"The Mound" turned out to not be fashioned of dirt, if you know what I mean

I was excited at the prospect of reading this story after having read another of Lovecraft's collaborations with Zealia Bishop, "The Curse of Yig," back near the beginning of my literary odyssey. Alas, while "The Mound" began with a lot of promise, in the end it completely failed to deliver the thrills as "Yig" did. A very disappointing climax indeed, especially given the really incredible bump-and-set that kicks off the first half of the story.

"The Mound" is ostensibly about an ethnologist who studies American Indian tribes--surely the same character who seeks out the story in "The Curse of Yig." So anyway, he comes to an Oklahoma town called Binger in order to research supernatural stories about a large mound or small hill a few miles outside town. Apparently, it's haunted--or possibly patrolled--by two ghosts.

In the daylight hours, an Indian man paces atop the mound, only to vanish if approached. In the night, the patrol is taken over by a headless Indian squaw. And so it has gone for the past century or so. Many of the daring explorers brave enough to investigate have either disappeared NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN or have returned after a brief period of absence to find themselves apparently mad and babbling typical Lovecraftian cosmic nonsense.

Pretty cool setup. I'll give them that.

So our hero goes up alone (he could find nobody in town stupid enough to join him) to dig and find out what's up. That's where he finds, after a decent afternoon of digging, a strange metallic tube containing ancient documents. As dark approaches, he decides to hoof it back to town and give the mysterious documents a thorough once-over.

The pages are the notes of famed 16th-Century explorer Francisco de Coronado...'s hired man, Panfilo de Zamacona. *sigh*

The bulk of the story is the ethnologist's reading of Zamacona's journal about his extended visit to an underworld inhabited by strange men with strange powers. I really don't want to get into the details, but it takes up a good 5 of the 7 chapters. Suffice it to say he found a primeval, subterranean society of telepathic, teleporting man-things and came to be more or less accepted by them, trading their knowledge, living quarters, food and all for his knowledge of the outside world.

This land, called K'n-yan by the natives, turns out to not be the only inner-earth world thriving with its own form of life. For beyond the shimmering blue iridescent light of K'n-yan, one can find sub-subterranean passages to a red-lit world even deeper in the planet. The natives of the blue world, of course, do not get along with those of the red, and nor do the red folk get along with the viscous black blob-like shapeshifters that can be found in the coal-dark sub-sub-subterranean world to be found even deeper beyond their own. *yawn* OK, I'm sufficiently bored.

Back to the blue world beneath the green (that's ours). The interesting bits are that they are a Cthuluhu- and Yig-worshipping, technologically advanced super-society that now has a genetically engineered slave class to do all the heavy lifting so they can just concentrate on educational, philosophical, artistic and sexual gratification. Also used as slaves are the people who would not conform--criminals, rogues, etc. First they are thrown in a gladiatorial coliseum and maimed in whatever horrible ways imaginable, to the delight of the crowds. This maiming includes but is not limited to: cutting, scraping, bruising, dismemberment, disemboweling, and death. This underground "civilization" also has the power to reanimate the dead, giving them a sole purpose--to please the living.

Anyway, Zamacona spends decades with them before he realizes he's run out of things to say and is pretty sure he's bound for the coliseum, so he tries to escape with the help of his lady-thing friend. He is able to get his missive to the surface, but that's all we know other than they got caught in their escape attempt. She faces a stiff punishment, but he is given another chance.

I am really cutting a ton of shit out of this shit-filled story; you have no idea. You're welcome.

So our hero decides he's gonna rediscover this society that Zamacona wrote about, and he sets off in the morning to continue digging.

SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! Of course if you haven't already read it, you probably shouldn't. Maybe just finish this review and call it quits for this story.

When he gets to the top of the mound, his shovel and pickaxe are missing. He figures it's a prank by some wise-ass villager watching through binoculars, so he just mans up and digs with his bowie knife instead, eventually being swallowed up by a sinkhole or something and ending up in a subterranean cave described by Zamacona.

He follows the passage, finding along the way his shovel and pickaxe, and an undead, highly maimed sentry. Oh shit. It's Zamacona.

The end.

Seriously. Yep. It ends that poorly. Very disappointing. I think HPL must have just been sick of writing it even though it was only a two-month project. In any event, it was considered a collaboration and wasn't printed until after his death anyway. At least he never had to see it published.

As I said, it started out so cool and promising. That's what made the ending even worse. This had the potential to be a sci-fi masterpiece. Too bad nobody has picked that idea up and written more tales in this setting. I'm sure the blue inner-world folk have many interesting and thrilling stories to offer the green earth, but this wasn't one of them.

"The Last Test" proves worthy of its name

SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!! (Not that there's much to spoil in this story)

Written in 1928, "The Last Test" is a revision by HPL of a story originally written by Adolphe de Castro, and it is a slog. I really had a hell of a time getting through this story. It brought my literary quest to a screeching halt for several weeks. Eventually I had to resort to using the audio Cliffs Notes of the Lovecraft library as my friends at the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast came to my rescue. Chad and Chris got me through by summarizing the section I was stuck on (in the usual entertaining fashion), and then I was able to pick up from that point and continue reading through to the end.

Even so, I found this story quite boring and generally stupid. Even Lovecraft himself called it "the story that ruined my winter," and a "beastly mess." It revolves around mostly three people--our hero, James Dalton, his spurned love interest, Georgina Clarendon, and her brother, Dr. Alfred Clarendon. It takes place over a span of many years, first setting up that the characters knew one another in New York when they were all young, then picking up much later when they have all moved and made lives for themselves in San Francisco.

Dalton and Georgina, whom he happens to still harbor a love for long after her now-deceased father disapproved of him as her suitor back in New York, run into one another in Frisco quite by accident. By this time, her brother Alfred is the staff doctor at San Quentin Penitentiary and a respected expert regarding a fatal black fever that has taken hold of the region. Similarly successful in his own field, Dalton is governor of California. Georgina helps her brother with his research.

Old feelings spring up between the old lovers, and when Dalton asks Alfred (whom he secretly refers to belittlingly as "Little Alf") for his blessing to marry Georgina, he's once again cockblocked, this time by the latest Clarendon patriarch.

Meanwhile, the fever plague has taken hold of San Quentin and the public fears it will jump the walls and spread among the populace. And here's where I'm going to skip a bunch of shit that doesn't matter...

Eventually it becomes clear that Clarendon has been actually infecting people with this fever plague in order to try to find a cure. In the end, he injects himself as a "last test," but he ends up dying too. And the two lovers marry and live happily ever after.

If you're thinking of reading this horrible story, think again. It's the literary equivalent of music torture at Guantanamo Bay. It's achingly dull, predictable, corny and emotionless. Thank goodness I can finally check it off my list. Whew. Maybe I can renew my pursuit of the goal before me now that I've faced what felt like the LAST TEST to my resolve. "Haa! I kill me!"

Laundry list classics

My Grammar Geeks group on LinkedIn has lately been busy contributing to a discussion called "Laundry list classics." The idea is to imagine what the first draft of a famous story might have been like were it penned on the back of a laundry or shopping list, cocktail napkin or something equally mundane. Some folks have posted alternate versions of famous first lines from classic novels, while others have composed sonnets or limericks. No matter the format, one could easily imagine the work scrawled haphazardly across a dry cleaning receipt or junk mail envelope.

I know that National Poetry Month is over, but I couldn't resist once this discussion started picking up steam. I've submitted three of my own limericks so far, and here they are:

I travelled one day on a whim
To shadowy Innsmouth so grim.
The fish-frogs came out
And chased me about--
I think I'll go back for a swim.


A young Kansan named Dorothy Gale
To Oz in a cyclone did sail.
On the road, she eased down
To old Emerald Town
And melted a witch with a pail.


On a night when I mourned my Lenore
With a sorrow like never before,
In swooped a black bird
That spoke only one word;
My wits shall return nevermore.

Time to learn some new words

If reading Lovecraft isn't enough of a vocabulary builder-upper for you, check this thing out! The title alone is enough to make you feel like an elite member of the bohemian intelligentsia. Here's how I found it:

I'm currently reading through the story "The Last Test," and--as is bound to happen now and then during a Lovecraft reading session--I came upon a word I did not recognize. My Nook informed me that there was no definition for this particular word, so I went online and tried again: "Testudinous..." Google thought I'd made a typo and suggested instead "testudineous," which means "tortoise-like" or "resembling a tortoise shell."

I reversed Google's unwanted correction and searched again. Very few hits. Hm. I moved on to the trusty ol' Ngram viewer (oh how I love that thing!) and searched for it there. Got a few hits, so on a whim I pulled open one of the earliest mentions. It was a reference book entry:

TESTUDINOUS, adj. [L. testudineus, from testudo, a tortoise.]
Resembling the shell of a tortoise.

Again, hm. The Latin spelling is a homophone for the suggested spelling Google gave me. Looks like we have two legitimate alternate spellings of a word, neither of which anyone uses anymore. I Ngram'ed them against one another and found that the -eous spelling was slightly more frequently used in print than Lovecraft's version, reaching an undisputed peak of usage in the early 1890s.

 



So, satisfied with the definition and its bearing on the story (the ascetic doctor's unique and quirky assistant, Surama, "indulged in many a deep, testudinous chuckle," or deep, slow-paced and deliberate chuckles), I turned back to this reference book I found through the Ngram viewer. Wow. What a title! Here's the title page, direct from the scan of the original 1832 printing:

 

 

The best news is that you can read the whole thing through Google Books by following this link. I guarantee you'll find some intriguing words in this book. It's easy to get hooked once you start digging. I swear to you, Lovecraft must have had access to a copy of this book because just about every page yields something I know I've read in his many stories.

 

I'm happy I found this valuable compendium of lexicographical knowledge. Have a look yourself. Expanding your vocabulary is a great way to learn more about the world around you and about yourself. It also allows you to more accurately express yourself. If that's not enough of a bonus, building your vocabulary can only have positive effects on your professional life. Ever heard of anyone getting canned because they have stellar communication skills?

 

If you think this book is surely antiquated and no longer relevant since it was published in the 19th Century, then I have news for you. It's been reprinted several times over the last 180 years. The 2010 paperback version, at 238 pages, is currently available on Amazon for the low, low price of $19.99! What are you waiting for? Grab some new words today!

SAS (Short Attention Span) HPL Reviews #10

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!!

Azathoth
This is sort of a Dream Cycle story, though I don't know if it's officially recognized as such by Lovecraft scholars. It is very short--one of his shortest, in fact. Here's the skinny: A guy lives in a huge fortress with no outward facing windows. The world is dead and gray, and the only things he sees when he looks out his castle window are the courtyard at the center of the fortress, the exterior walls, and (at night) the stars directly above. One night the stars open up to him and send a bridge of astral dust down to carry him away to an unknown paradise of verdant shores populated with beautiful flowers, where he lives in comfort from then on. No stars for this one, just a great big raspberry. Me no likey. For completists only.

The Battle that Ended the Century (written with R.H. Barlow)
There *is* a plot here... of a sort anyway. It's just not that good. This story is nothing more than a joke written by Lovecraft and Barlow, a way to drop names of their contemporaries and have a little fun. It centers around a boxing match on December 31, 2000. The two combatants end up getting quite bloody by the end, with ears and noses flying off throughout the fight, and one guy's fist going clear through the other guy's face. Throughout it all, the authors have overly peppered the dialog with Garbage Pail Kids-like references to their peers and themselves: Howard Philips Lovecraft is referred to as Horse Power Hateart; Frank Belknap Long is parodied as Frank Chimesleep Short... You get the picture. Another great big raspberry for this one. It's not a long story, but it's an interminable read.


The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
More of a novella, CDW comes in at around 51,500 words. Charles Dexter Ward is a young, well-to-do man who has recently escaped impossibly from a mental hospital. His family doctor, Dr. Willett, goes to investigate, digging into Ward's recent past and the goings-on that landed him in the asylum in the first place. Ward had become obsessed with an ancestor of his, Joseph Curwen, an alchemist and necromancer. Ward had resurrected Curwen from his long-dead ashes, much like the blood droplets resurrected Uncle Frank in Hellraiser. Once Curwen was back, he picked right back up on his old evil hijinks, killing his look-alike progeny and taking his place in the world, allowing him to continue his grisly experiments with necromancy. However, his sudden and unexplained lack of knowledge of the modern world gets the Charles Ward impersonator locked in the nut hatch. When Willett realizes who is actually locked up, he pays Curwen a visit, intending to kill him and burn him to dust in order to save the world from the dastardly plans he has been hatching. It's a great story, and the film adaptation isn't too bad either. For me the novella was a bit slow during the flashback parts about Curwen's time.

That was a long one. Gonna hang it up for tonight. Thanks for reading!

National Poetry Month 3

Any reader of this blog knows of my obsession with H.P. Lovecraft and my current goal to read everything he has written. Did you guys know he wrote poetry too? He didn't write a whole lot of it, but what I've seen is very good. Here's one of my favorites, in which Lovecraft pays homage to one of his own favorite authors, Edgar Allan Poe.

WHERE POE ONCE WALKED
by H.P. Lovecraft

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery's secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.

Adding to the list of H. P. Lovecraft stories I've now read...
The darker color is the previous list. The lighter colored entries are new additions.

• The Alchemist
• Azathoth
• The Battle That Ended the Century
• The Beast in the Cave
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep
• The Book
• The Call of Cthulhu*
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward* 
• The Cats of Ulthar*
• Celephais
• The Challenge from Beyond 
• Cool Air
• The Colour out of Space*
• The Curse of Yig*
• Dagon
• The Disinterment
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath
• The Dreams in the Witch-House
• The Dunwich Horror* 
• The Electric Executioner
• The Evil Clergyman
• Ex Oblivione
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
• The Festival
• From Beyond*
• The Haunter of the Dark*
• He 
• Herbert West: Re-Animator*
• History of the Necronomicon
• The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast*
• The Horror at Martin's Beach
• The Horror at Red Hook
• The Horror in the Museum
• The Hound
• Hypnos*
• Ibid
• In the Walls of Eryx
• The Loved Dead
• Memory
• The Moon-Bog
• The Music of Erich Zann*
• The Nameless City
• The Night Ocean
• Nyarlathotep
• Old Bugs
• The Other Gods
• The Outsiders 
• Pickman's Model*
• The Picture in the House*
• Poetry and the Gods
• Polaris
• The Quest of Iranon*
• The Rats in the Walls*
• A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth*
• The Silver Key
• The Slaying of the Monster
• The Statement of Randolph Carter*
• The Strange High House in the Mist
• The Street
• Sweet Ermengarde*
• The Temple*
• The Terrible Old Man*
• The Thing on the Doorstep*
• "Till A' the Seas"*
• The Transition of Juan Romero
• The Tree
• The Tree on the Hill
• Two Black Bottles
• Under the Pyramids/Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
• The Unnamable
• The Whisperer in Darkness*
• The White Ship
• Winged Death

Man, I gotta get some reviews churned out...

A Lovecraftian Christmas tale

Those of you who are Lovecraft fans like me will definitely appreciate this creative and hilarious Lovecraftian twist on the 12 Days of Christmas. It's a short story written by Eric Lis; this story was published in Weird Tales magazine in 2008, and this particular reading was broadcast on the Drabblecast podcast by Norm Sherman.
The link you are about to click on will launch the high quality 15-minute sound clip on YouTube. It's 15 minutes you'll be glad you invested.
My True Lovecraft Gave To Me
Merry Christmas!

More HPL short summaries

Once again, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!

Celephais - This story is, I suppose, part of the Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft. In it a man, called Kuranes in his dreams (we know not what his real name is), becomes obsessed with his dream world, where life is so much nicer and more exciting than the real world. He begins spending more and more time asleep, visiting a city called Celephais that seems to represent a cross between Arabian Nights and King Arthur. Anyway, he starts taking drugs to spend more time in the dream world and eventually, in the real world, ends up a penniless junkie. A knight comes to him in real life at the end to escort him to Celephais so he can rule as their king and god. Kuranes goes with him, where he rules for all eternity. Meanwhile, his mortal body is found smashed on the rocks below a high sea cliff. Meh. I don't really like the dream world stuff. At least, not so far. However, this is a notable story for being the first mention of Innsmouth (though a diffferent Innsmouth, as it's set in the UK) and it's the origin of Kuranes, who will make a brief appearance later in "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" (which, as Lovecraft's longest work and a dream world story, I am dreading reading).

Cool Air - One of the first stories few stories I read in this collection, "Cool Air" still endures as one of my favorites. A guy who lives in this boarding house in New York develops an interest in (and a budding friendship with) the tenant above him, who turns out to be a scientist suffering from a malady that requires him to constantly be in a climate controlled atmosphere. To that end, he has invented air conditioning, using an ammonia-based cooling system. As time goes on, he requires cooler and cooler temperatures to maintain his health. In the end we find out it's because he's a zombie and he's begun rotting. It's very cleverly and descriptively written. I really like this story. I've read it twice so far and also listened to a fantastic reading provided by the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. I imagine this will be one of the first stories I will reread after completing my journey through all HPL's writings.

The Curse of Yig - I covered this one here.

Dagon - An American prisoner of war escapes from a German u-boat and gets lost at sea. After drifting in and out of consciusness, he awakens and finds himself on what he can only surmise is an incredibly large, sludgy segment of ocean floor that has broken off and floated to the surface. He gets out and explores his surroundings. Eventually he finds a great crevasse, which he scales downward to find the facade of an enormous temple. As he watches, an ancient, cyclopean monster comes to worship at the monolithic temple. After it leaves, the man makes his way back to his boat, but his mind has snapped and he remembers little. Waking in a hospital, he is told he was found afloat in his escape boat, where there is no sign of any chunks of the ocean floor floating on the water. But he knows it was real. And it scares him almost to the point of insanity to believe that there is possibly a race of great, monstrous beasts under the sea worshiping gods of their own. Meh. It was OK. I prefer "The Temple" when it comes to undersea adventures, but we'll get to that one later. Considered together, I think the two stories complement one another nicely, and when you throw in "The Call of Cthulhu" as well, so far that's a nice collection of stories that might have a deeper (no pun intended) relationship with one another.

As always, thanks for reading. Subscribe!

More short attention span HPL summaries

Once again - SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!

The Book - A guy finds a crazy old book at a messy secondhand bookstore. The proprietor refuses to take payment for it, seemingly relieved to simply be rid of the thing. The man takes the book home and studies it in his attic room dedicated to studying strange stuff. Crap gets weird. He looks at it more and crap gets weirder. Eventually crap gets so weirdthat during one of his readings/rituals the walls melt away and he finds himself in another reality, flying over an ancient stone city. That's pretty much it. I guess Lovecraft initially meant this to be the beginning of a larger story that would essentially be a prose version of his wonderful and hypnotic poem "Fungi from Yuggoth." Then he decided it was shit and ceased his effort. Kind of a shame; I liked it so far. Oh well.

The Call of Cthulhu - Quintessential Lovecraft piece introducing the Old Ones, particularly Cthulhu, to the world. Let's do a very boiled-down summary for this one. Part I: Guy inherits a chest full of stuff that points toward existence of some sort of supernatural force in the world, including a small idol of undetermined origin, construction and significance. Part II: Guy reads account of an explorer who finds two cults on opposite sides of the world and opposite ends of the technological spectrum which worship the same primordial being, represented by the aforementioned diminutive idol. Part III: After years of trying in vain to discover more about these clues, the guy finally stumbles upon the newsaper account that ties everything together in a horrible realization: Cthulhu does indeed sleep in the sunken sity of R'lyeh. And he is stirring, signifying that he will waken for good very soon. And when he does, if his cultists are to be believed, all the world as we know it will be devoured and a new aeon will begin, wherein the Old Ones will once again reign over all the universe. Great story. Read it.

The Cats of Ulthar - This one reminds me of a children's story, kind of like a tale by the Brothers Grimm. Could be at home in a collection with Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In this story, an old couple loves to torture and kill the cats of their neighborhood. Cat owners are, therefore, very careful to keep their feline companions indoors. When a band of Gypsies comes through town, no one thinks to tell them about the disgusting habits of the town's most hated (and feared) couple. After they kill a little orphan Gypsy boy's beloved kitten, he casts a Gypsy spell and all the cats get together to attack and devour the old couple. It's a revenge tale with cute little ears and tiny pink toes. I read it to my kids a while back, and my 10-year-old son seemed to like it as much as I.

That's it for now. More to come soon. Thanks for reading.

Short-Attention Span HPL summaries

SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Ever wonder what all the hubbub is about H.P. Lovecraft stories, anyway? Curious, but never cracked one open yourself? Tried a few times but couldn't get past the style or outmoded language? Here be spoilers. I will attempt to summarize and review each one I've read in two to three succinct sentences, something of which I believe Lovecraft himself was likely incapable.

The Alchemist - A guy living on his family estate is cursed as his family has been for generations, hunted and haunted by an enemy of his ancestors, an alchemist who, centuries earlier, learned the secret of eternal life. Not very good. I suspect he wrote it as a young teen.

The Beast in the Cave - Find this review here.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep - A guy mind melds with an apparently crazy Indian who goes to distant realms in his dreams, and he soon realizes they are actually astrally projecting themselves several astronomical units into the heavens and becoming some sort of star-eating cosmic mega-beings. Not a bad story. I kinda dig this one. Not scary at all, more like straight sci-fi with a disturbing image or two (and a fair bit of that endearing Lovecraftian racism) along the way.

That's it for now. This is going to take a while, but it's way more efficient than spending a whole entry on each one.

HPL Review: The Call of Cthulhu

I really liked this story. It's one of the dozen or so longer stories Lovecraft wrote, coming it at around 11,000 words or so, I believe. Not a huge undertaking, but with my busy schedule it took me about four sittings to get through it.

The story is told in three chapters. It is told through a manuscript left behind by a man named Francis Wayland Thurston, who details how he slowly put together pieces of various stories and news accounts to make a horrible discovery.

In part one we're slowly introduced to the idea that something weird has been going on. Thurston is called upon to rummage through his deceased granduncle's belongings, whereupon he inadvertently unearths evidence that unrelated people all over the world seem to have had similar nightmares on the same specific dates. He also finds a curious little statuette of a winged, crouching, tentacle-faced creature, bearing unrecognized symbols or writing. Notes accompanying it name the figure represented as "Cthulhu."

In part two we delve further into the notes and discover in the piles memoirs of a man named Inspector Legrasse, who made some related and similarly disquieting discoveries of his own. It seems that a swamp cult in Louisiana and a remote tribe halfway across the globe not only seemed to worship this same heretofore unknown (to Legrasse) deity or eldritch being named Cthulhu, but they also performed the same exact rites in the same exact, unknown language.

In part three we learn the story of a sailing ship which encountered opposition during one of its voyages. Presumably, they were attacked by pirates. In reality the opposing ship had been trying to not only same themselves and the other ship, but indeed all of reality by keeping the other ship from proceeding.

No spoilers, but I have to say this is one of my favorite stories yet of this collection. As I say, it's a bit longer but still easily doable. Any HPL fan has no excuse for not having read this one. I'm ashamed it's taken me until I'm 38 to do it.

HPL Review: The Hound

This is a very short story about a couple of guys who are thrill seekers. It's similar to "Herbert West: Reanimator" in that our protagonist sort of paints himself as the willing accomplice following along on these insidious adventures instigated by the other guy.

Here's the synopsis: As I mentioned, these two guys have grown bored with life and even with the pursuits that exist on the fringe of society. Before long they realize in order to get excited about anything it must be dark, sinister or morbid activities. Eventually they resort to grave robbing for their adrenaline fix.

One day they get a line on this grave in Holland that is supposed to contain the body of a centuries-dead grave robber. He was purportedly buried with his last great prize, an amulet of some kind. They decide to target that grave next.

See, they consider themselves artists of a sort; they revel in the atmosphere of each plunder. And they see it as suitably poetic to rob the grave of a legendary grave robber.
They end up taking this gargoyle-looking amulet from the grave and hightailing it out of there, back to their elegantly and morbidly described museum of the disturbing known as their lair. That turns out to be a horrible mistake.

I really like this story. It's got some of the most unsettling stuff I've read in the descriptions of the loot they have in their hideout, (though I have discovered that one word I have in mine was a typo in the PDF translation**) and at the same time there are humorous passages that give a hint that Lovecraft penned this as kind of a parody. It's very reminiscent of Poe in certain parts, which is nothing new for Lovecraft, but this time it seems to be almost poking fun at not only Poe, but the whole Gothic horror genre in general.

There's this really cool bit of the story where Lovecraft shows that it's not supposed to be taken too seriously by doing this sort of "Rattling Bog" repetition about how the moon is full, the shadows are long, the trees are grotesque and drooping, there are huge bats flying around, there's a church steeple pointing like a finger into the sky, the fireflies are dancing, and there's a spectral howl of some sort of hound in the distance... He repeats that like three times nearly word for word during the story. I like that part. It's so graphically atmospheric, yet the way it's delivered is totally tongue-in-cheek.

"The Hound" is an easy, quick read that doesn't take itself too seriously. There's not much of a scare factor at the end, but definitely a worthwhile read. Highly recommended.

**I have to share this because it's kind of funny. When the protagonist describes the treasure trove the two villains have collected, at one point he says (in my ebook version), "Niches here and there contained... the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children." Picturing that, I cringed. Wow, I said to myself after reading that. Not only the heads of small children, but they flayed off the flesh too. God, that's horrible.

Once I heard an audiobook version of the story, I realized that my copy was wrong. It should have been the "...fresh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children."
Ohhhh, I said to myself upon my new discovery. 'Fresh!' They were just cutting the heads off freshly buried children and taking them home as trophies; they didn't flay the flesh to keep as well. That's not quite so morbidly sinister. But honestly, in retrospect, is there truly any difference? LOL

HPL Review: Pickman's Model

I had no idea what to expect when I started reading Pickman's Model. I was afraid it was going to be a dreamlike tale of building a model ship and sailing away to distant esoteric shores and such. I hate that "walking on moonbeams" crap. I'm happy to report, though, without spoiling anything, that it certainly ain't about model ship building and it ain't no boring Dream Cycle story. It's a doozy, too.
This story is told in a different fashion than any other Lovecraft tale I've read as yet, or any other story I've ever read come to think of it. We are told the story through the words of the narrator as he holds a conversation with a business acquaintance whose side of the discussion we are never privy to as readers. Think Bob Newhart's old phone call standup bits, or Clint Eastwood and his chair. I like the way Lovecraft used this style of narrative. It's a nice change of pace from his usual modus operandi.
The narrator is Mr. Thurber, a man nervously relating to his friend the story of why he suddenly and unexpectedly cut ties with a close friend of his who happened to be one of the hottest and well-known painters on the Boston art scene. He was particularly highly regarded for his ghoulish and fanciful pieces that were unlike any other current style in the market.
That painter's name was Richard Upton Pickman. And some time after the narrator cut ties with him, Pickman went missing.
Thurber describes to his friend the happenings of the time when he went to visit Pickman's studio space. He saw canvas upon canvas of very realistic and sometimes serene backgrounds crawling with horrific monstrosities, each one more disturbing and violent than the last.
The descriptions of the paintings made me think of the website dedicated to showing the works of people who procure art prints from rummage sales or thrift stores and then paint over them with foul creatures swarming a pristine farmhouse, squamous tentacles emerging from a placid lake, dead and rotting flesh dripping off the cheek of a previously innocent portrait subject, etc..
The scene in which he describes in detail the various horrible paintings in Pickman's studio, though not the climax, is definitely the highlight of the piece.
The "model" in the story relates to an artist's model. Pickman has a camera in his studio which he says he uses to photograph the backgrounds so he can look at the photos later in his studio and paint them without lookers-on or interruptions.
I will describe no more for fear of revealing spoilers. Please read the story yourself if you are interested. It can easily be consumed in one sitting, and it's worth the short amount of time invested.
This is one of my favorites so far because it skirts the line between simple, creepy dude story and infinitely powerful, cosmic monster from the void story. It doesn't lose itself in lengthy, circuitous descriptions of unimaginable things or places. Any color copy or descriptive text feels completely in place and helpful. And I only had to look up two words:

GLOSSARY:
Parvenu: noun / someone who has recently or suddenly risen to a place of wealth or power but has not yet gained the prestige or manner associated with it. / To witness the true parvenu in action, observe the character Roseanne Conner, post-lottery win, as she orders an armload of greasy burgers at the drive-through window.

Mephitic: adj / Foul-smelling / Two hours after consuming an armload of greasy burgers in her car, the air trapped inside the enclosed vehicle became so mephitic as to throw the cameraman into full-on vomiting convulsions.

HPL Review: The Beast in the Cave

This story begins with an adventurous yet ill-prepared explorer lost in a cave after having made the poor decision to split off from his tour group. He soon discovers he is not alone, and his mind races at what sort of ferocious oddity of nature must live in such a secluded atmosphere, cut off from all sunlight and contact with the outside world. It's not long before his torch sputters out and he is left in complete darkness, wrestling with his own imagination and the frightening sounds of the unseen beast shuffling toward him.

No spoilers, but I will say that it's one of those twist endings that might at one time have shocked readers, but by today's standards is rather predictable. It's like if someone were to watch Hitchcock's Psycho for the first time today. Set against its modern contemporaries, how much would Psycho, a complete mindfuck in its day, surprise anyone? No one. It's still a valuable piece of the American/English film heritage, but it no longer holds the same power for today's jaded audiences. A few of Lovecraft's stories in this collection suffer from that same peril, and "The Beast in the Cave" is one of them.

Bearing in mind, though, that Lovecraft was only 14 years old when he wrote this story, it is an incredibly well told tale, and thankfully not too cryptic in its construction. It is sufficiently exciting, propelled on by expertly (yet by a novice) drafted descriptions of the story's setting and atmosphere, as well as the wild meanderings of the main character's imagination and memories.

GLOSSARY:

Consumptive: noun | a person with a wasting disease, especially pulmonary tuberculosis  | ex. During a tour of the primitive village, we came across the hut where the tribe's consumptives go in their final days.

Salubrious: adj  |  health-giving  |  ex. After spending my whole life in the smog of urban California, the salubrious Colorado mountain air was a welcome change.

Prognathous: adj  |  having a projecting lower jaw or chin  |  ex. When it attacked his puppy, Jerome kicked that prognathous, antagonistic American Bulldog right in its massive underbite of a mouth.

HPL Review: The Music of Erich Zann

Art by David Reuss

"The Music of Erich Zann" was the first story of this collection that I read. It's a tale about a man in a boarding house who befriends a mute viol player that keeps a portal to another dimension at bay with his bizarre, dissonant music. Very Lovecraftian without delving into any Cthulhu mythos specifics. No night-gaunts, shoggoths, Great Old Ones, R'lyeh or Dreamlands; just a first-person account of the narrator's maddening encounter with a gateway to a dimension of complete emptiness which may or may not be attempting to spawn eldritch creatures borne of the horrible, unfathomable chilly depths of space itself.
It's a quick, easy read that can be tackled in one sitting. I quite enjoyed it.

As always, the atmosphere is conveyed with skillful mastery by the author. The description of the Rue d'Auseil paints a vivid picture. For some reason, in my mind the town seems to have been designed by Tim Burton or Dr. Seuss, or perhaps it was some sort of collaboration. I see impossibly angular and vertically superlative buildings teetering, yet inexplicably stable, on their practically 90-degree cobbled slope.

The story sucks you in slowly with a stranger coming to town and getting settled. It gradually builds interest as he inquires about the man playing the strange music. The pace begins to quicken as the characters meet and we realize there is probably more to the music than meets the ear. There is no doubt about where the climax comes, as the frantic music is playing, the wind is blowing, the colors are dancing, the lead character is shouting and fighting against the forces which pull from this world into the next... Whew.

What brought the story to my attention in the first place was the song titled "Erich Zann" from the Mythos album by C.G. Gross. I recommend both this story and that CD, especially for the Lovecraft initiate.


GLOSSARY:

Garret: noun | a top-floor or attic room, especially a small, dismal one  |  ex. We took Grandma's rocking chair and tea set to the garret as she instructed in the letter we received prior to her arrival.

Declivity: noun |  a downward slope  |  ex. Seeing Jones' helpless expression and the declivity of the graph he was about to present, the Board of Directors had a pretty solid notion that he was not delivering pleasant news.

Capricious: noun |  given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior  |  ex. There is very little in nature than can be as unpredictable as the capricious nature of a premenstrual Tasmanian She-Devil.

Crabbed: adj |  contorted and difficult to understand  |  ex. Due to the arthritis and Parkinson's disease, her crabbed sign language was a nightmare to decipher.

HPL Review: The Curse of Yig

My first exposure to the name Yig was in 1989 when GWAR released their seminal album Scumdogs of the Universe, which included the track “The Horror of Yig,” a song which gave little if no indication of who or what Yig was. Years later, I’ve run into the name a few times here and there in reading or gaming sessions. Now, after finally having read this story, I can finally say I know what Yig is.

The Curse of Yig is a tale within a tale; a doctor at an asylum relates to an American Indian anthropologist in 1925 the story of a married 19^th century settler couple and their run-in with the mystery surrounding the legend of the Indian Snake God and “half-human father of serpents,” Yig.

This is the origin tale of Yig, initially written by Zealia Bishop but referred to Lovecraft in 1928 for fleshing out. Accepting it as a paid job, Lovecraft did so, and returned the story to Bishop, who promptly sold it to Weird Tales magazine under her own name; it was subsequently printed in 1929.

No spoilers here, but there are a few key plot points I can reveal.

1. The settler husband, Walker Davis, is terrified of snakes, with an “almost epileptic fear.”

2. Yig is a snake god who watches over his progeny on earth, vowing vengeance on all who harm them.

3. An old Indian squaw told Walker, when he was small, that he would meet his end owing to snakes.

4. The Indians in the story are preoccupied with appeasing and sating Yig to avoid his wrath.

5. In the beginning, the anthropologist is shown some sort of horrifying snake/human hybrid creature locked away deep in the asylum underground, and it is the precursor to revealing the Davises’ story.

The story is expertly woven, the atmosphere portrayed with horrifying detail. As the story progresses, you can almost hear the ritual pounding of the Wichita Indians’ tom-toms in the distance. When they finally and suddenly stop, you can really feel the same dread felt by the main character. That entire scene is a nailbiter.

The other image that drills its way into your brain and nests there for a few hours after you’re finished is what happened (in a story within the story within the story) to the man who suffers dozens of venomous bites from an entire horde of rattlesnakes. I will say no more. (shudder)

This story is written in a far less arcane manner than most of the other HPL tales I’ve read to this point. I would venture to categorize it as a wonderful place to begin if you’ve never exposed yourself to Lovecraft’s writings before but are curious about them. You’ll spend far less time during the reading of this story looking up words in the dictionary or struggling to understand them through mere context clues than you will with most of the others I’ve had a chance to look at.

The toughest bits of reading were really the passages of dialog exchanged between the Davises. Remember Stephen King’s role in Creepshow? The country bumpkin covered with alien meteorite-spawned moss? Yeah, it’s like two of him talking to each another only missing maybe three more teeth each. It’s a consistently illustrated dialect, to be sure, but a hard one to decode at times.

The Curse of Yig is a fantastic story. Of the seven or eight I’ve read so far, this is the most accessible and easily one of the most enjoyable. It took me two sessions of reading to get through it.

GLOSSARY

Sententious: adj | given to moralizing in a pompous or affected manner | ex. I could no longer stand the sententious lecture of the Southern Baptist preacher, so I quietly excused myself from the congregation.

Squamous*: adj | covered with or categorized by scales | ex. Wonder Woman never got it on with Aquaman because she was completely turned off by his squamous genitals.

Salient: adj | most noticeable or important | ex. I understand now why jumping off this bridge is a poor idea; the gravity issue you bring up is a salient point.

Saltatory: adj | archaic | relating to the action of leaping or jumping | ex. I wanted to dance with the strangely beautiful mutated grasshopper woman, but I found it hard to keep up with her saltatory style.

Bluff: adj | direct in speech or behavior but in a good-natured way | ex. Uncle Marty was a bluff man, sure to tell it like it is and probably make you laugh in the process.

*this one I actually looked up after coming across it in a game of Cthulhu Gloom