00:00:06:18 - 00:00:09:15 Sean Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:22 - 00:00:15:18 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:15:18 - 00:00:18:00 Sean In each episode will read and discuss one of them. 00:00:18:03 - 00:00:23:23 Andrew I'm Sean Branney, and I'm Andrew Leman. Together we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:24:02 - 00:00:29:17 Sean For today's letter, I chose one written on March 23rd, 1931, to Elizabeth Toldridge. 00:00:29:17 - 00:00:32:17 Andrew And here it comes. 00:00:32:17 - 00:00:58:14 Sean March 23, 1931. Dear Mrs Toldrifge, I have delayed, reprehensible and acknowledging and returning the poetry review but tasks piled up on my program to such an extent that everything else had to lie dormant for a time. At present, I am taking one last despairing look at the circum ambient world before plunging into the abyss of a job calling for 100 pages of typing the nadir of martyrdom from my point of view. 00:00:59:02 - 00:01:32:05 Sean Meanwhile, I am indebted to you for other material, including the interesting circle which I return here with with much gratitude After an appreciative perusal and the delightfully colored Easter cards concerning whose workmanship, I am sure you are too modest. You really ought not spare so many of these potentially profitable items. I never acquired the custom of sending Easter cards, though one would think a warmth enthusiast like myself would be the first to celebrate a festival whose real origin is Equinox Deal and whose name is derived from the Saxon Spring goddess Easter. 00:01:32:21 - 00:01:53:08 Sean But my younger aunt, not the one at ten Bonds, whose president healthy is very encouraging, has always done so and will be exceedingly grateful for these specimens, which, however, she will feel rather guilty in accepting gratuitously. At any rate. Pray accept my sincerest thanks. I must likewise express my gratitude for the cuttings, which included much of keen interest. 00:01:53:21 - 00:02:20:19 Sean The crossing of Arabia desert to vastly stirred my imagination, since this region has always been a center of mystery and picturesque superstition. It is reputedly haunted by demons and contains the ghost or wraith of the primal bygone Erathem the city of pillars. Too bad you miss seeing the Poe relative. I shall read that book when it becomes available at the library, though I hardly think it will rival the probably definitive biography of Hervey Allen. 00:02:21:12 - 00:02:40:20 Sean That sculptured memorial will be very appropriate. I've seen pictures of it off and on since its completion nearly a decade ago and shall be glad to see the actual thing in place after its dedication. The sculptor's conception scrawling the subject's head with raven wings is a very apt one and does not carry the principle of grotesqueness to the extent of affectation. 00:02:41:15 - 00:03:07:01 Sean By the way, I must express thanks for that agreeable vernal harbinger which came last month and which expanded very gracefully under aqueous influence. It was very ably seconded by one of the petty articles among the cuttings. He really sustains a surprising level of interest and diversity in view of his inexhaustible yearly repetitions. Let me congratulate you upon your recent sonnet, her silence, and upon the prize it very deservedly won. 00:03:07:05 - 00:03:33:18 Sean It is truly a splendid piece of work and ought to take a substantial place in any collection of yours. In line eight, I think quiet is rather preferable to stylized. As for poetry, in general, as I said before, it is no more likely to become extinct than painting or music or any other rhythmical, symbolic and expressive manifestation of the races, reactions, glandular functioning and psychological association patterns. 00:03:34:07 - 00:03:53:19 Sean It is nothing to get sentimental about, no higher a form of expression than prose or mathematics, or any other basic response of the brain to impinging stimuli. But it is just as characteristic and permanent as any other form. It has a different relative importance in different times and places, but can hardly be totally absent from any social order. 00:03:54:07 - 00:04:30:09 Sean Modern America is of course, an unfavorable environment as such things go. But naturally, no comprehensive student will judge the civilization as a whole by the temporarily dominant element of loud mouthed commercial lists and utilitarians. There's no law against practicing the arts, even though the persons who fill the daily headlines care little about them. As for civilization in general, the transient sea and insignificance of mankind are understood more and more thoroughly in each new generation, so that the older sense of human importance will soon become less and less absurdly manifest in literature and the arts. 00:04:30:19 - 00:04:57:15 Sean Younger people today do not harbor either intellectually or emotionally the delusions of the earlier modern world. But our returning very perceptibly to the more rationally proportioned conceptions of the best ages of classical antiquity. The exaggerated and ridiculous seriousness of the 19th century, with its absurd notions about the deep significance and ponderous importance of the things, is a sensation which the present generation can understand only through antiquarian study. 00:04:57:21 - 00:05:20:22 Sean Though, of course, the lower orders retain most of the exploded attitude so far as outward form is concerned. While the cheaper and more immature forms of conventional art and literature continue to function vacuously and insincerely on the same basis as for democracy, it has never really been a possible form of government on a large scale and never can be and never could have been. 00:05:21:06 - 00:05:48:18 Sean It is simply a pose or attitude or catchword as far as any actual national policy is concerned, a myth fostered by politicians for their own immediate advantage. The only conditions under which anything approaching it can function are those of a very small, very homogeneous, very new and mainly agricultural community such as the New England of the 17th and 18th centuries, the New Zealand of the 19th century or Switzerland at various stages of its history. 00:05:49:02 - 00:06:13:02 Sean The moment a people becomes heterogeneous or the moment it adopts forms of involved commerce or mechanized industry, the condition of democracy becomes as automatically impossible as unrestricted traffic on a busy city intersection or Homeric military tactics on a modern battlefield of tanks and poison gas. If the forms and pose are kept up, that is merely so much sham and hokum which deceives nobody. 00:06:13:06 - 00:06:37:08 Sean Save the simple. Just as the Emperor Augustus rejected the title of King kept alive the fiction of the Roman Republic and had himself solemnly elected every year to all the various officers consul, Prater, Caistor, etc., whose powers his actual position included. But there is no reason to mourn the absence of democracy, because it is a sheer illusion which never existed on a national scale. 00:06:37:13 - 00:07:08:16 Sean There is no reason to attach any merit to it. Indeed, its worship is generally irrelevant and unsound. If anything is truly lamentable. It is the extent to which 19th century people naively swallowed the Democratic hoax, thereby strengthening the popular adherence to a meaningless finish, incapable of contemporary application. Today, all government involves the most abstruse and complicated technology so that the average citizen is absolutely without power to form any intelligent estimate of the value of any proposed measure. 00:07:09:03 - 00:07:33:18 Sean Only the most highly trained technicians can now have any real idea of what any governmental policy or operation is about. Hence, the so-called will of the people is merely a superfluity without the least trace of value in meeting and dealing with specific problems. Any sort of successful government must be administered by specialists working in coordination and able to plan over long time intervals without fear of interference or overturn. 00:07:33:22 - 00:08:03:02 Sean This is as true and communistic as in fascistic government. For, of course, modern Russia is ruled by a very small group of men who, despite a low origin and lack of general culture, are nevertheless highly trained in their particular respective lines according to the dominant ideology. The cause of modern conditions is, of course, the invention of machinery capable of establishing new rhythms of economic and social life and organization, a purely impersonal and inevitable phenomenon which could not have produced any different results. 00:08:03:07 - 00:08:26:15 Sean That is why there is no use in getting indignant about things. No matter how much one may naturally regret the cultural losses and dying traditions incidental to a profound readjustment. It couldn't have been any different. All that one needs to bother about in government is actual results in terms of daily life, high sounding theories and principles are words, just that and no more. 00:08:27:01 - 00:08:50:23 Sean What a government may reasonably be expected to guarantee to the individual is relative security. A chance to obtain the surroundings and impressions which harmonize with one's background abilities or appreciative capabilities. A freedom to express intellectual opinions and esthetic personality without restriction. A general atmosphere favorable to the creation of art and the search for truth for their own sakes. 00:08:51:01 - 00:09:28:01 Sean And a continuity of folkways sufficient to promote a sense of congenial placement and to create the allusions of interests, directions and value in the otherwise meaningless phenomena of conscious existence. It is not to be expected that these things can be achieved with any degree of perfection by any possible sort of government. But the important thing to realize is that these alone are the things that count these and not such mythical, futile and irrelevant word conceptions as equality, prosperity, justice, opportunity, property, democracy, independence, self-sufficiency, self-government, responsibility, and kindred blah blah. 00:09:28:12 - 00:09:53:00 Sean It doesn't matter an infernal rap how a nation achieves a reasonably civilized and orderly condition as long as it does achieve such a king oligarchy, fascist dictator, it's all the same in the end. One method is as good as another, provided it works. Even communism would be all right if it would work for civilized ends. But so far there does not seem to be evidence that it can effectively do so. 00:09:54:15 - 00:10:18:09 Sean About Einstein that Sears cutting which you enclosed gives as simple, graphic and effective a way of grasping the general space ideas I have seen yet. As Sears says, the way to clear one's mind of hampering preconceptions and give the problem a fresh approach is to get rid of the purely arbitrary notion of space as an entity and begin to regard it as a set of provisional working rules. 00:10:18:21 - 00:10:52:04 Sean Einstein has indeed received new data causing modifications of certain details of his field theory and may have more to say shortly about quantum mechanics. The recent principle so closely associated with the operation of cause and effect in certain cases. The general effect of such discoveries is certainly to impose limits on the predictability of certain types of phenomena. Though this recognition of limits is itself really an extension of our general knowledge of the cosmos, I was glad to see your vivid and delightful poem in its Charles Etonian setting, and I'm here with returning the cuttings. 00:10:52:04 - 00:11:30:09 Sean Since it's inscribed, nature seems to stamp it as an only copy. Two bad obstacles have developed in some of the contests, but these things are really not worth bothering about. C ontests are subject to all sorts of irrational caprices, and their only use any way is to give one a sort of renewed assurance that one stuff has merit. You no longer need such added assurances since the almost uniformly favorable criticism, given your work in wildly different places and by widely different persons, has undoubtedly proved to you impersonally and objectively that you indeed reach a rare level of genuine and skillful poetic expression with best wishes. Sean Your most obedient servant, H.P. Lovecraft. P.S. I've lately finished an Antarctic horror that which comes to novelette length, but which I haven't yet had time to get in shape for professional submission. Poetry review is highly interesting. That article on Poetic Innovation ought to answer a good many of your questions as to what constitutes the contemporary mood in verse. 00:11:56:05 - 00:12:03:00 Andrew Oh, boy. Okay, Sean, why did you pick that letter? Oh, you make it sound like you don't. 00:12:03:00 - 00:12:03:20 Sean Like this one. 00:12:04:08 - 00:12:08:10 Andrew I think it should come with a trigger warning if you. 00:12:08:10 - 00:12:44:01 Sean Lovecraft's is famous for his his cynicism as one of his many personal qualities. And this struck me as one of just just a fascinating bundle of political cynicism and recording this in a age fraught with political problems and challenges as it was. His perspective really fascinated me to find sort of all political thought, all the absolute fundamentals of which our nation's political views, no matter not talking about which side or another, but but the the actual. 00:12:44:04 - 00:12:45:00 Andrew The whole foundation. 00:12:45:00 - 00:12:56:00 Sean Foundation of the modern Western political world, that he just, you know, tosses out the window with casual abandon. And I thought that was really interesting. 00:12:56:01 - 00:12:57:09 Andrew Quite cheerfully, apparently. 00:12:57:09 - 00:13:05:05 Sean Quite cheerfully. And we haven't we haven't really touched a lot on politics yet with Lovecraft. So this seemed like a good place to start. 00:13:05:06 - 00:13:07:11 Andrew Who was Mrs Toldridge 00:13:07:17 - 00:13:34:14 Sean Mrs Toldridge was a poet, and she lived most of her life in Washington, D.C.. One of the qualities about her that differentiates her from a lot of Lovecraft's other correspondents is she's actually quite a bit older than him. I had imagined I don't know why my mental picture of of a lot of the the amateur press folks I imagine them sort of being of Lovecraft's own age or then there's a second wave of the of younger people who are writing fan mail to Lovecraft. 00:13:34:14 - 00:13:57:14 Sean But Elizabeth Toldridge was born back in 1861, so she's actually almost 30 years Lovecraft senior. She came to know him through him being the judge of a poetry competition and he describes her in one of his other letters as apparently she was involved in some kind of accident early in her life. And he calls her crippled and shut in. 00:13:58:09 - 00:14:25:01 Sean So apparently she didn't get out and her life was largely, you know, largely led indoors, even though she's presumably the more experienced in poetry and things. The fact that Lovecraft was brought in as the poetry judge seemed to have really held an exalted point of view towards Lovecraft. And to this man who's much, much younger than her, but treated him with a great deal of respect. 00:14:25:05 - 00:14:42:21 Sean She was not at all involved in the weird world. She's writing traditional poetry about, you know, love and family and things like that, and not about the, you know, fungi from yuggoth and the sort of things that Lovecraft's interested in. But apparently she followed Lovecraft's career through his entire life, would go to the newsstand to buy copies of Weird Tales. 00:14:42:21 - 00:14:59:01 Sean And Lovecraft would be like, you know, Oh, no, save your money. And but she was a supportive fan and in a manner that let her, you know, would both go by Lovecraft stories and and read and follow works that are apparently the subject matter were not something of particular interest to her. 00:14:59:14 - 00:15:00:09 Andrew What a sweet lady. 00:15:00:10 - 00:15:03:04 Sean Yeah. She sounds she sounds a whole lot of all right. 00:15:03:04 - 00:15:05:19 Andrew And not deserving of this tirade. 00:15:07:01 - 00:15:29:14 Sean One of the challenges and how Andrew and I are going after these conversations is any given letter we're stepping into on the whole, an exchange, the back and forth and right we disclosure moment. We haven't read all of the letters in sequence, so we don't always know what's going on between a given correspondent and Lovecraft at the time. 00:15:29:14 - 00:15:41:23 Sean We've we've picked a given letter. We're researching things where they can and sometimes things are available and often they're not. Or certainly what ever the correspondent had said to Lovecraft just prior to the Lovecraft letter. We don't we. 00:15:41:23 - 00:15:43:24 Andrew Have to get it from context, just like you. 00:15:43:24 - 00:15:46:02 Sean Do. Exactly. Except for you're stuck with us. 00:15:46:12 - 00:15:52:08 Andrew Yeah, well, we're trying to help out by doing some homework, but sometimes there's no homework to be done. 00:15:52:08 - 00:16:09:18 Sean So as we slide into this political tirade, I did think the moment about the Easter cards. Yeah. Was another just sort of snapshot into the day to day life of this nice poet lady from Washington and some Easter cards. And that's another thing that's. 00:16:09:18 - 00:16:34:00 Andrew Interesting about this letter is that it forces you to to realize, to remember that in addition to the letters themselves, these envelopes that were flying back and forth were full of other stuff, too. Lovecraft sent clippings and cuttings and pamphlets and brochures and all sorts of stuff and got them from all of these people. So every every letter from that the mailman brought was full of cool bonus stuff. 00:16:34:01 - 00:16:39:10 Sean Yeah, they're almost like care packages, really. There's all kinds of different tidbits. And. 00:16:39:17 - 00:17:00:07 Andrew You know, it shows that, you know, these people were all thinking about each other and like, oh, Lovecraft would love this, this clipping about Arabia. I'm going to cut that out next time I write them, I'll send it to him and vice versa. They were, you know, stocking up on fun tidbits to share with each other. And that's a really fun it's just a fun way of going about things. 00:17:00:12 - 00:17:02:12 Andrew That would be nice if people did. Yeah. 00:17:02:19 - 00:17:29:18 Sean There were very politely given and politely received too. And the clipping on on Arabia or something about, you know, the Edgar Allan Poe, you know, is going to be right up Lovecraft's alley in this one. And I was kind of fascinated that it seems that she sent him. I don't know what the agreeable vernal harbinger is, if it's some kind of seeds or some kind of wild grown plant or I for some reason I interpreted it as a plant. 00:17:29:18 - 00:17:30:04 Sean When I read. 00:17:30:04 - 00:17:30:20 Andrew It, I think. 00:17:31:09 - 00:17:45:04 Sean Which I tried to picture. Lovecraft Gardening is an image that had never entered my mind before. He refers to PD, CDC having sent the article and he was a nature author at the time. 00:17:45:04 - 00:17:46:01 Andrew He was a botanist. 00:17:46:01 - 00:17:47:21 Sean He was a botanist or a naturalist. 00:17:47:21 - 00:18:04:13 Andrew Yeah. And and a pretty well-known one at the time because he did have a column and he was highly regarded for apparently his columns were fun to read, but also scientifically right on the money. So I think Lovecraft really respected PD because he was not just a good columnist but a good scientist. 00:18:04:13 - 00:18:05:23 Sean Do you think he kept the plant alive? 00:18:05:24 - 00:18:14:03 Andrew I probably did as best I it's hard to I mean, we don't know what whether it was, you know, cut flowers that he just put in a face with water or whether a. 00:18:14:03 - 00:18:15:00 Sean Large cactus. 00:18:15:00 - 00:18:26:23 Andrew Or we don't know what it was. So who knows? Do you know? He mentions it just a little bit prior to that. Too bad you missed the Poe relative. I shall read that book when it becomes available. Do we know exactly what? 00:18:26:24 - 00:18:28:05 Sean I couldn't solve that. 00:18:28:15 - 00:18:32:01 Andrew I had a hunch. I know what the book is, but I don't know who the relative could be. 00:18:32:02 - 00:18:33:13 Sean Well, tell me what you think the book is. 00:18:33:13 - 00:18:44:16 Andrew There's a there was a book published in 1931 called Reminiscences of E.A. Poe. And you know, the title Reminiscences implies that whoever wrote it had some personal contact with. 00:18:44:16 - 00:18:46:09 Sean Ray, might have been a relative. 00:18:46:09 - 00:18:53:03 Andrew So, you know, a cousin or and, you know, something like that, because Poe, of course, didn't have any direct descendants. Right. 00:18:53:04 - 00:18:59:19 Sean And this does sort of has a flavor of being a book tour or, you know, the Poe relative came to town. And there's a thing about the. 00:18:59:19 - 00:19:15:01 Andrew Book that, you know, this family members apparently trying to set the record straight about Poe. The original biographies of Poe were written by people who hated Poe. Yeah. So hatchet jobs. Yeah. So, you know, this relative is presumably trying to set the record straight about Poe's life and write. 00:19:15:01 - 00:19:33:21 Sean And Lovecraft does, though, come to the defense of Harvey Allen. And his name is Rafal The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe, which had been published about five years before this and seems to if if that biography is making Lovecraft happy, then you've got to think it's pretty Poe A pretty propos. 00:19:34:08 - 00:19:37:11 Andrew Yeah, one would imagine. And then it gets into politics. 00:19:37:14 - 00:19:49:08 Sean Well, actually before the politics section starts, though, there is another interesting paragraph in there, which is when he's complimenting her on her sonnet and then telling her to change. 00:19:49:08 - 00:19:51:03 Andrew It can't help but edit it. Yeah. 00:19:51:19 - 00:19:54:20 Sean So did you find that pompous or helpful? 00:19:54:23 - 00:19:55:07 Andrew Or maybe. 00:19:55:07 - 00:19:58:09 Sean Both. I guess it's driven by the spirit in. 00:19:58:21 - 00:20:12:03 Andrew Relationship is based on her admiration of him as a judge of poetry. Maybe it makes sense, but what I think what confuses me is his suggestion that quiet is preferable to still list because quiet. I mean. 00:20:12:12 - 00:20:13:15 Sean They don't mean the same thing. 00:20:13:17 - 00:20:23:19 Andrew Mean the same thing in like even different parts of speech. So it's like, well, I would love to read the sonnet to know how quiet could be substituted for stillness. 00:20:24:07 - 00:20:33:10 Sean Right. And unless you're going to say quite the Scantron. Yeah. There's also going to be off with. Yeah. Still lost quiet. Yeah. 00:20:33:11 - 00:20:40:21 Andrew You know, so it's that's what I was puzzled by his suggestion. Not so much that he made it, but what the suggestion is. 00:20:41:04 - 00:20:58:17 Sean So what did you make from his entire can contempt for the concept of democracy and his utter political pragmatism that give me fascism, give me anything, as long as the trains run on time, which really ultimately seems to be, Well, his well, bigger point. 00:20:58:17 - 00:21:22:18 Andrew Except that the trains running on time is not even the point for him. What he says government ought to preserve, you know, are these incredibly abs, you know, a freedom to express intellectual opinion, an esthetic personality without restriction, a general atmosphere favorable to the creation of art and the search for truth for their own sake. These are things that no politician gives a rat's ass about, right? 00:21:22:18 - 00:21:24:13 Sean And I'm hungry. People don't care about. 00:21:24:17 - 00:21:48:23 Andrew Him to think that any politician is going to be at all concerned about the things that Lovecraft thinks government ought to be doing is I don't know if it's staggeringly naive or I don't know what it is, but it blows my mind that he thinks any form of government that does those things would be acceptable, right? I just can't it seems. 00:21:48:23 - 00:21:51:24 Andrew So I it blows my mind. 00:21:52:02 - 00:22:17:03 Sean It's also gets into a very fundamental question about what government can do. Can government pave it? Can you can you institute a type of government that will make people great creative, artistic thinkers in the way Lovecraft aspires? You know, what government can do is force the trains to run on time. There are practical things it can do, but some of these intellectual things are not necessarily don't fall within. 00:22:17:03 - 00:22:23:14 Andrew The earlier in the letter, he says there's no law against practicing art, but there could be sure, depending on who's in charge. 00:22:23:14 - 00:22:25:04 Sean Right. And the kind of art you want to practice. 00:22:25:04 - 00:22:37:00 Andrew Yeah. So, you know, it's just shocking to me. I mean, in this day and age, I mean, I'm coming to this living in the world we live in. Sure. So that's what, you know, gets me so upset that. 00:22:37:00 - 00:22:46:23 Sean Well, he comes back around to it. It doesn't matter. An infernal rap how the nation achieves a reasonably civilized and orderly condition so long as it does achieve such an but. 00:22:46:23 - 00:22:54:16 Andrew But the people in charge don't care about the civilized condition that he cares about. And it's ridiculous of him to think that that they would. 00:22:54:17 - 00:23:12:24 Sean Well, and I think it's also naive of him because he hasn't lived in, you know, contemporary North Korea or in some sort of place where liberties are are highly, highly seized. So he can go well, it doesn't really matter what the government does as long as they're letting me be a creative thinker or, you know, pursuing these abstract things. 00:23:12:24 - 00:23:25:10 Sean But I think if he were put face to face with the reality of living where those were the only rights you had, even if you know, he thinks it'd be great, I think he'd be lamenting it if he couldn't go out and buy enough sugar for his coffee. 00:23:25:10 - 00:23:30:08 Andrew Yeah, if if he weren't sitting on top of the food chain, he might have a different perspective. 00:23:30:09 - 00:23:41:02 Sean Sure. On the situation or used to sit on top of the food chain in this, watching the watching the top fall further and further away. But he's still yeah, he's still in the, you know, the top 10% of the world in which he lives. 00:23:41:02 - 00:24:00:09 Andrew And he may be I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with his point that an a huge, heterogeneous country like the United States of America. Yes, government does have to be run by specialists to some degree. But who chooses the specialists? That's the point. Sure. And he seems to think that, you know, all democracy is a ridiculous joke. It is a fantasy. 00:24:00:09 - 00:24:13:22 Andrew It doesn't matter, except and government should be left to specialists. Well, yeah, but who picks the specialists, right? I don't disagree that specialists are in incredibly important. But you don't let the specialists assign themselves, right? 00:24:13:23 - 00:24:25:13 Sean Who picks them and who do they answer to? Right. And then the bizarre assertion that democracy could somehow work in Switzerland and in historic New Zealand and yeah, his assertion that. 00:24:25:23 - 00:24:28:17 Andrew He could only work in the place where it actually worked. 00:24:28:17 - 00:24:34:10 Sean Once. Well, we'll move on from that because he moves on from that, because he then well, let's wrap it up with Einstein. That's the other. 00:24:34:10 - 00:24:50:15 Andrew Thing is that he he does I mean he drops all these bombs. Yeah. To me they're bombs. And then, Oh, yeah, let's change the subject. This is all. I guess what's shocking is he really apparently thinks it doesn't matter. Yeah, doesn't matter to him. 00:24:50:16 - 00:25:18:05 Sean Well, and that's what gets back to why I pick this. Because it's such an incredibly cynical point of view to think it doesn't matter. And I think for somebody like him, it wouldn't matter until such a time that the rights that he cherished were taken away. And then then it wouldn't matter. I think he'd write a whole new letter about, you know, how terrible it is when his ability to write fantastic literature is somehow suppressed by government specialists. 00:25:18:11 - 00:25:40:02 Sean Yeah, I think he would be singing a whole other tune. But as you were saying, talking about the clippings and the other delightful inclusions. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what brings him back around to this. This apparently an article by Frederick Hanley Sears, who was an astronomer talking about Einstein and Lovecraft, did find Einstein a really interesting guy. 00:25:40:06 - 00:25:56:19 Andrew Yeah. Yeah. And Lovecraft was well situated to understand and enjoy that conversation. And Lovecraft was interesting in that, you know, he could look at Einstein's works and have opinions about them, which, you know, few people would feel comfortable criticizing Einstein's view of the universe, probably. 00:25:56:19 - 00:26:07:07 Sean Well, I don't know. Lovecraft's opinionated enough. There's almost nothing he won't criticize if he wants to. Do you think he actually really understands general relativity? 00:26:07:07 - 00:26:16:07 Andrew I'm willing to bet he understands it better than you and I do. But I also don't think you want Lovecraft teaching a college course on relativity. All right, I agree with that. 00:26:16:11 - 00:26:26:08 Sean Okay. Well, that's good. You know who you do want, though? Teaching a course on Einstein and Lovecraft, though. Oh, Fred. Lubnow, Fred. 00:26:26:08 - 00:26:28:00 Andrew Lubnow. Yeah. Got to love, Fred. 00:26:28:00 - 00:26:46:12 Sean Lubnow. Yeah. I just crossed my mind as I was reading this last night. It was like, Oh, this is a letter written for Fred. For those of you who don't know Dr. Fred, the Lubnow is a he is the author of the Journal of Lovecraftian Science. He actually wrote an essay, rather long one called Lovecraft and Albert Einstein. 00:26:46:12 - 00:27:11:16 Sean Yeah, but he really gets into it's fun because his work sometimes brings in the real science behind Lovecraft stories, where Lovecraft is just writing, you know, imaginative works. But they'll bring in science, too, to go, Well, this is how the time travel of the at the ends, if you're really going to do it, this is how it would have to work. 00:27:11:16 - 00:27:16:17 Sean So if you're at all interested in Lovecraft and science. Dr. Fred Lubnow, you can easily find him online. 00:27:16:17 - 00:27:26:18 Andrew And yeah, we've met him a few times at Necronomicon and other places like that, and he has a fascinating website that's full of his various articles. Yeah, Fred is a fun guy. 00:27:26:18 - 00:27:29:13 Sean Yeah. So, you know. Wait, how do you mean that? 00:27:30:06 - 00:27:46:17 Andrew He's a fun guy. Sean from somewhere in the Midwest, I think. Our thanks today to Hippocampus Press for publishing this letter in their book of the Letters to Elizabeth told Region and Hilary Renshaw. 00:27:46:17 - 00:27:50:18 Sean You can learn more about them or pick up your own copy at hippocampus.com 00:27:50:18 - 00:27:54:10 Andrew I'm your obedient servant, Andrew Leman. 00:27:54:15 - 00:27:57:17 Sean And I am cordially and respectfully yours. Sean Branney. 00:27:57:24 - 00:28:01:15 Andrew You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:28:01:15 - 00:28:04:23 Sean If you've enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate it. If you take a moment to post a review. 00:28:04:23 - 00:28:09:04 Andrew Or tell a friend about the show, maybe through a letter, tell him all about Voluminous. 00:28:09:04 - 00:28:58:01 Sean Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.com