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Friday, December 22, 2017

“I Couldn't Live a Week Without a Private Library" : My Lovecraft Collection (Part One)


In my first Lovecraft post, I wrote about the several occasions on which I have sought to expand my collection of his works, despite it flying in the face of all practical considerations. I gave my reasons and rationalizations for the purchases, but as any collector can attest, there is one answer as to why I bought those books: Because I did not yet own them. I’ve found that people, even those of the “nerdy” persuasion we so often associate with collecting things, fall into two categories on the subject. There are those who immediately understand my sentiment above, and those to whom it is a foreign concept. Folks in the latter group might be able to understand that drive in theory, but you can usually tell after just a few moments’ discussion on the matter that they don’t feel that same pull as a collector.

Case in point, last year I had a rather nasty disagreement with a friend and roommate at the time, who deigned to call my desire for books “hoarding.” Now, there was a time when such a statement might have evoked images of a dragon perched atop a mound of gold; these days, thanks largely to reality television, it elicits thoughts of people in bathrobes with flyaway hair and wild eyes surrounded by eight-foot-high stacks of Reader’s Digest. Needless to say, I did not respond positively to this assessment of my habits, and rebuked him bitterly for it. The main thrust of my rebuttal was simply that my books are not simply intended to be things I own without purpose, but are purchased in order that they might eventually be read.
Now, if I’m being completely honest, there’s a better-than-good chance I won’t get to read every book I own in my lifetime, and I buy new books pretty much anytime finances allow for it. That doesn’t erase my intent to read each of them when purchased, though, nor does it take into consideration the other positive qualities of my collection. Anyone who has a genuine collection of items which are important to them – be it baseball cards or fine china adorned with aardvarks – knows exactly what I mean by that. There’s a certain feeling you get when you’re surrounded by your things, a sense of both peace and power which very little else in the world can replicate. Given the quotation I used for the title of this post, I’d say odds are good H.P. Lovecraft himself understood this phenomenon quite well.
In my original post I used stock images of the different works I was discussing, with one exception, that being the header image at the top of the page. That photo is the bookshelf in my apartment which contains most of my Lovecraft collection. The arrangement and contents of that shelf have changed slightly since that particular photo was taken, and so below I've included an updated version. (The biggest change is that the two Gene Wolfe paperbacks stacked on top of the Lovecraft books have been replaced with more Lovecraft books. This is in no way intended as a slight against Gene Wolfe, who is a phenomenal author.)


You might have noticed above that I said “most” of my collection, because like most collectors, I am in a constant state of flux as I try to strike a balance between the things I want to display and the space available to me to display them. Unsurprisingly, I also have stories or remembrances connected to each of my acquisitions, and those are difficult to share without parsing the full shelf down into its individual components. Such are things that I find myself with the desire to share a more robust guide to my collection in the pictures and descriptions below; the fact that this also provided me with an excuse to pull each volume off the shelf and admire it briefly is not something lost on me.

The Collection Part One: Works by H.P. Lovecraft

Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading - Three Volume Set

The set that started it all, I love these volumes, and am especially fond of that gnarly cover art for "At the Mountains of Madness." That first picture of the spines is the first picture I ever took of Lovecraft books for my photo album chronicling my ever-expanding library. For this post, I decided to supplement it with a picture of the full covers, so that y'all can appreciate how rad the art is. Content-wise, these contain a nearly all of Lovecraft's stories which were released under his name, though some more obscure pieces are absent.




Penguin Classics - Three Volume Set

The second set of story collections I purchased, these contain mostly the same content as the B&N set, so one might wonder why I would have picked them up? (Well, one might wonder if they're not a chronic collector, that is.) There are actually two practical answers to that, the first simply being that I wanted some "reading copies" that weren't my nice B&N set. The second is that I had begun to do a bit of research on the topic, and discovered that the Penguin versions had been edited by someone named "S.T. Joshi." I had no idea who Joshi was at the time, but comments and reviews on Amazon mentioned him frequently in a positive light.



Del Rey Books - Six Volume Set

Alright, at this point my justifications for having multiple copies might seem to be wearing thin, BUT three volumes in this set are completely different material from the previous two. "The Horror in the Museum" collects most of Lovecraft's revisions / ghostwritings for other authors, which are of great interest for anyone who is more than a passing fan of his work. "The Watchers Out of Time" contains all of August Derleth's stories which are purportedly "based on" either notes or story fragments Lovecraft left behind when he died. (I'll save my opinions on THAT whole piece of history - and the stories themselves - for a later post.) Finally, "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos" is a rather impressive collection of works from both classic and modern horror writers, although some of the ties to the mythos are tenuous at best.

The other three volumes - those containing the bulk of Lovecraft's own fiction - are sort of divided up by theme, and for a time were the only readily available collections of these stories. Unfortunately, they could have used better editing, and are riddled with typos and even a few glaring mistakes in transcribing the texts. Nevertheless, those covers are still wicked; I should have taken a picture of the backs as well, since most of them wrap around.

Fun Fact: Unless I am mistaken, I believe "Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" is the first Lovecraft book Bryant ever picked up. You can (and should!) read more about that over on The Truth Inside the Lie.




Del Rey Books - Waking Up Screaming & Shadows of Death

Yeah, ok, I will readily admit that I bought these two books simply because I wanted them. They contain stories I already had in numerous other volumes, and are unfortunately even more poorly edited than Del Rey's other offerings. The one edge I will give them is that they represent possibly the only instance of Lovecraft's stories being collected in mass market paperback format. Now, I much prefer the trade paperbacks that have been listed up to this point for reading these tales. Like a vast majority of heavy readers / collectors, though, I grew up frequenting used bookstores, so I have an undeniable affinity for mass market editions.


Dell Publishing - The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft & More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft

Though the actual stories contained in these volumes are present in three and sometimes four of the items already on this list, the real focus here is on S.T. Joshi's extensive annotations. There are only ten stories total collected within - four in the first volume, six in the second - but they are accompanied by a staggering wealth of information surrounding their history and composition. I haven't yet investigated the contents beyond some light skimming, but when I reach each of these tales within my larger project, I plan to use the versions here for my second reading.


Arcane Wisdom - The Crawling Chaos and Others & Medusa's Coil and Others

I briefly mentioned above that Lovecraft did enough work editing / ghostwriting during his life that one of the Del Rey volumes is composed of nothing but those stories. As it turns out, that one volume alone wasn't enough to contain all such works, and so I picked up this marvelous pair. Edited by Joshi - whose name by this point I actively sought out when buying new Lovecraft collections - these two volumes contain nearly all of the collaborative efforts, plus extensive annotations. The fourth volume in Joshi's most recent set is also focused on these tales, and seeing how I've only read two of them, I'm excited to reach this part of my project.


Hippocampus Press - The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft

I've honestly never read any of Lovecraft's poetry, so whenever I get around to tackling this beast - it comes in right around 600 pages - I'll be interested to see what my reaction is.


Library of America - Lovecraft: Tales

I purchased this for two reasons: Because it's a lovely, travel-sized hardback of Lovecraft stories, and because I wanted to support the Library of America's acknowledgement of Lovecraft's importance as a voice in American writing. Given the sheer quantity of times his work has been collected and reprinted, you'd think that latter one is a given, but we live in interesting times. (That's a topic for an entirely different series of posts, most likely once I start reading "I Am Providence.") If you've never seen a Library of America edition, I highly recommend visiting your local bookseller and seeing if they have one available for an American writer you find enjoyable. They're slightly expensive ($25-$40, depending) but are a real treat if you're into this sort of thing.


Chartwell Books / Barnes & Noble - Complete Fiction Collections

There is at least one more well-reviewed "complete" Lovecraft collection out there, that being the Knickerbocker printing which Bryant used during his own foray into madness at The Truth Inside the Lie. The Chartwell I picked up online for a whopping $11, while the B&N edition was a gift from friends in my Maryland sci-fi book club when I moved (Hi, Brian and Cindy!). Interestingly enough, and unbeknownst to them when they bought it, post-2011 copies of the B&N printing are the most complete extant single-volume collection of Lovecraft's works. They include stories which, for one reason or another, are not present in the Knickerbocker or Chartwell editions. The B&N collection was also overseen by Joshi, so I would say it is THE definitive version to pick up if you want a big-ass chunk of cosmic horror.


Penguin Classics - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Orange, Deluxe, & Standard)

One of these volumes - the standard edition on the right of the picture - has already appeared on this list, and yes, the other two contain the exact same stories. In the middle of the picture is the "deluxe" edition, which I found used but in flawless condition at 2nd & Charles, and was so delighted by the cover I couldn't possibly have left it behind. The leftmost edition is part of the "Penguin Orange Collection,"* and I couldn't tell you what sets that collection apart from their standard "Classics" printings. I do know that I vehemently hate orange, so it's telling of my Lovecraft fandom that I decided to pick up this particular edition. (Let it also be known that I hate Tennessee.)

*McMolo over at Dog Star Omnibus has joined out little Lovecraft venture, and the Penguin Orange is the edition he selected to begin his descent into madness!



Publishers TBD - At the Mountains of Madness... & The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Not much to say here; these were recent finds at the aforementioned 2nd & Charles. They don't usually have used Lovecraft books, so whenever I find some, I'm apt to buy them if I don't already have that specific edition.


SFBC Science Fiction - Black Seas of Infinity

The penultimate item before we move on to the parts of my collection that connect to Lovecraft, but weren't necessarily written by him, is yet another curiosity I picked up at 2nd & Charles. What caught my eye was the fact that someone other than Joshi had selected the stories within. Coming in at just over 500 pages, it's a compact but hefty hardback volume which purports to be "the largest one-volume collection of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction ever assembled." What's surprising is that this was only published in 2001, meaning it's only been in the last 10-15 years that we've gotten the kind of "Complete Collected Fiction" editions seen earlier in the post.

Andrew Wheeler's introduction is great, and gives further insight into the fact that this resurgence of weird fiction I keep mentioning is a very real thing which can be tracked across the past decade. For instance, Wheeler talks about how the writings of Lovecraft's contemporary Clark Ashton Smith were out of print, and virtually inaccessible unless you could get ahold of the originals or scans. Thing is, I own a Penguin Classics collection of Smith's works that will be featured in my next post about books I own that are connected to Lovecraft. Furthermore, there's a six-volume set on my wish list that collect's all of Clark Ashton's Smith's fantasy stories, plus his miscellaneous writings.

This introduction, along with flipping through the book and reading snippets of my favorite stories, is a large part of what spurred me on to finally begin writing about Lovecraft in earnest. So if nothing else, I'm glad I came across Black Seas of Infinity for the interesting waypoint it provides in tracking the popularity and availability of both Lovecraft's fiction, and works from his contemporaries. Plus the cover art - which is another wraparound I should have photographed in full - is pretty spectacular, and the book overall is just a really pleasing addition to my collection.



Hippocampus Press - Collected Fiction Volumes 1-4 (Variorum Editions)*

After picking up Black Season of Infinity, I did something which will be very familiar to anyone with a passion for reading or collectioning: I hopped online to look for other Lovecraft editions I might have overlooked in the past few years. This search lead me almost immediately to Joshi's newest releases, which in turn lead me to an assessment of my budget; where things went from there you can probably guess. I knew that I could not in good conscience obtain these volumes simply to place them on a shelf, though, and so resolved that it was time to finally get cracking on getting my "academic pursuits" up and running again.

The volumes themselves are a sight to behold, with the first three coming in at around 500 pages each, while the fourth surpasses a whopping 700 pages. Joshi uses copious footnotes in order to denote the textual differences between various versions of each story. The references both are and aren't distracting if you're just trying to read the story, and so I am split on whether I would suggest these editions to someone new to Lovecraft. On one hand, you can easily obtain the Penguin paperbacks for about $15 apiece; add in Del Rey's Horror in the Museum for the collaborations at about $20, and you've got most everything for around $65. On the other hand, the presentation in the new variorum editions is superb, all of the stories are presented in the most accurate known chronological order, and overall these volumes are simply better-made than their trade paperback brethren.

*Just so no one thinks I'm putting on airs, I very much so had to look up what "variorum" meant when I ordered these editions. The answer is "an edition or text with notes by different persons; an edition containing variant readings of the text."



 *Special Addition* Barnes & Noble – H.P. Lovecraft: Great Tales of Horror

In addition to the set from which my B&N “Complete Fiction” volume hails, the company also has various other compendium / collection sets they publish and sell. While doing a little holiday shopping, my mom and I came across the volume you see below. Mom is one of my most avid readers and supporters of my different pursuits, and has contributed a fair number of books to my Lovecraft collection in recent years. So when she asked if this particular book would be a good one for her to start reading some of his works, I leapt at the opportunity. The contents really are quite impressive, covering pretty much of all of the major stories save “Dream-Quest.” Given that it is specifically a collection of “Horror” stories, though, that omission makes a decent amount of sense. I’ll let you know what she thinks once she gets underway! (Also, the book you can just barely see the corner of is a copy of Stephen King’s Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which she received from Bryant, and is also super excited about!)

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So there you have it! Everything in my collection - except that one thing which I'm inevitably overlooking - written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. (Yes, I know that two of the Del Rey books push this criteria a bit, but so be it.) I'll be honest, that took significantly longer than I expected to format and write all of those blurbs! I had originally planned to include the things I own which are inspired by / related to Lovecraft as well, but I feel we've reached a good stopping point. Those works will have to wait until my next post, after which I'll start my cataloguing of the works themselves!

8 comments:

B McMolo said...

That is quite the collection! Nice write-ups.

I'm somewhere between the person who needs no follow-up explanation to your first few paragraphs/ reactions there and somehow who does not own multiple versions of the same work. Compared to a "civilian," I am a collector; compared to a collector, I'm a dabbler. It's a little like that with Star Trek and Star Wars and comics, too, now that I think about it.

(For example - not that you need one! My wife rolls her eyes at any sort of explanation like the above paragraph. We're all nerds to her. But you or Bryant (arguably) might roll your eyes at my own lackadaisical attitude towards certain things in my collection/ urgency of getting to them in queue. Not suggesting you DO roll your eyes, only to try and pinpoint where I am on the map.)

(But: to my wife, who doesn't understand how I box books up to make room, then un-box them, then re-arrange them, nor constantly acquire books, etc. You know the rest.)

The Orange Penguin one is the one I bought. (Up to "The Hound" now.)

Bryant Burnette said...

I think the collecting instinct is strong in many people in one way or another, but it doesn't always manifest in the same way. Book lovers might -- or, just as possibly, might NOT -- be drawn to collecting books. How many grandmothers have you met who had a love for decorating their house with knick-knacks of some sort? Tell me THAT'S not the same instinct given vent in a different manner; I'll tell you you're wrong.

And the thing is, it probably does share something in common with hoarding. But my perception of hoarding -- in the reality-television sense -- is that it's aimless and spurred on by some sort of mental problem. Collecting books CAN be that, I guess; but I don't think I've ever seen a collection of books that would make me think that.

A few more points:

(1) I dig the art for those B&N editions. Probably not quiiiiiiite enough to buy myself copies, but that is precisely the sort of thing that would cause me to buy a(nother) superfluous edition of stories I already own. I've done it before and will do it again.

(2) Ditto the Penguin editions, although -- and I could be wrong about this -- I think those three pieces of art were originally done as their own thing, and are not new to these books.

(3) You are 100% correct about that being my first book of Lovecraft stories. I have a different edition, though, which has the same cover art but a different design/layout. And hey, you might not know this, but that phenomenal art is by Michael Whelan, who you might have heard of.

(4) I've got those two annotated volumes, but have not read them. YET...

(5) I think there are some stories in "ghostwriting" volume(s) that you are going to lose your shit for. Some of them are weak; some of them are very much not.

(6) Did you know the Library of America edition was curated by Peter Straub, who selected the stories? Yep. Pretty cool. Damn, I'd love to have a copy of every single book in that series; THAT would make for a fine collection.

(7) That "Black Seas of Infinity" cover is dope as fuck. If I'm looking at the image correctly, I believe I am seeing the faint outline of your hand/arm as you are taking the photo. If so, you are present on the cover as a sort of shadow, and what's interesting about that is that your silhouette kind of lines up with the middle spire. Your own darkness is sort of supplementing the darkness inherent in the piece of art on the cover itself. Gotta love that! (Alternatively: I am imagining things. If so, I am imagining COOL things.)

B McMolo said...

Oh man - I'd love to have that entire Library of America series for sure.

Imagine walking into somebody's house with one wall of bookshelves filled with the Library of America series, another of only Criterion DVDs/ Blu-Rays, another of just Playboys and Sight and Sounds and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction over multiple decades... add a mantle where you move one of the trophies and things switch from Aunt May's boarding house to the Spider-Man Amazing Friends computer lab and you're in business.

Bryant Burnette said...

I love stuff like that. Even if it's stuff I wouldn't normally care about. Couldn't care less about National Geographic, for example, but tell me you were donating to me a collection of every issue plus some shelves to store them on, and I'd flip out.

Xann Black said...

(A) Bryan - My girlfriend is thankfully a collector herself, and so thankfully understands when I being pulling things off shelves, or moving them around on the shelf, etc. That's part of the fun!

(B) Bryan - *Simpsons nerd guy voice* "Ah, yes, a 'filthy casual' collector. I've met your kind before." In all seriousness, you WAY out-nerd me in some regards, so there is absolutely no eye-rolling here. Bryant and I have discussed before how we’re sort of “layman nerds” for most things, with a few areas we specialize in.

Also, feeling a cold hand clawing at your gut because you saw something your brain insists on having isn’t always a good thing. For instance, I’ve had to learn not to worry about DD variant covers. I have some in my collection, and I enjoy them, but getting them all is an itch for another day.

(C) Bryant – See below.

(*) Whether or not my collectioning is related to potential mental health issues is something we can leave up to professionals…

Joking aside, I completely agree with you. Ironically enough, that friend has a bunch of stuff in the garage that he just will not get rid of, or at least hadn’t last time I checked. These aren’t his things, either, but rather things that have been left behind by old roommates, and are largely damaged / unusable. (Lest anyone think I’m casting aspersions behind his back, I would – and have – say all of this openly to this friend.)

(1 & 2) The art on Lovecraft collections tends to be pretty stellar, whether it’s a piece done specifically for the cover, or an existing work that’s been co-opted. Without dumping on Uncle Steve, it does make me think of your “Worst to Best” list of his covers and how awful / bland some of them are. At least shelves full of Lovecraft look interesting, even if the contents of most of the volumes are the same!

(3) So, I DID know that was Whelan art, and from well-before I ever read the Tower and encountered his work there. (I’m really excited typing this, ‘cause you’re going to think it’s cool as fuck.) I had a bookmark as a kid that I loved which had a picture of an awesome dragon on it. The artist was, of course, Michael Whelan, so that’s how I first came across his work.

In high school I became a hug Meat Loaf fan, and was delighted to discover that the book of liner notes – remember those? – in Bat Out of Hell II had Whelan art inside. Each piece was matched up with a lyric from one of the songs, and the overall effect is bad-ass. Even cooler than that, the piece of art from the “Bloodcurdling Tales” cover was matched up with a line from “Objects in the Rearview Mirror (May Appear Closer Than They Are).”

That line is “There were endless winters, and the dreams would freeze.” Not only does that line pair really well with that piece of art, but it is Lovecraftian as all get-out!

(5) I’m looking forward to diving in! Not so much with the Derleth stuff…

(6) I did not know that, but it makes me even gladder to have a copy! Man, a full Library of America set would be awesome. Personally, one of my goals has always been a full B&N Classics collection, as well.

(7) “Dope as fuck” indeed, sir! Also, yes, that is my shadow! I was kind of annoyed that I couldn’t get a picture without it, but you’ve made it sound pretty rad! Looking at it, it’s almost like the fish creatures are hiding in that spot specifically because the light is being blocked.

Xann Black said...

Bryan & Bryant – THAT feeling right there is, I think we can all agree, what separates collectors from folk who just see it all as “things.” I’m not saying a non-collector wouldn’t or couldn’t appreciate such a thing, but I do feel like their reaction / connection to such a display would be inherently different.

For instance, Bryan mentioned the Criterion Collection in his reply. Well, things have been tight here at Blackout, but not so tight that I had to completely pass up B&N’s last half off sale on Criterion films. Specifically, I wanted Blood Simple, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Moonrise Kingdom in order to round out my Coen and Wes Anderson collections. I did their “reserve in store” process online, as it said all three were in stock, but when I arrived they said they couldn’t find Inside Llewyn Davis anywhere. I helped one of the associates scour the department for it, and was about to leave without anything when they said I could order it to the store and still get the sale price.

Now, some folks – even some reading this blog – might scratch their heads as to why I would leave behind the other two films. Wouldn’t the sensible thing just be to get them at the discounted price, and then see if the other one was available on Amazon, etc? Thing is, collectioning isn’t always entirely sensible, as we’ve discussed. I was excited that they had all three, so I could pull the trigger on filling out my director sets in one go. When it looked like that wouldn’t be possible, my enthusiasm for the entire venture deflated.

Anyways, going back to the original point about the hypothetical Collection of the Gods, we actually had several decades of National Geographic at one point. My mom had always displayed them in her classrooms, and encouraged her students to read them during down time. Unfortunately, various things conspired to make it so we didn’t have a place to store them at one point, and they were lost to the ages. I’ve always been a Nat Geo fan, and it never fails to make me grin when young George Bailey is showing off his newest issue in It’s a Wonderful Life.

B McMolo said...

One of my prized possessions is a box of National Geographic maps stretching back to the early 20th century that I won on eBay. It was an estate sale of a guy who had collected it his whole life.

But it's like you both say - walk me into a room where there's a wall to wall ceiling to ceiling collection of pretty much ANY magazine and I'm automatically interested.

Totally understand the all-at-a-go deflated-venture experience at the B&N!

Bryant Burnette said...

(3) "Not only does that line pair really well with that piece of art, but it is Lovecraftian as all get-out!" -- 100%. Nice! That's cool about the Whelan/Meat Loaf connection.

(5) You will be engaged by the Derleth material, if only for the opportunities it gives you to refute it all. A couple of the stories are okay, though; it's not a complete waste, just a near-complete one.

(7) Exactly! That's what I was going for and could not articulate.