00:00:06:01 - 00:00:09:03 Sean Welcome to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:03 - 00:00:14:16 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:16 - 00:00:16:20 Sean In each episode. We read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney, 00:00:17:01 - 00:00:22:15 Andrew and I'm Andrew Leman. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:22:16 - 00:00:29:20 Sean So for today's letter, I chose a four pack, a four pack of letters from H.P. Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright 00:00:29:20 - 00:00:34:17 Andrew Farnsworth Wright. High time we talked about Farnsworth Wright 00:00:34:18 - 00:00:55:08 Sean Yeah. He is an important figure in Lovecraft's life, and it is kind of late in the game for us to be talking to him, so. So I thought the letters are fairly brief, and so that's why I cobbled together a four pack. And I think the four combined give an interesting look at his relation, the relationship and the evolution of time. 00:00:55:08 - 00:00:55:16 Sean All that. 00:00:55:20 - 00:01:08:00 Andrew Yeah. And I bet we'll cover other F. Wright letters because they had a contentious and yet mutually necessary relationship with each other and there's more to talk about. 00:01:08:02 - 00:01:10:01 Sean Well, we should let these people hear the letters. 00:01:10:01 - 00:01:10:20 Andrew OK Please read them. 00:01:11:05 - 00:01:37:10 Sean So to break it up a little bit. I'm going to read a letter and then we'll talk about it. Then read another letter and then we'll talk about it. So here we go. Ten Barnes Street, Providence, Rhode Island, July five, 1927. Dear Mr. Wright: yours of the first arrived this morning. Wandrei has written me of his long and pleasant call at the Weird Tales headquarters and was very complimentary in his description of those whom he met there. 00:01:37:21 - 00:01:57:21 Sean He is now in New York, and I expect to see him here on about the 10th. I shall try to induce him to stay in New England long enough to imbibe some of our fascinating scenery and antiquities, including the prototypes of Kingsport and Arkham and the hellish North End District in Boston, which forms the locale of Pickman's Model. 00:01:58:07 - 00:02:25:06 Sean In accordance with your suggestion. I am resubmitting "the call of Cthulhu", though possibly you will still think it a trifle too bizarre for a clientele who demand their weirdness in name only, and who like to keep both feet pretty solidly on the ground of the known and the familiar. As I said some time ago, I doubt if my work, especially my later products, will go very well with the sort of readers whose reactions are represented in the Eyrie. 00:02:25:18 - 00:02:54:15 Sean The general trend of the yarns, which seem to suit the public is that of essential normality, of outlook and simplicity of point of view - with thoroughly conventional human values and motives predominating and with brisk action of the bestseller type as an indispensable attribute. The weird element in such material does not extend far into the fabric. It is the artificial weirdness of the fireside tale and the Victorian ghost story, and remains external camouflage 00:02:54:15 - 00:03:20:16 Sean even in the seemingly wildest of the interplanetary concoctions. You can see the sort of thing at its best in Seabury Quinn and at its worst in the general run of contributors. It is exactly what the majority want. For if they were to see a really weird tale, they would know what it's all about. This is quite obvious from the way they object to the reprints, which in many cases have brought them the genuine article. 00:03:21:03 - 00:03:45:01 Sean Now 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. To me, there is nothing but purity in a tale in which the human form and the local human passions and conditions and standards are depicted as native to other worlds or other universes. 00:03:45:08 - 00:04:12:06 Sean 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? Only the human scenes and characters must have human qualities. These must be handled with an unsparing realism, not catch penny romanticism. 00:04:12:14 - 00:04:50:22 Sean But when we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown, the shadow haunted Outside, we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold. So much for theory. In practice, I presume that few commonplace readers would have any use for a story written on these psychological principles. They want their conventional bestseller values and motives kept paramount throughout the abysses of apocalyptic vision and extra-Einsteinian chaos, and would not deem an interplanetary tale in the least interesting if it did not have its Martian (or Jovian or Venerian 00:04:50:22 - 00:05:21:18 Sean or Saturnian) heroine fall in love with the Young Voyager from Earth and thereby incur the jealousy of the inevitable Prince Kongros (or ZeeLar or Hoshgosh or Norkog), who had once proceeds to usurp the throne, etc., or if it did not have its Martian or etc. nomenclature, and follow a closely terrestrial pattern with an Indo Germanic a name for the princes and something disagreeable and Semitic for the villain. 00:05:22:06 - 00:06:05:14 Sean Now, I couldn't grind out that sort of junk if my life depended on it. 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 alien age, depending, of course, on the scene of the tale, whether laid in the solar system, the visible galactic universe outside the solar system, or the utterly unplanned gulfs still farther out, 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. 00:06:06:06 - 00:06:32:07 Sean I have merely got at the edge of this in "Cthulhu", where I have been careful to avoid terrestrialism in the few linguistic nomenclature specimens from outside which I present all very well. But will readers stand for it? That's all there likely to get from me in the future, except when I deal with definitely terrestrial scenes. And I am the last one to urge the acceptance of material of doubtful value to the magazine's particular purpose. 00:06:32:21 - 00:06:56:05 Sean Even when I deal with the mundane weird, moreover, I shan't be likely to stress the popular artificial values and emotions of cheap fiction. However, you can best judge this matter from some recent samples of my scribbling. Wherefore I'll enclose purely for your personal perusal, although God knows you can print them if you like, since nobody else is likely to do so. 00:06:56:19 - 00:07:24:10 Sean Two characteristic neo lovecraftian outbursts - The silver key and The strange high house in the Mist. I fancy you won't find much of a professional interest in them, so you may be sure your readers aren't missing much. When I do write any more things with a fairly earthly slant I'll certainly send them along, but my winter fiction crop consisted only of two novelettes too long for any but serial use, (and I haven't the energy to type them yet either!) 00:07:24:21 - 00:07:50:07 Sean whilst this spring and summer I've been too busy with revisory and kindred activities to write more than one tale - which oddly enough, was accepted at once by Amazing stories despite its full possession of the non-terrestrial qualities so characteristic of my recent work. Toward autumn I hope to arrange for some writing leisure and I shall then get off my chest several plots which have been insistently clamoring for expression lately. 00:07:50:19 - 00:08:17:06 Sean Among these are at least two, which I shall try on you, though they won't see much like the recent weird Tales type. Which reminds me that in the latest issue (July), I found Hugh Irish's "Mystery of Sylmare" closest to my notion of a weird tale, with R. Ernest Dupay's "Edge of the Shadow" as not very close second. Munn's tale was good, but he seems to be getting the popular fiction bug. 00:08:17:15 - 00:08:39:12 Sean Has he shown you his 92 page sequel to the story - The Werewolf Daughter? And by the way, let me congratulate you on your new illustrator, Rankin. He's the best yet! Glad to hear of the improving rates - they ought to attract new cohorts of fable authors. I feel sure that scores of top-notchers would be glad to write weird stories if they could find any place to market them on their own terms. 00:08:40:01 - 00:09:02:13 Sean With every good wish, and hoping the enclosed won't bore you too badly. I remain most sincerely yours. H.P. Lovecraft. P.S. My history of weird fiction is all in type, and I have told Cooke (whose private publication will contain it) to be sure to send you a copy. He is going to issue my "Shunned House" as a little book uniform with Long's Poems. 00:09:03:07 - 00:09:30:13 Sean P.P.S. Besides my visit from Wandrei, I'm expecting a visit from young Long and his parents on the 21st. If Wandrei can stay over until then, we will have quite a weird conclave beneath my lowly roof-tree. Wandrei is a great boy. He has some poignant imaginative glimpses Outside which few living writers have shared and will undoubtedly develop remarkably. In sheer daemonic, extra-mundaneness he excels anybody I know except Clark Ashton Smith. 00:09:36:10 - 00:09:38:22 Andrew All right, Sean. Well, we're off to a good start. 00:09:39:02 - 00:09:56:22 Sean Well, thanks. Yeah. You know Farnsworth Wright, The editor for Weird Tales, Absolutely A pivotal figure in Lovecraft's professional career. And as you mentioned in the opening, it really was a contentious and difficult relationship between the two of them. 00:09:56:22 - 00:10:01:23 Andrew And vice versa. I mean, Lovecraft was a pivotal figure in Fansworth writes professionally. 00:10:01:23 - 00:10:16:18 Sean Oh, sure. Yeah. No, it definitely is a two way street there. And, you know, there's not an enormous quantity of letters between Lovecraft and Wright, but they certainly do show an interesting and again, pivotal relationship that unfolded over time. 00:10:16:18 - 00:10:38:07 Andrew I presume the reason I mean, Lovecraft and Wright must have written to each other a lot, but they were always, you know, professional. So I don't know whether I know some of them are in selected letters. Do we know whether I mean, I presume Farnsworth Wright threw away letters from Lovecraft that he was done with because they weren't like personal friends. 00:10:38:07 - 00:10:39:09 Andrew It was professional. 00:10:39:10 - 00:11:14:00 Sean Yeah. So the the letters from Lovecraft to Wright, we have them because of the Arkham House transcripts. So after Lovecraft passed away August Derleteh, wrote to all of Lovecraft's correspondence that he knew or could find, including Farnsworth Wright right then sent the manuscripts of the letters he had to Arkham House. They dutifully transcribed them, returned the original Lovecraft manuscripts, all of which then were subsequently apparently lost or perhaps will resurface in a Winnie the Pooh cookie tin someday. 00:11:14:00 - 00:11:26:05 Sean But. But they're no longer extant. So, you know, again, props to Mr. Derleth and Mr. Wandrei for getting those the originals of the letters and transcribing them shortly after Lovecraft's death. 00:11:26:08 - 00:11:31:17 Andrew So Farnsworth Wright. He took over as editor of Weird Tales after Edwin Baird. 00:11:32:11 - 00:11:33:03 Sean Got sacked. 00:11:33:03 - 00:11:33:24 Andrew Got sacked. 00:11:33:24 - 00:11:38:09 Sean Because Lovecraft home almost ended up with Farnsworth Wright's job. 00:11:38:13 - 00:11:54:08 Andrew Yeah. Henry Berger, who had who was, you know, the publisher of the magazine, offered Lovecraft the job of editor after Baird and Lovecraft turned it down because he didn't want to move to Chicago. And thinking about that more, it's like had Lovecraft taken that job, weird tales would have gone under in a year. 00:11:54:08 - 00:12:08:22 Sean Where tales would have gone under. And it's, you know, and depending on how long the experiment lasted, it could have actually had a really negative impact on Lovecraft's creative fiction. So it probably was a good thing that he didn't take the editorship moving off to the Wild West of Chicago. 00:12:09:00 - 00:12:24:02 Andrew And Farnsworth Wright, had been at the magazine. He was like an assistant editor under Baird. Right. And he was very well qualified, at least on paper, for the job, because he was a trained journalist and had been a newspaperman and an editor in Seattle. 00:12:24:03 - 00:12:27:24 Sean Yeah, he was a writer. He was a music critic. Yeah. He did a whole number of things. 00:12:27:24 - 00:12:39:15 Andrew Well educated and well suited for the job. I was thinking, you know, if you're not a guy who personally really likes weird fiction, being the editor of Weird Tales is probably a tedious job. 00:12:39:15 - 00:12:40:08 Sean Pretty miserable. 00:12:40:14 - 00:13:00:20 Andrew Having to read, you know, not only the best, but of course, all of the worse. Yeah, as well. And you have to read all of it and think about all of it. And I don't get the impression that Farnsworth Wright really actually personally liked your fiction. He was into Shakespeare and Jaws and, you know, he was a classier guy. 00:13:00:21 - 00:13:04:07 Andrew Weird fiction was not his entertainment of choice, I don't think. 00:13:04:11 - 00:13:28:05 Sean Well, and I think there's an underlying underlying question with Farnsworth Wright. Whether he got some of the more challenging pieces of weird literature that were sent to him. Yeah. And he, you know, really is at the the hub of what's going on in terms of strange literature in the United States at this point in time. And I have a guy who who may or may not like it and may or may not be really even understanding it. 00:13:29:03 - 00:13:39:07 Sean And in that role, it becomes you know, it's a fascinating place for him to be. And yet, you know, he stays on in the job for 16 years and carries it all the way out until his health is failing. 00:13:39:07 - 00:13:48:04 Andrew Simply can't do it anymore. He's hired him because he he had Parkinson's disease and he it was diagnosed as early as, what, 1921 or something? 00:13:48:09 - 00:13:50:24 Sean Yeah, I think I think right at the end of World War One. 00:13:50:24 - 00:14:10:23 Andrew So even before he became editor, he he knew he had Parkinson's. And by 1930 he was so shaky that he couldn't sign his own letter. So being editor of Weird Tales was a tough job. Would have been a tough job for anyone. And I think it was a tough job for Farnsworth Wright I the more I've learned about Farnsworth Wright, I kind of like 00:14:10:23 - 00:14:12:19 Andrew and have a sympathy for Farnsworth Wright. 00:14:12:19 - 00:14:29:22 Sean Yeah. And it's easy to, you know, razz him for things like rejecting the Call of Cthulhu. But, boy, you know, there also is a pretty great litany of authors who were published in Weird Tales during that era and during the Farnsworth Wright era of the 22 to 1940. 00:14:29:22 - 00:14:35:10 Andrew Authors are can be very temperamental. He had to deal with a lot of how to. 00:14:35:10 - 00:14:36:24 Sean Deal with people like Lovecraft. 00:14:36:24 - 00:15:02:05 Andrew There're a lot of you know and not just Lovecraft, but Robert Howard and Clark, Ashton Smith and people who who firmly believed they knew what they were doing and he was an idiot for rejecting their story. So he had to deal with difficult personalities. He was constantly under financial pressure to keep the magazine from going under. And he was battling Parkinson's disease, which, you know, is a neuro, a neurological condition. 00:15:02:05 - 00:15:22:18 Andrew And it can I mean, a lot of people who complained about Farnsworth Wright. Complain because he was indecisive and he changed his mind. But, you know, he had Parkinson's disease. And that can affect your decisiveness and your confidence and stuff like that. So he had a lot of things to worry about as editor of Weird Tales. 00:15:23:08 - 00:15:25:17 Sean And one of them was H.P. Lovecraft. 00:15:25:21 - 00:15:32:23 Andrew Yeah, this this opening letters like, wow, to just dump on the magazine that you are submitting to. 00:15:33:00 - 00:15:53:11 Sean So, yeah, absolutely. The tone is really fascinating because there is something that's slightly solicitous of writing to the man who will give the thumbs up or thumbs down to the manuscript that you're submitting, and then Howard's just bagging on the readers. Yeah, You know, you're too stupid to understand my story. They're too stupid to understand my story. No one understands my story. 00:15:53:11 - 00:16:15:24 Sean Will you please publish my story? Yeah. Yeah. It really is pretty terrific. One of the other things that fortunately, because so much of Lovecraft's letters from the time are still extant, was able to piece together a little bit more context to about this visit from Donald Wandrei. Oh yeah, Yeah. If you don't mind, I was going to share two little things about that from you. 00:16:16:11 - 00:16:16:24 Andrew Please. 00:16:17:08 - 00:16:32:05 Sean Rather. So Lovecraft tells right that Donald Wandrei's been to the weird tales offices and and you know spoke highly of him and thinks well the letter that Donald Wandrei sent to Lovecraft on the 20th of June 1927 is still extant. 00:16:33:12 - 00:16:36:23 Andrew And this is shortly before this first letter was written, the. 00:16:36:24 - 00:17:03:14 Sean Shortly before he wrote this letter, Wandrei sent this to Lovecraft. It's very brief. Dear Mr. Lovecraft, Chicago unimpressed going on the city is filthy. Came yesterday and I'm leaving today after I see Wright. Saw the Field Museum and Art Institute yesterday. The city is an eyesore to me already. Sincerely, Donald W. 00:17:03:14 - 00:17:11:16 Andrew Well, as a former resident of Chicago and a former worker at the Field Museum, I think Donald Wandrei is wrong. 00:17:13:11 - 00:17:15:18 Sean Well, it's the impression he was left with. So. 00:17:15:24 - 00:17:21:20 Andrew So Wandrei apparently Lovecraft had submitted the Call of Cthulhu and Wright had said no thanks. 00:17:21:20 - 00:17:22:04 Sean Right. 00:17:22:11 - 00:17:35:20 Andrew And then apparently Wandrei snuck in later and said, have you read this story by Lovecraft "call of Cthulhu" and upon reconsidering it when Wandrei submitted it, Farnsworth Wright accepted it on the second go around. 00:17:35:22 - 00:17:56:17 Sean Yes. Well, if you don't mind, I'll share something about that, because in his memoir: Lovecraft in Providence. Wandrei addressed the situation in a fair bit of detail, and I think it also was very informative about the three of them. So let me, if you don't mind, I'll share this. Yeah, Yeah. So this is this is Wandrei writing about Lovecraft in a in a memoir. 00:17:56:17 - 00:18:16:16 Sean He says: "his Call of Cthulhu, however, which introduced the mythology that he developed more extensively in later stories, had been rejected by Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales. I read the TypeScript and thought it as fine a narrative as he had yet written. He too had thought of it well, but he said that Wright had rejected it on the grounds that readers would not understand it, and he was plainly discouraged. 00:18:17:02 - 00:18:34:04 Sean But the reason given by Wright signified to me only that Wright himself had not understood it, for I remembered an event of a couple of years before. In 1924 or 25, I had written a story called The Red Brain. I had sent it to Weird Tales, but Wright had rejected it. I had mentioned this in a letter to Lovecraft. 00:18:34:04 - 00:18:58:11 Sean He asked to read the story, liked it, and when he returned, it advised me to wait until six months or so had elapsed and then send it to Wright again. He stated The Wright had a peculiar mental quirk whereby Wright was never able to accept on first submittal a story which contained a new idea or concept that when Wright had no previous experience or basis of judgment, he invariably rejected such a story. 00:18:58:11 - 00:19:15:14 Sean But thereafter he could and would buy such a story because the theme was now familiar to him. I had followed Lovecraft's advice, waited several months, and then I sent my story to Wright again, along with a note saying that I had revised the tale along the lines suggested by Wright when he first read it, and that he had asked to see it again. 00:19:15:19 - 00:19:35:21 Sean And now I hoped he would find the new version improved story. Well, not a word of this was true. Wright had not made any suggestions, had not asked to see the story again, and I had not altered one word of the typescript. It was the same as before. But Wright buy the tale, just as Lovecraft had predicted he would, and wrote to me that it was a much better version than the first. 00:19:36:12 - 00:19:45:12 Sean That how my first story was published. " so I thought that was, you know, delightful, that Lovecraft knows the game, explains it to Wandrei, and it ends up working for both of them. 00:19:45:12 - 00:19:49:14 Andrew Yeah. No, that is that is a perfect example of how the thing worked. 00:19:50:01 - 00:19:56:10 Sean And, you know, just like the rest of us editors, you know, have their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. 00:19:56:22 - 00:20:10:21 Andrew And, you know, perceptions. Wright was no doubt reading a gazillion of these manuscripts. And of course, he didn't remember it from the first time. Sure. So, you know, you read it again six months later in your and it's suggested to you that it's been revised. You don't know the difference. 00:20:10:21 - 00:20:15:06 Sean Of course, it must be better. Oh, I gave you suggestions. And clearly they're there and it must be better. 00:20:15:06 - 00:20:18:16 Andrew Oh, I'm very wise for having suggested your improvements. 00:20:18:16 - 00:20:21:11 Sean Absolutely. There's there's a nice degree of sycophancy in that a. 00:20:21:12 - 00:20:28:09 Andrew Lovecraft needed an editor. We've often said. Oh yeah, but Farnsworth Wright. Wasn't the editor he needed probably. 00:20:28:09 - 00:20:35:01 Sean And I think as far as I can tell, Farnsworth Wright in many ways wasn't an editor. He was an editor in terms. 00:20:35:01 - 00:20:35:22 Andrew Of he was he was a. 00:20:35:23 - 00:20:44:16 Sean Keeper. Exactly. He decides what goes in and what goes out, but he doesn't actually go too many too many adjectives here. Yeah, get rid of a few and it'll be a better. 00:20:44:16 - 00:21:06:03 Andrew Wright when he was an assistant, some of his own writing had been published in Weird Tales. Right. And, you know, he was not known as being an awesome writer. Sure. Weird fiction himself. So, you know, he didn't really have much of a leg to stand on. It comes to making helpful suggestions to someone like H.P. Lovecraft or Robert Howard or how to improve your writing. 00:21:06:03 - 00:21:20:14 Sean Yeah, in this this first letter, one other thing that that kind of got my attention in looking at it was this paragraph that begins now. "All my tales are based on the fundamental premise" Yeah, and it goes on and I do mark that one too. 00:21:20:14 - 00:21:22:03 Andrew Yeah, that's that one is. 00:21:22:21 - 00:21:54:09 Sean Because, you know, there's this famous quote attributed to Lovecraft about all my stories are it's called the Black Magic quote. And the wording of this particular paragraph is very similar to this famed and dubious black magic quote. And I thought it was really interesting and I wondered if there was a conflation of the two and the real existence of this one in the right letter made the other one, which apparently was in a letter to Harold Furness, seem more true. 00:21:54:12 - 00:22:00:11 Sean Right. Anyway, which is interesting because the wording of this and it is a pretty great articulation of why it. 00:22:00:11 - 00:22:00:21 Andrew Is a great. 00:22:02:04 - 00:22:18:07 Andrew Lovecraft often quoted himself in slightly altered words and re-used explanations that he had given other people. So it was be perfectly plausible to think that, you know, if he wrote this quote in this letter, then the black magic quote might have been a reworking of this quote, Was it? 00:22:18:18 - 00:22:31:22 Sean So for those of you who might not be familiar with what Andrew and I are talking about with the black magic quote, there is a quote which is is given thus, this is in a letter written by Harold Furness. So he's talking about Lovecraft. 00:22:31:22 - 00:22:35:12 Andrew So Furness is also allegedly quoting Lovecraft. 00:22:35:12 - 00:23:05:08 Sean Right. He is a correspondent of Lovecraft and is basically saying Lovecraft said such thus: "Upon congratulating HPL upon his work, he answered, It should be all answered. You will of course, realize that all my story is unconnected as they may be, are based on one fundamental law or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again. 00:23:05:22 - 00:23:09:24 Sean The elders, as he called them". And this is from Furness again. So this. 00:23:09:24 - 00:23:10:17 Andrew Is hearsay. 00:23:10:23 - 00:23:42:21 Sean This is basically hearsay. I'm looking at a very old copy of The Crypt of Cthulhu, a fanzine from the 1980s, and this is an essay by David Schultz, who you'll often hear us refer to as He's one, of course, the the most authoritative editors of Lovecraft's letters now. But he really goes after Furness and looking at how how dubious and unlikely it is that Lovecraft ever actually said that black magic quote. 00:23:42:21 - 00:24:05:01 Sean And I think Schultz is almost certainly right to even just the term black magic is not and this is Furness was writing to August Derleth and Derleth who the one who seized on this quote and really promulgated it to the world, saying this is what Lovecraft's about. And, you know, as we all know, Derleth understanding of Lovecraft was perhaps not the best. 00:24:05:01 - 00:24:09:06 Andrew Overly generous interpretation would be that Furness was paraphrasing. 00:24:09:12 - 00:24:16:05 Sean Yeah. And it does seem that there was no delivered intent to deceive. It was, as far as he could recall, this was Lovecraft. 00:24:16:05 - 00:24:18:14 Andrew He was quoting the gist of what he thought Lovecraft said. 00:24:18:14 - 00:24:23:16 Sean Exactly. And it was Derleth who really took that ball and ran with it and went, Oh, this is a great bite sized description. 00:24:23:16 - 00:24:31:14 Andrew But this actual quote in this letter to Farnsworth Wright is just as interesting. 100% what Lovecraft actually said. 00:24:31:15 - 00:24:54:02 Sean Yeah. And it gets to this, you know, this very fundamental notion that Lovecraft didn't find people particularly interesting, you know, the the humdrum vicissitudes of day to day life for for people. You know, something, he wanted to stay as far away from as possible and really felt that anything that's truly weird will abandon, you know, the narrow perspective of mankind and human emotions. 00:24:54:05 - 00:25:03:04 Andrew Good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind are not worth writing about. 00:25:03:07 - 00:25:04:21 Sean And that sounds like HBO to me. 00:25:04:21 - 00:25:49:24 Andrew Yeah, he goes on in the next paragraph of the same letter to Dump on the conventional bestseller values and motives kept paramount throughout the the stuff that other losers are submitting to weird tales. And I thought it was very interesting that, you know, he's he's dumping on like science fiction interplanetary stories and you know, the incur the jealousy of the inevitable Prince Konggross or Zeela or Oshkosh or Norkog who at once proceeds to usurp the throne, etc., or if it did not have its Martian or etc., nomenclature, follow a closely terrestrial pattern with an Indo Germanic a-name for the princes and something disagreeable and Semitic for the villain. 00:25:50:04 - 00:26:01:06 Andrew I thought it was. Is Lovecraft like calling out anti-Semitism in this letter? Because it's just interesting that he is, you know, he he's calling it out because it's such lazy writing. 00:26:01:06 - 00:26:01:17 Sean Sure. 00:26:01:18 - 00:26:12:23 Andrew But it's it it was just interesting to hear him like find fault with other people for for just lazily attributing, you know, Semitic characters to their villains. It's like. 00:26:13:01 - 00:26:23:23 Sean Yeah, I don't think he's complaining about anti-Semitism. I think he's complaining about bad writing. Yeah. And you know, the anti Semitic villain is a handy trope that all these crappy writers are. 00:26:23:23 - 00:26:26:05 Andrew If he went the next little step. 00:26:26:05 - 00:26:27:21 Sean Only if only he did. 00:26:27:21 - 00:26:31:14 Andrew But then it's also lazy in life. It's not just lazy and writing. 00:26:32:13 - 00:26:46:14 Sean Well, yes. I also I just for you, because we've been we've been dealing with a project that deals with Venus quite a bit, talking about the venereal disease rather than the Venusian side. 00:26:46:20 - 00:26:54:15 Andrew I almost went and did a search and replace, but I chose not to do it because I think Venusian is in fact a better as well. 00:26:54:15 - 00:27:14:10 Sean And there's something venereal that just comes with and I had actually never seen that form the adjective before. But apparently, while you could trust Howard, he knows One of the other things I thought was fun. It happens in all these letters, but but you know, any time he is making reference to, oh, I've enclosed something I've done. 00:27:14:12 - 00:27:30:18 Sean Yeah. Oh the the little the of the he's very offhand in referencing the the attached manuscript and the attached manuscript is "The color out of space"! Yeah. It's, it's Lovecraft's own favorite work that he ever did during his lifetime and he's just like, oh and here's a thing you can read. 00:27:30:20 - 00:27:53:22 Andrew Well, I think it's partly because I mean, because he had been burned by Wright what he felt were capricious and stupid rejections. It's like I can easily understand him just doing up. Oh, by the way, here's here's one of my masterpieces of fiction, because he doesn't want the pain of getting a formal rejection to a formal submission. 00:27:53:22 - 00:28:08:10 Sean Yeah, No, I think you're right. Do you think that's part of why he's so off hand with it. But, boy, right. In short order. He also doesn't name them by name, but is like, Oh, I wrote a couple other things. Yeah. The case of Charles Dexter Ward and Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Yeah. And the color out of space, you know. 00:28:08:10 - 00:28:22:07 Sean And of course the two longer works are the ones he's just so unimpressed by. He's not even ever going to bother to type during his entire lifetime. You know, this is back in 1927 and and, you know, a decade later, he still never pulled them out of the door to type them. 00:28:22:07 - 00:28:32:04 Andrew And weird Tales did print the Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but not until after Lovecraft had died. Right. And I don't think it ever published Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. 00:28:32:04 - 00:28:32:19 Sean Don't think. 00:28:32:19 - 00:28:38:04 Andrew They did. I don't think Farnsworth Wright understood his Dreamland stuff at all. Yeah. And never accepted any of that stuff. 00:28:38:08 - 00:28:51:17 Sean It was interesting. You know, Lovecraft did have sort of a compliment for Hugh Irish and a backhanded one for R Earnest Dupuy. I was trying to find those stories, and. And they seem to. Have I found that. Oh, did you? 00:28:51:17 - 00:28:57:05 Andrew Yeah. You can get most of the most of those old issues of weird tales are available online. 00:28:57:05 - 00:28:58:06 Sean Oh sure. In digitized form. 00:28:58:06 - 00:29:21:09 Andrew Yeah. So I read The Mystery of Still Mare by Hugh Irish, and I totally understand why Lovecraft liked it. It has. It's a I thought it was a very good story. It's not terribly long. It's about this. It's it's a classic Lovecraftian structure in that it's a guy telling a guy about a thing that happened to him and a guy telling a guy about a thing that happened to a guy that he knew. 00:29:21:13 - 00:29:49:11 Andrew Right. And it has a hint of the willows about it. It's about this this very strange island where, you know, plants are somehow sentient and malevolent. And there's this strange rash of suicide in the town. And this the guy who tells the guy about the thing, you know, went to the island and under, you know, experienced it. It has a little bit more it has more like sex scenes and stuff. 00:29:49:11 - 00:30:07:17 Andrew It's a little more pulpy by far than The Willows. Right. But I totally get why Lovecraft thought it was as like he says in this letter, you know, this is closer to my idea of a weird tale because it's it's very reminiscent of The Willows But with sex scenes, right? I thought it was I thought it was good. 00:30:07:17 - 00:30:11:16 Andrew And I was glad, too, to find it through this letter. 00:30:11:21 - 00:30:35:07 Sean Well, both those guys, though, Irish and Dupuy, seem to have been writers who did not go on to have significant careers there, you know, apart from that single appearance in their Weird tales, that that seems to be all that's about left to them. One other thing about Wright and it's hard to know how much responsibility he had for the decision, but Lovecraft here congratulate him on his illustrator. 00:30:35:07 - 00:31:03:01 Sean Rankin Yes, but also Margaret Brundage is, you know, the Supreme She's the one who did the the kind of naughty, racier, weird tales covers. But, you know, some of the artists, Finlay and Spock. Yeah, they are artists who are submitting their work, particularly the cover work, to weird tales during the Wright administration were, you know, some of the best pulp illustrators of all time. 00:31:03:01 - 00:31:18:04 Andrew Yeah. No Farnsworth Wright. Definitely gets credit for, you know, nurturing the careers of, you know, great fantasy illustrators. And again, I think, you know, had Lovecraft gotten the job of editor of Weird Tales, Margaret Brundage would never have ever come. 00:31:18:09 - 00:31:18:16 Sean To the Wastebasket 00:31:18:16 - 00:31:22:20 Andrew Yeah. Farnsworth Wright. Had to sell magazines and a Brundage cover. 00:31:22:20 - 00:31:23:08 Sean Sure. 00:31:23:08 - 00:31:25:21 Andrew Is one that a teenage boy will pick up. 00:31:25:21 - 00:31:27:21 Sean And there's actually an absolutely. 00:31:28:02 - 00:31:53:13 Andrew he does mention Hugh Rankin and says he's the best yet. And I looked at him. Have you looked him up at all? I did look him up, yeah. He is an interesting guy with an interesting background. Yeah, born in 1878 and he was his grandparents were like hosts on the Underground Railroad and prominent abolitionists. And he came from this really interesting, politically active family. 00:31:53:17 - 00:32:06:12 Sean And he went on to be a newspaper illustrator. Yeah. You know, back when, when photos were an impracticable. Right, you know, ways of visually telling stories. So you hire an illustrator, come in and draw a picture of of what comes in the news. 00:32:06:12 - 00:32:26:00 Andrew So his mother was a sculptor and apparently he, you know, either inherited or learned his talent for art from her. And his parents separated when he was young. And he he was his his he was born Hugh Copp, which was his father's name. But after his parents separated, he switched drop the column to take his mother's maiden name. 00:32:27:00 - 00:32:37:17 Sean Some of his works are also signed. Doke Which is his middle name. Yeah. I don't know if that was just a whim or if there was a policy under which you know that stuff when his Rankin or stock stuff on his desk. 00:32:37:17 - 00:33:00:11 Andrew But and even as a child his he was a he had when he was like a young teenager his art was exhibited in a like a children's gallery at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 would have been, you know, like 15 or 16 or something. Yeah, Rankin was an interesting guy, and Lovecraft, I think, was Wright to say, You Rankin's got the goods. 00:33:00:11 - 00:33:30:17 Sean And you bet. Well, that's part one. So let's hear another one: Ten Bond Street Providence, Rhode Island September 24, 1928. My dear Wright. Pardon my bothering you with the enclosed manuscript by Mrs. Z. B Reed, (joint revision client of Belknap and myself) but she insists that she wants you to see it despite its thoroughly non weird nature and its consequent ineligibility for weird tales. 00:33:31:02 - 00:33:50:16 Sean Why she wants to send it is beyond me -unless perhaps she has read in the "Eyrie" how you help young Robert S. Carr to fame, and imagines you can do likewise with her. I pass it up. I personally would consider it a damned imposition to load you with irrelevant manuscripts, but in this case I can only carry out orders! 00:33:50:22 - 00:34:12:15 Sean The tale itself I don't consider it all bad for a novice. Another thing, Mrs. Reed would be prodigiously grateful if you could tell her the approximate date when her "Curse of Yig" will appear. You might drop a card to her address - 4125 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri - If the time of the publication is decided upon within a month. 00:34:12:15 - 00:34:30:15 Sean If other work lets me get at it, I may send you a new Reed weird story, a thing with an Oklahoma locale like "Yig", but at present in such poor shape that it will require careful retouching. If I can't get at it soon, I'll let my bright little partner Belknap tackle it with his fresh young wits. 00:34:31:08 - 00:34:50:13 Sean Incidentally, here's a new thing of my own, which I cooked up last month by ruthlessly neglecting all the piled up work before me. It embodies some of the rural atmosphere which I picked up during my summer wanderings and the two people who have seen it, Belknap and Bernard Dwyer, speak so favorably of it that I've decided to let you look at it. 00:34:51:02 - 00:35:17:07 Sean I can't resist enclosing Sonny's card of criticism, though I must not be thought of as endorsing the child's ecstatic opinion. I hope the length won't repel you. Lately my ideal of fiction has shifted toward the longish short tale in which there is opportunity for cumulative incident and gradually thickening atmospheric clouds. I suppose you'd call this a novelette in modern magazine language. 00:35:18:04 - 00:35:41:23 Sean Don't feel any undue hurry about reading it, and don't hesitate to shoot it back if it doesn't look right for weird tales. Trusting that the submission of this Reed tale does not form a wholly unwarranted encroachment, (you can return it to the author unread if you like, of course) I remain your most obliged obedient servant, HPL Now part two. 00:35:42:05 - 00:36:05:09 Sean I think the reason I selected that one will become relatively obvious as as your Bishop Reed, as an old friend of ours having having done our own book of Lovecraft's letters to her. But again, I just thought it was an interesting step in the evolution also of the relationship between Lovecraft and Wright in terms of what's going on. 00:36:05:09 - 00:36:16:21 Sean So it's just a year later, it's September of 1928, and apparently Zelia has asked the Lovecraft to do her a favor with his friend. Mr. Wright. 00:36:17:01 - 00:36:38:10 Andrew Well, it's interesting how, you know, like Wandrei and Derleth are submitting Lovecraft stories to Wright on Lovecraft's behalf. Now, here's Lovecraft submitting a Zelia Bishop story to write on Zelia behalf and, you know, downplay it totally. I'm it's totally inappropriate. You'll never accept it. But what am I going to do? I gotta submit it to exactly. 00:36:38:10 - 00:37:00:15 Sean No, you know, I could only carry out orders. He's such a victim in all this. Like, Come on, Howard. But one of the he makes a reference that, you know, perhaps Zelia wants to be helped in the same way that you helped a young Robert S Carr to fame And Carr was a 15 year old kid when he sold a story to weird Tales. 00:37:01:00 - 00:37:17:24 Sean And then a couple of years later, you know, his writing career got really going. He wrote a thing called The Rampage that then got made into a major motion picture. And, you know, he became he got rocketed from being a high school weird tales writer to suddenly a Hollywood screenwriter. 00:37:17:24 - 00:37:20:06 Andrew He's like that kid who wrote Eragon or so. 00:37:20:07 - 00:37:26:09 Sean Yeah, exactly the same sort of thing. And so I think Zelia was hoping that that could be her. 00:37:26:19 - 00:37:34:08 Andrew Well, she was, you know, I don't know. She's quite middle aged at this point, but she was not a teenage boy. She was a single mom. 00:37:34:09 - 00:37:35:05 Sean A middle aged woman who was. 00:37:35:05 - 00:37:59:06 Andrew Just trying to put food on the table and reading this, you know, we don't know what story he sent. I mean, he said it was wildly inappropriate, so it it couldn't have been Recursive. Yeah. Because that had already been submitted. Right. And it couldn't have been The Mound because that hadn't been started yet. Right. So the question is, what was the Zelia Bishop manuscript that Lovecraft sent along with this letter? 00:37:59:22 - 00:38:16:21 Andrew I looked through our we because we did the book of Letters to Zelia. I went through them to see if I could take a wild guess at what the what it was and write it about the same time Zelia Bishop had been taking this writing class from this guy named Azel. 00:38:16:21 - 00:38:20:06 Sean Oh, almost Thomas Azel. He's back again. Yeah. 00:38:20:06 - 00:38:58:11 Andrew And she had been writing a story for his class called Red Blood that Lovecraft had helped revise. And then Azel didn't really care for Lovecraft's revisions, so Lovecraft handed it off to Frank Belknap long because at this particular point in time, they were a team doing revised re work together. So not only Lovecraft, but also Frank Belknap long also worked on Red Blood, and it was at about this same time and we don't know what Red Blood was about exactly, but the title by itself might be the sort of thing that you would say, well Zelia submit that to weird tales and see what right thinks of red blood. 00:38:58:15 - 00:39:02:06 Andrew So it could have been red blood because that was a story that they were working on. Well. 00:39:02:17 - 00:39:20:10 Sean I think there's two stories at work here, though, because there's there's something that's actually that Zelia's written, which is done which Lovecraft is submitting here. Right. But then he also makes reference to working on an Oklahoma thing, like Yig, right. Which is in such poor shape, it requires a bunch of retouching and I hope to get at it in the future. 00:39:20:15 - 00:39:23:17 Sean So it's clearly not the thing that's enclosed in this envelope. 00:39:23:18 - 00:39:29:20 Andrew Right, Right. But according to Ste, whatever that Oklahoma thing is, couldn't be the mound because that hasn't started yet. 00:39:29:20 - 00:39:30:04 Sean Right. 00:39:30:05 - 00:39:31:15 Andrew So there's some other. Okay. 00:39:31:17 - 00:39:39:04 Sean That's what I'm saying is there's there's two stories at work here. One might be red blood, but the other is is another one of these Zelia Compton tales. 00:39:39:04 - 00:39:41:02 Andrew Or I found a potential candidate. 00:39:41:02 - 00:39:42:02 Sean Bring it on, Let's say. 00:39:42:06 - 00:40:05:04 Andrew In August, on August 25th of 1928, a little bit before this letter is written, Lovecraft is writing to Zelia and he says: "Your account of the mildly touched old lady with extra terrestrial vision or affiliations is indeed extremely interesting. And I have no doubt but that the case could, with some modification and elaboration, be made into a distinctly powerful tale. 00:40:05:10 - 00:40:30:18 Andrew It would take the greatest care and subtlety, however, to handle the subject effectively. And I fear that the inherent pathos of the theme would make impossible a full exploration of its cosmic side." So she had clearly proposed something that, you know, might be acceptable for weird tales if Lovecraft focused on that aspect of it. And this was just before this letter was written. 00:40:30:18 - 00:40:36:03 Andrew And we don't he Lovecraft never says anything specifically about Oklahoma, but it could be that this. 00:40:36:06 - 00:40:37:02 Sean I buy that. 00:40:37:05 - 00:40:45:19 Andrew This nucleus of the mildly touched woman with the extraterrestrial vision might have been the the mystery story that Lovecraft refers to. 00:40:45:19 - 00:40:54:01 Sean And Lovecraft here referring to it to Wright as being in such poor shape. Right. Clearly significant investment of time needs to go into making this a publishable thing. 00:40:54:01 - 00:41:01:11 Andrew So so those are my that's you know, that we have very little to go on. But of what we know, those are two candidates for what he's talking. 00:41:01:11 - 00:41:14:11 Sean Well, I'm going to bind both. I think they're excellent theories. So it's great. You know, we were talking about the offhand reference of the other submissions in the last letter, like, oh, oh, I'm enclosing something in this one. It's not done. Where are you? Right. 00:41:15:13 - 00:41:18:12 Andrew Which which to his credit, love right does. 00:41:18:12 - 00:41:25:15 Sean Except in a lot of ways. I think the Dunwich horror is one of the more straightforward I think it's a very user friendly Lovecraft story. 00:41:25:15 - 00:41:27:07 Andrew It's one that you can understand. 00:41:27:07 - 00:42:00:12 Sean But yeah, there's good guys and there's bad guys and the good guys beat the monster and, you know, we all go home and, you know, at the end of it, it's not like a bit of meteoritic ooze in a well, but, you know, no one at the end of it even exactly knows what happened. So, yeah, you know, and that's I think that's part of the fun of Lovecraft was why to me colorist page is a more interesting story than the done which are because of all the things that are still left unsaid known and sure and so yeah he also here you know tells Wright that he's moving into longish fiction right And I 00:42:00:12 - 00:42:11:03 Sean think you know I think for me as a reader, that was one of the smartest moves he made and that on the whole, his longer works are more compelling than the shorter ones. 00:42:11:03 - 00:42:34:18 Andrew But he also, I think, recognized that Wright was if if Wright was unlikely to accept one of his stories before, he's even more unlikely to accept one that's too long. Because one of the reasons Wright always gave when he rejected them was It's too long. Yeah, And, you know, I don't know how to break it up into parts to make it a serial, which is what he said about At the mountains of Madness, which Lovecraft rightly considered to be. 00:42:34:18 - 00:42:40:11 Andrew You know, one of the best things I ever wrote. And Wright said, Yeah, but I don't I'm not going to publish it because it's too long and. 00:42:40:18 - 00:42:41:01 Sean Too many words 00:42:41:01 - 00:43:08:06 Andrew too many words. And that so stung Lovecraft that he didn't submit another thing to write for years. So I don't know if his mentioning that in this letter is just a way of, you know, either preparing Wright for this is what you're going to be getting from me going forward. So get used to it. Or laying a foundation for accepting the rejections that he suspects are inevitable. 00:43:08:13 - 00:43:26:23 Sean Yeah, well, you know, I think Lovecraft was, you know, one of the things that's so commendable about him is, is he was true to himself and his own muse. And he's like, you know, I want to write longer stuff because that's what's coming out of me. And I think there are better stories. So that's what I'm going to be writing, you know, and he'll suffer. 00:43:26:23 - 00:43:28:10 Sean The consequence of the piece was. 00:43:28:11 - 00:43:44:12 Andrew Also, as we've often observed, Lovecraft did not knuckle under to commercial demands and he didn't change the way he wrote because he knew Right would accept it and it would get published. He would rather never published than write something just for the sake of publishing. 00:43:44:12 - 00:43:52:23 Sean Yeah, no, absolutely. And such contempt he has for those who are who do writing strictly for the marketplace instead of for and to when he. 00:43:53:00 - 00:43:58:23 Andrew Knows that they're capable of better right he feels oh poor Seabury Quin he could have been great if. 00:43:58:23 - 00:44:23:10 Sean Only he had a little sunny long. Come on. So maybe. What a sellout. Okay. Okay. Well, unless you got anything else on the Zelia letter we go to No 3 10 Bond Street, Providence, Rhode Island, February 16, 1933. Dear Wright Yours of the 13th arrived just after I had dropped you a card in reply to your earlier note. 00:44:23:22 - 00:44:57:02 Sean So little Augie has been showing Grandpa's stories, eh ? Quite a boy! Yes. If you want to use the witch house, go ahead. Surely $140 is as much as can be expected in these times. As for radio dramatisation rights - I really think an author ought to be able to have at least a censorship of anything which goes out under his name - for what a popular dialog arranger could do to the atmosphere and artistic integrity of a seriously written story is appalling to contemplate! 00:44:57:11 - 00:45:20:10 Sean Indeed, it is not likely that any really finely wrought weird story - where so much depends on mood, and nuances of description - could be changed to a drama without irreparable and the loss of all that gave it power. Of course, weird drama can be written - when the author starts out from the first to utilize the dramatic form. 00:45:20:10 - 00:45:46:13 Sean Dunsany "Gods of the Mountain" and "Night at an Inn" are typical specimens. But when a thing is written as a story, it will fare best by staying that way. What the public consider weirdness in drama is rather pitiful or absurd according to one's perspective. As a thorough soporific, I recommend the average popular horrible play or cinema or radio dialogue. 00:45:46:18 - 00:46:28:14 Sean They are all the same - flat, hackneyed, synthetic, essentially atmosphereless jumbles of conversational shrieks and mutterings and superficial, mechanical situations. "The Bat" made me drowsy back in the early 1920s - and last year an alleged Frankenstein on the screen would have made me drowse had not a posthumous sympathy for poor Mrs. Shelley made me see Red instead. Ugh! And the Screen Dracula in 1931, I saw the beginning of that in Miami, Florida, but couldn't bear to watch it dragged to its full term of dreariness, hence walked out into the fragrant tropic moonlight. 00:46:28:18 - 00:46:50:10 Sean Of course, as you say, the dramatization of my Witch House is very unlikely. But on the whole, if it's all the same to you, I wouldn't mind seeing it protected against the dialoguer's unconscious caricaturing. You may recall that I wouldn't contribute to Strange Tales because Bates couldn't guarantee me immunity from the copy-slasher's shears and blue pencil. 0:46:50:24 - 00:47:17:16 Sean So I fancy that, on general principles, it would be simplest to sell first North American serial rights only. I hope that doesn't sound too fussy, but when I reflect on how much the force of any carefully written story depends on atmospheric effects peculiar to the original wording, I really feel the demands for integrity of form are justified... even in instances of second presentation. 00:47:17:16 - 00:47:41:12 Sean Price is getting me to attempt collaboration on a sequel to the Silver Key involving some of his dimensional theories. If I can't work up the proper synthesis, I may turn the job over to Klarkash-Ton. Best wishes - Yours most cordially, HPL So we skip ahead here a couple of years. It's now 1933 and this is what led me down. 00:47:41:12 - 00:47:58:24 Sean Farnsworth Wright. Rabbit hole as I happened to be. I was reading selected letters because it's the sort of thing one does for fun around here and saw the thing about the serialization and radio rights and was so tickled by that. But yeah. 00:47:59:02 - 00:47:59:22 Andrew Got to read that. 00:47:59:24 - 00:48:32:04 Sean Got to read that letter. And then I was like, Oh, let's see what else, you know, what other Wright letters are out there? So yeah, I guess, you know, it never really crossed my mind that a contract in 1933, they are already going, you know, we're going to package the, the radio rights and you know, other rights along with the you know, what Lovecraft pushes for is the North American serialization rights but just seething contempt that Lovecraft has for what we do. 00:48:33:08 - 00:48:55:20 Sean It So throws the gantlet at our feet. I think, you know, Andrew and I have long wondered with, you know, making movies like Call of Cthulhu, you know, the Dark Adventure Radio Theater and things would Lovecraft have liked it? You know, I think we approach it with the underlying hope that he would have seen enough of his own work in it that, you know, perhaps he would have. 00:48:55:20 - 00:49:10:11 Sean And hearing the radio plays, which at least of our ears aren't as cheap and hackneyed as, you know, what he's hearing from other adaptations. Would you know, would would he have liked it? And no, maybe, you know, he would not have liked it? I think so. 00:49:10:17 - 00:49:24:04 Andrew Yeah. He appears to be against the idea of adapting it just in principle. If it's written as a story, it should never be anything other than a story. And you know, I can't agree with that point of view, but that seems to be where he's coming down. 00:49:24:05 - 00:49:49:09 Sean Well, and I think, you know, in fairness to him, too, he's living in a time where, you know, he hears adaptations of stories on the radio and they're bad. You know, there's they're not sophisticated storytellers and they're, you know, a lot of the motion picture adaptations, you know, are not good. You know, the art forms are, you know, both in filmmaking and, you know, the radio drama are in their infancy. 00:49:49:09 - 00:49:57:22 Sean And I think, you know, his personal experience with them are unsuccessful adaptations to where he's feeling sorry for Mary Shelley. I feel sorry for Bram Stoker. 00:49:57:22 - 00:50:13:02 Andrew Outraged by Dracula. Yeah. And yeah, it's it is. You know, Lovecraft, of course, had a uniquely heightened appreciation for those classics. So any adaptation would have to. 00:50:13:14 - 00:50:14:07 Sean Be really. 00:50:14:10 - 00:50:45:02 Andrew Clear, a very high bar to be acceptable to Lovecraft. And, you know, clearly he felt the same way about at least some of his own work, right? Yeah. You know, he says when a thing is written as a story, which he underlines, it will fare best by staying that way. And that, you know, that's it made me think of, you know, a playwright who would write a play and then objectif anyone ever performed it because, you know, the minute you let an actor say the words that you wrote, you're. 00:50:45:03 - 00:50:46:04 Sean Going to say they're. 00:50:46:05 - 00:50:55:10 Andrew Going to say him wrong. They're not going to say them the way you imagine them being said. So, you know, two object to adaptation in principle, I think is. 00:50:55:16 - 00:50:57:11 Sean It's a form of conceit. 00:50:57:21 - 00:51:11:13 Andrew Or something. I cannot go with Lovecraft that far and just say, you know, if it's written as a story, it must never be anything but a story because, you know, it's a collaborative. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but I can't go there. 00:51:11:13 - 00:51:31:12 Sean Yeah, well, you know, and again, I think in fairness to him, if the collaborations or if the adaptations that he's hearing and seeing at the movie theater are bad, then you've come to believe that people can only record and you only really sort of unlock the potential of, Oh my God, such and such a work could be adapted and come out better than the original. 00:51:31:20 - 00:51:44:10 Sean But you have to hear that once and and and once you go, Holy cow. I turned on the radio and CBS did an adaptation of Dracula on the radio that knocked my socks off. Suddenly that opens the door to the fact it could be that. 00:51:44:10 - 00:52:03:21 Andrew Could be done that finds you know interesting the interesting kernels of the original story and expands on them in new directions. Sure. It's not the story. The story is the story. But right there you can do other versions based on that story that are in and of themselves. Interesting and good. 00:52:04:04 - 00:52:04:11 Sean Right? 00:52:04:16 - 00:52:24:09 Andrew You don't destroy the original Frankenstein or Dracula or at the Mountains of Madness by adapting it. Sure. It's a different piece. It's a different work of art or not, but it's a different thing. Yeah, but he does say, you know, I really think an author ought to be able to at least have censorship of anything which goes out under his name. 00:52:24:09 - 00:52:29:16 Andrew You know, I want I want to have final approval of anything that is done with my stuff. 00:52:29:16 - 00:52:31:23 Sean And yeah, I'm going to respect that. 00:52:31:23 - 00:52:37:13 Andrew I hear what he's saying. If only he hadn't died, then he could just go. 00:52:37:13 - 00:52:39:11 Sean Feelers coming in. 00:52:39:11 - 00:52:57:04 Andrew He does say, I'm going to sell first North American serial rights only in this letter from 1933. Right. And we know that he had been selling only first North American serial rights since at least 1926. Right. And that opens the door to the fantastically complicated situation. 00:52:57:04 - 00:52:58:20 Sean Oh, you're not going to bring up copyright and. 00:52:58:20 - 00:53:09:12 Andrew Copyright just because, you know, is Lovecraft stuff in the public domain or not is a perennial unanswerable question. 00:53:09:17 - 00:53:11:14 Sean Have you ever got an email asking you that question? 00:53:11:14 - 00:53:19:08 Andrew I once or twice people have asked me if it's in the public domain, and I have always told them I'm not a lawyer. And are you a lawyer, Sean? 00:53:19:10 - 00:53:19:21 Sean You know. 00:53:20:09 - 00:53:31:18 Andrew No, neither of us is a lawyer. And you'd have to be not only a lawyer, but like a federal judge is the only person who could ever definitively answer that question. 00:53:31:18 - 00:53:50:11 Sean And that's that's really the thing is, at the end of the day, the way American copyright works, anybody can allege ownership of anything. You know, you can say you own all the works of H.P. Lovecraft, you can say that, and then only becomes incumbent upon you to prove that in a court of law. 00:53:50:11 - 00:54:09:07 Andrew And so far, all the people who've said they own those copyrights have declined to prove it in a court of law. They have been repeatedly asked to show the papers that prove you own those copyrights. And curiously, their answer has been it would not be in my interest to show you those documents. Huh? 00:54:09:14 - 00:54:11:03 Sean Oh, I wonder why. 00:54:11:03 - 00:54:19:00 Andrew I wonder why. Yeah. So the question has never been tested in court. And until it's tested in court, it cannot be answered. 00:54:19:00 - 00:54:37:09 Sean And yet, at the same time, there there you can you can license Lovecraft's stories from people who claim to own these assets. So people are people have come to us going, oh, but, but I listened to such and such a story and it's like, you know, what's your license worth if the person who licensed it to you. 00:54:37:10 - 00:54:39:05 Andrew Doesn't have the rights to license? 00:54:39:05 - 00:54:58:24 Sean Yeah, it's a it's a crazy and complicated situation. And I think a lot of people just fundamentally don't really wrap their head around this notion that the fact of any copyright actually still being enforced on Lovecraft's work has in fact never been resolved and probably won't be . 00:54:58:24 - 00:55:15:24 Andrew The few people have tried to wrap their heads around it. Oh, yes. And one of them is valiantly, one of them is Chris Carr. Oh, yeah. W ho has published a lengthy and very well-researched piece called The Black of Copyright, and we will be sure to link to that in the notes for this episode because it is worth reading. 00:55:16:01 - 00:55:16:18 Sean Indeed, if. 00:55:16:18 - 00:55:19:16 Andrew You are at all interested in this unanswered question. 00:55:21:00 - 00:55:58:14 Sean Well, let's hear the fourth and final letter. 66 College Street. Providence, Rhode Island. July one, 1936. Dear Wright, Young Schwartz has persuaded me to send him a lot of manuscripts for possible placement in Great Britain, and it occurs to me that I'd better exhaust their cisatlantic possibilities before turning them over to him. Accordingly, I am going through the formality of obtaining your official rejection of the enclosed - so that I won't feel that I've overlooked any theoretic or source of badly-needed revenue. In the absence of other American markets 00:55:58:14 - 00:56:28:19 Sean for purely weird material, I won't need to try them elsewhere. Hence, if you don't mind, you might send them on after rejection to Julius Schwartz 255 East 188th Street, New York, New York. Instead of returning them to me. I was greatly shocked about a fortnight ago to receive a card from Miss Moore with the dire news (without details and allegedly obtained directly from Texas) of the death of Robert E Howard by his own hand. 00:56:29:12 - 00:56:55:01 Sean It sounds incredible to me - for I had a long, normal letter from good old Two-Gun Bob written as recently as May 13. He was worried about his mother's health, but otherwise seemed perfectly all right. I'm wondering whether there can be any hope of a mistake, either a ghastly hoax or some strange confusion of name springing from the suicide of another Western writer 00:56:55:01 - 00:57:33:08 Sean (the young science-fictionist David R Daniels) slightly earlier in the year? If the news is indeed true, it forms weird fictions worst blows since the passing of good old Carnarvon in 32. Scarcely anybody else in the pulp field had quite the driving zest and spontaneity of REH He put himself in everything he wrote, and even when he made outward concessions to pulp standards, he had a wholly unique inner force and sincerity which broke through the surface and placed the stamp of his personality on the ultimate product. 00:57:33:24 - 00:58:05:16 Sean How he could surround primal megalithic cities with an aura of aeon-old fear and necromancy! And his recent "Black Canaan" (WT Best story in the last three issues) is likewise magnificent in a more realistic way - reflecting a genuine regional background and giving a clutching powerful picture of the horror that stalks through the moss-hung, shadow-cursed, serpent ridden swamps of the farther south. Others efforts seem pallid by contrast. 00:58:05:16 - 00:58:36:00 Sean I can't understand the tragedy, for although REH had a moody side expressed in his resentment against civilization (the basis of our perennial and voluminous epistolary debate), I always thought that this was a more or less impersonal sentiment - like Sonny Belknap's rage against the injustices of capitalistic civilization. He himself seemed to me pretty well adjusted to his beloved south western environment. 00:58:36:20 - 00:59:02:10 Sean Well - weird fiction certainly has occasion to mourn, unless the melancholy report turns out to be false. I'm telling Price (the only one of the group who ever met REH in person) that he ought to prepare an obituary for weird tales - just as I did of H.S.W four years ago. (I've written a paragraph or two for the fan magazines.) But alas that there should be an occasion for such! 00:59:03:08 - 00:59:36:21 Sean I've had a hell of a year - rotten health, and aunt seriously ill and at hospital - though now recovering well. Programme in chaos. Apologizing for the enclosed perfunctory inflections. Yours most sincerely HPL All right. And then we move into part four, which is now late in Lovecraft's life. This is the 1st of July 1936. And yeah, such a different tone in this one. 00:59:37:02 - 01:00:12:07 Sean And a guy at a very different point in his life in this one. And one of the reasons I picked this is, you know, we've often commented that Lovecraft's response to almost any stimulus is rarely emotional. And to me, there was such a once we got into the death of RobertE. Howard such a melancholy in in the actual words he used that you can feel Lovecraft's pain which boy, there aren't very many times where that kind of quality comes through in the letters. 01:00:12:07 - 01:00:30:00 Andrew He seems to really regret not having noticed that there was something wrong with Robert E Howard. I thought I never. I spoke to him last week. He seemed fine. It never occurred to me that when he rails about the horrors of civilization, that he was taking it personally. Yeah. Yeah. 01:00:30:00 - 01:00:51:07 Sean Well, you know, and that's that's absolutely, you know, a hallmark of people trying to grapple with suicide. Yeah. You didn't see it coming and you feel, you know, could I have done something? Why didn't I see it? Could I have, you know, helped avoid the, you know, the consequences of the emotional state that Howard was in that led him to the end of his life. 01:00:51:07 - 01:01:03:18 Sean So, yeah, it is interesting that Lovecraft's talking with Wright here, right in the beginning about young back to copyright and being able to license stories for publication overseas. 01:01:03:18 - 01:01:26:02 Andrew Well, because Wright in 1926 apparently. Wright had imagined a whole series of books that would be like weird tales anthologies. That would include And he had a whole one that was going to be just Lovecraft alone. He wanted to do a whole book of Lovecraft stories. And Lovecraft had apparently personally suggested the title The Outsider and Other stories. 01:01:26:03 - 01:01:50:04 Andrew Right. But the first weird tales anthology that they published was called The Moon Terror, and it was such a flop. Womp, womp. Yeah. That that, you know, no other weird tales, anthologies, all those plans were scrapped because the moon terror tanked so bad. But there were various British anthologies like the Not at Night series, right, that were very successful. 01:01:50:04 - 01:01:54:04 Andrew And Lovecraft stories had been published in these British anthologies. Right. 01:01:54:08 - 01:02:08:10 Sean So Julius Schwartz is essentially he's got a company called Solar Sails Literary Agency and is representing Lovecraft to try and put together these deals to see his works in a book form. 01:02:08:10 - 01:02:29:13 Andrew And Julius Schwartz was a he was 21 years old at the time, a young go getter, a total fan of horror and science fiction. And he he went on in life to become, you know, editor at DC Comics and handle Batman and Superman and all those classic titles. But in 1936, he's just this young guy, super enthusiastic. He loved the weird fiction, the way Wright 01:02:29:18 - 01:02:32:13 Andrew Never did. Right. If Julius Schwartz had been editor. 01:02:32:13 - 01:02:34:08 Sean Of Weird Day Lookout, it might have. 01:02:34:08 - 01:02:36:19 Andrew Been a much more energetic magazine. 01:02:36:22 - 01:02:39:04 Sean They would not they wouldn't have published The Moon. 01:02:39:04 - 01:02:57:01 Andrew They wouldn't publish the Moon Terror. But anyway, so Schwartz is going to bat for Lovecraft and trying to get his stuff seen. And it is interesting, you know, Lovecraft, you know, 1936, Lovecraft has been so burned so many times over the years and seem every plan like this has gone down the tubes. So, I. 01:02:57:03 - 01:03:13:08 Sean Mean, even friends of his cook publishing the shunned house, you know, oh, we've we printed them, but we never got around to getting them bound, you know, the shadow over Innsmouth We sort of did, you know, a copy run of books. You know, it just never, ever worked out. So, yeah. 01:03:14:09 - 01:03:19:09 Andrew I do. Like, I don't think I've ever seen the word cisatlantic before, and I really like that word. 01:03:20:16 - 01:03:45:06 Sean Yeah, the shock that Lovecraft, you know, feels, though, and in learning about Robert Howard's death, this letters written on the 1st of July, Howard killed himself on the 11th of June. So it hasn't even been three weeks yet. And there's still that is that hope is right Perhaps that isn't true. Maybe we're thinking about David Daniels who had actually died of a gunshot back in April. 01:03:46:09 - 01:03:49:18 Sean But that, you know, yeah, it didn't didn't pan out to be the case. 01:03:49:18 - 01:04:09:02 Andrew And when he talks about, you know, its forms weird fictions worst blow since the passing a good old Kanadan 32 and Kanadan was the kind of like Randolph Carter was the fictional alter ego of Lovecraft Kanadan was the fictional alter ego of Henry S. Whitehead who was a really good friend of Lovecraft who lived in Florida. 01:04:09:02 - 01:04:20:00 Andrew And Lovecraft thought he was a good writer and a man's man, and he really admired Whitehead. So and Whitehead had died not by suicide, but just a few years previously, Yeah. 01:04:20:07 - 01:04:43:16 Sean WHITEHEAD died in late 1932, and HPL wrote, Yeah, no elegy or eulogy, rather, for him. Weird Tales published in March of 1933. Yeah, And here's suggesting that your Hoffman Price might be, you know, the man to write a similar piece about Robert E Howard so. 01:04:44:01 - 01:05:11:13 Andrew Yeah and his final his sign off on this I've had a hell of a year rotten health aunt seriously ill in the hospital though now recovering well program in case you know Lovecraft is it's late 1936 and he is not doing well and it's Yeah it is this selection of letters that you gave us is an interesting time span and shows Lovecraft you know that first letter where he's at the height of self-confidence and arrogance. 01:05:11:18 - 01:05:29:07 Andrew Your idiot readers will never understand the majesty. That is my writing. Yeah. Down to. Oh, and here's the color out of space. Yeah, it's, you know, you probably won't like it. It's like it's a masterpiece. And here it is. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is an interesting spectrum. 01:05:29:17 - 01:05:39:00 Sean Well, there you go. A spectrum is what I was looking for, for trying to. To give everybody a taste of the correspondence between Lovecraft and Wright. 01:05:39:03 - 01:05:49:09 Andrew Well, well done. And let's maybe find one of his. We'll do another right one. Maybe just just one longer. Farnsworth Wright. At some point after we do other stuff. That's interesting. Sure. 01:05:49:09 - 01:06:12:14 Sean Okay. I have to offer a lot of different thanks today because I had to rely on on several different sources. So first off, I'd like to offer our thanks to, of course, the gang over at Hippocampus Press. But this time it's for the Lovecraft annual issue number eight from 2014, in which hippocampus published the letters of H.P. Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright. 01:06:12:24 - 01:06:16:15 Andrew As always, you can learn more about them at hippocampusPress.com 01:06:17:11 - 01:06:38:07 Sean I also leaned on everyone to thank David E. Schulz for his essay, The Origin of Lovecraft's Black Magic quote, published in Crypt of Cthulhu, a pulp thriller and theological journal Volume six, Number six from 1987 that if you're looking for that, I think is your eBay is pretty much your help at this point. 01:06:38:07 - 01:06:45:19 Andrew And if you find it you'll find an old ad from a a young upstart organization called the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 01:06:45:19 - 01:07:08:12 Sean Yeah crazy. I'm sitting there reading the the issue and then I see a letter to the editor that I wrote back in 1987 congratulating them on what a nice job they're doing. So good, good for us. And it was very funny to see a really old age belly dress. AD one last thing. The the memoir by Donald Wandrei that I read from was published Lovecraft. 01:07:08:12 - 01:07:24:18 Sean Remember, it was edited by Peter Cannon. It was published by Arkham House in 1998. I don't actually know off the top of my head if it's still in print or not, but at least it can more readily be found than old copies of Crypt of Cthulhu. 01:07:24:18 - 01:07:30:18 Andrew Will will publish better updated references to all these things on the page for this episode. 01:07:30:19 - 01:07:31:07 Sean By God. 01:07:31:13 - 01:07:41:22 Andrew If you want to read any more of these letters that Lovecraft wrote to Zelia Bishop, you can always read the spirit of revision, which you can get directly from the HPLHS Online store. 01:07:41:22 - 01:07:47:07 Sean Shameless self-promotion. Well done. So well done. I am your obedient servant, Sean Branney. 01:07:47:07 - 01:07:49:02 Andrew I'm cordially and respectfully yours Andrew Leman. 01:07:49:02 - 01:07:53:05 Sean You've been listening to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 01:07:53:06 - 01:08:01:15 Andrew If you've enjoyed this episode, please feel free to send note to voluminous at HPLHS.org We'd love to hear from you. 01:08:02:04 - 01:08:34:23 Sean This show has been brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org