00:00:06:00 - 00:00:09:12 Andrew Welcome to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:12 - 00:00:14:14 Sean In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:14 - 00:00:18:10 Andrew In each episode, we'll read and discuss one of them. I'm Andrew Leman. 00:00:18:10 - 00:00:22:20 Andrew And I'm Sean Branney. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:23:09 - 00:00:30:08 Andrew For today's letter, I chose one written on March 7th of 1920 to Rheinhart Kleiner. 00:00:31:00 - 00:00:32:00 Sean Well, let's hear it. 00:00:32:01 - 00:01:09:24 Andrew Okay. March seven, 1920. Reverend Bolingbroke. I am glad you find merit in my fictional attempts and wish I had not dropped fiction in the nine years between 1908 and 1917. Somehow or other, I conceived the idea that my stories were poorer even than my verse and essays. Though I now fully believe the critics who declared the reverse to be true. I am at present full of various ideas, including a hideous novel to be entitled "The Club of the Seven Dreamers", of the really great workers in the field of the weird 00:01:09:24 - 00:01:30:03 Andrew I hardly think there is any reason to question the leadership of Mr. Poe. I cannot say that Hawthorne appeals so much to me, since he seems hampered to some extent by reality and tameness. However, it is long since I have perused anything of his. I must include a rereading of him in my present program of Absorption in the Bazaar. 00:01:30:24 - 00:01:52:04 Andrew When I come to review my own excursions into the province of the Muse, I am conscious that my attitude was never that of the true poet. For lyrical compositions, I had little or no use and believe that most of my zeal lay in the mere love of rhythm. Plus, the facility which antique verse affords in recreating the atmosphere of the past. 00:01:52:22 - 00:02:17:15 Andrew Aside from rhythm and archaism, nearly every element which I cite in verse can be supplied equally well by prose. The flight of imagination and the delineation of pastoral or natural beauty can be accomplished as well in prose as in verse, often better. It is this lesson which the inimitable Dunsany hath taught me. Poetry, to me, meant merely the most effective way of asserting my archaic instinct. 00:02:18:00 - 00:02:45:12 Andrew I could convey more actual, archaism in my couplets than in any other avenue of equal brevity and simplicity. Were I to grow sober and introspective like you and the Galton kid lit I should describe my own nature as tripartite. My interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups A: love of the strange and the fantastic B: Love of the abstract, truth and of scientific logic. 00:02:45:22 - 00:03:12:20 Andrew C: love of the ancient and permanent Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities. Now, I trust that you succeeded in outlining your agnosticism to your pastor without shocking the good soul. How well I recall my tilts with Sunday school teachers during my last period of compulsory attendance. I was 12 years of age and the despair of the institution. 00:03:13:03 - 00:03:41:07 Andrew None of the answers of my pious preceptors would satisfy me and my demands that they cease taking things for granted quite upset them. Close reasoning was something new in their little world of Semitic mythology. At last I saw that they were hopelessly bound to unfounded dog matter and traditions and thence forward ceased to treat them seriously. Sunday school became to me simply a place where in to have a little harmless fun spoofing the pious moss backs. 00:03:41:16 - 00:04:14:10 Andrew My mother observed this and no longer sought to enforce my attendance. I hope that your present state is merely one of transition from the idealism of youth to the realism of midlife. When the thinker realizes that there is no such thing as ideal happiness and justice and ceases to strive after illusion so empty and unreal. Solid bourgeois contentment with the settled conviction that wild pleasures are too rare, elusive and transitory to be worth seeking is the best state of mind to be in. 00:04:15:00 - 00:04:38:16 Andrew One should come to realize that all life is merely a comedy of vain desire wherein those who strive for the clowns and those who calmly and dispassionately watch are the fortunate ones who can laugh at the antics of the strivers. The utter emptiness of all the recognized goals of human endeavor is to the detached spectator deliciously apparent. The tomb yawns and grins 00:04:38:16 - 00:05:04:15 Andrew so ironically, whatever bliss we can gain is from watching the farce, removing ourselves from the strife by not expecting more than we receive and reveling in that world of the unreal which our imagination creates for us. To enjoy tranquility and to promote tranquility in others is the most enduring of delights. Such was the doctrine of Epicurus, the leading ethical philosopher of the world. 00:05:05:02 - 00:05:25:14 Andrew If one's interest in life wanes, let him turn to the succor of others in a like plight and some grounds for interest will be observed to return. About the time I joined the United, I was none too fond of existence. I was 23 years of age and realized that my infirmities would withhold me from success in the world at large. 00:05:26:03 - 00:05:48:07 Andrew Feeling like a cipher, I felt that I might well be erased. But later I realized that even success is empty. Failure, though I be, I shall reach a level with the greatest and the smallest in the damp earth or on the final pyre. And I saw that in the interim. Trivialities are not to be despised. Success is a relative thing. 00:05:48:19 - 00:06:14:16 Andrew And the victory of a boy at marbles is equal to the victory of an Octavius at Actium, when measured by the scale of cosmic infinity. So I turned to observe other mediocre and handicapped persons about me and found pleasure in increasing the happiness of those who could be helped by such encouraging words or critical services, as I am capable of furnishing. That I have been able to cheer here and there, 00:06:14:16 - 00:06:37:06 Andrew an aged man, an infirm old lady, a dull youth or a person deprived by circumstances of education affords to me a sense of being not altogether useless, which almost forms a substitute for the real success I shall never know. What matter if none here of my labors, or if those labors touch only the afflicted and the mediocre. Surely it is 00:06:37:06 - 00:07:08:19 Andrew well that the happiness of the unfortunate be made as great as possible. And he, who is kind, helpful and patient with his fellow sufferers adds, is truly to the world's combined fund of tranquility, as he who with greater endowments promotes the birth of empires or advances the knowledge and civilization of mankind. Thus, no man of philosophical caste, however circumscribed by poverty or retarded by ailment, need feel himself superfluous so long as he holds the power to improve the spirits of others. 00:07:09:12 - 00:07:33:15 Andrew My advice to you would be to reenter active amateur and follow my example of accumulating a john and circle of literary dependents where the folk who suffer more than you and whose pain could be assuaged by the exercise of the critical gifts which you possess in so great an abundance. Or if you are especially qualified to promote contentment in any other way, choose that way. 00:07:34:03 - 00:07:59:01 Andrew There is a vast satisfaction in alleviating the misfortunes of another. When I am able to bring a smile of gratitude to the vacuous face of a Crawley or the childish visage of a try out Smith, I am impressed with my own ability to do such a thing and have thereby the better opinion of myself, and I can feel some share of their pleasure since as a fellow struggler, I am able to appreciate their limitations. 00:07:59:17 - 00:08:24:24 Andrew The secret of true contentment, I am convinced, lies in the achievement of the cosmic point of view whereby the most cruel distinctions betwixt great and small things are shown to be merely apparent and unreal. The next philosophical step is to acquire the impersonal attitude, to divest oneself of egocentric consciousness and assume the role of a spectator at the comedy of man. 00:08:25:15 - 00:08:55:21 Andrew Thus depersonalized, one may roam through all history and all legend with imagination as a guide, enjoying the pleasant things of life without experiencing the anguish of participation. If lonely in his own life, the dreamer may find company at the tables of wills or buttons, or may join the embattled hosts of some shadowy monarch who defends with a fabulous sword the gates of his gorgeous and unheard of capital, which rises among the gold and diamond mountains beyond the Milky Way. 00:08:56:03 - 00:09:25:05 Andrew To the impersonal dreamer belongs all infinity. He is Lord of the universe and taster of all the beauties of the stars. As for the future, what is sweeter than oblivion, which the humblest of us may share with the kings of all the ages, and even with the gods themselves. Believe me, sir, your most obedient, humble servant, Epicurus, lack brain gent. 00:09:25:05 - 00:09:29:01 Sean Well, Andrew, what led you to pick this letter? 00:09:29:09 - 00:09:51:21 Andrew Well, I wanted to find something that was a little lighter and happier than some of the letters we've been reading lately. Because we've been. We've been just bathed in unpleasantness and the couple of recent letters, and I found this one very, very charming. It also contains a quote or a couple of sentences that have been quoted in a couple of prominent places. 00:09:51:21 - 00:09:58:22 Andrew So that also sort of caught my eye and it was just fun to read this. This is an earlier letter. We've talked about Reinhart Kleiner before. 00:09:58:22 - 00:10:07:14 Sean We should probably recap for anybody who who could possibly have lost track of. Yeah, the short biography of one of Lovecraft's good friends. 00:10:07:14 - 00:10:22:04 Andrew Well, he was one of Lovecraft's earliest friends from the amateur press days. He was a poet, and he and Lovecraft began writing to each other in the late 19 teens. And they were very close for a number of years, especially in the earlier phases of Lovecraft's career. 00:10:22:09 - 00:10:42:14 Sean Yeah, there. I would say at this point, Galpin and Kleiner are probably the two people with whom Lovecraft is closest. Yeah, at at this point, his this is still relatively early in Lovecraft's life. He's 30 years old. And so remembering Bolingbroke. Did you make something out of that? 00:10:42:15 - 00:10:47:09 Andrew Bolingbroke was just one of the nicknames that Lovecraft always addressed Kleiner by. 00:10:48:00 - 00:10:50:01 Sean I, i, it's a, it's a recurrent thing though. Yeah. 00:10:50:05 - 00:11:11:19 Andrew That he used Bolingbroke a lot of the time to refer to Kleiner. He at the very beginning, you know, he, he, he says he wished he hadn't dropped fiction in the nine years between 1908 and 1917. And that was a great big gap in Lovecraft's. He focused mostly on poetry and essays during those years because, as he says in the letter, he was convinced that he was terrible at writing fiction. 00:11:12:01 - 00:11:28:01 Sean Right. Which is a conclusion he returned to in the late 1930s when he really after some of his failures in publishing. Yeah. Just really felt like he had artistically been unsuccessful and there was no point in his continuing to to write stories. 00:11:28:01 - 00:11:49:05 Andrew Which is, you know, confusing and sad in ways because, you know, he was always so devoted to the concept of writing as an art and didn't care about the commercialism of it. And for him to judge his own success by whether or not Farnsworth Wright agreed to publish it in Weird Tales, it seems like, Why do you care what that loser thinks about your fiction? 00:11:49:05 - 00:12:05:04 Sean Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm convinced by Lovecraft saying he didn't care and he was only an artist, only works for himself. Well, who cares what the market thinks and all that? You know, it's easy to spout, spout off that sort of thing. But really, at the end of the day, I think he cared very, very deeply. 00:12:05:04 - 00:12:21:24 Sean And and I think there's a lot of places where we see him as a man with a pretty intense need for external validation. Yeah, that's true. And I was really tickled by this, him floating the idea of his novel The Club of Seven, the Seven Dreamers. I'm like, Really? Well, write the damn thing. 00:12:22:18 - 00:12:46:14 Andrew There's apparently a there was several years back a role playing game set in the Dream lands by Jason Thompson who did the you know the animated movie version of Dream Quest of unknown Kadath called the Club of the Seven Dreamers, and he adapted that name. As for a role playing game, and it also reminded me there's a on the H.P. Lovecraft literary podcast by Chris Lackey and Chad Phifer. 00:12:46:14 - 00:13:12:07 Andrew There's a there's a notorious Derleth posthumous collaboration with Lovecraft that's called the Dark Brotherhood that features like seven identical Poe's Edgar Allan Poe in like seven. It's a crazy, crazy story. They covered it for the podcast like in 2015. I think back at Necronomicon live. They did it and I read my read excerpts from it with them. 00:13:12:07 - 00:13:31:07 Andrew But it was, you know, the seven deadly pose and I wonder whether no one seems to know exactly where Daryl got the idea for the Dark Brotherhood. And I wondered if he was glomming on to this title, The Club of the Seven Dreamers, as part of the inspiration for the Dark Brotherhood. With it with it seven Deadly Pose. 00:13:31:07 - 00:13:35:12 Andrew That's a wacky story and a fun episode of their podcast. You should you should definitely check it out. 00:13:35:14 - 00:14:06:05 Sean Oh, just posing. Yes. In the next paragraph, there's a pleasing bit of self-awareness. I think I mentioned earlier, I've never been a huge fan of Lovecraft's poetry. I try to like it, but like I love Poe as a poet and Lovecraft stuff. I Yeah, yeah. I could really kind of take or leave it. And so when he says I am conscious that my attitude was never that of the true poet for lyrical compositions, I had little or no use and believe that most of my zeal lay in the mere love of rhythm. 00:14:06:09 - 00:14:18:03 Sean Plus the facility which antique verse affords in recreating the atmosphere of the past. And I think he hits the nail on that. I think he really does. It's like that's that's kind of what it's about for you, because that's what I'm getting from his poetry. 00:14:18:03 - 00:14:36:22 Andrew And it's because and especially since he is fond of those obscure Roman rhyme schemes and metrical patterns and things, and, you know, he clearly is in it for the rhyme and the just a metrical payoff, right? Yeah. No, I think he's exactly right about his own assessment of his poetry, which is interesting. 00:14:37:06 - 00:14:54:00 Sean And at the end of that paragraph too, I just thought it was it was him being very honest with himself, too, because he says his interests are consisting of three parallel and associated groups, A: love of the strange and fantastic and B: love of the abstract truth and of scientific logic, and C: love of the ancient and permanent. 00:14:54:04 - 00:15:09:07 Sean And I'm like, Boy, you roll those three things together, you get called of Cthulhu. Oh, you're all those three things together. You get mountains of madness. It's a it's a very incisive summation of what really the is at the core, I think, of of Lovecraft's fiction. 00:15:09:07 - 00:15:23:11 Andrew And that's that little passage that you just quoted from is the one that has been quoted. His little own nature is tripartite that was the one I vividly remember is in Out of Mind, that movie that was made in Canada in I'm. 00:15:23:11 - 00:15:24:24 Sean Sure that the course I read almost yeah. 00:15:24:24 - 00:15:33:07 Andrew Where Chris Heyerdahl plays Lovecraft in a you know, vintage newsreel style. I mean, Chris Heyerdahl nails Lovecraft. It's a really good performance. Yeah. 00:15:33:08 - 00:15:44:07 Sean If you haven't seen Out of Mind, it's worth trying to track it down. It's not I'm not sure if it's streaming anywhere at this point. It might be, but yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's an hour or so long. I think it was made for. 00:15:44:16 - 00:15:45:20 Andrew For Canadian tv. 00:15:45:20 - 00:15:46:00 Sean Yeah. 00:15:46:00 - 00:15:54:03 Andrew Canadian television and yeah. Chris hired all as Lovecraft quotes. It's not this whole letter at least that part of it And and now. 00:15:54:08 - 00:16:08:07 Sean We had talked a few letters back about Lovecraft playing Rome, Romans, Romans and gladiators feeding Christians to the lions as a little boy. And now, now we have Lovecraft just cause it wreaking havoc at sunday school. 00:16:08:10 - 00:16:09:09 Andrew Oh, funny. I thought. 00:16:09:09 - 00:16:28:12 Sean That man, ten year old Howard, must have really been a hoot because he, you know, he had such a crash around the time he hit puberty and high school and sort of so imploded inward. But as a little boy, he seems there seems a time where he's got his detective agency, that he's a feisty, precocious, fun kid and. 00:16:28:12 - 00:16:39:13 Andrew Riding his bike all over Providence, getting into troubles and adventures and given the pastor at Sunday school nothing but grief until his mom's like, okay, you don't have to go to Sunday school anymore. 00:16:39:14 - 00:16:41:10 Sean That's well. Well, that plan works. 00:16:41:10 - 00:16:43:03 Andrew Exactly. Yeah. No, it. 00:16:43:03 - 00:16:44:13 Sean Is. It is very. 00:16:44:20 - 00:17:09:05 Andrew Fun and charming to think of little Lovecraft given given that Pastor Heck. Yeah. I was very interested, you know, towards the middle of this letter where, you know, he's he's wishing apparently Kleiner is in some emotional distress, some kind of funk. And Lovecraft is trying to buoy his spirits and, you know, giving him really good, good advice. I think, you know, it's oh, you know, you know, it was. 00:17:09:05 - 00:17:11:15 Sean I was less impressed by by his advice. 00:17:11:22 - 00:17:21:23 Andrew I think, to the degree to which you're able to not take things personally in life. I agree with Lovecraft. You will you will be the happier if you can just. 00:17:22:12 - 00:17:24:07 Sean Cultivate a cosmic perspective. 00:17:24:17 - 00:17:51:07 Andrew Yeah, to some degree. I mean, not exactly the way he's describing, but so much so many of the hurts that we feel in life. I think. I mean, I guess I can speak only for myself. Are self inflicted. You imagine that people mean mean you harm when really they're not really even thinking about you. I mean, it's easy to take things personally that aren't intended personally. 00:17:51:07 - 00:18:00:19 Andrew And if you can cultivate a sense of detachment and and just get over yourself to some degree, you can get by without quite so much pain. 00:18:01:03 - 00:18:25:11 Sean Well, I won't I won't argue with that. What struck me in the same section was his notion of that if you can disconnect yourself, then you can you can glide easily by and watch the comedy unfolding beneath you. And so I don't know, to me, it had a very. Hmm. Looking down his nose kind of, Oh, yeah, I didn't take it. 00:18:25:11 - 00:18:26:20 Andrew I didn't take it that way at all. 00:18:26:21 - 00:18:56:01 Sean Hmm. Which I thought was also kind of interesting because there are other places in in the letters where he's so dismissive of of comedy and buffoonery, and yet, you know, here he's he's looking at finding the enjoyment of the comedy unfolding around you. And when you don't have any skin in the game, then you can look at life as a comedy because you're you're removed from it and enjoy it as as it's unfolding before you. 00:18:56:01 - 00:18:59:23 Sean And if you do have skin and then it becomes a tragedy because it's going to hurt you. 00:19:00:06 - 00:19:29:01 Andrew Yeah, I did very much like this to enjoy Tranquil it in to promote tranquility in others is the most enduring of delights. You know and talking about how when he was 23 he was he was in a rough spot emotionally and you know, why should I even bother continuing to live? But he found he found purpose in life by joining amateur the amateur press and being of service to other people in the amateur world. 00:19:29:13 - 00:19:41:04 Andrew And I you know that was just that's not a the soft side of Lovecraft that we haven't gotten to see a lot of and that you know sometimes he forgets even himself but is in there. 00:19:41:09 - 00:19:58:20 Sean This is I think him at his philanthropic best because there is an investment and a concern for other people's well-being and a kindness for those not doing as well. And it's a very interpersonal side of him that doesn't always show up. And and. 00:19:58:20 - 00:19:59:03 Andrew Even though. 00:19:59:03 - 00:20:22:18 Sean Looking out for your neighbor doesn't seem a particularly cosmic in some ways, it seems a little removed from the perspective that he's he is often trying to cultivate. But but good for him. You know and to take genuine happiness in helping the infirm old lady or the dull youth. I wondered if those were perhaps Mr. Holdridge or August Derleth under no names. 00:20:22:18 - 00:20:25:05 Sean Names? Yeah, but. Well, he's helping them, and he feels good. 00:20:25:07 - 00:20:27:04 Andrew He does call out, try out Smith. 00:20:28:02 - 00:20:30:11 Sean And does try out Smith was an interesting story. 00:20:30:11 - 00:20:33:04 Andrew Yeah, Tell it. Well. 00:20:33:11 - 00:20:57:23 Sean You're right. Well, there was a fellow named Charles W Smith whose nickname was Try out. He was born back in the 18 in 1852, and he was a pioneer of amateur journalism. So he published this amateur publication called The Try out. It was a little I thought you'd like it. It was passport sized, so just a little bit bigger than the blue books, but did more than 300 issues of it. 00:20:58:05 - 00:21:01:09 Andrew And each of them riddled with typography, ethical errors. 00:21:01:10 - 00:21:24:15 Sean You know, bless his heart, he tried, you know, uh, but Lovecraft visited him in 1934. Yeah. So, yeah, I thought, well, I don't know. They're just, just honoring this guy for, for I think one of the cool things about the amateur press movement is that they all just did it. You know, they just did it. They didn't have resources and they didn't have skills or training or whatever. 00:21:24:15 - 00:21:38:07 Andrew They wait for someone else to give them permission or pay them a dollar. They just I want to write this thing. I'm going to write it. I'm going to publish it. I'm going to send it to a bunch of people. It's that kind of spirit and try out. Smith was, you know, the epitome of that spirit. 00:21:38:10 - 00:21:43:14 Sean Yeah. And it seems like he really kind of created that out of the void. It was a new, new thing. 00:21:44:05 - 00:21:56:18 Andrew And I think Lovecraft really genuinely admired that in in Charles Smith. He also calls out the vacuous face of Crowley. And I don't know. I don't know which Crawley he's referring to. 00:21:56:18 - 00:21:57:12 Sean Yeah, it was. 00:21:57:21 - 00:21:58:15 Andrew It's certainly not. 00:21:58:15 - 00:22:21:21 Sean Alistair. I, I couldn't, I could not find a better connection, but that connection makes no sense in this context. So I think he's referring to somebody specific, but I think it's somebody who probably lets another all to his another one, some guy, some minor player and in his sphere. So yeah, I've a sentence that I think really grabbed that in a different letter. 00:22:21:21 - 00:22:52:05 Sean We talked about Rory Howard talking about when you stub your toe while you're walking, you step on a piece of Lego walking across the house, the furniture, it's the gods out to get you and Lovecraft says, That's mine. It's my son. Well, it was many years ago. But Lovecraft says the secret of true contentment, I'm convinced, lies in the achievement of the cosmic point of view whereby the most cruel distinctions between great and small things are shown to be merely apparent and unreal. 00:22:52:05 - 00:23:12:19 Sean And I think that ties back to, you know, what you were saying about not taking things personally, I think the only thing that strikes me is some of Lovecraft's philosophy like that. I don't disagree with that, and I think it's true. But sometimes it seems like he's disconnecting himself from the importance of actual things that actually happen in actual life. 00:23:12:19 - 00:23:21:21 Sean And I, I think those are often also very, you know, very important. And some of the most significant things that will ever happen to you are personal. 00:23:21:21 - 00:23:48:15 Andrew Sure. But I think that, you know, Lovecraft we've seen in other letters and I'm sure we'll continue to see, you know, the difference between what you what a person thinks and how they feel. And they're not necessarily you know, Lovecraft is always trying to separate his emotions from his thoughts. And, you know, often trying to repress the emotions and raise the thoughts to the ultimate level. 00:23:48:16 - 00:24:16:02 Andrew And, you know, I think that's part of the ongoing struggle. I also think, you know, he also a little bit earlier in the letter here, he says, you know, surely it is well that the happiness of the unfortunate be made as great as possible. And he who was kind helpful and patient with his fellow sufferers adds is truly to the world's combined fund of tranquility as he who with greater endowments promotes the birth of empires or advances the knowledge of civilization. 00:24:16:02 - 00:24:37:23 Andrew And if you're and you know, he's just urging Kleiner to do what you can, it doesn't matter if you're because on the cosmic scale of things, a little boy winning it marbles is no less significant than Marcus Aurelius beating the barbarians. So do what you can. And if if you can't do this, do something else. Do something to make a positive contribution. 00:24:38:03 - 00:25:04:10 Andrew And although Lovecraft often forgets that advice himself and, you know, writes lengthy diatribes to Frank Belknap Long full of hateful and stupid ideas in general, Lovecraft practiced this bit of prejudgment throughout his life. He was always generous and helpful with other writers and, you know, answered fan mail in an incredible personal way that most people never would dream of doing. 00:25:04:10 - 00:25:31:10 Andrew I think Lovecraft struggled with that balance all the time. One other just another little thing at the very end of this letter that caught my eye and that I really liked is, you know, he if you can acquire this impersonal attitude and divest yourself of egocentric consciousness, then you can let your mind go through all history. And it sounded I mean, we know that Lovecraft didn't really care for games. 00:25:31:14 - 00:25:51:05 Andrew R.H. Barlowe tells us that, you know, he thought they were childish and a big waste of time. But what he's describing sure sounds like playing call of Cthulhu. You know, you imagine yourself at the tables of of wills or buttons. These coffeehouses of Elizabethan England, you know, and have adventures in your imagination. He's describing Cthulhu lives. 00:25:51:16 - 00:26:06:10 Sean Yeah. No, it's a or at least call it call a Cthulhu might even be more apt because you can stay at the coffeehouse. But. Right. But travel to the vanished epics and yet have experiences that you couldn't otherwise have. And engage in intellectual. You know, you know. 00:26:06:12 - 00:26:20:05 Andrew Listen, you know, you you and your hosts of a shadowy monarch defending the swords of the gates. And it's he's playing dandy in his imagination. He's playing call of Cthulhu. QUEST He's he's doing this stuff that we have enjoyed doing for a long, long time. 00:26:20:05 - 00:26:23:24 Sean We got to buy him an honorary set of dice. 00:26:23:24 - 00:26:31:13 Andrew And I also I just loved his signoff to this letter, Epicurus, Lark Brain and a total a total tweak on himself. 00:26:31:13 - 00:26:34:11 Sean Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, not taking himself too seriously and. 00:26:34:17 - 00:26:41:22 Andrew And, you know, trying to cheer up Kleiner,trying to cheer up his friend by deliberately goofy signoff. 00:26:41:22 - 00:26:47:19 Sean Yeah, the intentions are good. And, you know, I think that's a it's part of what friendship's all about. Yeah. So, so. 00:26:47:19 - 00:26:51:12 Andrew I really, I really enjoyed this letter because for so many reasons. 00:26:51:24 - 00:26:57:17 Sean Well it was particularly good one for today. So nice change base. Yeah, absolutely. And so, so pleasantly brief. 00:26:58:03 - 00:27:06:17 Andrew Yeah. There you go. So let's let's not belabor it. Our thanks today to Arkham House for making this letter available in selected letters Volume one. 00:27:07:03 - 00:27:16:15 Sean It's also extra. Thanks. Go to our pals at Hippocampus Press as well. The collected letters of Reinhart Kleiner out-of-print. They're coming back. Andrew Oh. 00:27:16:16 - 00:27:19:17 Andrew Right. That means we can get the unabridged versions. 00:27:19:18 - 00:27:29:00 Sean Yes, we'll find out. There's this nice short letter's actually 64 pages long. Well, you can keep an eye out for that by visiting them over at HippocampusPress.com 00:27:29:20 - 00:27:32:10 Andrew I'm your obedient servant, Andrew Leman. 00:27:32:10 - 00:27:35:02 Sean And I'm cordially and respectfully yours. Sean Branney. 00:27:35:03 - 00:27:38:19 Andrew You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:27:38:24 - 00:27:42:15 Sean If you've enjoyed the show, we sure appreciate it. If you take a moment to post a review. 00:27:42:15 - 00:27:45:15 Andrew Or tell a friend, write a letter all about voluminous. 00:27:45:15 - 00:28:18:03 Sean Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org.