IBC Bonus18 The Eyrie and Howard on Howard

Join us in the back room of the Squid Inn for a deep delve into the letters column of Weird Tales, plus HPL's views on REH. We talk Edwin Baird, alien perspectives, HPL as editor, Gaelic and Cmyric, genres and HPL's definition of weird.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome to Insmith Stranger.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Greetings, pilgrims, and welcome to the 18th bonus episode of the Innsmouth Book Club. Welcome indeed. As you see, we've brought you to the private back room of the Squid Inn today for a little delve into various writings, but uh we shall talk about that in a moment. I am one of your hosts, Rob Poyton.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

And I'm the other one, Tim Bendies. And yes, you could see stacks of magazines and letters and all kinds of paraphernalia thrown around the place. So yeah, we're gonna be having a right good rummage today.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Oh, I do like a good rummage. Don't don't we all, don't we all? I I just thought before we start, as we're in the squid in, we should get a round of drinks in. I I was thinking of trying the cider actually. Have you ever had Innsmouth cider? Um no, I haven't. No. Yeah, I thought I'll give it a go. I did hear it's very good for pickling, apparently. Um, with a bit of imagination, you'd be surprised at the sort of things you can put insider.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yes, indeed. When I was a chef, I used to take great delight in writing pork insider on the on the on the chalkboard.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Pork insider, love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I will just quickly mention before we start, Innsmouth Literary Festival 26 coming up in well, just about six weeks' time. Uh, a lot of you lovely patrons have already let us know you're coming. Of course, as a supporter of the show, you get free entry. If you haven't and you do want to come, please let us know quickly. As ticket sales are on the rise, we've only got about a quarter of the places left. So do let us know as soon as you can.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Excellent stuff. Yes. And uh one of the things that you might find if when you come to the Intimate Literary Festival is old copies of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, usually at um is it Bob Dorset Bob? Yes. He usually has a good stack of things you to have a look through. Incredible collection, isn't it? Yes, yeah. In fact, some of these may have even come from there. As you can see, yes, I've sitting next to a big old stack of weird tales because something I like to do on Strange Shadows is going through them and reading contemporary reviews of readers on Clark Ashen Smith stories. So I thought to myself, I must I I should do something similar with Lovecraft, but then I realized as I was flicking through that Lovecraft himself actually corresponded with the Erie fairly often. Now, I've got an example here because they all did. They all did, right? I've got an example here from February 1926, three very short letters, and this just sums up exactly what I'm saying here. H.P. Lovecraft, another favourite author, writes, I have lately read your December issue and believe the general qualitative level is kept commendably high. We don't find any of the frank crudities that marked the earlier issues. Long's The Sea Thing strikes me as the best tale, with Owen's The Fan as a good second. Then, Robert E. Howard of Cross Plains, Texas writes concerning Mr. Quinn's stories of Jules de Gradin. These are sheer masterpieces. The little Frenchman is one of those characters who live in fiction. I look forward with pleasurable anticipations to further meetings with him. And then just below that, we have August Derlith Jr. of Sork City, Wisconsin, writes. Is it possible to get more stories by H. P. Lovecraft? And to have one of David Baxter's Nature Tales in every issue. I find Frank Owen's tales delightfully fantastic, while Grey Laspina's stories are gems of sinister menace. I wish to repeat E. L. Middleton's plea for a new old-fashioned ghost story and the reprint of Algernon Blackwood's The Willows. Oh, nice. What a nice trio there. Exactly. And this is that's just a cherry-picked issue. Quite often, if you look through the Erie, I find it fascinating. You'll you'll see like Bloch was always writing in, especially in his early days. Oh, we'll we'll be mentioning that a little later on. Yeah. Yes. Well, that's why I brought it up because I knew there was a nice little thread there. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. So there, just one after the other, bang, bang, bang. Lovecraft, Howard Derlith. So there you go. But Lovecraft, especially early on in the magazine's tenure, very early on in its first year, Lovecraft wrote in in greater detail. Um, as anybody who's read his letters know what he can be like, they tend to get longer and longer as they go on. So the first letter that he sent into the Erie was in the September 1923 issue. Now, around this time, he had basically out of the blue randomly sent Weird Tales five stories. He sent them Arthur Germain, Cats of Altar, The Hound, The Statement of Randolph Carter, and Dagon. And they were all accepted. So, yeah, we're gonna dive into this. This is the first letter that H.B. Lovecraft ever wrote to Weird Tales. Equally interesting is the letter from H.P. Lovecraft, another master of the Weird Tale, from whom we have accepted some stories for your entertainment. Mr. Lovecraft's letter, unlike Mr. Trim's, doesn't exactly flatter Weird Tales, but we are nevertheless glad to pass it on to you. This is typically typical Howard, this is, it really is. My dear sir, having a habit of writing weird macabre and fantastic stories for my own amusement, I have lately been simultaneously hounded by nearly a dozen well-meaning friends into deciding to submit a few of these gothic horrors to your newly founded periodical. The decision is herewith carried out, enclosed are five tales written between 1917 and 1923. Of these, the first two are probably the best. If they be unsatisfactory, the rest need not be read. The statement of Randolph Carter is, in the main, an actual dream experienced on the night of December the 21st into 22nd, 1919. The characters being myself, Randolph Carter, and my friend Samuel Loveman, the poet and editor of 21 Letters of Ambrose Bear. I don't think I ever knew that that and obviously I knew that Randolph Carter was Lovecraft. I don't think I ever knew that the doomed character was Samuel Loveman.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

No, I didn't know that at all, actually. I can't remember seeing that anywhere before. That's very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

And that it was a dream. I found that, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, I think I remember it. Well, it's difficult with Lovecraft because a lot of them are, yeah. A fair amount were. But he was very open about that, wasn't he, there?

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah, very much so. My models are invariably the older writers, especially Poe, who has been my favourite literary figure since early childhood. Should any miracle impel you to consider the publication of my tales, I have but one condition to offer, and that is that no excisions be made. If the tale cannot be printed as written down to the very last semicolon and comma, it must graciously accept rejection. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

No compromise for Howard.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah. Excision by editors is probably one reason why no living American author has a real prose style. We could have a point. Oh yeah. But I'm probably safe, and my manuscripts are not likely to win your consideration. Dagon has been rejected by and then these are this is blanked out, to which I sent it under external impulsion, much as I'm sending you the enclosed. The magazine sent me a beautifully tinted and commendably impersonal rejection slip. Right, so here we go. We're into now we're into the criticism. I like Weird Tales very much, though I've only seen the April number. Most of the stories, of course, are more or less commercial, or should I say, conventional in technique. But they all have an enjoyable angle. Beyond the Door by Paul Suter seems to me the most truly touched with the elusive quality of original genius, though a square of canvas by Anthony M. Rudd will be a close second, if not so reminiscent, in Denouement of Balrak's La Chef de Ouvre in Canue, as I recall it, across a lapse of years without a copy at hand. However, one doesn't expect a very deep thrill in the sophisticated and tradesman-minded age. Yeah. Arthur Mackin is the only living man I know who can stir a truly profound and spiritual horror. So, and then at the end of the I like this from the editor, who will get into him in in a little while. Despite the foregoing, or because of it, we are using some of Mr. Lovecraft's unusual stories, and you will find his Dagon in the next issue of Weird Tales. Nice. So, yeah, his very first letter is having a moan.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

I suppose for a pulp magazine, it's alright.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah. So in the very next issue in October, Lovecraft replied to basically to himself. You may recall the letter from H. P. Lovecraft published here last month. A bit caustic, that letter, and today we have pleasure in offering another, which, if less stinging, is nonetheless enjoyable. Our friend Lovecraft always has something to say when he writes. Thus, dear Mr. Baird, I should apologize for my former letter seemed to tax weird tales with seeking conventional material. Such was not my intention in any way. I only meant that I presumed you would not wish too subtle or cryptical material for a presentation to the general public. There is a difference between mere originality and delicate symbolism, or hideously nebulous adumbration, if I How many American readers outside the Frankly Highbrow class, for example, would find any pleasure or coherent impression in Arthur Macken's The White People, or in the fantastic passages of the same author's Hill of Dreams? In a word, I take it that Weird Tales wants definite stories with a maximum of plot, tension of situation, explosive climax, and statement, rather than too elusive suggestion. This rather than the Bordelarian prose poem of spiritual Satanism, where chiseled phrase, lyrical tone, colour, and an opiate luxuriance of exotic imagery form the chief sources of the Macabre impression. Bloody hell.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

I just have an impr impress like I Farnsworth reading this and going, I don't know what this guy's on about, but we'll print it anyway. Perhaps someone can tell us.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Well, Farnsworth may have read this, but he wasn't the editor at this point. This is what we're gonna get into. Oh, this is pre-farnabesius.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

All right.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah, this is interest, very interesting, because I did a bit of digging into all this. I'll get I'll get onto that in a in a wee while. Yeah, and basically um he goes on again talking about that that episode that issue and how you know there was some good stuff in it, but then he he he does he he just keeps going, and they just printed the whole letter. That's what I love about this, right? Someday I may send you a possible filler beginning through the ghoul guarded gateways of slumber, past the one mooned abysses of night. I have lived o'er my lives without number, I have sounded all the things with my sight, and I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness and fright. Nice, nice. Yeah. So and uh there's a little cut-in from Mr. Baird, the editor at this point. Mr. Lovecraft, you will observe, is quite as deft with poetry as he is with prose, and as further evidence of this, we submit the prologue to a 300-line heroic poem of his that we may print someday. I am he who howls in the night, I am he who moans in the snow, I am he who hath never seen light, I am he who mounts from below. My car is the car of death, my wings are the wings of dread, my breath is the north wind's breath, my prey are the cold and the dead. Oh, beautiful, beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Goth as hell, that isn't it? That is, isn't it?

unknown 13:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

This is Lovecraft in his gothy phase, isn't it? Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Oh, very much so. Now, it's inter he carries on a little bit now because he talks about Dagon, because that's the one that they're going to be printing imminently. But at the end of it, he he meant he he goes into mentioning some people he knows. So here we go. A friend of mine, Clark Ashton Smith, the California poet of horror, madness, and morbid beauty, showed this yarn to George Sterling, who declared he liked it very much, though suggesting, absurdly enough, as I view it, that I have the monolith topple over and kill the thing. A piece of advice which make me feel that poets should stick to their solitearings. Oh dear. And he finishes with My love of the weird makes me eager to do anything I can to put good material in the path of a magazine which so gratifyingly cultivates that favourite element. I shall await with interest the next issues with the tales you mention, and I'm meanwhile trying to get the opening number through a news dealer. I am sure the venture will elicit some notable contributions as its fame spreads, and the extent of that fame may be judged from the fact that people in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and California have been equally prompt in calling my attention to it and urging me to try my luck. Yeah, so there you go. So when Dagon was printed and uh Lovecraft writes in in the uh January 1924 issue. My dear Baird, I was exceedingly pleased with the appearance of Dagon, which seems virtually free from misprints and which has a particularly excellent illustration. You can't imagine how relieved I was to see that drawing, for there is always such danger of a hasty sketch which either literally or subtly bellies the belies the text or perhaps cheapens the whole thing by poor style or technique. The Dagon illustration delighted me, for not only is it very good, but it carries out the conception of the story as through as as though projected out of my own imagination, thanks to for the favorable send-off in the eerie. I hope, though, that Messrs. Starrett and Sterling won't start gunning for me because of the illusions I made in those letters. It so happens that I have a particular respect for both of these gentlemen in their respective provinces. Starrett is a pra is practically the American introducer of my revered idol Macken, while Sterling upholds almost single-handedly the same tradition in American poetry. The same tradition. Interesting. Yeah, and the rest of that one, he he basically talks about other stories in the thing, and he talks about his own story, Arthur Germain. I'm gonna skip forward now to the March 24 issue, which is the last one that is definitely edited by Mr. Baird. Right, and then we'll have a break on this, and I'll let you uh get some stuff in, and then we'll come back to this later because I took a detour at this point and we will uh and found it incredibly interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

My dear Baird, I was indeed glad to receive yours of the 14th, and to learn that your readers are taking kindly to my tenebrous effusions as represented by Dagon. I hope they'll like its successes as well, for I can certainly give them all you think they'll take. Right, so now we're gonna get back into HPL. I've got a pop at modern authors again, which seems to be his his thing at this point, right? He seems seems to have a B in his bonnet at this point. Popular authors do not, and apparently cannot, appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto. And approaching a theme purged utterly of any uh of any usual or preconceived point of view, wild and different as they may consider their quasi-weird products, it remains a fact that the bizarrery is on the surface alone, and that basically they reiterate the same old conventional values and motives and perspectives. Good and evil, sugary sentiment, anthropocentic psychology. Take a werewolf story, for instance. Whoever wrote one from the point of view of the wolf, and sympathizing strongly with the devil to whom he has sold himself. Whoever wrote a story from the point of view that a man is a blemish on the cosmos, which ought to be eradicated. As an example, a young man I know lately told me that he means to write a story about a scientist who wishes to dominate the earth and who wishes to accomplish his ends by training and developing germs and leading then leading armies on them in the manner of the Egyptian plagues. I told him that although this theme has promise, it is made utterly commonplace by assigning the scientist a normal motive. There is nothing outre about wanting to conquer the earth. Yeah, there we go. I told my friend as you conceive a man with a morbid, frantic, shuddering hatred of the life principle itself, who wishes to extraparate from the planet every trace of biological organism, animal and vegetable alike, including himself. That would be tolerably original. And really, really depressing. Did he just uh did he just talk about Thomas Legotti years before he was born?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

I was gonna say, yeah. It's almost like a premonition, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I like this little bit here. One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses theme and style alike with that grotesquery and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Oh, that's that's there's an interesting discussion point for uh that that'd make a good panel at some time, wouldn't it? That one. Yeah. Yeah, or or maybe we'll do an episode on that, get some guests in and chat. That's a very, very interesting point.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah. Maybe next year. I wish you could get a staff of Clark Ashton Smiths to illustrate weird tales. Well, don't we all? The normal artist has conventional conceptions of line and detail, light and shade, but the Macabre genius has the magic prism and sees the world in that leeringly twisted, mockingly decorative light, which gives rise to the achievements of an Aubrey Beardsley, Sidney Syme, John Martin, Gustav Dorr, or Immortal of Immortals, Francisco Goya. So I wish you could get some illustrations and cover designs from Clark Ashen Smith himself, even though he doesn't seem to be doing much in that line lately as he used to do. He lacks technical assurance, but he has lurid vision to an abnormal degree. And then he goes he goes into a story now about spending time with Eddie, who I assume is the editor. He's the only Eddie I can figure. Yeah, up in up in Rhode Island, and they go to a remote village and basically get weirded out because it's really quiet and the bushes are leering at them and all that kind of thing. Probably the thing will turn out to be a clump of ill-nourished bushes, a few rain puddles, and a couple of sparrows. But until our disillusion, we are at liberty to think of the place as the immemorial lair of nightmare, an unknown evil ruled by that subterraneous horror that sometimes cranes its neck out of the deepest potholes.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

It well there you go, he's uh the premonition of another writer of the future. Yeah, exactly. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah, so I'm gonna tell A bit of a break from those now, but there's a lot of chew over in these letters. I'm glad I dug these out because he covers a lot of topics and he's not scared of holding back, is he?

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I think there's two things we can say about Lovecraft. One, yes, is straight up front about his views, though I think he's generally doing them in uh I want to say a friendly way. He's trying to be constructive. Oh yeah, yeah. It comes across as very paternalistic, doesn't it? And even patronizing at times. Yeah. But I think he's doing it from a good place. Yeah. And the other thing is just how incredibly dense some of the letters are as well. As we know from uh Dornwood Spire Lonely Hill, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Oh yeah, but I mean these ones that were actually printed in a magazine.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Like you're talking like three pages of A4, that last one, that March one. It's absolutely ridiculous. But yeah, he cut he covers a lot of lot of good stuff in there. And uh yeah, we'll see more of that later on. But uh I'm gonna take a break because saying some of them sentences has damn near boiled my brain.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Would you like a damp cloth for your brows, uh for your fevered brow?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Oh yes, I could I could do with a mop.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Or do you want to try do you want to try some of this insmoth cider? It's got quite a kick on it actually. Oh aye, yeah. I might be slurring my words in a moment. Well, I'm certainly going to be slurring one lot of words. In fact, I don't know if I'm gonna say these words at all, but we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah, I've I've been I've been chucking down the shock of soul peculiar, so what I'm gonna look at today is Howard on Howard.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

So this is Howard Phillips Lovecraft talking about Robert E. Howard. Now, before we get into the meat of that discussion, which was prompted by a young Bobby Block, as we shall see, we're gonna take a look at how R.E.H. and HPL met, so to speak. Uh, and this is a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, 23rd of June 1930, and this is in Dornwood Spire Lonely Hill that we mentioned a minute ago. Lovecraft writes, Wright recently sent me a letter from the Weird Towers author Robert E. Howard, praising my Rats in the Walls and giving incidental remarks on early Celtic Britain. He seems a rather erudite person, and I am dropping him a line. So R. E. H first writes to Lovecraft because of Rats in the Walls. So Rats in the Walls was written some years earlier, 1923, and you'll probably remember near the end of the story, De LaPore, the narrator, uh, sort of regresses back through his ancestral line. So we get this paragraph, uh, and this is where I I don't think I'm gonna try reading this, because we start in modern English, then we go to what we might call old-fashioned English, then we go to Middle English, then archaic Latin, then Gaelic, and finally to inhuman vocalizations. This this is all in in one paragraph. So it starts, curse your Thornton, I'll teach you to faint that what my family do, uh, it's blood bell, stink hard, I'll learn you how to gust. What'd you swanky me thinkly raise? Magnumata, magnumata, and then we go into Gaelic and all sorts of other stuff, and it finishes with unglucky, which I can just about manage. In fact, I think the slider's helping for that bit. So, Gaelic. There's a particular word in there, and it was spelt wrong. Now we don't know whether Lovecraft spelt it wrong or whether it was just spelt wrong when it was typeset. Uh, it was corrected in well, not in later editions or reprints with Weird Tales, but certainly later editions in books, it was corrected. And this, I'm not gonna digress on this too much, but this phrase Lovecraft lifted it bodily from a story called The Sin Eater by Fiona MacLeod in a volume called Best Psychic Stories. So Lovecraft crippled this from something else anyway. And the word was printed as A O D A-U-N Adorn when it should have been spelt A O D A N N. Now people kind of or Lovecraft might have said at the time, well, no one's gonna notice that, are they? Wrong. So this was printed in the June 1930 issue of Weird Towers, and a person wrote in mentioning this mistake. And this letter goes thus. As to the climax, the maundings of the madden victim is like a sweep of horror down the eons, dwindling back and back, to be finally lost in those grisly mists of world birth where the mind of man refuses to follow. And I note from the fact that Mr. Lovecraft has his character speaking Gaelic, instead of Kimrick in denoting the Age of Druids, that he holds to Lewis' theory as to the settling of Britain by the Celts. This theory is not generally agreed to, but I scarcely think it has ever been disproved. And it is upon this that my story, The Lost Race, was based, that the Gaelic tribes preceded the Kimric peoples into Britain by way of Ireland, and were later driven out by them. We then get a whole load of stuff here about how things are pronounced in Gaelic and Kimric, and it's all very, very detailed. And it finishes, I may write a story one day upholding a certain theory of science, letters, anthropology, or whatnot. And the next day, a story upholding a theory directly opposite. A fiction writer whose job is to amuse and entertain should give all theories equal scope and justice. But I'm taking up too much of your time. And of course, the author of that letter was one Robert E. Howard writing from Texas.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Oh, so he's just as bad as Lovecraft with the ridiculously long-winded letters.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yeah, I mean, this is like a page of stuff, and it's you know, I I don't know how accurate this would be in in modern historical terms or whatever, but accurate or not, he knows his stuff. He's gone into a lot of detail in this, it he's gone into a lot of study. And we do know at the time that REH was reading a lot about Irish history and sending long letters to people like Harold Priest and Tevis Clyde Smith. So it was, of course, a big interest to him for several reasons. So the two began to correspond, and now we jump forward to November 1934, and uh we're back in the Erie again, or the IRI is it Irie or Erie?

SPEAKER_00 28:58

Erie.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

I'm used to I've got some Jamaican friends, this Irie. It's well Irie. Oh yeah, yeah. So here's a letter from a young writer who was to become uh probably the most famous out of all of them, actually. It is, of course, Mr. Block. Conan is rapidly becoming a stereotyped hero. I'm awfully tired of poor old Conan the Cluck, who for the past 15 issues has every month slain a new wizard, tackled a new monster, come to a violent and sudden end that was averted, incredibly enough, in just the nick of time, and won a new girlfriend, each of whose penchant for nudism won her a place of honour, either on the cover or on the inner illustrations. We're back to our brundage, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Oh, we are, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

And this made me laugh. Such has been Conan's history, and from the realms of the Cushites to the lands of Aquilonia, from the shores of the Shemites to the palaces of Diamond of El Bologna, I cry, enough of this brute and his iron-hued sword thrusts. May he be sent to Valhalla to cut out paper dolls. Tell us what you really think, Bobby. Fucking hell. Now, this was really not even a year after Block had started corresponding with Lovecraft, and Lovecraft had already spoken about REH to Block, and he had this to say. Robert E. Howard is a most unusual character, the son of a physician in the wild and woolly, rip roaring West Texas country, which is actually much more like the sanguinary West of chap fiction than we commonly realise. Howard is twenty-seven and is probably the greatest living authority on the history and traditions of the Southwest and the lives of America's noted outlaws. He is a burly athletic chap, fonder of fighting than of literature, and possessed of the curious belief that primitive barbarism is a more desirable sort of social organization than civilization. His letters have a greater literary value than his towels. So again, we get sort of damn in with faint praise from that's classic HPL, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 31:17

That's what he does all the time. He does it to Smith a lot, but Smith does it right back to him. They're both as bad as each other for.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yes, I think he kind of met his matching Smith, didn't he, in some ways?

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

So anyway, then this letter is printed in Weird Tales from Bloch. And Lovecraft, to his credit, springs to his friend's defence. Now, this is a fairly long letter. I'm I'm gonna read it out, then I'm gonna go back and pick out a couple of points. I think there's there's some interesting things in here. So this is Lovecraft's response, and I think this is from the book HPL's Letters to Robert Block. I've haven't had time to read the present issue of Weird Tales, but noticed your provocative epistle in the Erie. I feel you are just a bit too hard on our distinguished massacre specialist, since some of his stuff has a really distinguished poignancy. Who else can so well convey an idea of unholy antiquity in primal cyclopian ruins? And can anyone deny a certain touch of genuine poetic vision in the Queen of the Black Coast? What is more, of all the repeatedly used stock characters of the WT bunch, Jules de Grandin and so on, it is certain that Conan, hate him as you will, has the most aesthetic justification. He is the least wooden and artificial of all. That is, he reflects more of his creator's actual feelings and psychology than any other. De Grandin is merely a puppet, moulded according to cheap popular demand. He represents nothing of Quinn. But in the moods and reactions and habits of Conan, we can clearly trace the sincere emotions and aspirations and perspectives of Howard. De Grandin always acts as a synthetic marionette, but Conan often acts as a living and distinctive human being. Of course, the artistry of Howard is only partial, he is not thoroughly trained, and he writes frankly for a popular pulp audience. Much about Conan is indeed mechanical and absurd, but beyond all that, there is a certain genuineness and spontaneousness which can't be denied or argued away. However, it is to be remarked that a character of this type is probably out of place in weird as distinguished from adventure fiction. That is, the constant exploitation of such a type is out of place. I can agree with you that the placing of supreme emphasis on the head cracking and gore-splattering activities of a primitive nomad scarcely contributes much to the weird effect of the scenes through which he hews his way. Howard ought to separate these two gifts, his command of dark brooding effects and his sympathetic understanding of the barbarian mind into separate groups of stories, contributing the one to Weird Towers and its congenas, and the other to magazines of the adventure class. Of course he does write a great deal of wholly non-weird stuff for things like action stories, fight stories, etc. He has a prize fighter character called Steve Costigan, who seems to be quite a rival of Conan in his virile affections. Actually, as a creator of vigorously self-expressive, a more or less sincere and spontaneous fiction of a certain sort, Howard undeniably stands higher than the much absolutely puppet showmen and herd caterers as Edmund Hamilton, Quinn, Klein, and the latter-day price. Dividing the WT group into sheep and goats, we can't avoid placing R.E.H. in the upper tier, along with Smith, Moore, the old time price, and the late Whitehead.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

So again, kind of damning with faint praise, but I I think Lovecraft makes some very interesting points here.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Yeah, I tend to agree with a lot of it. Yeah. Because I mean I've always seen Conan as more as adventure. There is weird in it, obviously. It is weird adventure, but it is adventure at its core.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

I always think of Conan as historical fiction with fantasy elements. Nice. Yeah. Basically. Because he writes it like historical fiction. Yeah, he does. Yeah, if you read his historical fiction stuff, it's very much the same vein. Uh the hawks of Outremer and stories like that. I mean, the the main characters are very Conan-esque in that as well, generally. Right. Or the uh the Cormac MacArthur, the the Vikings. Well, Brad MacMaulna be another example, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

I think that is Howard's strength. But I think he does in most of those put in a very strong element of the weird.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Oh, I would agree. I would I would agree. But I can see where Lovecraft's coming from.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

But but I yeah, so I kind of agree but disagree at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Yeah, yeah. I think what Lovecraft gets right is the idea of poetic vision, because I think REH's writing is extremely vivid and cinematic and colourful, in line with Smith in many ways, although it's of a different style, it gives me that same I can see what's going on very clearly, you know.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Yeah, I would agree. Something I just want to just want to put in what a bit while I remember it. Can we just uh doff a cap now for Lovecraft calling Robert E. Howard a massacre specialist? I know, isn't that great?

SPEAKER_01 36:48

That's amazing. I love that. Isn't that great? Which he was. I mean, you know, blood and thunder. Yeah, no one, no one could write, I don't think anyone ever since has written a fight scene like Howard. No, you know, it's it's visceral, and whereas you get the uh you know, people fencing and running someone through with R.E.H., we get the full-on description of what's actually going on, which I don't know if that had been done before to that extent, really. Very graphic. But this all ties in with this idea of Conan as a real character, I think. And there is the famous quote from Reh himself that he said when he wrote the Conan stories, it was almost as though Conan was stood behind him, and like an old adventurer does, the stories just come out in any order. Oh, I remember a time I was in Koth and this happened. You know, it it's not like you're here's the origin story, and then the the progression. So I think in that sense, it has that feeling of realism about it, and I think if anyone has seen the film The Whole Wide World, there's a scene where Robert Howard is describing Conan to novel in Price, and I still say that scene is very short. That's the best depiction of Conan we've had on film. I mean, forget Arlie and all that crap.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

I like those movies, but they're not Conan, but they're good, they're good movies.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Yeah, yeah. Oh, first one, great great sword and sorcery movie, but yeah, but uh uh a world away from this character with with a lot more depth than people might think. So I I think Lovecraft was right there, and we have to say also, and Lovecraft, I'm sure, would agree, he wasn't a character writer, was he? No, you know, he says it himself, right? Randolph Carter is me. Well, so is virtually every other one of your characters. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

It's it's maybe maybe actually Wonderer, because obviously that one's that one is uh Loveman. I wonder who are some of the other doomed people. They're probably probably other people in the circle, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yes, yeah. Well, we we know famously missed the block, right? We've got that left back and forth, but yeah, I'm I'm sure there are others as well. Yeah, uh yeah, and I I was thinking because Lovecraft is very weak on character, that's okay, that's not what his stories are about. Uh Howard is very strong on character, and Smith was somewhere in between the two, I think, again. Because when we look at well, a great story like Vaults of Yo Vombis, we don't remember the characters. The strength of that story is the setting and the atmosphere. That the characters are all a little bit tweedy, aren't they? Tweedy chaps. Yes. But then we get characters like Mal Dweb and others who are very nicely drawn, and you get a really nice sense of the person. So I thought I thought it was an interesting, it's somewhere between the two.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Yeah. I think we've often said that, wouldn't we? He's kind of the bridge between the two writers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

And then another thing that made me smile for this was that well, Howard obviously is not trained and he just writes for the pulps. So do you, HP? So do you know? You're not writing for, I don't know, whatever the the strand. Oh, not even the strand. I don't know what a high brow magazine would have been at the time, the New York Times or something. I don't know, but you know, you're all writing in the pulps.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Yeah, that did make me j that did make me laugh out there.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Yeah. And of course, Howard was the opposite of that in terms of HPL, as we as you said earlier, don't change the thing. If you change so much as a comma, don't use it. And uh REH would frequently change stories himself, or you know. Yeah, in fact, the first Conan story, Phoenix on the sword, was a rewrite of a King Cole story by this axe I rule. Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

So oh, there we go. I guess I'm more like how uh Robert E. Howard then, because I tend to do things like that. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A good idea is a good idea, you just want to reskin it sometimes, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah. And I thought this idea of of these he should just just write in these two genres, genres was interesting because I think Howard's Robert E. Howard's strength is that combining the historical with the weird. And and if you look at all right, Conan is fantasy, but if you look at Solomon Kane, Bram McMaulne, all these kind of characters, you've got strong characters, strong adventure, and the weird. Where I I think if you look at his just his straight horror stories, the Black Stone and everything else, they are very good, but again, they're not particularly character-led. You know, the the characters are much more like it in a Lovecraft or a Smith story. Yeah. So I I don't know. I I sort of disagree with Lovecraft a little bit on that one. I I think he did a very good job of blending the two together.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Oh, yeah. I mean, and I think by the very night the very notion of you not being able to pigeonhole it as adventure or weird makes it weird.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Well, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

The fact you can't pigeonhole it somewhere else means that it's weird, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:48

I mean, there's another discussion, and this is one they often spoke about in the letters, right? Of what constitutes a weird tale.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Well, we're gonna get into one of them in a bit.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Right, right. Gregor awoke one morning and found he turned into a giant cockroach. Indeed. You know, it doesn't get weirder than that, does it? But is that seen as weird fiction or uh uh or or high high literature?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Well, yeah, it's kind of seen as philosophical, yeah, but also as horror and satire, and yeah, because uh because I I read it again recently, Metamorphosis, and somebody asked me, in fact, it was one of our regular listeners, Ralph Grasso, asked me how would you describe it? And I was like, Well, here we go. So, yeah, it's all of these things and none of these things, and that in that sense, it is the weirdest of the weird, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Yeah, and we can think of things like Robert Aikman stories where nothing necessarily horrible happens, but the whole tone is weird, and and often it's those social situations, uh uncanny value kind of stuff. Yes, but we we can't it it's not like horror in the terms of a a slasher movie, is it, or a Halloween kind of thing, or a monster flick. The the weirdness is in other people being just a little bit off kilter.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Yeah, but even Poe, I mean, his the quieter tales, they're they're definitely well, they're obviously gothic, but they're also I would class them as weird, weird fiction. A lot of Poe. Because I mean, just the very concept of some of them, it's just like what?

SPEAKER_01 43:30

You know, and I do feel, I mean, we've said this endlessly, but we'll say it again, you know, genres in some way has been the death of all of this because now I get press releases come in, whether it's for RPGs or fiction or whatever it is, and the first thing they say, oh, this is uh blah blah blah type of horror in the vein of da da da da da da. It's letting me know what it is because we all live by the algorithm now, right? And I have to know which category it's in before I might be interested in it. Yes. Like we we we had to buy a new freezer recently. And we're still getting fucking adverts for freezers in in my F we've got one. Oh it's bizarre, isn't it? It's just weird. Yeah. There's there you go. That's weird, weird facts, not weird fiction.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Yeah, I recently bought a drum machine and I I've uh a new drum machine and I've all I've had since is videos of people using the drum machine I've just bought or adverts for it. It's just like I've already got the drum machine, go away.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

It's crazy when you think about it. Yeah, but that's uh Nile Athert for you, right? Yeah. Anyway, so now the whole Block saga with Conan and Robert E. Howard is another another rabbit hole. We'll delve into it sometime. But I will just finish Block's involvement with this because he didn't back down, old Bobby, young Bobby. In December 1934 issue of Weird Towers, there was another letter from him which included this comment Conan Vile, Cl Moore, splendid. So he took no notice at all of what HPL wrote. And uh I like it.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Robert Block trolling HP Lovecraft in the pages of Weird Tales. I love it. I do like the fact that they use the letters pages of these magazines as essentially their own forum or message board, like years before that sort of concept even existed. But that's how they kind of used them, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Totally, yeah. Was this a new thing at the time? I mean, was Poe writing letters to places, was Cone and Doyle writing into the Strand and that sort of thing? I I don't know if it existed as much before.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Well, I know Poe used he did reviews, uh literary reviews and um things like that, and quite often landed himself in hot water. He used to he used to do reviews for the local for the newspaper, that was his day job essentially, and he quite often landed himself in hot water because he was quite often scathing. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

So yeah. So yeah, I I guess it was a thing. I I suppose another thing is the sign of the times was letter writing would have been the the realm of the upper classes, wouldn't it? In the Victorian era. I mean, uh literacy literacy levels were very low anyway, up until the I think even into the 1920s and the 1930s. So uh but yeah, it is interesting to think of these writers. You could read their story and then write what you thought about it next month and they'd respond back. You know, uh um social media in a sense is not a new thing, it it's just the the nature of it now has changed. Yeah, the medium, yeah, yeah. And I wonder as uh creator, most creators have a social media presence, though whether someone takes care of that for them, whether they do it themselves. We know dear old Ramsay Campbell, of course, does all of his own, and it is a marvellous thing to behold. It's very funny, yes, it is, yeah. But um, I can't imagine some of the other big name authors dirtying their hands with it somehow. You know, I'm not gonna mention any names, but you get that impression with some, don't you? Yeah. So I just want to finish a little bit on Howard and the mythos. Again, this is another big rabbit hole, but I want to touch quickly on this because this, of course, is where Lovecraft's work and Howard's work cross over, and we can definitely say through uh a few examples that Cthulhu and Conan inhabit the same universe.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Uh yeah, I mean the same timeline given that Cthulhu is immortal. However, REH makes maybe surprisingly few overt references to the mythos. We get mentions of the Necronomicon in things like The Thing on the Roof and The Children of the Night. Uh, we also get names of the old ones, Cthulhu, Yxothoth, Sarthogua, and so on. Bram McMorn swears by the black gods of Ryulia, and we get other mentions in stories like Dig Me No Grave, we get a mention of Yagoth and Yoksoth, and so on. But they're not especially overt. I don't like we don't get Conan fighting deep ones, for example. Now, there is an argument to say that in uh Zoothal Conan fights a shogoth, or I think a formless spawn myself is more likely.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Yeah, I think it's a I think it's a yeah, we've discussed this before. I think it's a formless spawn as well.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

Yeah, but it's not referenced as such, is it? You know, again, there's not that overt reference. However, I think in general tone we get that Lovecraftian or that mythos feel in those stories, and the two men obviously had their own views about a lot of things. We know that Lovecraft was famously a materialist and a rationalist. Uh and here's uh here's something from R. E. H. This is when he was criticizing William Lumley. R. E. H says Lumley has taken refuge from reality in misty imaginings and occult dreams. There is to me a terrible pathos in man's vain wanderings on occult paths and clutching at non-existent things as a refuge from the soul-crushing realities of life. Howard felt the human being is left writhing feebly on the jagged rocks of materiality, dying as any other insect dies, and knowing that he is no divine spirit in tune with some mystic infinity, but only a faint spark of material light to be extinguished forever in the blackness of the ultimate abyss. Now, if that isn't Lovecraftian, I don't really know what is so I I do think that that is something that the uh the two of them definitely shared that outlook. Yes, yeah. And to finish, I'll just quickly mention REH's probably his biggest contribution to the mythos, which is of course Nameless Cults undrachikenkolten by Friedrich Wilhelm von Juntz, which is uh Reh's Necronomicon, yeah, basically. Maybe one time we'll parallel the two. There's a lot of interesting parallels between the two, and and look at perhaps how the two evolved and how one uh sort of encouraged the other. I think that might that might be an interesting thing at some time. Uh and of course, Lovecraft started putting it in his stories as as they all did, you know. So I thought you were being Smith's uh prime example.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Yeah, now the book of Ibon, yeah, and then the cult de ghouls.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yes. So there we there we are. That's Howard on Howard. We will at some point in the future, I do want to get hold of them, the correspondence between REH and HPL, because they really went to town. I mean, we've got a lot between Smith and Lovecraft, but I think the the Lovecraft Howard letters uh even more voluminous.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

I'd imagine so, seeing how they both write. Both as bad as each other on that. Yeah, what I like from that is again that was a lot of that took place in the pages of Weird Tales, so that all kind of ties in with this. So I'm gonna now spool us all the way back to how Weird Tales began. In 1922, a publisher by the name of JC Henneberger, who was the publisher of College Humor and the Magazine of Fun.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Welcome to the House of Fun.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

Yeah. Formed the Rural Publishing Corporation of Chicago in partnership with his old fraternity brother, J. M. Lansinger. So, yeah, this is like straight out of college kind of thing. Frat boys. Yeah, frat, a couple of frat boys basically. Yeah, they they went from college humor and a magazine of fun. Now, JC Henneberger was a massive fan of Poe. So that's where this germ came from. But the first thing that they published was Detective Tales, which was published of the first issue came out in October 1922, with Weird Tales following in March of 1923. And as we'll see, they weren't exactly a resounding success when they first started. But Edwin Baird, who was an editor who was born in June 1886 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was the first editor of Weird Tales. J.C. Henneberger had hired Baird and tasked him, along with a young assistant by the name of Farnsworth Wright to put together the first issue of Weird Tales. Um that became the March 1923 publication, the very first issue. Now, Baird was also the editor of Detective Tales. So he continued as editor of Weird Tales until we assume, we presume April 1924 when he was sacked. Interestingly, the April issue was published with no credited editor. His last credit was March, which would be a full year. So did the anniversary issue and yada yada yada. Now, various sources have talked about this mystery April issue, including Robert E. Howard. Now, I'm gonna do a deeper dive into this at some point and probably put it out as a mini episode because there's a hell of a lot, there's letters from various people talking about what could, may, and may not have happened, but from for now, we're gonna do a little truncated version. It's believed that Baird started the issue, then Wright took it over when he was sacked. Wright then walked out because he wasn't happy with what had happened to Baird, and then Otis Edelbert Klein jumped in and finished it before Farnsworth Wright was persuaded to rejoin. Wow. Wow. So potentially it had three editors. That's what we um kind of gather from this. But the most interesting thing I think about this whole thing is the fact that in a parallel universe we could have had a very, very different Weird Tales because it very, very nearly had a very different editor. Now, I'm gonna get into this because what happened with Baird was the fact that under Bai's stewardship, Weird Tales lost an estimated $51,000.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Wow, that's a chunk of change, isn't it? That especially in 1923. That's a huge chunk. I mean, you could buy a house for sort of a thousand dollars in the house. That's mental, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 55:40

That's incredible. Insane. So Henneberger, learning that Baird owed a bunch of the contributors, was not happy and reached out to each one of them to apologize. One of these for five stories was HP Lovecraft.

SPEAKER_02 55:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Now we don't have Henneberger's letter that he sent, but we got, you know, you could you know it's gonna be it's gonna like look, we're a bit financially fucked. As soon as we've got some money, we'll give it you. You know it goes. We've all had those letters, right? We've all we've all we've all had them or sent them. And sent them. Yeah, yeah. But what I did manage to find, and I was really pleased about this, was we have this ridiculously long letter. It's essentially an essay from H.B. Lovecraft. I'm just gonna cherry pick from it. But it was a reply dated February the second, 1924. I was very glad to hear from you and to receive so many sidelights on Weird Tales, whose chosen field makes me very eager for its success. I know the financial end of magazine publishing must be tremendous and often discouraging responsibility, and I have a sincere respect for the pluck and determination of anybody who undertakes such a venture. Most certainly I do hope that some favorable turn will gradually transform your burdensome debt on the two magazines into an increasingly gratifying profit. And it seems to me that many facts warrant such optimism, for in the weird field you are practically alone and with a good start. Whilst in the detective field there seems to be an insatiable demand for new material. Still, I know that marketing is a venturesome and uncertain process, especially with dealers in the unscrupulous state of mind you describe. Now, in the next paragraph, he's talking because um I we we can just infer from the letter that there was probably talk about Baird and how he Henneberger wasn't happy with his editorship. And it seems that there's a story that seems to be a bone of contention. Now, I've not read it, but on the state of this, it sounds like something I need to read. And this is very insightful into what we've discussed on many occasions about Lovecraft's sense of humour. I assure you that I was not at all disconcerted by the presence of the transparent ghost beside my hound. In the first place, I don't take myself too seriously, and in the second place, I can appreciate the sort of humour involved in such touches of comic relief, like the gravedigger in Hamlet or The Porter in Macbeth. When a magazine covers a popular clientele and appeals to one particular interest, it is peculiarly apt to elicit literacy, or more or less literary, contributions from its readers, so that I suppose a very large proportion of those who have seen weird tales have flooded the office with unacceptable manuscripts. To them, the whole subject of impossible contributions has become a live issue, so that the exploitation of some comically illiterate attempt carries a piquancy which they can feel and smile at, even though others may find it somewhat tedious and inappropos. The transparent ghost may not be an austerely literary asset, yet I cannot doubt but that it will make many friends for the magazine and perhaps assuage more than one subtle sting left behind by rejected manuscripts. I hope anyway that this matter won't be instrumental in deposing Mr. Baird from the editorship until he is himself ready to relinquish it, for I feel that he must have done very well on the whole, considering the adverse conditions encountered in the quest for really weird stories. That he could get hold of as many as five perfectly satisfactory yarns is an almost remarkable phenomenon in view of the lack of truly artistic and individual expression amongst professional fiction writers. So now he goes on a massive thing again about types of fiction, and uh he has a real dig at like um American fiction writers in general being so in a box and down the line and won't think outside of what they're doing and and all this. And he also talks about like some of the stories that were in Weird Tales not being to his, shall we say, um, what should we say? Taste. No, not to his taste. Uh basically he describes them as sort of humdrum and things like that. And there's a line here I just want to bring up. Actually, the typical reader has very little true taste and judges by absurd freaks, sentimentalities, and analogies. So it's I know. So it's come to be an accepted tradition that American fiction is not an art but a trade. Oh ouch, ouch. That's an interesting line.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

I know. Doesn't that fit in with this whole I'm a gentleman kind of thing? That's like uh was it play- is it players and gentlemen, the the old cricket thing prof yeah you look down on professional people, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

Indeed, yes, that's very true. That's very much that yeah, he's harking back to that Victorian gentleman thing again, isn't it? The old gent of Providence and all that. Now, weird fiction, even in America, is not subject to the limitations of general fiction. When a person, the sort of person forming the readers of Macabra fiction, wants an Outre narrative at all, he is willing and anxious to take something removed from the beaten track of the national tradition. The tradition of conventional insipidity. Here is our real exception. The man who wants something original, but in the face of a general tradition which usurps all the education of our storytellers, we can only ask in tragic accents, who is going to give that to him? So, yes, he g he goes on for another couple of pages in this vein. And yeah, this is where he gets into things not being to his taste. So when I read Weird Tales and Note here and there, a story full of hackneyed stuff, the laboratory, the club room with well-groomed men around the fire, the beautiful queen of remote planets, the ghost that is a human villain trying to scare somebody out of a house, etc., etc. I never think of blaming Mr. Beard, for out of a somewhat wide knowledge of non-eminent writers gained through various club affiliations, I am perfectly well aware that he had to take the stuff because no living man could quite get enough of anything else to fill the required number of pages at the required intervals. I don't believe there is enough first-rate weird fiction written in America to fill a monthly magazine the side of weird the size of weird tales. Yeah, don't hold back there, Howard. Blimey.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Yes, again, quite uh quite cutting, isn't it? Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

So now he gets into the sort of thing that he does he does like, and he names a few people, such as Seabury Quinn, Peter Thom, and and uh he talks about Macken again um in quite deep in quite a lot of detail. He calls Macken the only living master in the full sense of the word I could possibly name in this field. A point which I think anyone can appreciate by comparing his episode of the white powder in the three imposters with every other tale of terror known to this generation. Now I tend to agree on that because that's uh that is a tremendous bit of work, is the white powder. Yeah, yeah. Then just below this, I thought this was an interesting thing worth pointing up, picking up. I think though, that with the requisite capital, a magazine could train up a group of effective weird writers by offering them a free and lucrative field and letting some expert give them recommendations as to reading, what authors to avoid, what ones to emulate. I know a kid, a junior at Columbia named Frank B. Long Jr. Who could give you some creepy stuff if he could be persuaded to write out half of the ideas he has. I'm inducing him to send in a poem to Weird Tales, and if he receives encouragement, he may furnish more. They may, then, there must be more like him if one has the time to look them up. So now he goes on to talk a little bit about the detective magazine, and because apparently they were talking about putting true crime in it, which they eventually did. And Lovecraft thought that was a good idea, but he didn't want to do all just that, otherwise, it'd be just a newspaper. Yeah. He then talks about um serializing stories and how he doesn't like it. Um, because he does he'd just done Reanimator, Herbert West Reanimator, and apparently he hated the whole process of it of having to have a climax and all this, and he he just did not like the whole thing. He thought he diluted the whole story. I I think he's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:08

I think he does showing that story particularly, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:11

He then talks about um the rats in the walls and how it, you know, that it was nice to have been accepted and the compliments from it and things like that. And apparently they'd asked him for a long manuscript of 25,000 words or more. So he he then he talks again about some things he likes and some more things he doesn't, and finishes thus. But I see that I've rattled this letter out to ridiculous lengths, for which I trust you'll duly forgive me. I hope my various marks of remarks have been buried in them some grains of sense which will answer for intelligent suggestions. Though as a practical planner, I was never very notable. I certainly wish you the best of luck with Weird Tales, and hope every modification may develop in the right direction. I shall be Very glad to see the check when it comes, though well knowing that my own straits are shared more or less by everybody else all along the line. I hope the difficulty of payment doesn't deter any first rate writers from contributing. I suggested to Mr. Baird that it might have exactly the opposite effect, scaring off the mercenaries and leaving those artistic writers who draw horror for horror's sake. There's an interesting point. Yes. Yeah, so like I say, there's a hell of a lot more in there. Um I'll I'll I might actually try and uh get that typed up and put it out in the next insmith news or something because it's an incredibly interesting letter.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

Yeah, yeah. I think it raises a huge amount of points there, and and I think one thing that springs immediately to mind is Lovecraft's sort of avuncular nature. One of his more positive uh characteristics, shall we say, was this willingness to give advice and help. Well, we've mentioned Mr. Block, of course, long. They were all well, he was the old gent, wasn't he? I don't I don't think they were that much younger than him. I mean, Block probably was, but he wasn't a man in his 50s or 60s, was he? Lovecraft. He was in his 30s, wasn't he, at the time? I think it was mid-30s. So not an old guy. No, but he's he seems uh put over this persona almost like the the old grandpa, well, old gramps, right? You know. Uh but this willingness to encourage young writers, I think, is a very good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:31

Yeah, definitely. And that is something that obviously didn't go unnoticed by Mr. Henigberger, because in the follow-up letter, he offered HP Lovecraft the job as editor. Wow, oh now, wow. It's what I'm talking about, the ultimate what if in a parallel universe. But he did, he offered him the job. He was just like, look, Baird is gone. Do you want to be editor?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:57

How would that have looked, do you think? I mean, on the one hand, um, would it have ever got printed? Because I don't know that yeah, we we need to get it, we've all been here, right? We need to get it to the printers by March the 15th at the latest. March the 14th. Well, I'm still working on the the editing of this first. I revised it several times. Wouldn't that been a thing that he could have done? If he had, I wonder how that would have affected his pecuniary situation. Would that have given him a solid regular income? Which was something uh uh aside from when he was married to Sonia, and that was her income. He he never really seemed to have that, did he? No, yeah, would that have stabilized his his life a little bit more, perhaps? Possibly, yeah. Would the quality of stories in Wheel Towers be any different? Would they all be better? Or would would there only be two stories per issue because none of the others made the crate?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

It's interesting to think about, isn't it? Um and also there is the fact that would he have had to move to Chicago and how the hell would he have coped with that because the windy city?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

Oh, he wouldn't have liked that. Yeah, oh totally, yeah. I mean the yeah, the winters there are worse than New York, I think, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:15

Yeah, they are, yeah, they're brutal. Yeah, like seen pictures of it, like like people look to their neck in snow, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:23

Yeah, and that was just as much a thriving metropolis as New York, right? You know? Yeah, yeah. Uh Chicago, very busy city. So again, a a world away from I don't know that Providence is a quiet backwater, particularly, but it certainly wasn't New York or Chicago, was it?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

No, um I get the impression if you if you consider like if I'm using the UK, so New York would be London, Chicago would be Manchester kind of thing, and and and say Providence would be like Wells or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cyrens Esther or something, yeah, yeah. Ely, Ely. Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:09

Your average UK market, yeah, with a cathedral. So so it's a so it's a city, yeah. But how uh yeah, this is it. So I got so blown away by finding out that HPL was like that close to being the editor of Weird Tales, because it was a sincere, because you can see why, if you've read all that letter, all through it, it's just like how you could make it better, this is who we get in, this is what we would do. It's almost like he was pitching for the job, but obviously he wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

Yeah, I mean, because that's the impression when you said that thing of oh what you need is someone who could maybe um it does sound a bit like uh like me, but I I don't think that was how we operate because he's a gentleman, he wouldn't put himself forward like that. No, and I wonder what his reaction was to that then. Obviously, he didn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

No, he very graciously declined, apparently. I'm trying to find that letter, but I can't uh I couldn't find it this morning. But if I do find it, then it will get out there somehow. But from from the little excerpt I've seen, it was just like, thank you very much, and it's not for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:20

My gut feeling is that he would have seen it as uh beneath him is not the word, but it's um there's that quote from Three Musketeers. Which which one was it? Was it Athos? Um, where they're they're offered a commission, you know, they've done very well on the Queen of uh but a commission, is that the sort of thing a gentleman really has? A commission, you know. I I'm a gentleman, I don't need a commission. I get that feeling. I I'm I'm a gentleman, I I don't do a proper job.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:50

Yeah, and yeah, also because in one of the in I don't know if it was that letter or one of the other ones he'd sent around that time, he also said about the fact that he writes purely for pleasure, yeah, and all this kind of thing. So I guess that that as well, there's an artistic thing, I wouldn't have time to actually write. Because I mean I I know that firsthand from when I when I've done curating and editing for anthologies. Oh wow, it's a hell of a lot of work. It's like just reading the slush pile when you've got open submissions. I mean, one of the ones I did, we had like over 250 submissions and 10 spots.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:29

Well, nine because one of them spots was mine. Of course, of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:35

Absolutely, and it's then you have the task of editing. So if you do select a story, uh-huh, obviously the ones I've done have been lucky with people such as yourself and John Hoolahan, etc. etc. You check it for spelling and whatever, and that's it, you know. But I have had other stories that have needed revising several times, or I'm sure you've had the same, you you virtually rewrite it yourself, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

Oh, a couple, yeah, a couple in in anthologies. I won't name any anything, but yeah, some that I've there's a lot of me in that them stories, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:11

Because you want to get the the the anthology out, and it's kind of quicker to do that sometimes than you know, try and find another story or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:20

Yeah, I guess that that's more in the case of when they're a themed thing and it's got a fit, it's got to very much fit a narrative or something, you know. It's you know you know yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:31

Yeah, the the Pikmin papers is the prime example, and and you know what I mean, but yeah, I I won't go into any more detail on that. How you can just get a setting so wrong is beyond me. But there we go. I won't there you go, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:46

There you go. That's just how it is, isn't it? Sometimes that's just how it is. So, yeah, there you go. That is the ultimate what if. And I'd love to hear what our patrons think about that. Um, what what do you reckon if look how how would weird tales have looked with HBL in charge? Would it be this weird utopia or would it have turned into a dystopian nightmare?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:08

It did work with other people, obviously, Hazel Hild and and so on and so on. Yeah, we did, yeah. Uh yeah, trouble collaborating with with other Hoffman and all the rest of it. So Rimmel, Price, yeah, loads of them. We can only speculate, and and then we get into the situation where Smith stories would have been much more likely to have been approved, uh-huh, as opposed to almost constantly being turned down by Wright and having to be resubmitted a year later or rewritten and resubmitted, which in turn led to Wright's um led to Smith's pecuniary depletion. So again, it's like a domino effect, isn't it? That the ripples from that could have had uh again, imagine if Smith had had a regular income, he might have continued writing and not turned to sculpting and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:53

Yes, uh it's boggling to think about, isn't it? So anyway, yeah, Lovecraft turned it down, as we know, and Farnsworth Wright took over, and the rest is history. So I'm gonna finish now on Lovecraft's last long letter that I that I have right on me right now that isn't just him saying no the last issue was good or last issue was crap. So this is from February 1928, and it dials directly into what you were saying earlier about what is weird. What constitutes a weird tale? This question is answered so clearly and succinctly in a personal letter to the editor from H. P. Lovecraft, author of The Call of Cthulhu, in this very issue, that we cannot forbear quoting him, although the letter is really an explanation of his own stories rather than a general discussion on the weird tale. All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos at large, writes Mr. Lovecraft. To me, there is nothing but purility in a tale which in which the human form and the local human passions and conditions and standards are depicted as native to other worlds or universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind have any existence at all. Well, I mean, this is heavy stuff, innit? Thomas Lagotti, eat your heart out. Only the human senses and characters have human qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, not catchpenny romanticism. But when we cross the line into the boundless and hideous unknown, the shadow haunted outside, we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold. If I were writing an interplanetary tale, it would deal with beings organized very differently from mundane mammalia and obeying motives wholly alien to anything we know upon Earth. The exact degree of alienage depending, of course, on the scene of the tale, whether laid in the solar system or the utterly unplumbed gulfs still further out, the nameless vortices of never dreamed of strangeness, where form and symmetry, light and heat, even matter and energy themselves, may be unthinkably metamorphosed or totally wanting. I have merely got at the edge of this in Cthulhu, where I have been careful to avoid terrestrialism in the few ling linguistic and nomenclatural specimens from outside which I present. All very well, but will the readers stand for it? That's all they're likely to get from me in the future, except when I deal with definitely terrestrial scenes.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:20

There we go. Yeah, this this touches on something we've said about Smith a lot as well, didn't it? About his aliens being very alien.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:29

Being alien with a capital A, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:31

Yeah, and that idea sometimes of trying to look at it from the alien perspective. I think, yeah. We can only speculate where that would have led to with Lovecraft, because I think wasn't that idea that he was moving towards more overtly sci-fi type stories at the mountains of madness to to a large extent.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:51

And the shadow out of time. Yeah. Yeah, he he was definitely moving in that direction. Yeah. So yeah, it's interesting to think about where he would have ended up if it had carried on.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:03

Yeah, because it's you you do come up against that wall at some point of describing the indescribable, didn't you? Of course. Which is something Lovecraft gets flaked for. I think he generally does a very good job. Oh, yeah. And he does describe things a lot more than people say. But at some point, words are not enough, are they?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:20

No. Describing the indescribable. That was one of my rounds at last year's Innsmouth Literary Festival quiz. I might have to resurrect that from that again for this year. I had fun with that round.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:35

Yeah, and and how far, again, we've said before. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. Perhaps uh dear listeners can can tell us of some uh of a book or a story that totally puts across an alien viewpoint. And I mean really alien, not just uh things can be like the Daleks are aliens, right? But they're the third Reich. Yeah, you know, it's that's that's pretty much it. Oh, they are, yeah. But something that is truly alien, how do you write from that being's perspective?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:11

I've done it, it's bloody hard. I had to write a short story from the as part of a um combined narrative, a shared world anthology, but I was chosen to write they were it was the same story told from five different perspectives. All right, and I was chosen to write it from the perspective of the squiggly, slimy, great old one that lived in the lake and was causing all the insanity. Ah, all right. Um bugger me, that was hard. That is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to write. Did you not just write mmm crunchy humans, nom nom nom? I kind of did go a little bit down that route later because you know what we were saying earlier about taking ideas and changing them. Um when that came out of uh out of contract, I rewrote it as part of my beyond desire erotic Cthulhu Mythos stories that I did with Zoe Burgess. I I took it and changed it and made it fit.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:15

So that that was more like lovely humans, ooh, and we went down a another route.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:20

Yeah, well, yeah, another type of appetite. Yeah, there was the thing is that it was already in that direction anyway, because it was it was um the whole concept was it of it taking brides for the mingling kind of thing, right? Right, right. But in the original version of it, it was very toned down. With Zoe, you're given full reign, but in that with yeah, no, with Zoe. I think Zoe even said, no, no, no, make it do more. All right, turn it up to 11. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh yeah, but oh my god, that was hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:57

I've never really tried that. I mean, I've written I I want to write more stories about a group of ghouls, but ghouls are quite human-ish, you know, or animalistic. They they want to feed, they want to do other things, so that's that's quite easy. They're not that's not really alien, is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:16

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:17

Yeah, but that'd be interesting to know any any listeners can uh recommend not nothing springs to mind uh off the top of my head, but I'm I'm sure someone uh I know we've had things from the point of view of the deep ones and that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:30

Oh, there's a lot of that, there's a lot from the deep ones and ghouls as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:35

It's they're quite humanistic, if I can call it that, aren't they? You know, it's it's still very similar. How do you put across the perspective of something that exists in eight dimensions, for example?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:47

Well, exactly, that's the problem. Yeah, yeah. That that's the that is the big issue. You know what I would love to see, and it's something that it I might have to try and write at some point, from the perspective of Sarfoguer, and the story would be Sarfoguer's banquet. Nice, the hyperborea, you know, it's right in itself, but yeah, but from the yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:12

Pretty much all of the stories are sarfoguer's banquet.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:16

Yeah, but but but from the perspective of sarfoguer, as if he's like gone to a restaurant. Or you can eat buffet, yeah, exactly, and all you can eat buffet. It's like, oh, should I should I try this this the short squat one now? Or maybe maybe have I dunk a bit of this on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:35

Oh dear. I mean, again, as we said before, probably Sarthogua and Nyilactotep would be the easiest ones to approach, wouldn't they? Because they seem to have a lot of regular interaction with humans.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:46

Saying that, actually, Charles Stross has done chapters from the perspective of Nihilathotep in Laundry Files. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think various other writers have from old gnarly, but again, like you say, that it's treated more like Loki, more like a trickster in that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:06

One of his their she's many incarnations, yes, masks, yeah. One of their masks, their avatars, yeah. Uh splendid. Well, I think we've covered a lot of stuff there, but we've also uncovered a lot of stuff. Um we we could there's several rabbit holes leading off of this, which uh oh yeah, we'll save for future episodes, of course. There's a a few choice topics there, I think, that we can chew over.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:31

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:32

And of course, dear patron, if you have any uh any thoughts on any of those, then do let us know. Always very nice to hear from you. Do take a look over at the Insma Forum. We've got some excellent discussions and comments going on there, which we will share we shall be reviewing in our next regular episode. We'll be dipping into the mailbag uh because I think we're back in the Gilman House next time, and uh not many people know that's actually where Daingon's sack resides. It's got its own little corner in the Gilman house slowly pulsing away in the gloom.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:09

Yeah, it's a little cupboard just just behind the office, isn't it? It's uh when you're sitting at the desk, you can hear it throb through the walls, a bit like Poe's Telltale Heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:19

It was the beating of his hideous sack. Oh yes, I love it. Don't you open that trapdoor?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:26

I'm putting a pin in that one for the next Beyond Desire.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:33

Okay, that's it for today, folks. As always, thanks very much for joining us and a super thanks for supporting the show and allowing us full reign for our madness, which we aim to spread, of course, across the globe and maybe even beyond. Yes. Indeed. And on that cosmic note, it's goodbye for me, Rob Python.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:55

And disappearing through the angles is right for me, Tim Mendes.