"If I Am Mad, It Is Mercy!" : My Lovecraft Collection (Part Two)

As I write these, I sometimes like to imagine what my readers will think as they read them. For instance, I imagine right now most of you are going “Wait a second, didn’t I already see a picture of that shelf, and read a post about his Lovecraft collection?” The answer to that question is yes, I did already show you a similar picture, and write a post that was very similar in theme and format to this one. The answer is also no, because this post in front of you is about books I have which are related to Lovecraft, but weren’t written by the man himself.

“Great,” I imagine I can hear you muttering, “More of him preening over how cool he thinks all of his stuff is.” For once, I’m not going to go with the easy, self-deprecating shot about a massive Lovecraft collection being uncool; I think these books are cool as Hell, which is why I’m excited to be sharing them! Now, just for clarification, the following titles are either directly related to Lovecraft, or were purchased as part of my efforts to expand my understanding of his influences and legacy. I will openly admit that I have read very little of what’s on this list, but hey, that’s one of the things I hope to rectify with this ongoing project. Now, in the words of the Pagemaster, let’s look to the books!


The Collection Part Two: Works Related to H.P. Lovecraft

S.T. Joshi – I Am Providence (Two Volume Set)

Of all the books on this list, these two volumes are perhaps the ones which I am most excited to finally read. In these two volumes, Joshi presents a work that is partly a biography of Lovecraft, and partly the story of Joshi’s own fascination with the writer. The reviews I’ve read are either glowingly positive, or found the books to be self-indulgent tripe, but the former thankfully outweighs the latter. Given how much I enjoy Joshi’s introductions and annotations in the other works I have, I imagine I’ll like this quite a bit.

A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (Two Volume Set)

You may or may not know this, but Lovecraft’s best friend for many years was the famous (and somewhat infamous) pulp writer Robert E. Howard. Basically, everything I could find online said that if you wanted to understand Lovecraft as a person, reading his letters to Howard was the way to go. This set was unfortunately out-of-print when I first began really digging into Lovecraft, and sellers online were charging several hundred dollars for it. Thankfully, there was a reprinting in January 2017 – just after I received my copies of I Am Providence for Christmas, as it happens – and I got this set as a birthday present. One of these days, I hope to add Mark Finn’s “Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard” to my collection as well.

Robert E. Howard – The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

I’ve read all of these stories, and love them, and wish more existed. While Solomon Kane is definitely not as well-known as Conan, I feel that has less to do with the character, and more to do with readers. Solomon certainly cuts a striking figure in my mind, with his high-collared Puritan garb and black hat. Perhaps a bit more imagination is required to appreciate his adventures, although I mean that as no slight against the raw pulp awesomeness that is Howard’s Conan tales. Whatever the case, Howard wrote far more Conan adventures than he did Solomon Kane stories, and the two Arnold Schwarzenegger films helped cement the Cimmerian in pop culture.

There actually IS a Solomon Kane film starring James Purefoy which has never gotten a full release in the States, but is available for viewing on Amazon Prime. The audience reviews are mostly positive, and I think Purefoy is a great actor, so I really should get around to watching it. Based on the posters, it appears that they took a bit of creative license with “Puritan swordsman,” but I guess that’s to be expected. Admittedly, a direct translation of his appearance from the stories would probably have looked silly in a movie.

Robert E. Howard – Conan the Barbarian (3 Volume Set)

As a kid, I loved the show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe; I had action figures, and a light-up sword, the whole nine yards. So when I was slightly older, the natural progression was to Conan the Barbarian. Look, I’m not going to get into lengthy diatribes about gender roles or masculinity on this blog, and I certainly don’t look like Schwarzenegger does in these films or anywhere close. There’s absolutely no denying, though, that when you see Arnold in that costume you think: “Now that’s a fucking man, let me tell you.”

That was precisely what Howard was always shooting for with his Conan stories, and given the legacy of his works, I’d say he succeeded in spades. I haven’t read but a few of these stories over the years – and some of those were the comic book adaptations by Dark Horse – but these tales are about as straightforward as you get. That’s not to say they’re lazily written, or simple in execution. You can just be pretty certain going in that there will be villainous cultists, a scantily-clad woman in distress, and most of the problems will be solved by Conan turning people into jigsaw puzzles.

There are people out there – on both sides of the aisle, and for “different” reasons that all come down to them wanting to control how others thinks – who will tell you this kind of story doesn’t have a place in the world anymore. To which I say: “Bullshit.” There are still people writing new Conan stories, both in prose and for the aforementioned ongoing Dark Horse comics. Now, do I think pulp adventures about glistening, muscled warriors are the only stories to be told? Not in the slightest, but those stories are still out there, and readers still need a way to access them.

Michel Houellebecq – H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

I have yet to read this, but I’ve heard only good things from other Lovecraft fans who have recommended it. You might notice that the cover proudly states “Introduction by Stephen King,” which means old Uncle Steve thought it was worth his time. That alone is probably enough to sell me on it.

August Derleth – The Watchers Out of Time

There’s a history lesson to be told about this book, but I’m going to save the bulk of it for my actual post regarding it and its contents. The short version is: Without August Derleth, you wouldn’t be reading this blog, because none of Lovecraft’s stories would have survived to the modern era. For that, if nothing else, every fan of weird fiction owes Derleth an indescribable debt.

 

…unfortunately, simply collecting and publishing Lovecraft’s extant works wasn’t enough for ole August, and so we have the stories in this volume. Ostensibly written straight from notes and unfinished drafts left behind by the man himself, these are stories Derleth “finished” and then published. I have only skimmed them – and read Bryant’s thoughts over at The Truth Inside the Lie – but my impressions are not positive. In truth, the titles of the stories alone make me roll my eyes something fierce, as they are just poorly jumbled versions of Lovecraft’s own titles. For instance: “The Shadow Out of Space.” Are you kidding me?

 

Del Rey Books - Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos & Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

I briefly mentioned the “Cthulhu Mythos” volume in my first collection post, but wanted to give it and its companion volume “Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos” a little more examination here. Both collections contain stories either directly related to or inspired by Lovecraft’s works; the former has stories from both his contemporaries and modern writers, while the latter focuses just on authors from the height of the pulp era. The titles are a bit of a misnomer, as the works in “Cthulhu Mythos” don’t deal exclusively with the Great Old Ones, but that’s a minor complaint at best. This is another chunk of the project I’m genuinely looking forward to reaching.

Flame Tree Publishing – Gothic Fantasy: Lovecraft Short Stories

My girlfriend (Hi, Em!) got me this as a surprise after-Christmas gift, mostly because she found it for a phenomenal price and had been looking for something to add to my Lovecraft collection.* I was uncertain of whether to include it here or go back and add it to my Collection Part One post, and still don’t know if I made the right choice. You see, most of the stories within were written by Lovecraft, but there are a handful of stories by others interspersed. In the end, I decided to put it here, since it matches up thematically with the books proceeding and succeeding it on the list.

*In case it hasn’t already become clear, that’s a difficult task to accomplish, given to my proclivity for just buying books related to my interests, even when it’s not in the interest of my wallet.

Dark Renaissance Books – The Ghost of Fear and Others & The Dead Valley and Others

I’ve been structuring these lists by theme rather than chronologically, so I would like to note that these two volumes were some of the first I picked up during my Lovecraft resurgence in 2015. Compiled and edited by the incomparable S.T. Joshi, these collections contain stories which Lovecraft himself regarded as being triumphs of the horror genre. Now, I can’t say with certainty that they’re all winners; sometimes a creator whose work you love turns out to have terrible taste themselves. Just based on the pedigree of the authors within, though, I’m going to guess these are probably two of the best collections of this type in print, even without the Lovecraft connection.

To my knowledge, I’ve only read one of the stories collected here, that being Lord Dunsany’s “Idle Days on the Yann.” It’s so obviously the inspiration for “Dream-Quest” and the connected stories that I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had called the narrator Mr. Carter. I enjoyed it so much I bought an entire volume of Dunsany’s work, which will appear later on this list. I greatly look forward to reading the rest of the stories in these two collections, and sharing my thoughts about them here.

Barnes & Noble – H.P. Lovecraft Selects: Classic Horror Stories

Someone I know got this for Christmas, which alerted me to its previously unknown existence, and so of course I snagged myself a copy during post-holiday sales. The title makes me arch an eyebrow slightly, seeing as Lovecraft died in 1937… huh. I was going to make some snarky comment about him “selecting” things for a book put out by Barnes & Noble, but it turns out the original bookstore was founded in 1886, and had grown large enough have a publishing division under the B&N name by 1931. So it’s entirely possible he did select horror stories for them to put in a collection. I’ll save actually digging into whether or not that is the case for when I get to this book in my reading!

Either way, skimming the table of contents, I saw familiar names from the set just prior to this on the list, but there were enough differences to make this a worthwhile purchase. Really and truly, if you started with the two Del Rey collections mentioned above and worked your way down to here, you’d have a pretty phenomenal set of horror / weird tales collections spanning most of the 20^th century. There’s something to be said for the fact that all of them have been put together with Lovecraft as the common association. Though my full thoughts on it are a topic for a later post, suffice to say that I get understandably frustrated when people try to marginalize his contributions to both the horror genre, and American literature as a whole.

Clark Ahston Smith – The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies

I haven’t read any of these stories, but that hasn’t stopped me from adding a six-volume set of Clark Ashton Smith’s complete works to my Amazon wish list. Smith is commonly mentioned in the same breath as Lovecraft – as is our next author – and so I’m sure whatever this volume contains will entertain me, and probably deepen my understanding of this era of writing as well.

Algernon Blackwood – Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories

I have read two of these stories – “The Willows” and “The Wendigo” – and found them both to be simultaneously delightful to read and utterly suspenseful. Though I don’t know if it’s true of all these stories, the two I’ve read show an interest and familiarity with the outdoors that is absent from Lovecraft’s own work. Even when Lovecraft’s protagonists do venture outside, there’s always an ethereal quality to the places they visit, such as the Antarctic. Blackwood’s stories take place in locations that feel real, and the fantastical elements feel all the more threatening because of it.



Lord Dunsany – In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Tales

As mentioned above, I so adored “Idle Days on the Yann” that I made this purchase as a result. I suspect I won’t connect with all of these stories on that level, but if even a third of them elicit such a response, this will have been a worthy purchase. In addition to heavily influencing Lovecraft, Dunsany was also a key figure in developing Tolkien’s literary voice, so this volume can serve double duty when I eventually get around to blogging about those books as well. (I sincerely hope all of you reading this are still around when I get to THAT project in 2071!)

Side Note: Looking back at the last three entries – and at part one of this bibliography, and at my Amazon wish list – it’s pretty obvious that at some point, someone at Penguin said “You know there’s a bunch of awesome stories out there no one is printing anymore. We should fix that!” For instance, with Lord Dunsany, searching on Amazon brings up this volume, and a couple of cheap-looking paperbacks, and some Kindle collections. I mentioned in my last post that Clark Ashton Smith’s works were unavailable as recently as 2001. Yet two spots above this is a whole book full of ‘em, just waiting to be enjoyed! So I would like to extend my gratitude to this unknown publishing employee; I am grateful for your bold thinking, although my bank account is not.

Robert W. Chambers – The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

I purchased this and the next two titles partly because of the Lovecraft connection, but mostly as a result of watching the first season of HBO’s True Detective. There are numerous references to the King in Yellow – often referred to as Hastur in associated works, though I don’t know if that name appears here – and to the land of “Carcosa.” Chambers’ story is also a key part of Alan Moore’s Providence in which rumor has it those who read the tale are driven mad. As for the story itself, I’ve heard mixed reviews, both from friends and online, so we’ll see what my thoughts are when we get here.

Ambrose Bierce – Can Such Things Be? & The Complete Short Stories

I have even less to say about these than The King in Yellow, other than I bought them for similar reasons. Uh… that sure is a pretty cover on the Complete Short Stories. Moving on!

Seabury Quinn – The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin (Volumes 1-3, Ongoing) *Not Yet Pictured*

Here we have what is possibly the most indulgent, potentially risky set of purchases on the list so far: I have never read a single story by Seabury Quinn, but have purchased three out of five planned volumes involving his protagonist Jules de Grandin. (Yes, there are items on here still more gratuitously acquired.) Now, odds are good that I’m going to greatly enjoy these stories. They’re about a French detective who investigates supernatural cases in a small New Jersey town; he’s got a Poirot-style moustache, for heaven’s sake! Still, I might despise them, in which case I’ve spent not a small amount of money on (eventually) five books I dislike. Regardless, their release over the past two years is another indicator of the weird fiction resurgence we’ll eventually discuss.

Bram Stoker – Dracula / Mary Shelley – Frankenstein

Let’s be honest, nothing I say here can capture either of these works. There are collegiate courses dedicated to the study of just one of these two titles. Graduate students compose theses and dissertations about their themes, style, and composition. Even the most far-reaching of Lovecraft’s works doesn’t even come close to the impact Dracula and Frankenstein have had on the cultural and literary landscape.

So what are they doing on my little list, you ask? Well, I intend to read them and write about it, both because they are awesome, and because their influence on horror literature – and all writers of the genre, including Lovecraft – probably can’t be overstated. Just as sci-fi as we know it today would not exist without Wells and Verne, neither would horror exist without Stoker and Shelley. I’ve heard people say that horror writing has changed, and so you don’t need to read these works anymore. To quote myself from earlier: “Bullshit.”

H.P. Lovecraft, et al – Shadows of Carcosa

I won’t even lie, that cover had a huge role in me buying this volume; the stories inside were just kind of a bonus. Unless I’m mistaken, every author represented within has already popped up previously on the list, so I can be fairly assured of the quality of the contents. There’s a piece of Bram Stoker short fiction in here, which I guess I should have known was a thing, but hadn’t ever really thought about before.

William Sloane – The Rim of Morning

I know three things about this book: The cover is once again top-notch, the tales involve “cosmic horror,” and Stephen King provided an introduction. (That’s essentially a trifecta of ways to get me to purchase a book.) I can’t put my finger on why, but I always get this thrill of anticipation anytime I think about diving into these two stories.

Titan Books – Black Wings of Cthulhu (Volumes 1-4, Ongoing)*

Starting in 2012, S.T. Joshi started this anthology series of tales from modern writers that are either directly related to Lovecraft’s works, or are heavily influenced by them. There have been three further releases to date, with the fifth volume in the series coming out in a few weeks. I have yet to crack open any of them, but fingers crossed that changes as we continue along this journey together. (In case you were wondering, yes, they are really, REALLY sharp-looking in person.)

*Volume 5 will be out less than two weeks from this writing. If I can remember, I'll try and update this entry accordingly.

Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows – Neonomicon

I’m going to let Bryant kick this one off: “If you’re going to read one comic with ejaculating fish men in it this year, make it Neonomicon.”

Look, this comic is all kinds of weird, and genuinely disturbing / upsetting in pats, and in a way I’m not really looking forward to reading it again. When you get right down to it, though, isn’t that what horror is all about? I’ve come to the conclusion that this work represents Lovecraft with all of the ethereal fog stripped away. You want stories in which there’s an entire town populated by people who appear to have been cross-bred with fish men? Well guess what, there’s a certain biological process that has to occur for such things to exist, and baby, it ain’t pretty.

Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows – Providence

Confession Time: As of this writing, I have only read the first six issues of Providence, and unfortunately do not remember those as well as I’d like. Essentially, the series was supposed to kick off in May of 2015 and then run for twelve consecutive months, wrapping up in May of 2016. Unfortunately, like many projects of this nature – especially those involving Alan Moore – things took longer than planned. As it was, Providence #12 didn’t hit shelves until April of 2017, nearly a year overdue.

The intervening time saw me move from Maryland back to Alabama, and as I’ve mentioned previously, the first year back wasn’t conducive to giving something like Providence the attention it deserved. Make no mistake, this is a comic that demands your full attention, and doubly so for the prose sections in the back. So as each new issue came in, I set it aside, and then did likewise with the three collected editions that were released this year. This will probably be one of the first things I tackle after finishing Lovecraft’s main body of work, as I’ll enjoy reading it with the source material fresh in my mind.

Donald Tyson – Alhazred & Necronomicon

Donald Tyson’s interpretation of the Necronomicon is another work that my buddy Adam sent my way; I read his copy over a weekend when I was dog-sitting for him and his wife. It’s an interesting read, written from the perspective of Abdul Alhazred, and drawing inspiration from all sorts of works tied to the mythos. I enjoyed it enough that I picked up my own copy, plus Tyson’s “autobiography” of Alhazred. The Necronomicon runs just under 300 pages, and is written / formatted so it seems shorter than that, so imagine my surprise when the companion volume arrived at just under 700 pages. I haven’t found the time to read it since, and even now it seems a daunting task.

Laird Barron – Three Volumes of Short Fiction

I bought these story collections after a friend / the founder of the sci-fi book club I joined in Maryland (Hi, DeLuca!) suggested them to me. I took a trip back up to visit in early 2016, and read The Imago Sequence on my flights and during layovers. It’s… man, I don’t even know. A couple of the stories I really enjoyed, and Barron is obviously a talented writer, but some of them just did not impress me. The main offender is the longest of the stories, "Procession of the Black Sloth,” which had never been published before this collection. It just doesn’t work, for my money.

As I said, though, some of the other stories are quite good, and overall I’m pleased with the purchase, and am interested to read the other two collections. I do want to make something clear, though: I honestly don’t feel the supposed resonance between Barron’s stories and Lovecraft. If anything, I think going in with that expectation – which you will find discussed in nearly every online review – hurt the stories because I was looking for something that I never found.

This presents an interesting dilemma, one which lies at the core of why the only modern Lovecraft-homage collections I own are the ones edited by Joshi. There are a bunch more on my wish list, collections with cool cover designs, or excellent titles like “A Mountain Walked.” I hesitate, though, because I have yet to encounter a writer who can successfully, intentionally evoke Lovecraft. Robert Bloch did a decent enough job in his two stories which frame “The Haunter of the Dark,” but even then the difference between the original and the pastiches stood out to me. All of this is probably better left for a different discussion, but suffice to say that if you use the name “Lovecraft” when suggesting an author’s work, that work better bring it.

Fantasy Flight Games – Eldritch Horror / Elder Sign / Call of Cthulhu Card Game

As I mentioned in several previous posts, Lovecraft’s legacy extends far beyond other writers continuing his mythos or paying homage to his style. So vast is this influence that I had to make a conscious decision to cut this post off at some point, and start a list for an eventual third codex. Works such as John Carpenter’s film The Thing, or the video game series Dead Space will have to wait until then to get their turn in the spotlight.

My first encounters with the Cthulhu mythos proper would have undoubtedly been via Chaosium’s “Call of Cthulhu” tabletop roleplaying game. It mostly plays like D&D set in the 1920s, except that one of your primary concerns is keeping your character from losing their mind. (Alternatively, your objective can be to intentionally have them lose their sanity in order to being about the glorious rebirth of the Ancient Ones!) From my brief interactions with the game, I learned that Lovecraft’s world was one in which madness was perhaps even more certain than death, and also that artists love to draw some messed-up stuff based on the mythos.

I unfortunately don’t own any of the Chaosium books, but I do have these top-notch board / card games from Fantasy Flight. Since they are directly tied into the mythos, rather than only borrowing from it, I decided I’d go ahead and include them here. What cinched it is that I bought them all – although not all at once – as a direct result of my interest in Lovecraft, rather than having acquired them beforehand and later recognizing the connection. I’ve played both Elder Sign and the CoC card game, and of the two I prefer Elder Sign. It’s a cooperative game where each player is an investigator, and you’re all working together to keep an “Ancient One” from awakening. I haven’t yet played Eldritch Horror, and although my buddy Adam owns its big brother, At the Mansions of Madness, we’ve never gotten past the setup phase.

The H.P. Lovecraft Coloring, Dot-to-Dot, and Activity Book

Yes, I own a coloring and activity book based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and boy do I love it. We found it in 2^nd & Charles, and Emily got it for me when she saw how delighted I was. I’ll try to get some scans of the pages, because they really are pretty radical. The dot-to-dot drawings are especially amusing to flip through, as most of them are simply the odd tentacle, eyeball, or mouthful of teeth surrounded by little numbered dots. It makes me grin, because the dots form the vague outline of whatever horror can be revealed, and I feel a bit like one of Lovecraft’s protagonists; I don’t know precisely what I’m looking at, only that you’d have to be a madman to investigate further.

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With that, we can close the doors on my Lovecraft collection… for now! I already picked up two new paperbacks which will need to be added to Part One, and that’s likely to continue. As I mentioned above, I’ll also eventually do a Part Three which will focus on all different types of media, and explore a broader range of works influenced by Lovecraft. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these two codices as much as I’ve enjoyed compiling them. If you’ll be sticking around for a while, I’ll probably end up using both of these posts as a guide for when I dive into all of these works and begin doing my analysis. When that day comes, I’ll do my best to come back and add links to each description here. Until then, enjoy the time we have left before beings we cannot comprehend emerge from the darkness between the stars!