 00:54:30,990
metaphor for it.

767
00:54:32,540 --> 00:54:38,100
Tremendously more than just the
unspeakable, the cosmic in bodily form.

768
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:43,260
Though completed, the lengthy tale of
Charles Dexter Ward was never typed or

769
00:54:43,260 --> 00:54:47,830
submitted. He just left it in a drawer
he didn't think it was worth bothering

770
00:54:47,830 --> 00:54:52,970
with. It was a first draft, amazingly. I
believe Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

771
00:54:52,970 --> 00:54:53,968
was also.

772
00:54:53,970 --> 00:54:59,110
How he didn't see the merit in this
stuff is just amazing.

773
00:54:59,670 --> 00:55:03,410
I don't think he was built to write
longer narratives.

774
00:55:03,650 --> 00:55:07,430
He went as far as he could that way, and
he did press the envelope.

775
00:55:07,890 --> 00:55:11,050
Some of those last stories are really
rather long.

776
00:55:11,550 --> 00:55:16,230
but they're also inert in a certain way
that a novel cannot afford to be.

777
00:55:16,830 --> 00:55:20,990
There was another tale written during
this time on which Lovecraft held an

778
00:55:20,990 --> 00:55:22,330
entirely different opinion.

779
00:55:22,890 --> 00:55:28,010
The Color Out of Space is just a great
science fiction movie, story.

780
00:55:28,250 --> 00:55:32,470
It should be a movie, although I don't
know how you do the color because it's

781
00:55:32,470 --> 00:55:35,030
unlike anything we've seen, and I don't
know what that is.

782
00:55:35,270 --> 00:55:39,350
There is a type of story where you go to
the minimal setting.

783
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:46,300
a household in a farm or in a far field,
and you unleash upon them

784
00:55:46,300 --> 00:55:50,820
a cosmic melody, you know, a cosmic
curse.

785
00:55:51,220 --> 00:55:55,000
It all began in 1882 with a meteorite.

786
00:55:55,380 --> 00:56:00,420
And by night, all Arkham had heard of
the great rock that fell out of the sky

787
00:56:00,420 --> 00:56:05,260
and bedded itself in the ground beside
the well at the Naom Gardner place.

788
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:09,860
They had uncovered what seemed to be the
side of a large colored globule

789
00:56:09,860 --> 00:56:11,520
embedded in the substance.

790
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:16,120
The color, which resembled some of the
bands in the meteor's strange spectrum,

791
00:56:16,380 --> 00:56:21,580
was almost impossible to describe. And
it was only by analogy that they called

792
00:56:21,580 --> 00:56:22,580
it color at all.

793
00:56:23,140 --> 00:56:28,280
And the color out of space, it is, as
the story has it, just a color out of

794
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:31,920
space. It's literally indescribable in
prose terms.

795
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:35,120
It's something that's almost impossible
to even detect.

796
00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:40,480
It's something that's so incredibly
insidious that there's no escaping from

797
00:56:40,540 --> 00:56:44,540
except by geographically removing
yourself as far as you can from the

798
00:56:44,820 --> 00:56:49,820
By the next harvest, Laura and Fauna are
found deformed, and the Gardner family

799
00:56:49,820 --> 00:56:52,040
is infected with an unexplained madness.

800
00:56:52,640 --> 00:56:57,380
It happened in June, about the
anniversary of the meteor's fall, and

801
00:56:57,380 --> 00:57:00,880
woman screamed about things in the air
which she could not describe.

802
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:05,040
In her raving, there was not a single
specific noun.

803
00:57:05,630 --> 00:57:07,110
She was being drained of something.

804
00:57:07,470 --> 00:57:11,010
Something was fastening itself on her
that ought not be.

805
00:57:11,570 --> 00:57:15,930
It wasn't just the meteorite, it was
something inside the meteorite that

806
00:57:15,930 --> 00:57:21,210
to spread and poison the landscape and
mutate the landscape and the people.

807
00:57:21,490 --> 00:57:26,370
It's one of those stories of Lovecraft
that moves into physical gruesomeness,

808
00:57:26,370 --> 00:57:32,010
the effects on the unlucky family in the
farmhouse, but then it passes beyond

809
00:57:32,010 --> 00:57:33,830
that into absolute...

810
00:57:34,770 --> 00:57:39,310
awesomeness, the kind of real
transcendental quality of terror that

811
00:57:39,310 --> 00:57:40,310
Lovecraft achieved.

812
00:57:41,090 --> 00:57:46,010
Though the call of Cthulhu looked to the
stars, the color out of space was

813
00:57:46,010 --> 00:57:48,070
clearly set in the realm of science
fiction.

814
00:57:48,650 --> 00:57:53,310
For this very reason, Lovecraft
submitted his tale to the new journal

815
00:57:53,310 --> 00:57:58,840
Stories. Though they would eagerly
publish the story in September of 1927,

816
00:57:58,840 --> 00:58:02,320
lack of payment convinced Lovecraft that
he should never stray far from the

817
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:04,160
known quantity of Weird Tales.

818
00:58:04,660 --> 00:58:08,700
They would be the only magazine he
formally submitted to for the rest of

819
00:58:08,700 --> 00:58:09,700
life.

820
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:17,700
During a 1928 excursion to
Massachusetts, Lovecraft happened on a

821
00:58:17,700 --> 00:58:18,700
stones.

822
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:24,180
Oldest of all are the great rings of
rough -hewn stone columns on the

823
00:58:24,260 --> 00:58:27,980
more generally attributed to the Indians
than to the settlers.

824
00:58:28,900 --> 00:58:33,860
Along with talk of witch blood, the
eerie cries of the Whippoorwills, and

825
00:58:33,860 --> 00:58:37,940
ever -present Old Ones, Lovecraft shaped
the Dunwich Horror.

826
00:58:39,240 --> 00:58:44,040
It was in the township of Dunwich that
Wilbur Whateley was born on the 2nd of

827
00:58:44,040 --> 00:58:45,560
February, 1913.

828
00:58:46,540 --> 00:58:51,140
Lavinia Waitley had no known husband,
but according to the custom of the

829
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:53,320
made no attempt to disavow the child.

830
00:58:53,800 --> 00:59:00,020
There is an inbreeding between gods and
man, and they produce, you know, what do

831
00:59:00,020 --> 00:59:02,800
you produce? You've got this half -god,
half -man thing.

832
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:08,580
Wilbur Whateley's grandfather is Old
Wizard Whateley. He's an eccentric New

833
00:59:08,580 --> 00:59:13,460
England hick. What's his motivation? Is
he trying to end the world because he's

834
00:59:13,460 --> 00:59:17,100
some kind of Sodian nihilist? No, he
just needs a few extra bucks.

835
00:59:17,580 --> 00:59:23,660
Yogg -Sothoth agrees to give him pirate
doubloons if he pimps out his daughter

836
00:59:23,660 --> 00:59:29,500
to him. At the age of 10, Wilbur
Whateley attained an unnatural thigh,

837
00:59:29,500 --> 00:59:30,500
fully grown man.

838
00:59:31,150 --> 00:59:34,450
His facial aspect, too, was remarkable
for its maturity.

839
00:59:35,130 --> 00:59:39,670
Exceedingly ugly despite his appearance
of brilliancy. There being something

840
00:59:39,670 --> 00:59:44,850
almost goatish or animalistic about his
thick lips, large, pawed, yellowish

841
00:59:44,850 --> 00:59:49,310
skin, coarse, crinkly hair, and oddly
elongated ears.

842
00:59:49,970 --> 00:59:53,890
What troubled the residents of Dunwich
even more were the number of cattle

843
00:59:53,890 --> 00:59:57,870
purchased by Old Whateley without ever
increasing the size of his dock.

844
00:59:58,990 --> 01:00:02,730
and the dreaded something being kept in
the upper part of the Waitley farmhouse.

845
01:00:03,450 --> 01:00:10,190
There are twins that were born to
Lavinia, and one is a normal, mostly

846
01:00:10,190 --> 01:00:16,810
-looking, eight -foot -tall, goatish
-looking man, and a half -seen,

847
01:00:16,950 --> 01:00:20,990
invisible half -brother, which is much
more like his father.

848
01:00:21,570 --> 01:00:24,250
Soon, a mysterious thunder was heard in
the woods.

849
01:00:24,950 --> 01:00:27,770
Livestock and eventually entire families
disappeared.

850
01:00:28,560 --> 01:00:33,380
and Wilbur Waitley was discovered
breaking into Miskatonic Library in

851
01:00:33,380 --> 01:00:38,060
a complete Necronomicon, one that
contained the rights for the Old Ones'

852
01:00:39,100 --> 01:00:41,060
Yog -Sothoth knows the gate.

853
01:00:41,300 --> 01:00:43,160
Yog -Sothoth is the gate.

854
01:00:43,380 --> 01:00:46,520
Yog -Sothoth is the key and guardian of
the gate.

855
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,920
Past, present, future, all are one in
Yog -Sothoth.

856
01:00:51,620 --> 01:00:57,220
The Dunwich Horror earned Lovecraft his
biggest payday from Weird Tales, $240.

857
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:03,420
But again, Lovecraft failed to
capitalize on his success and would not

858
01:01:03,420 --> 01:01:04,420
more than a year.

859
01:01:04,500 --> 01:01:09,480
This time, Lovecraft's reticence was due
to a desire for artistic growth.

860
01:01:10,220 --> 01:01:16,000
There are my Poe pieces and my Dunsany
pieces, but alas, where are my Lovecraft

861
01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:17,000
pieces?

862
01:01:17,260 --> 01:01:24,160
Lovecraft's writing on the surface
appears to be imitations of other

863
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:27,680
If you see the early stories, there
is...

864
01:01:28,060 --> 01:01:29,940
a much more constrained sense of scope.

865
01:01:30,220 --> 01:01:35,020
And towards the end of his life, he was
gaining as a writer, I think, and

866
01:01:35,020 --> 01:01:40,560
gaining as an artist and as a human
being, and his view of the world became

867
01:01:40,560 --> 01:01:47,060
ample. And I think when Lovecraft shed
the influence of D 'Antoni and

868
01:01:47,060 --> 01:01:51,980
started writing like Lovecraft, that's
when things take off.

869
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:55,880
He was writing much better fiction. He
was writing much more contemporary

870
01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:56,880
fiction.

871
01:01:57,290 --> 01:02:01,830
in many senses. I mean, in the sense
that the language was more contemporary

872
01:02:01,830 --> 01:02:03,490
the settings were more contemporary.

873
01:02:03,810 --> 01:02:09,830
You can even see how some of his
descriptions start becoming more

874
01:02:10,170 --> 01:02:14,690
You know, they go from being unnameable,
obscene things...

875
01:02:15,340 --> 01:02:21,960
to being described as a cucumber body
with so -and -so tentacles, with

876
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:27,980
or proboscis in its end. You know, he
really started relishing that, and he

877
01:02:27,980 --> 01:02:33,060
started giving a sense of dignity and
history to these creatures that I think

878
01:02:33,060 --> 01:02:34,060
unique.

879
01:02:34,540 --> 01:02:39,280
With Providence as a lifeline, Lovecraft
was emboldened to venture further and

880
01:02:39,280 --> 01:02:41,260
further in art and in life.

881
01:02:41,900 --> 01:02:46,160
His correspondence engaged in healthy
discussions on race, men, and

882
01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:50,500
civilization. The more Lovecraft exposed
himself to other opinions and places,

883
01:02:50,760 --> 01:02:53,600
the more his views and phobias began to
soften.

884
01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:57,380
This self -improvement did not extend to
his marriage, however.

885
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:02,060
Since his return to Providence, Sonia
had seen very little of her husband.

886
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:07,460
While she remained in New York for the
sake of a career, Lovecraft favored his

887
01:03:07,460 --> 01:03:08,460
cherished city.

888
01:03:08,910 --> 01:03:15,250
On March 25th, 1929, after constant
pleas from Sonia, the Lovecrafts filed

889
01:03:15,250 --> 01:03:20,270
divorce. Sonia went on to Europe, a
place Lovecraft had always longed to

890
01:03:20,390 --> 01:03:21,390
but never did.

891
01:03:21,570 --> 01:03:26,170
Later she moved to California where she
remarried and led a full life until

892
01:03:26,170 --> 01:03:27,170
1972.

893
01:03:28,330 --> 01:03:32,130
In 1930, Lovecraft had begun work on a
new tale.

894
01:03:32,370 --> 01:03:37,800
By the time it was published in August
of 1931, The changes in Lovecraft could

895
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:39,040
be glimpsed on the page.

896
01:03:39,380 --> 01:03:42,420
Well, we need to celebrate the
Whispering Darkness because, of course,

897
01:03:42,420 --> 01:03:48,640
astronomers have now taken the planetary
status away from Pluto, which is to

898
01:03:48,640 --> 01:03:51,360
say, you know, Black Yuggoth on the rim.

899
01:03:51,900 --> 01:03:56,880
And, in fact, the Whispering Darkness
was Lovecraft's reaction to the

900
01:03:56,880 --> 01:03:58,100
of a new planet.

901
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:03,780
After a rash of unprecedented floods in
Vermont...

902
01:04:04,040 --> 01:04:06,880
Misshapen cadavers wash up along the
riverbanks.

903
01:04:07,300 --> 01:04:12,640
They were pinkish things, about five
feet long, with crustaceous bodies

904
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:18,440
vast pairs of dorsal fins or membranous
wings and several sets of articulated

905
01:04:18,440 --> 01:04:19,440
limbs.

906
01:04:20,040 --> 01:04:25,860
Albert N. Wilmarth of Miskatonic
University begins to investigate the

907
01:04:25,860 --> 01:04:26,860
these alien things.

908
01:04:27,220 --> 01:04:32,120
The blasphemies that appeared on the
Earth came from the dark planet Yuggoth.

909
01:04:32,760 --> 01:04:37,740
But this was itself merely the populous
outpost of a frightful interstellar race

910
01:04:37,740 --> 01:04:43,260
whose ultimate source must lie far
outside even the Einsteinian space -time

911
01:04:43,260 --> 01:04:48,520
continuum. It's actually one of
Lovecraft's most restrained stories.

912
01:04:48,520 --> 01:04:52,660
very few of those runs of adjectives.
Most of it is done as a series of

913
01:04:52,820 --> 01:04:57,000
something I imagine he probably learned
to some extent from...

914
01:04:57,310 --> 01:04:59,470
the novel Dracula, which he greatly
admired.

915
01:04:59,930 --> 01:05:04,510
Through the first -hand contact of his
colleague, Henry Akeley, Wilmarth learns

916
01:05:04,510 --> 01:05:07,090
of the dark intentions behind the
buzzing creatures.

917
01:05:07,830 --> 01:05:12,630
What Akeley deems a deadly danger,
however, turns out to be something else

918
01:05:12,630 --> 01:05:17,910
entirely. In the last stage of
Lovecraft's career, when he began to

919
01:05:17,910 --> 01:05:21,970
best stories, in spite of there being
what I called inert earlier, you can see

920
01:05:21,970 --> 01:05:26,130
him taking a different angle of vision
on the monsters at the heart of what is.

921
01:05:26,520 --> 01:05:30,340
known as the mythos. The Witches Were in
Darkness is probably the first story in

922
01:05:30,340 --> 01:05:33,540
which one begins to see this shift in
attitude.

923
01:05:33,940 --> 01:05:35,200
They're still frightening.

924
01:05:35,920 --> 01:05:42,360
And when their voices are recorded on
tape, they are intensely scary

925
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:48,720
beings. But they may not be completely
inimical

926
01:05:48,720 --> 01:05:51,540
to the human race.

927
01:05:52,000 --> 01:05:57,810
In fact, the fungi from Yuggoth wished
to expand man's senses to enable his

928
01:05:57,810 --> 01:06:00,130
exploration of the cosmos and its
secrets.

929
01:06:00,810 --> 01:06:05,490
This process, however, involves removing
the brain and placing it in a cylinder

930
01:06:05,490 --> 01:06:09,530
for the journey, all in the spirit of
discovery, but hardly harmless.

931
01:06:09,950 --> 01:06:11,270
It's all a scam.

932
01:06:11,930 --> 01:06:18,190
It's like people today that say, oh,
there's no problem with Islamofascism.

933
01:06:18,210 --> 01:06:21,830
Yeah, where's the problem? These people
are merely misunderstood. Nah, you're

934
01:06:21,830 --> 01:06:26,090
wrong, and you better hope you don't pay
with your life for this stupidity. And

935
01:06:26,090 --> 01:06:30,610
Wilmarth's getting sucked into this
thing, and it isn't even achling

936
01:06:30,750 --> 01:06:37,470
His brain's in a can somewhere, and he's
being led off the path by the buzzing

937
01:06:37,470 --> 01:06:39,410
lobsters and all that.

938
01:06:41,390 --> 01:06:43,610
You're being set up if you think that's
the case.

939
01:06:43,930 --> 01:06:48,830
Still, the whisperer in darkness could
be seen as a sign of tolerance to come.

940
01:06:50,330 --> 01:06:55,250
During the last years of his life,
Lovecraft's travels continued to expand

941
01:06:55,250 --> 01:06:57,630
first -hand knowledge of the changing
world around him.

942
01:06:58,350 --> 01:07:00,230
He was making up for lost time.

943
01:07:00,950 --> 01:07:05,770
But this long -deferred semi
-introduction to the world did not take

944
01:07:05,770 --> 01:07:08,970
thoroughly as it might have done had I
been chronologically younger.

945
01:07:10,340 --> 01:07:13,560
Lovecraft's funds could not keep up with
his thirst for growth.

946
01:07:14,320 --> 01:07:18,960
Ghostwriting continued, but its
anonymity was becoming unattractive all

947
01:07:18,960 --> 01:07:25,540
more. So in early 1931, Lovecraft began
work on another original story, a tale

948
01:07:25,540 --> 01:07:27,300
of ancient Antarctic horror.

949
01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:32,480
It is altogether against my will that I
tell my reasons for opposing this

950
01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:37,600
contemplated invasion of the Antarctic,
with its vast fossil hunt and its

951
01:07:37,600 --> 01:07:42,520
wholesale boring and melting of the
ancient ice cap, to deter the exploring

952
01:07:42,520 --> 01:07:47,640
world in general from any rash and
overambitious program in the region of

953
01:07:47,640 --> 01:07:49,320
mountains of madness.

954
01:07:50,570 --> 01:07:54,570
Some of the descriptive passages in At
the Mountains of Madness seem to me to

955
01:07:54,570 --> 01:07:58,270
rank with the great geographical
fantasies of literature.

956
01:07:58,550 --> 01:08:03,170
Actually, I think it's a painterly
quality in that novel that you perhaps

957
01:08:03,170 --> 01:08:04,910
find so much in his other work.

958
01:08:05,130 --> 01:08:09,690
It is one of those places where all of
the different influences come together,

959
01:08:09,750 --> 01:08:13,290
the idea of you're trekking across the
ice.

960
01:08:13,710 --> 01:08:14,870
It's quite horrible.

961
01:08:15,090 --> 01:08:16,090
It's Antarctica.

962
01:08:16,370 --> 01:08:17,830
And it is science fiction.

963
01:08:18,050 --> 01:08:20,710
You know, it's about an incursion by
aliens.

964
01:08:21,229 --> 01:08:25,770
In the foothills of these towering
cliffs, an expedition discovers the

965
01:08:25,770 --> 01:08:27,770
remains of a pre -Cambrian race.

966
01:08:28,450 --> 01:08:33,010
Found monstrous barrel -shaped fossil of
wholly unknown nature.

967
01:08:33,290 --> 01:08:36,970
In furrows between ridges are curious
growths.

968
01:08:37,180 --> 01:08:40,620
Combs or wings that fold up and spread
out like fans.

969
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:45,939
Arrangement reminds one of certain
monsters of primal myth, especially

970
01:08:45,939 --> 01:08:51,779
elder things in Necronomicon, supposed
to have created all Earth life as jest

971
01:08:51,779 --> 01:08:57,720
mistake. One of the most horrific ideas
was that the things that the scientists

972
01:08:57,720 --> 01:09:01,080
were studying started almost dissecting
them.

973
01:09:01,439 --> 01:09:05,560
That is a revelation of intelligence and
curiosity.

974
01:09:06,620 --> 01:09:10,520
The sense of curiosity these things had,
leaving little trails around the

975
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:14,500
equipment and so forth, that was what
was so scary to me.

976
01:09:14,720 --> 01:09:21,359
Something terribly odd and horrifying
chased these men out, you know, and

977
01:09:21,359 --> 01:09:24,840
something that was supposed to be a
fossil record is after them.

978
01:09:25,359 --> 01:09:30,439
After the mysterious and utter
annihilation of an advance team, the

979
01:09:30,439 --> 01:09:35,260
the unfortunate expedition discover a
Cyclopean city hidden among the peaks.

980
01:09:35,950 --> 01:09:40,790
There, they learn the tragic history of
the star -headed elder things, their

981
01:09:40,790 --> 01:09:46,330
shaping of life on Earth, surviving war
with other races of cosmic infinity, and

982
01:09:46,330 --> 01:09:52,090
falling prey to their slave race of show
gods, protoplasmic masses capable of

983
01:09:52,090 --> 01:09:54,690
molding their tissues into all sorts of
forms.

984
01:09:55,600 --> 01:09:59,200
You know, in the 60s, there was the idea
that aliens had come here and had kind

985
01:09:59,200 --> 01:10:03,400
of created the human race. But that idea
really was old compared to what

986
01:10:03,400 --> 01:10:08,180
Lovecraft had dreamed up, which was the
idea of these battling alien forces, you

987
01:10:08,180 --> 01:10:09,079
know, on Earth.

988
01:10:09,080 --> 01:10:13,020
And that man ended up somehow inheriting
this thing almost by default because

989
01:10:13,020 --> 01:10:18,080
these two major presences had sort of
wiped each other out. The old ones in

990
01:10:18,080 --> 01:10:20,640
Mountains of Madness are scientists.

991
01:10:21,360 --> 01:10:22,640
They were artists.

992
01:10:22,880 --> 01:10:23,960
They were architects.

993
01:10:25,000 --> 01:10:31,320
Yes, they are tentacled cucumbers with
wings, but they are sentient,

994
01:10:31,320 --> 01:10:36,920
beings. And that sense of intelligence
makes the evil at work in Lovecraft's

995
01:10:36,920 --> 01:10:38,300
stories much more intense.

996
01:10:38,660 --> 01:10:43,320
At the Mountains of Madness also
displayed two new reactions to the

997
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:46,520
unknowns, fellowship and empathy.

998
01:10:47,260 --> 01:10:53,200
It's a real imaginative achievement for
him to have seen these threatening

999
01:10:53,200 --> 01:10:56,800
beings in a warmer light eventually.

1000
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:00,760
He kind of fell in love with them. He's
been in love with them all along,

1001
01:11:00,800 --> 01:11:05,810
actually. The old ones, they may have
been crinoid pickle -shaped barrels with

1002
01:11:05,810 --> 01:11:10,570
wings and starfishes for heads and a bad
sense of humor, but they were men.

1003
01:11:11,330 --> 01:11:13,310
But why is that?

1004
01:11:13,870 --> 01:11:19,050
Because now they got the rebellious
slaves, the Shoggoths, to worry about.

1005
01:11:19,370 --> 01:11:25,010
So has Lovecraft seen a different group
as the same as him?

1006
01:11:25,530 --> 01:11:30,210
because all people are equal, or he
sympathizes with them as slave owners

1007
01:11:30,210 --> 01:11:33,730
are now on the run from an even weirder
race.

1008
01:11:34,070 --> 01:11:36,730
So I don't know what that means, really.

1009
01:11:36,950 --> 01:11:43,250
Not so bad. There's the elitists like I
am against the uppity bad guys.

1010
01:11:44,110 --> 01:11:48,970
I think there is a huge Lovecraftian
influence and a huge At the Mountains of

1011
01:11:48,970 --> 01:11:53,750
Madness influence on the first Ridley
Scott alien, the idea of a ship.

1012
01:11:54,270 --> 01:12:00,750
that essentially lands on a planet, and
they find a derelict city -sized

1013
01:12:00,750 --> 01:12:07,490
ship, dead denizens in it, and something
that is very much

1014
01:12:07,490 --> 01:12:14,170
alive and waiting, and then takes over
the humans, that's essentially,

1015
01:12:14,410 --> 01:12:17,670
you could say, very much a demand of
madness.

1016
01:12:18,030 --> 01:12:21,630
It has influenced the story that the
thing was based on.

1017
01:12:22,030 --> 01:12:26,570
which was a direct rip -off of The
Mounds of Madness. So I think its

1018
01:12:26,570 --> 01:12:29,510
repercussions are very cinematic.

1019
01:12:29,970 --> 01:12:32,830
This was the crowning jewel of the
Cthulhu mythos.

1020
01:12:33,050 --> 01:12:39,050
It clearly came as a crushing blow when
Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird

1021
01:12:39,050 --> 01:12:40,930
Tales, rejected it.

1022
01:12:41,470 --> 01:12:48,210
By then, sadly, Lovecraft had really
decided that he no longer had

1023
01:12:48,210 --> 01:12:54,050
any ability to express, convey the kind
of thing he wanted to convey. He was to

1024
01:12:54,050 --> 01:12:57,790
write very little prose fiction for the
last few years of his life.

1025
01:12:58,470 --> 01:13:02,790
Though more stories were attempted over
the next few years, most, like The

1026
01:13:02,790 --> 01:13:05,750
Shadow Over Innsmouth, were problematic
for Lovecraft.

1027
01:13:06,410 --> 01:13:09,690
Lovecraft himself seemed almost
embarrassed by it.

1028
01:13:10,590 --> 01:13:11,590
The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

1029
01:13:11,770 --> 01:13:18,170
And I think probably he understood, he
undoubtedly understood, that it was in a

1030
01:13:18,170 --> 01:13:24,210
sense a kind of reversion, a hearkening
back to the same sort of xenophobic

1031
01:13:24,210 --> 01:13:27,410
prejudices that he had embraced in his
youth.

1032
01:13:27,650 --> 01:13:30,390
And why is everybody so down on
Innsmouth?

1033
01:13:30,750 --> 01:13:35,790
Some of the stories would make you laugh
about old Captain Mars driving bargains

1034
01:13:35,790 --> 01:13:38,970
with the devil and bringing imps out of
hell to live in Innsmouth.

1035
01:13:39,470 --> 01:13:44,730
Some of them have queer, narrow heads
with flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes

1036
01:13:44,730 --> 01:13:48,170
that never seem to shut, and their skin
ain't quite right.

1037
01:13:48,790 --> 01:13:53,750
These things are creatures that are born
looking normal, and the older they get,

1038
01:13:53,790 --> 01:13:58,130
the stranger they become, until
eventually their transformation will be

1039
01:13:58,130 --> 01:14:01,470
and they'll slither off into the sea
where they will live forever.

1040
01:14:02,110 --> 01:14:06,210
It's definitely a sort of biological
horror story where you have the

1041
01:14:06,210 --> 01:14:09,530
of not just human society, but of the
human body.

1042
01:14:10,110 --> 01:14:15,190
But I think the overriding concern is
actually about culture. You have the

1043
01:14:15,190 --> 01:14:19,770
culture of the Deep Ones coming up and
over the decades eating away the culture

1044
01:14:19,770 --> 01:14:24,250
of Innsmouth so that finally Innsmouth
will vanish. There is, to be sure, a

1045
01:14:24,250 --> 01:14:28,970
of racist or xenophobic undercurrent to
that story, but I think it's very subtle

1046
01:14:28,970 --> 01:14:29,970
and very...

1047
01:14:32,619 --> 01:14:36,960
indirectly expressed, I'm now beginning
to think it must be one of Lovecraft's

1048
01:14:36,960 --> 01:14:38,060
one or two best stories.

1049
01:14:38,340 --> 01:14:42,220
And he does something that you don't see
a whole lot of Lovecraft doing in

1050
01:14:42,220 --> 01:14:43,460
writing action scenes.

1051
01:14:43,900 --> 01:14:48,700
I still think that the escape from the
Gilman Hotel is a marvelous action

1052
01:14:48,880 --> 01:14:54,840
and running across and running into the
parade of horrific frogfish things, it's

1053
01:14:54,840 --> 01:14:57,880
wonderful and not the sort of thing that
he did a lot.

1054
01:14:58,470 --> 01:15:02,570
Lovecraft never formally submitted The
Shadow Over Innsmouth for publication.

1055
01:15:04,450 --> 01:15:10,230
Partially, Lovecraft marginalized
himself because he was never very

1056
01:15:10,230 --> 01:15:11,570
complimentary of his own work.

1057
01:15:11,790 --> 01:15:17,690
But I think readers and critics
neglected to see the imagination at work

1058
01:15:17,690 --> 01:15:18,688
what he wrote.

1059
01:15:18,690 --> 01:15:22,930
It would be a few more years before
modern taste turned in his favor.

1060
01:15:24,250 --> 01:15:29,950
At the end of 1935, New York agent
Julius Schwartz was able to sell the

1061
01:15:29,950 --> 01:15:32,670
previously rejected At the Mountains of
Madness.

1062
01:15:33,310 --> 01:15:38,430
Thanks to the efforts of Donald Wondry,
the shadow out of time sold soon after,

1063
01:15:38,550 --> 01:15:43,450
giving Lovecraft his highest combined
payday, a total of $595.

1064
01:15:44,450 --> 01:15:50,730
By the end of 1936, just as success
seemed a possibility, Lovecraft's health

1065
01:15:50,730 --> 01:15:52,110
began to diminish.

1066
01:15:52,490 --> 01:15:57,340
In many ways, I think if Lovecraft had
preserved his health, He would have

1067
01:15:57,340 --> 01:16:01,560
become a well -known writer in the 40s
and 50s if he had lived that long.

1068
01:16:02,080 --> 01:16:06,320
I think Lovecraft really died at the
pinnacle of his talent.

1069
01:16:07,040 --> 01:16:10,660
Lovecraft had been suffering from a
small collection of ailments, including

1070
01:16:10,660 --> 01:16:11,660
digestive trouble.

1071
01:16:12,220 --> 01:16:17,060
By the time he submitted to a doctor's
diagnosis, the cancer had spread through

1072
01:16:17,060 --> 01:16:18,060
his small intestine.

1073
01:16:19,320 --> 01:16:23,780
H .P. Lovecraft died on the morning of
March 15, 1937.

1074
01:16:24,590 --> 01:16:26,530
He was 46 and a half years old.

1075
01:16:31,810 --> 01:16:36,670
Although he knew himself celebrated in a
small circle, he never broke through to

1076
01:16:36,670 --> 01:16:41,210
the public in any sense at all. And
therefore, when he died, he would have

1077
01:16:41,210 --> 01:16:45,470
justified in thinking himself as a
failure or as a very, very obscure

1078
01:16:45,730 --> 01:16:49,130
If it weren't for Lovecraft's disciples,
he would have been forgotten.

1079
01:16:49,390 --> 01:16:51,930
That it was people like Darylis and...

1080
01:16:52,670 --> 01:16:57,370
Robert Block and so forth that kept
Lovecraft alive. And they went out and

1081
01:16:57,370 --> 01:16:58,930
actually got his books published.

1082
01:16:59,210 --> 01:17:05,210
In 1939, August Derleth and Donald
Wondry, two of Lovecraft's most earnest

1083
01:17:05,210 --> 01:17:09,390
supporters, achieved what no one had
been able to do in Lovecraft's lifetime.

1084
01:17:09,810 --> 01:17:14,470
They founded Arkham House and released a
collection of stories entitled The

1085
01:17:14,470 --> 01:17:17,090
Outsider and Others by H .P. Lovecraft.

1086
01:17:17,430 --> 01:17:19,810
Well, Arkham House came into being.

1087
01:17:20,600 --> 01:17:25,960
virtually out of Lovecraft's death. I
mean, almost immediately on the news of

1088
01:17:25,960 --> 01:17:28,640
Lovecraft's death reaching August 1st.

1089
01:17:28,880 --> 01:17:35,000
It existed initially to publish
Lovecraft and then continued with an

1090
01:17:35,000 --> 01:17:37,840
record as a small press.

1091
01:17:38,280 --> 01:17:42,600
Following on from which they decided to
do more Lovecraft and then indeed to do

1092
01:17:42,600 --> 01:17:44,300
more of the other.

1093
01:17:44,830 --> 01:17:49,690
Great writers from Weird Tales, Clark
Ashton Smith, for instance, and, indeed,

1094
01:17:49,890 --> 01:17:50,890
Wanda himself.

1095
01:17:50,950 --> 01:17:55,090
You know, Arkham House books became, for
the most part, incredibly valuable

1096
01:17:55,090 --> 01:17:56,190
incredibly quickly.

1097
01:17:56,430 --> 01:17:58,650
They were sought after by book
collectors.

1098
01:17:59,730 --> 01:18:03,070
Not because they were rare, but because
they were good.

1099
01:18:03,370 --> 01:18:08,170
For, certainly, a decade or more, there
was no publisher other than Arkham House

1100
01:18:08,170 --> 01:18:13,350
specialising in mainly supernatural
horror, a very small smattering of

1101
01:18:13,350 --> 01:18:17,760
fiction. It was a cheap, disposable
literature.

1102
01:18:18,500 --> 01:18:23,320
And Arkham House was one of the very
first places to actually say some of

1103
01:18:23,320 --> 01:18:25,780
stuff needs to come out, respectively.

1104
01:18:26,540 --> 01:18:31,080
Since the success of Arkham House, many
writers have continued to expand the

1105
01:18:31,080 --> 01:18:32,080
Cthulhu mythos.

1106
01:18:32,500 --> 01:18:36,500
In fact, this was a practice Lovecraft
encouraged when he was alive.

1107
01:18:37,000 --> 01:18:42,180
As part of the Lovecraft game is, you
know, that you get it and you want to

1108
01:18:42,180 --> 01:18:43,300
to it and pass it on.

1109
01:18:43,850 --> 01:18:47,210
And it's been part of the Lovecraft game
from the very beginning.

1110
01:18:47,490 --> 01:18:52,230
The Fritz Leibers, the Bob Bloch, all of
these people.

1111
01:18:52,570 --> 01:18:58,450
And August Ellis. They took a little of
this, took the story, added to it,

1112
01:18:58,490 --> 01:18:59,449
passed it on.

1113
01:18:59,450 --> 01:19:01,450
And so then we started doing it.

1114
01:19:01,760 --> 01:19:05,700
The problem when I was a teenager was,
you know, I read Lovecraft and I

1115
01:19:05,720 --> 01:19:09,740
this is how you do it. But
unfortunately, what I meant by this to

1116
01:19:09,820 --> 01:19:13,540
you know, this is how you imitate it.
And worse still, although I've never

1117
01:19:13,540 --> 01:19:18,660
more than 20 miles away from Liverpool
in England, I've set these stories in

1118
01:19:18,660 --> 01:19:22,920
Massachusetts, you know, in Arkham and
places like that, Kingsport. And it was

1119
01:19:22,920 --> 01:19:26,240
painfully obvious that I'd never been
very far from Liverpool, particularly

1120
01:19:26,240 --> 01:19:32,780
the rustics opened their mouths. If you
read... A story like The Mist, King's

1121
01:19:32,780 --> 01:19:34,120
novella, that's pure Lovecraft.

1122
01:19:34,360 --> 01:19:39,580
It's about these tentacle things
breaking through from some other

1123
01:19:39,580 --> 01:19:42,820
terrorizing a grocery store in, guess
where, Maine.

1124
01:19:44,740 --> 01:19:48,280
That's pure Lovecraft, I'm sure.

1125
01:19:48,660 --> 01:19:54,340
I did a story called Shoggoth, So
Peculiar, in which I have two

1126
01:19:54,340 --> 01:19:57,800
beasties complaining about Lovecraft as
a writer.

1127
01:19:58,390 --> 01:20:02,990
But the truth is that we only parody
things that have life.

1128
01:20:03,770 --> 01:20:08,550
There is no point in parodying something
dead. There is no point in parodying

1129
01:20:08,550 --> 01:20:11,650
something in which one has no interest.

1130
01:20:11,870 --> 01:20:15,610
There's no point in parodying or making
fun of something that doesn't matter.

1131
01:20:15,850 --> 01:20:20,270
And almost 100 years after his death,
Lovecraft don't matter.

1132
01:20:20,890 --> 01:20:25,990
And it is a passion that continues to
this day, even in the face of criticism.

1133
01:20:27,560 --> 01:20:30,920
Well, there's always going to be a kind
of snobbery about supernatural horror

1134
01:20:30,920 --> 01:20:34,720
fiction. I think, you know, the writer
needs to be dead for maybe 100 years

1135
01:20:34,720 --> 01:20:36,700
before he's fully taken seriously.

1136
01:20:37,380 --> 01:20:42,760
Every creator that dwells in the genre
must assume his work will not be

1137
01:20:42,760 --> 01:20:45,720
appreciated as if he was doing straight
stuff.

1138
01:20:46,020 --> 01:20:47,480
It's been ghettoized.

1139
01:20:47,800 --> 01:20:54,440
It's really not the proper occupation of
a serious writer.

1140
01:20:54,880 --> 01:20:57,440
Look what happened when Stephen King won
that award a few years ago.

1141
01:20:57,980 --> 01:21:01,460
People immediately started putting him
down because he wasn't writing serious

1142
01:21:01,460 --> 01:21:02,460
stuff.

1143
01:21:02,640 --> 01:21:08,920
It's very easy for us now to forget in a
world in which, you know, as a fantasy,

1144
01:21:09,000 --> 01:21:14,360
horror, science fiction, whatever the
hell I am, author, my books are going to

1145
01:21:14,360 --> 01:21:17,160
come out in the hardback just like
anybody else's and they're going to be

1146
01:21:17,160 --> 01:21:18,720
their shelves just like anybody else's.

1147
01:21:19,840 --> 01:21:21,780
That didn't used to be the case.

1148
01:21:22,420 --> 01:21:23,600
But I think...

1149
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:28,900
probably at the moment that we saw
Luftwaffe in the Penguin modern

1150
01:21:29,120 --> 01:21:33,640
I think there's no question whatsoever
that he's fully established and about

1151
01:21:33,640 --> 01:21:34,640
time too.

1152
01:21:35,800 --> 01:21:41,480
He has been translated into something
like 25 languages around the world, from

1153
01:21:41,480 --> 01:21:47,460
Czech to Polish to Japanese, Korean.
There's a Bengali edition.

1154
01:21:48,220 --> 01:21:51,560
A lot of people kind of get introduced
to Lovecraft not even knowing that it's

1155
01:21:51,560 --> 01:21:55,080
Lovecraft. You know, you've got things
like, you know, Hellboy, which is, you

1156
01:21:55,080 --> 01:21:59,060
know, borrowing very heavily from, you
know, the Lovecraft mythos. And even

1157
01:21:59,060 --> 01:22:03,020
things like Pirates of the Caribbean,
where you've got Davy Jones is looking

1158
01:22:03,020 --> 01:22:07,020
like, you know, he crawled out of
Lovecraft. You know, it looks like

1159
01:22:07,440 --> 01:22:11,180
You look around these days and you get
the plush Cthulhu phenomenon.

1160
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:12,700
You get Cthulhu slippers.

1161
01:22:13,280 --> 01:22:15,160
You get funny Cthulhu hat.

1162
01:22:15,820 --> 01:22:20,280
One of the things that I think is so
amazing is I met a group of people who

1163
01:22:20,280 --> 01:22:24,720
into playing these love -like Call of
Cthulhu games and so forth, and they

1164
01:22:24,720 --> 01:22:27,880
all of the Lovecraft creatures, but they
had never ever read Lovecraft. They

1165
01:22:27,880 --> 01:22:28,980
didn't know what the stories were.

1166
01:22:29,320 --> 01:22:35,560
His images are so outré and ghastly and
macabre and colorful that they influence

1167
01:22:35,560 --> 01:22:37,440
all kinds of rock and roll bands.

1168
01:22:38,480 --> 01:22:44,740
I think he also literally appeals to the
outsider and the person who is not.

1169
01:22:46,240 --> 01:22:50,380
well accepted in society, who's a little
bit of a loner. I think one of the

1170
01:22:50,380 --> 01:22:55,700
reasons that Lovecraft is so popular
today is that his view, which is a very

1171
01:22:55,700 --> 01:23:00,140
dark one, you know, that man is lucky to
be ignorant, I think is what he used to

1172
01:23:00,140 --> 01:23:03,720
say, because if he knew the truth, he
would either go crazy or he would kill

1173
01:23:03,720 --> 01:23:07,200
himself, is one that everyone can relate
to these days.

1174
01:23:07,700 --> 01:23:12,480
Every election, you see the bumper
stickers saying, vote for Cthulhu, why

1175
01:23:12,480 --> 01:23:13,480
for the lesser evil?

1176
01:23:14,090 --> 01:23:19,990
Such is Lovecraft's fame that some
occultists insist the Cthulhu mythos is

1177
01:23:19,990 --> 01:23:26,220
myth. I know every religion begins as
the delusion of one or two people. And

1178
01:23:26,220 --> 01:23:29,440
once enough people sign on, it becomes a
worldview.

1179
01:23:29,840 --> 01:23:35,380
And if you can inhabit it and live
everyday life, then it no longer seems

1180
01:23:35,380 --> 01:23:40,000
insane. But when you're one of the very
few who believe it, there's a kind of an

1181
01:23:40,000 --> 01:23:43,820
intensity that results in an unbalanced
character.

1182
01:23:44,020 --> 01:23:47,860
And that's what I'm afraid of with
cultists.

1183
01:23:49,320 --> 01:23:51,480
actually believe there are old ones.

1184
01:23:51,840 --> 01:23:57,860
I think that every time somebody comes
out with a world as fully fleshed as

1185
01:23:57,860 --> 01:24:03,860
Lovecraft creates, you are bound to find
people that will start speaking Klingon

1186
01:24:03,860 --> 01:24:10,040
or dressing like a hobbit to go to the
supermarket or believe that they can

1187
01:24:10,040 --> 01:24:14,700
actually channel in a couple of old ones
into their living room.

1188
01:24:15,150 --> 01:24:20,790
And I believe that some people have
actually even died trying to invoke some

1189
01:24:20,790 --> 01:24:21,790
the ancient gods.

1190
01:24:22,030 --> 01:24:27,510
I knew people that handled Star Wars
this way. They were so absorbed in it.

1191
01:24:27,510 --> 01:24:33,670
of them wished it were true, you could
tell. And another believed that it was

1192
01:24:33,670 --> 01:24:35,810
all true in a parallel world.

1193
01:24:36,350 --> 01:24:39,570
And, you know, you're beginning to go
off the deep end.

1194
01:24:40,390 --> 01:24:44,270
So, you know, I would definitely not
advise to...

1195
01:24:45,320 --> 01:24:50,300
put too much money or effort into
invoking that Shoggoth into the kitchen,

1196
01:24:50,300 --> 01:24:51,560
it's up to you.

1197
01:24:53,800 --> 01:24:59,320
The oldest and strongest emotion of
mankind is fear. And the oldest and

1198
01:24:59,320 --> 01:25:03,160
strongest kind of fear is fear of the
unknown.

1199
01:25:03,880 --> 01:25:10,320
We live in a world in which even if you
don't know who Cthulhu is, even if

1200
01:25:10,320 --> 01:25:13,920
you've never read any Lovecraft, you can
kind of get the joke.

1201
01:25:14,800 --> 01:25:19,080
And while certainly there have been far
too many people, not least me, imitating

1202
01:25:19,080 --> 01:25:24,740
him too closely, he also has had a
profound influence on people as diverse

1203
01:25:24,740 --> 01:25:31,400
Fritz Leiber, as Poppy Z. Bright,
Caitlin Kiernan, Ted Kline, you name it.

1204
01:25:31,400 --> 01:25:37,180
me, the brilliance of Lovecraft, what's
so important about Lovecraft is his...

1205
01:25:38,220 --> 01:25:39,400
It's simply his imagination.

1206
01:25:39,920 --> 01:25:45,320
It's incredible to think that this guy
who was this reckless living in this

1207
01:25:45,320 --> 01:25:50,680
little house in Providence, Rhode
Island, ends up spawning, you know,

1208
01:25:50,700 --> 01:25:53,060
essentially modern -day horror.

1209
01:25:54,380 --> 01:25:59,320
It's the duality of Lovecraft. It's the
fact that people can take the ideas

1210
01:25:59,320 --> 01:26:04,280
almost as the basis of a religion.
People can take the ideas from a...

1211
01:26:04,849 --> 01:26:09,770
theory as academic point of view or from
a writing point of view and then you

1212
01:26:09,770 --> 01:26:15,510
can then if you just like drawing great
big monsters Lovecraft is waiting for

1213
01:26:15,510 --> 01:26:16,510
you too