In which a friendship foolishly neglected is gratefully resumed
Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to renew my long friendship with H. P. Lovecraft.
We will now pause to accommodate the panicked exodus of those poor unfortunates who dreamed of a different sunken city than darkly impossible R’lyeh…
…the thunder of stampeding footfalls fades across the sea-swept rocks that lie black and carven at the roots of the Mountains of Madness, and a few squealing stragglers are neatly tipped into the icy swells by strangely gelatinous and barely visible pseudopodia groping up from the lightless depths…
It’s been a revelation how much I missed H.P. Lovecraft, his vocabulary and the utter surety with which he plays it, like the infinite instrument it is, his erudition that tucks itself into odd nooks and crannies to shine like an old mine cut diamond dropped on the age-heaved flags of a decaying family crypt just waiting for the unwary and happily ignorant (run and pick it up, intruder, you’ll never escape its influence again this side of madness - that’s the curse of knowledge, after all) and his cynical vision wherein humanity's position as the pinnacle of some god's creation topples into the abyss along with any notion of that god's puissance itself.
I freely admit that Edgar Allen Poe it was who first hinted to me that everything I saw was but a fancy, a scrim whispered in pastels over the strength of the under-painting, the grey and black bones of the work that lie beneath, ignored in what’s likely the first article in mankind’s collective unconscious pact with its own self-image. But even then, I couldn’t get past those damnably precious rhymes - if one cannot rhyme with overwhelming power on the juggernaut course of one’s theme, if the rhymes twist and prettify and prostitute the image for no other reason than to exist as rhymes, then they disgust me and I want them gone from my sight. Annabel Lee is not for me. /end intentional punning
H.P. - Howard Phillips - showed me all the full extent of the mystery, the land where the dragons sing in the autumn woods and the wind blasts invisible silver, sharp as shattered obsidian, through shadowed hills beneath heavy, running clouds. He showed me my native land, where the ancient trees drowse in the sultry summer air, deep in narrow valleys so steep their heads look like oddly rumpled patches in the long grass seen from atop those boundary hills as a thunderstorm blasts through, and one may make one’s way for miles swiftly and all unseen along those valley floors, if the trees and shadows are willing, or not at all if they’re averse, and, indeed, one may never come up onto the hilltop again if they're averse enough. Lovecraft showed me the night under great blooming stars in the cold depths of infinity, and gave me to realize it was all right to be awed by the sight and the thought that I looked on both wonder and terror. The world is itself: it has no requirement to conform to my comfort, or preferences, or even my presence. And I had no requirement to conform to the preferences of such puny creatures as the majority of mankind, either. H.P. would always be there, liking what I liked, regardless of how much others disliked that same sense of the void in which visible creation hardly qualifies as a mote.
H.P. never disappointed me with some species of cutesy triteness. When he wasn’t great, and he very often was great, he never sank to sentimentalizing the truly horrible in his work, like some conventionalized-but-unable-see-it Victorian-Gothic-Fanboy, either. There’s never a need to pick off a layer of sugar-glacee to get at the dark fruits in Lovecraft. Nor is there any need to boil down a piece to find any flavor in it. Howard, you may have been a cranky, opinionated pessimist over-endowed with financial difficulties, family issues, apparent racism and personal pedantry, but I do so love you for your gifts: that vocabulary and the educated and discerning ear for language that always went with it, the sure sense of plot and pace and character that dumped all these poor, believable persons into seemingly normal worlds, worlds that bud and then slowly bloom into intense strangeness if not utter madness, and always that strangely erudite acquaintance with every shadowed byway scholarship has to offer.
I’ve come to realize, too, that H.P. Lovecraft was and is a shaping force in my perception of how speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy and horror all ought to work and be. Real life isn’t thus, and I cannot escape into a world where stupidity breeds success, either. Thanks to Lovecraft, my tolerance for the cute, the trite, the conventionalized and the sentimentalized in genre fiction, whether written, or televised in whatever format, is so vanishingly small as to be functionally invisible. It narrows my choices, yes, but it also keeps me from hurling expensive publications and even more expensive electronica across inoffensive rooms, too. From Lovecraft I learned that same lesson about genre fiction that Honda now uses as a safety slogan: Stupid Hurts. I will forever be grateful for my abiding inability to warm to any character whose stupidity must be offset by their creator’s endless intervention and boundless indulgence simply to get the character through the piece intact. Make that character The Hero of the piece, and I will throw the thing. I suppose that means I don’t tolerate stupid, or, indeed, ignorant in the creator any better than their creation, either. So be it. Real life isn’t thus, and I cannot escape into a world where stupidity breeds success, either.
If this has meant that it becomes more and more like an impossibility for me to watch the Sci Fi channel - pardon me, SyFy (What is that meant to be? The Syphilis channel for the spelling-impaired?) - it’s also meant that I’ve discovered the peculiar pleasures of knowing more, and knowing it more thoroughly, than the people who make History Channel programs on Egypt, the Celts, the Vikings, the Templars, and every occult subject past which the History Channel ever deigns to waltz. My family may be quite a bit better educated on the formulation of Japanese incense, the Enuma Elish, flint knapping, 19th century ship riveting techniques, and the spheres of influence and modes of worship of a wide array of deities whom their careers in the American school system have taught them to believe were both pagan and inherently nasty than they might ever have intended to be, but no knowledge is ever a waste, either. I've even discovered the sensation of knowing more, at least in terms of alternate interpretations, about alternate history than some of the alternate historians. All Has Read, indeed. And falling into a good book, well researched, beautifully written, multi-layered, deft, subtle, and smart will always be an even greater pleasure since you insured I knew that sweetness and light are usually hollow folderol, and always boring as hell. If the spun sugar doesn't create a cutting edge when it breaks, what use is it?
Thank you, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Thank you.
We will now pause to accommodate the panicked exodus of those poor unfortunates who dreamed of a different sunken city than darkly impossible R’lyeh…
…the thunder of stampeding footfalls fades across the sea-swept rocks that lie black and carven at the roots of the Mountains of Madness, and a few squealing stragglers are neatly tipped into the icy swells by strangely gelatinous and barely visible pseudopodia groping up from the lightless depths…
It’s been a revelation how much I missed H.P. Lovecraft, his vocabulary and the utter surety with which he plays it, like the infinite instrument it is, his erudition that tucks itself into odd nooks and crannies to shine like an old mine cut diamond dropped on the age-heaved flags of a decaying family crypt just waiting for the unwary and happily ignorant (run and pick it up, intruder, you’ll never escape its influence again this side of madness - that’s the curse of knowledge, after all) and his cynical vision wherein humanity's position as the pinnacle of some god's creation topples into the abyss along with any notion of that god's puissance itself.
I freely admit that Edgar Allen Poe it was who first hinted to me that everything I saw was but a fancy, a scrim whispered in pastels over the strength of the under-painting, the grey and black bones of the work that lie beneath, ignored in what’s likely the first article in mankind’s collective unconscious pact with its own self-image. But even then, I couldn’t get past those damnably precious rhymes - if one cannot rhyme with overwhelming power on the juggernaut course of one’s theme, if the rhymes twist and prettify and prostitute the image for no other reason than to exist as rhymes, then they disgust me and I want them gone from my sight. Annabel Lee is not for me. /end intentional punning
H.P. - Howard Phillips - showed me all the full extent of the mystery, the land where the dragons sing in the autumn woods and the wind blasts invisible silver, sharp as shattered obsidian, through shadowed hills beneath heavy, running clouds. He showed me my native land, where the ancient trees drowse in the sultry summer air, deep in narrow valleys so steep their heads look like oddly rumpled patches in the long grass seen from atop those boundary hills as a thunderstorm blasts through, and one may make one’s way for miles swiftly and all unseen along those valley floors, if the trees and shadows are willing, or not at all if they’re averse, and, indeed, one may never come up onto the hilltop again if they're averse enough. Lovecraft showed me the night under great blooming stars in the cold depths of infinity, and gave me to realize it was all right to be awed by the sight and the thought that I looked on both wonder and terror. The world is itself: it has no requirement to conform to my comfort, or preferences, or even my presence. And I had no requirement to conform to the preferences of such puny creatures as the majority of mankind, either. H.P. would always be there, liking what I liked, regardless of how much others disliked that same sense of the void in which visible creation hardly qualifies as a mote.
H.P. never disappointed me with some species of cutesy triteness. When he wasn’t great, and he very often was great, he never sank to sentimentalizing the truly horrible in his work, like some conventionalized-but-unable-see-it Victorian-Gothic-Fanboy, either. There’s never a need to pick off a layer of sugar-glacee to get at the dark fruits in Lovecraft. Nor is there any need to boil down a piece to find any flavor in it. Howard, you may have been a cranky, opinionated pessimist over-endowed with financial difficulties, family issues, apparent racism and personal pedantry, but I do so love you for your gifts: that vocabulary and the educated and discerning ear for language that always went with it, the sure sense of plot and pace and character that dumped all these poor, believable persons into seemingly normal worlds, worlds that bud and then slowly bloom into intense strangeness if not utter madness, and always that strangely erudite acquaintance with every shadowed byway scholarship has to offer.
I’ve come to realize, too, that H.P. Lovecraft was and is a shaping force in my perception of how speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy and horror all ought to work and be. Real life isn’t thus, and I cannot escape into a world where stupidity breeds success, either. Thanks to Lovecraft, my tolerance for the cute, the trite, the conventionalized and the sentimentalized in genre fiction, whether written, or televised in whatever format, is so vanishingly small as to be functionally invisible. It narrows my choices, yes, but it also keeps me from hurling expensive publications and even more expensive electronica across inoffensive rooms, too. From Lovecraft I learned that same lesson about genre fiction that Honda now uses as a safety slogan: Stupid Hurts. I will forever be grateful for my abiding inability to warm to any character whose stupidity must be offset by their creator’s endless intervention and boundless indulgence simply to get the character through the piece intact. Make that character The Hero of the piece, and I will throw the thing. I suppose that means I don’t tolerate stupid, or, indeed, ignorant in the creator any better than their creation, either. So be it. Real life isn’t thus, and I cannot escape into a world where stupidity breeds success, either.
If this has meant that it becomes more and more like an impossibility for me to watch the Sci Fi channel - pardon me, SyFy (What is that meant to be? The Syphilis channel for the spelling-impaired?) - it’s also meant that I’ve discovered the peculiar pleasures of knowing more, and knowing it more thoroughly, than the people who make History Channel programs on Egypt, the Celts, the Vikings, the Templars, and every occult subject past which the History Channel ever deigns to waltz. My family may be quite a bit better educated on the formulation of Japanese incense, the Enuma Elish, flint knapping, 19th century ship riveting techniques, and the spheres of influence and modes of worship of a wide array of deities whom their careers in the American school system have taught them to believe were both pagan and inherently nasty than they might ever have intended to be, but no knowledge is ever a waste, either. I've even discovered the sensation of knowing more, at least in terms of alternate interpretations, about alternate history than some of the alternate historians. All Has Read, indeed. And falling into a good book, well researched, beautifully written, multi-layered, deft, subtle, and smart will always be an even greater pleasure since you insured I knew that sweetness and light are usually hollow folderol, and always boring as hell. If the spun sugar doesn't create a cutting edge when it breaks, what use is it?
Thank you, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Thank you.