00:00:06:02 - 00:00:09:02 Sean Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:03 - 00:00:14:18 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:19 - 00:00:17:17 Sean In each episode, we'll read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney 00:00:17:17 - 00:00:23:02 Andrew And I'm Andrew Leman. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:23:03 - 00:00:30:15 Sean For today's letter, I chose one written on April 1st, 1930. James Ferdinand Morton Jr. 00:00:31:04 - 00:00:33:06 Andrew I am looking forward to hearing this one. 00:00:33:09 - 00:00:36:03 Sean Well, here you go. 00:00:36:18 - 00:01:07:22 Sean Tuesday, 1st April 1930. All Fools (My Patron. Saints Day) Flowing Fountain of Factual Fulgence:- Has four tastes and experience and time schedules. I see your point of view. Okay, enough in theory. But I have yet to be convinced that the objective world offers sufficient stimuli to produce anything like real contentment in a sensitively organized and disillusioned man. No matter how great may be, his capacities for adjustment to reality. 00:01:07:23 - 00:01:44:22 Sean As Doc Freud terms it. Reality is alright enough so far as it goes. I'm not one of those frantick bozoes who howl that everything is all wrong and poisonous and so on. The only trouble is that it doesn't go far enough for a guy with extreme sensitiveness. The faculty of interest is a goddamn complex thing. It is perfectly true that mild, conventional and highly respectable people like the average business and professional man, can get enough of a kick out of watching the meaningless routine phenomenon of this pimple on the cosmos to warrant their staying alive. 00:01:45:09 - 00:02:23:18 Sean But even with them, you can see it wears thin now and then, especially in this latest age of standardization and decreased variety and adventurousness. That's why more and more people kick over the traces and burst out in wild anti-social vagaries, which are just as meaningless as the routine against which they are a protest. And when you leave the amiably respectable class and consider men with individualized imaginations, you can't help seeing that objective phenomena are endless and predictable repetitions of the same old stuff over and over again form only the very beginning of what is needed to keep their sense of significance 00:02:24:00 - 00:02:48:18 Sean harmony and personal adjustment to infinity satisfied. All sensitive men have to call in unreality in some form or another, or go mad from ennui. That is why religion continues to hang on, even when we know it has no foundation in reality. That crazy old half Tartar Bolshevik Lenin stumbled on one snappy mouthful of truth when he said Religion is opium for the people. 00:02:49:04 - 00:03:12:05 Sean It's just that. And the only reason vast numbers of cultivated men stay cheerful is that they keep doped up on that same obsolete mythology. But that stuff can't last forever. We know too goddamn much about nature now to have it work. Reaction will try to keep it alive for another generation. We shall see desperate and damn fool movements like humanism, neo potpourri. 00:03:12:11 - 00:03:35:23 Sean Harry Emerson Fosdickism, and so on. But all that will peter out with the dying off of the last generations, reared in genuinely subjective religious faith. Read Joseph Wood Krutch's The Modern Temper. If you want the authentic expert low-down on all this. Then will come the test of whether man can or can't adequately nourish himself with objective reality alone. 00:03:36:06 - 00:04:04:22 Sean I, for one, say he can't, and I'm not judging from personal experience alone when I say it. Ol art Schopenhauer had the straight goods. However you look at it, there's so goddamn much more pain than pleasure and any average human life that it's a losing game unless a guy can pep it up with pure moonshine Either the literal 95 proof pink snake Volver or the church hooch of belief in immortality, and a benign old gentleman with long whiskers. 00:04:05:16 - 00:04:44:04 Sean For the debates of yore. And a cosmic purpose. Or else the Dunsanian conjuration of an illusion of fantastic and indefinite possibility are shadow'd forth in certain aesthetic interpretations of selected objective phenomena, time sequences, and cosmic and dimensional speculations. Now, of these three refuges, I prefer the third by a long shot, because the first is highly anesthetic in practice and degrading in symbolism, while the second is pure evil in substance and insulting to the intellect in its outright denial of plain facts and objective probabilities. 00:04:44:12 - 00:05:13:14 Sean For you will notice I do not share in the real mystics contempt for facts and objective conditions, even though I fail to find them interesting and satisfying. On the contrary, I am forced to respect them highly and allow for them in every system of imaginative refuge, I formulate. It gives me no kick at all to emulate the idealist or religionists and invent false conditions and significances which actually deny reality like crutch 00:05:13:19 - 00:05:50:19 Sean I had rather be a man and face reality than be a child and hide my head in a gilded gothic, freer do of absolute pretense For me then is the third course the consciously artificial manipulation of the theologians and myth makers privilege and manner of the 18th Baron Dunsany. That is the deliberate exercise of the human instinct for space, reach, adventure and cosmic identification through the weaving of fantastic esthetic impressions as such, and not as intellectual denials of objective reality. 00:05:51:12 - 00:06:17:23 Sean If you get what I mean, I like to supplement rather than contradict reality. I get no kick at all from postulating what isn't s as religion is an ideal, a stoop that leaves me cold. In fact, I have to stop dreaming about an unknown realm (such as Antarctica or Arabia deserter) as soon as the explorers enter it and discover a set of real conditions which dreams would be forced to contradict. 00:06:18:11 - 00:06:44:16 Sean My big kick comes from taking reality just as it is, accepting all the limitations of the most orthodox science, and then permitting my symbolizing faculty to build outward from the existing facts, rearing a structure of indefinite promise and possibility whose topless towers are in no cosmos nor dimension penetrable by the contradicting power of the tyrannous and inexorable intellect. 00:06:45:11 - 00:07:09:03 Sean But the whole secret of the kick is that I know damn well it isn't so. If I let the process interfere with my intellectual perceptions and discriminations in the theistic manner, I'd have no fun at all but merely feel like a damned ass. I'd probably trying to have my cake and eat it at the same time to get the intoxication of a sense of cosmic contact and significance as the theists do. 00:07:09:03 - 00:07:46:17 Sean and yet to avoid the ignorant and ignominious ostrich act whereby they cripple their vision and secure the disaster at result. But this is wandering from the issue. My point is that a highly organized man can't exist in durably without mental expansions beyond objective reality. I said it before and I say it's still. You yourself get such expansions through your lingering belief in the religious myths of cosmic purpose, values and governance myths which you can accept without ignominy, because an early theological environment has enabled you to actually imagine that such things are real. 00:07:46:23 - 00:08:19:08 Sean I repudiating the obsolete faiths from the start can have no such residual illusions. Hence, if I want to think of the cosmos as a significant thing in which man has no important and symmetrical part, I have to roll my own. And that's what guys like me and Edward John Morton, Drax Plunkett is doing. We're only cooking up a passable substitute for a type of delusion which the dying Orthodox civilization of platonic Christian speculation took for granted and worked for a kick under the amusing impression that it was reality. 00:08:19:17 - 00:08:44:13 Sean And that's that, every different bimbo to his own brand of gin. And I'll forgive the poor old timetables if their agents, which give providential an occasional glimpse of your aghast presence. Even so, they're damn stingy about it. Thanks for the cutting. You and I know the sort of place to get born in. No debate there. Even if we do differ on subsequent modes of gathering. 00:08:45:06 - 00:09:06:21 Sean Speaking of cuttings, here's a couple worth Lamping. You sent me a summer about the Chiltern hundreds and I confessed ignorance accept and hundred is an ancient Saxon land unit. Well, here's the rest of the tale from the Christian Science Monitor. You can keep this one. The other to be returned involves a bit of ancient history, which you may or may not remember. 00:09:07:05 - 00:09:33:15 Sean Do you recall a KLM meeting at 169 Clinton, in which we had a hot debate about the authenticity of highly modern literature, T.S. Eliot and etc. and I tried vainly to find a very pertinent explanatory article by Edmund Wilson in my files. Think hard. Well, after five years, I have found it. It was in an odd file, which I hadn't opened since leaving 598 Angel and not in my black walnut cabinet at all. 00:09:33:23 - 00:09:44:13 Sean Well, here it is at last. Now, are you convinced? And so it goes. See you later. Yours. indefinitely Theobaldus. 00:09:45:02 - 00:09:52:03 Andrew I'm looking forward to talking about James Ferdinand Morton. Sean. He was one of Lovecraft's biggest correspondents. What made you choose this particular letter? 00:09:52:06 - 00:10:11:05 Sean This one was actually referred to me. I was talking with ST Joshi relatively early on when we were developing this project, and I said, Are there any letters that really stand out to you as particularly interesting ones? And him being the sort of mind that he is, he was like, Well, there's the James Morton letter of April 1st, 1930. 00:10:11:13 - 00:10:30:05 Sean And I was like, I'm not familiar with that. So I went and looked it up and I was like, Oh, I can see why, I guess caught your attention. And it is a it's an interesting look at Lovecraft, which is an interesting look at his his opinions on these topics. And I thought a great way to introduce one of his significant correspondents, which is James Morton. 00:10:30:09 - 00:10:35:01 Andrew Now, did just out of curiosity, did he say why he liked this particular letter? 00:10:35:16 - 00:10:47:01 Sean I think what caught his attention was the manner in which Lovecraft discussed writing and ownership of the creative process. 00:10:47:01 - 00:11:11:21 Andrew Because certainly one of the things that struck me about this letter is how utterly different in tone it is to any of the others we've read so far. Yeah, he is Lovecraft. It's it's so slangy. And so, I mean, it's like Lovecraft dialed back 30 years to write this letter. He sounds like the 16 year old boy that, you know, he's been writing to in ones we've read recently. 00:11:11:23 - 00:11:41:05 Sean Well, one of the things I think that may fuel that is the fact that in most of his correspondence that we've read, Lovecraft has been writing to younger people. And here he's got somebody who's 20 years his senior, who's a Harvard educated, you know, well-established man of intellect and opinions. And so it's one of the first times, I think, where we see almost a paternal relationship in which Lovecraft is not the paternal figure. 00:11:41:05 - 00:11:42:16 Sean But he's the junior figure. 00:11:42:17 - 00:12:03:12 Andrew Yeah. And this the tone of this I mean, in contrast to the pompes and arrogant tone that he often takes with Frank Belknap Long. Reinhart Kleiner and other people in this, he's almost deferent. He is so you know, comparatively modest and circumspect and not declaiming This is the way it is. It's it's this is the way I think it is. 00:12:03:12 - 00:12:06:14 Andrew And I you you think it's the way you think it is. And that's great. 00:12:06:14 - 00:12:14:00 Sean The evolution of their relationship was was a pretty interesting one because Morton was part of the amateur press movement, as Lovecraft was. 00:12:14:00 - 00:12:15:21 Andrew They kind of started as adversaries. 00:12:16:02 - 00:12:32:07 Sean They absolutely started as adversaries with Lovecraft publishing his own his own publication, The Conservative. And Morton is a very, very, very progressive thinker. So we've really got the the right wing and the left wing. And Morton came back pretty hard at Lovecraft. Yeah. 00:12:32:22 - 00:12:43:13 Andrew As well he should have, because, yeah, Lovecraft wrote a very ugly essay called In a Major Key. Yeah. And that was, that was the one that Morton said, Oh, no, wait a minute. 00:12:43:18 - 00:13:11:12 Sean Right. Somebody's got to take a stand against this. And one of the things that that I think set them up for a long term constructive relationship is Morton didn't just blow him off, didn't just assault the arguments, but really took it apart step by step in a polite, insightful way, and I think managed to keep a tone of respect towards Lovecraft as a thinking person going. 00:13:11:13 - 00:13:32:02 Sean And I think when thinking people really disagree, you know, that's the beautiful thing about argument and debate is, is when both sides have merit and both sides have respect and now it's one person's going to apply their intellect to the other's arguments and say, well, this is what's wrong. You know, here I'm going to challenge you on the assertions you make on point. 00:13:32:02 - 00:13:53:01 Sean ABCDE and and Morton really did that with him, and I think Lovecraft took it in the right spirit. I think he you know, he had been slapped down, but he's been slapped down by somebody who really applied some intellect to Lovecraft's own arguments. And I think Lovecraft respected that. 00:13:53:23 - 00:14:16:17 Andrew I really am a big fan of James Ferdinand Morton because he is inspiring to me in this, especially in, you know, this day. And age recent years, I have noticed I think we've all noticed a trend, a tendency to write Lovecraft off. He is a horrible racist and we shouldn't like him. We should erase his image. We should stop reading him. 00:14:16:21 - 00:14:19:17 Andrew Let's let's pretend he never even existed. 00:14:19:18 - 00:14:22:23 Sean People send us e-mail with those suggestions relatively frequently. 00:14:22:24 - 00:14:26:19 Andrew Right. And it's it's come up, you know, recently in Providence, there have been you know, it's. 00:14:26:19 - 00:14:27:23 Sean Been it's an issue. 00:14:27:23 - 00:14:55:17 Andrew It's an issue. And Morton is a guy who gives me hope that you can disagree with someone without throwing them away. We should all learn from from Morton how to recognize someone's horrible flaws. But still be friends with them. I mean, the Morton of anybody, the man who wrote the Curse of Race Prejudice and, you know, was I mean, he couldn't be more different from Lovecraft, but he never just said, Lovecraft, you're a jerk. 00:14:55:17 - 00:15:15:02 Andrew I don't want to talk to you anymore. Right. He found a way to continue to be friends with this guy. And it's what gives me hope that I can somehow find a way to keep liking Lovecraft despite recognizing his horrible flaws. I get it. And I don't blame anyone who feels like we should just forget about Lovecraft. I get it. 00:15:15:09 - 00:15:26:19 Andrew But I've never felt that way. And James Ferdinand Morton is the kind of guy who helps me figure out how to keep liking Lovecraft despite not liking what some of what Lovecraft said and thought. 00:15:27:06 - 00:15:57:11 Sean And I think ultimately that's a lot of what this whole enterprise of voluminous is about, is to try and deal with Lovecraft, who's a frustrating and controversial and sometimes just downright appalling figure, and who sometimes a charming, generous, kind, insightful. You know, he's complicated as really we all are, you know, and some more than others, some more than others. 00:15:57:11 - 00:16:20:03 Sean But, you know, generally speaking, people are full of contradictions and people are full of complexity. And I think in taking in the wide scope of Lovecraft's letters, that gives us an opportunity to help us personally as Lovecraft guys and whoever's listening to the show process. Huh? Oh, boy, I hate that about this guy. Oh, I love this about this guy. 00:16:20:09 - 00:16:39:24 Sean Oh, those two opposing qualities can simultaneously exist. And at the end of the day, just just like we all have to choose to, to embrace, see each other and go, you know, this is What about Sean drives Andrew crazy. This is What about Andrew Drive? Sean crazy. But we go, we're going to put up with No, I know. 00:16:40:00 - 00:16:50:22 Sean Shocking news. Shocking news. But we're going to put up with each other for the you know, for for our of our whole lives (apparently) merrily So I got it's. 00:16:50:22 - 00:16:51:11 Andrew Drawing to a. 00:16:51:11 - 00:17:13:08 Sean Close. Eventually I'll get to the finish line but you can, you know, make a conscious choice to go yeah I can I'm going to deal with the whole, whole totality of this other person. Yeah. And we and you can come to your own conclusions. But I think there's there's a lot to redeem Lovecraft as well as, as those things. 00:17:13:08 - 00:17:19:05 Sean So anyway, that's what we're trying to do with the whole show. And I think the Morton letter is just delightfully representative of that. 00:17:19:19 - 00:17:21:24 Andrew Let's talk a little bit about James Ferdinand Morton. 00:17:21:24 - 00:17:22:21 Sean Why, yes, let's. 00:17:22:21 - 00:17:30:14 Andrew Because he was like you said, he's 20 years Lovecraft senior born, 1870. They first met like in 1920. I think. 00:17:30:19 - 00:17:48:07 Sean Right. They met in person in 22 and then twice in an hour. Sorry, they met in person in 1920 and then twice in 1922, Morton came to New York, and after those in-person meetings, Morton became a regular correspondent. They didn't write back and forth. 00:17:48:07 - 00:18:11:02 Andrew Their initial interchange with each other was through editorials in the amateur press, and at that point they were on very opposite sides. And, you know, one would never have thought they would grow to become lifelong friends and admirers of each other. Right. But they did, yeah. And once Lovecraft moved to New York, Morton was part of the KLM Club, and Morton and Lovecraft's each other in person all the time, along with all those other guys. 00:18:11:03 - 00:18:12:17 Sean Yeah, they seemed to be very chummy. 00:18:12:17 - 00:18:30:06 Andrew And Morton was. You can't imagine a more progressive, liberal, open minded, open hearted guy in 1906, he wrote a book. Book? It's a very thin book, but it's called The Curse of Race Prejudice. And it's all about the folly of prejudice, I highlighted a couple of passages I thought I might read. 00:18:30:06 - 00:18:31:02 Sean Oh, please do. Okay. 00:18:31:09 - 00:19:09:11 Andrew The prejudiced man is he who prefers something else to truth, who forms his opinion in advance of due inquiry and refuses to give a patient investigation to the claims of the view opposed to that to which he has committed himself. If the unbending facts of ethnology history, biology, psychology, and such other departments of knowledge as may be laid under contribution in the study of the relative values of the different races tend inexorably to the conclusion that the human race is one in all essential characteristics, and that no race can claim a permanent superiority over others or justly be doomed to a condition of permanent inferiority. 00:19:09:20 - 00:19:32:20 Andrew The charge of willful prejudice must be granted to be legitimately brought against those who deliberately shut their eyes to the proven facts of science and the permanent records of history, and seek to fan the flames of a barbarous race hatred, or to feed an already excessive vanity with pretenses of an inherent right to dominion over their brothers of a darker hue or an alien tongue or creed. 00:19:33:12 - 00:20:04:10 Andrew It is no new phenomenon but as old as human folly, of which it is so conspicuous an example being wholly emotional, it expresses itself mainly by means of hysterical ejaculations its fruit says will later be seen range from burlesque fears of imaginary contamination to the foulest massacres that have stained the pages of history. It is the offshoot of so obviously childish, a vanity that the one amazing fact in the whole controversy is to find it seriously defended by any civilized man. 00:20:04:11 - 00:20:09:17 Sean That's quite a quite quite an essay to unleash on the world in 1906, in. 00:20:09:17 - 00:20:10:14 Andrew 1906. 00:20:10:14 - 00:20:16:02 Sean And you look at the history of the 20th century, which is really largely driven by. 00:20:16:05 - 00:20:17:04 Andrew That racial. 00:20:17:04 - 00:20:19:17 Sean Prejudice. And and it's still an issue. 00:20:19:17 - 00:20:34:10 Andrew You know, a lot of the people who who try to excuse Lovecraft's racism say, well, everybody was racist in the 1920s and this goes to show, you know, James F Morton wrote this in 1906. So it's not true that everyone was a racist. 00:20:34:10 - 00:20:45:03 Sean And yeah, it was a more prevalent attitude than it is today. Yes, absolutely. But Lovecraft's views are not representative of the average American of, you know, the 1920s and thirties. 00:20:45:03 - 00:21:16:02 Andrew One of the reasons I wanted to read this is because when I read it, it struck me how amazing, really, because Lovecraft himself was so devoted to science and, you know, taking things as they are, is or isn't. And yet when it came to race, Morton has his number. It is pure, absolute vanity, and it is pure folly for him to refuse to accept the plain facts of science and history and biology and, you know, ethnology and psychology, all the things that Morton is citing here. 00:21:16:03 - 00:21:28:00 Andrew Lovecraft has a complete blind spot, too. I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms before, but it is kind of shocking that Lovecraft can say, Oh, human humanity is nothing. Humanity is a little tiny dot, a little. 00:21:28:00 - 00:21:29:10 Sean Spot, but my part is. 00:21:29:18 - 00:21:43:24 Andrew Part of humanity on your part. It's like how Lovecraft, who had that objective cosmic point of view about so many things, could get so petty and personal when it came to race. 00:21:44:05 - 00:22:07:23 Sean It makes me wonder if if that quality in him was something that was inculcated in him from his youth. I wonder what part of his upbringing and I've never I don't think I've ever seen anything that really addressed. Yeah, anybody in his family or anything like that espousing those ideas. But they're clearly there. And as you say, they're absolutely antithetical to the worldview that he himself embraces and espouses in. 00:22:07:23 - 00:22:16:05 Andrew Almost every other sphere of life. You wouldn't think racism would be something Lovecraft would ascribe to, but he does well. 00:22:16:07 - 00:22:38:17 Sean But fear is a big part of Lovecraft. And I think the fear of the those not like me taking away what is mine because of his life's events. Yeah. Even without his life. Sometimes that's an underpinning quality that his worldview has. And I think that's a manifestation of it. But anyway, it's great to see Morton taking a stand like this. 00:22:38:17 - 00:22:51:08 Sean Yeah. You know, prior to World War One. Wow. Yeah. What a guy. And he, he also was into, you know, free thought and free love. And, you know, some of the Victoria would hold the rights for women's rights for women, freedom of the press. What next. Yeah, he. 00:22:51:08 - 00:22:58:11 Andrew Was, he was a man ahead of his time. I wish I had known him because he he is an inspiring figure who gives me some hope. 00:22:58:15 - 00:23:24:15 Sean Yeah. So some people say, oh, Lovecraft kind of grew out of his racism as he grew older, and that's not really held out by by the facts. But what did happen is the very conservative Lovecraft of 1915. Yeah, he does really evolved over the next 20 years and so the political Lovecraft by like you know, the Great Depression in the mid thirties has a very different view of economic political. 00:23:24:17 - 00:23:44:06 Sean Yeah just pure staunch conservatism does not ultimately serve the world. And he's also watching it, not serve him. Yeah. As his his fortunes continue to plummet downhill through the thirties. It's like all these things I believed, and there's a lot of hungry people out there. Yeah, including me. 00:23:44:06 - 00:24:08:05 Andrew Yeah. And there's also, I think as well as we'll continue to discover and explore as we read more of these letters, you know, in Lovecraft there was a difference to Lovecraft between intellectual opinion and how he personally felt about things. Sure, he could hold an intellectual opinion that is completely at odds with his personal feelings, and he could somehow manage to have both those things going on in his mind at the same time. 00:24:08:10 - 00:24:17:07 Andrew There's a difference between thinking a thing and feeling a thing. Sure. And Lovecraft is able to think and feel sometimes things that are mutually opposite. 00:24:17:10 - 00:24:45:23 Sean And he's got a fascinating schism because he he holds in so much more esteem how he thinks than how he feels. He's so dismissive of human emotions and he so idolizes cognition and thought and an intellectual point of view. And, you know, maybe maybe it's sort of the overemphasis of the intellect comes from a place of self self-loathing about how he's bothered by the feelings that. 00:24:45:23 - 00:24:50:11 Sean Yeah, so I don't know, that's a little cheap, cheap Lovecraftian psychology. We'll have to read. 00:24:50:11 - 00:24:50:20 Andrew A few more. 00:24:50:20 - 00:24:55:01 Sean Letters to horribly unqualified people espousing their opinions. 00:24:56:18 - 00:24:59:07 Andrew Don't listen to us. Turn this podcast off right now. 00:24:59:13 - 00:25:29:16 Sean There you go. For all that about Morton, there was one quality I wanted to share about him because this makes it all seem like the relationship is a very an intellectual exercise, which it certainly appears in their correspondence. And yet in 1925, James Morton, H.P. Lovecraft went on to their famed ice cream eating contest at Max Fields in Providence, where, along with Frank Belknap Long and Donald Wandrei, they sampled 28 different flavors of ice cream. 00:25:31:01 - 00:25:47:07 Sean Yeah, if there's anything that can bring people together. Yeah. It's 28 different flavors of ice cream on me. I'm here to tell you. But I thought it was great to that. One little biographical tidbit really humanizes and goes, Wow, okay. These are these are also regular guys. 00:25:47:07 - 00:25:53:03 Andrew Who they also tried briefly to go into business together with the Craft and Service Bureau. Don't forget that. 00:25:53:03 - 00:25:53:14 Sean How did that go ? 00:25:53:14 - 00:26:12:02 Andrew No, I don't think very well. They made some very ambitious claims for the Craft and Service Bureau. They were basically offering to fix all of your life's troubles as well as your bad writing. There's a great well, maybe we'll post a link to it. There's a photo of the ad for the Craft and Service Bureau. That is that's a lot of fun. 00:26:12:03 - 00:26:40:05 Sean One of the sentences I want to point out in here that that really struck me as Lovecraft's making this, the intellectual argument was, he says, My point is the highly organized man can't exist in durably without mental expansion beyond objective reality. I'm not sure that's true, but it's true for Lovecraft, right? He needs to be able to step beyond the boundaries. 00:26:40:05 - 00:27:02:21 Sean And that's why he can't write a piece of fiction like Hemingway, which is a man in a boat catching a fish or a guy driving an ambulance on the lions in World War One, where it is all about objective reality. Lovecraft has that need to to break the rules, break the boundaries, and go someplace beyond. And yet what he craves is that sense of plausibility. 00:27:02:21 - 00:27:08:04 Sean It's got to be realistic. Right. And then knock down one wall to take it just a little bit further. 00:27:08:04 - 00:27:11:18 Andrew Because it was totally made up and it would be no better than religion, which is. 00:27:11:18 - 00:27:31:02 Sean Ridiculous. Right. And he doesn't want that. He wants that sense of plausibility. And to me, I think of the Mountains of Madness, which is a great story, or even dreams in the White House to where he spends a lot of time dealing with science and objective reality and objective reality almost to the point where you're you're getting tired of it because nothing else has really happened. 00:27:31:02 - 00:27:37:14 Sean And then it's like when these special things happened in the witch house, or they find things that break all the rules in Antarctica. 00:27:37:14 - 00:28:00:12 Andrew It's like that is this is sort of Lovecraft's secret recipe for fiction is to start with something mundanely realistic, right? And then once it's very well-established, then you introduce just one weird thing that lets you go off on a tangent. And that's why I think it's so evocative to you and me, is because you know it. It's based on the real world, right? 00:28:00:12 - 00:28:10:08 Andrew And yet it goes further. And that's part of what's so freeing about it. That's what sets your imagination on fires that, well, if this weird thing happens and oh, what other weird thing could. 00:28:10:08 - 00:28:28:13 Sean Happen and could happen in our own world. If you read Tolkien, you have to just go, I'm going to leave my own world behind and go to this other world where all these things can happen. But here it's like it's it's our everyday reality, right? And yet there are things beyond our perception that are just waiting for us to engage with them. 00:28:28:13 - 00:28:47:08 Sean And that's that's, I think, to me, a much more a much more exciting notion. And I think, you know, fundamentally that's why I'm personally much more drawn to the mythos stories than I am, say, to the Dream Lions. One show a lot of the very Dunsany and things where it's like, you know, oh, it's beautiful sunsets and beautiful architecture and it's pretty and it's weird. 00:28:47:08 - 00:29:05:23 Sean And the place names are all hard to say, but the experience of those stories I find much less engaging than something like Pickman's model, where it's like, Man, if you just went to the Wright's basement in Boston and knew the right creepy artist, right, he could show you things that would blow your mind. 00:29:05:23 - 00:29:25:21 Andrew I imagine that the Dreamland stuff worked for Lovecraft because they were Lovecraft's dreams. He had this direct, personal, visceral connection to all his own dreamland material that we just can't ever get. In this letter, Lovecraft says. You know, there's three ways to get your kicks. You can either do what I do, which is start from reality and then add to it. 00:29:25:21 - 00:29:35:01 Andrew Or you can believe in religion, which is totally made up or you can get drunk. And the reason he doesn't like the getting drunk option is because it's so tacky. It is it. 00:29:35:01 - 00:29:35:13 Sean Is beneath. 00:29:35:13 - 00:29:49:11 Andrew Him. It's anesthetic. It is anesthetic pleasing to be drunk. And that's why he doesn't do that version. I wonder, you know, would he have written any stories if he didn't find booze so, so, so disdainful? 00:29:49:16 - 00:30:07:10 Sean Well, and we heard him wondering about what the effects cannabis would have had on him if he had had tried it. And yeah, I sometimes wonder about that, too. If you think of a story like Old Bugs, which is, as you know, cautionary, a cautionary tale about drinking and is was there some part of him that wondered what would be set free in him if he were to alter his consciousness? 00:30:07:15 - 00:30:12:05 Andrew Well, there certainly have been, you know, generations of great artists who did both who. 00:30:12:05 - 00:30:12:18 Sean Oh, sure. 00:30:12:20 - 00:30:20:16 Andrew Who, you know, got lost in addiction and booze and drugs and, you know, some of them created great art, but, man, they all paid horrible, horrible prices, rough life. 00:30:20:16 - 00:30:29:13 Sean Yeah. And for a guy who admired Poe as much as Lovecraft did. Yeah, you would. You would think there might actually be some temptation there to to see. 00:30:29:22 - 00:30:33:18 Andrew Maybe that's why he take it for inspiration. Maybe that's why he thought it was so distasteful. 00:30:33:18 - 00:30:39:08 Sean Maybe so. Yeah. I wouldn't want anybody beneath him as a gentleman to end up in a in a Baltimore gutter. 00:30:39:09 - 00:31:00:18 Andrew So one of the things that makes it so different from other letters we've read so far is how much slang he uses in this or his quest. You know, there's bimbos and bozos and oh, here's a thing lamp. It, you know, you know, which presumably means, you know, take a look at it, shine a light on it, the lamp, it it's very and you know, Lenin is snappy with this religion is the opiate of the people. 00:31:00:18 - 00:31:05:24 Andrew And Lovecraft comes across as a goofy kid trying to impress or please. 00:31:06:00 - 00:31:09:05 Sean Yeah. There's a sense. A sense of yeah. Aspiring to be hip. 00:31:09:05 - 00:31:24:01 Andrew Yeah. And I was struck by one of his slangy sentences is reality is alright enough so far as it goes. I'm not one of those frantic bozos who howl that everything is all wrong and poisonous and so on. Yes, you are. You frown, You Complain that everything's all wrong all the time. 00:31:24:05 - 00:31:32:18 Sean And it's very true. Yeah, I also love the phrase every different bimbo to his own brand of gin. Yeah, but. 00:31:33:15 - 00:31:33:22 Andrew Who. 00:31:33:22 - 00:31:37:10 Sean Are you? What do you know about gin, anyway? And bimbo. So I was. 00:31:37:10 - 00:31:59:02 Andrew Also struck when he's complaining about how reality wears thin now and then, especially in this latest age of standardization and decreased variety and adventurousness. This written in 1930. Imagine how Lovecraft would feel in this day and age when there's a Starbucks and a Walmart and O dolls on every corner. Yeah, you know, if you if you're complaining about standardization in 1930, old man, you would hear, Yeah. 00:31:59:02 - 00:32:00:12 Sean And mechanization too. 00:32:00:12 - 00:32:02:06 Andrew You would hate 2019 man. 00:32:03:02 - 00:32:13:23 Sean The sign off from this letter I also thought was interesting because it's a little different than he ever uses anywhere else, you know? And so it goes see you later or is and definitely the of Aldo's Yeah. 00:32:14:10 - 00:32:18:24 Andrew And so it goes that's a phrase I've always associate with Kurt Vonnegut doesn't Kurt Vonnegut always say. And so it goes. 00:32:18:24 - 00:32:19:20 Sean He does yeah. Yeah. 00:32:20:02 - 00:32:23:05 Andrew And I don't know if I mean I guess it's a common enough phrase. I don't. 00:32:23:05 - 00:32:24:23 Sean I don't think Vonnegut coined it the claim. 00:32:24:23 - 00:32:25:05 Andrew To it. 00:32:25:05 - 00:32:27:20 Sean But I think I think in Slaughterhouse Five it's he was pretty extensive. 00:32:27:20 - 00:32:32:04 Andrew Every time I hear Lovecraft say and so it goes it's a jarring time jump for. 00:32:32:04 - 00:32:44:19 Sean Me his sign off the other one's your obedient servant. A lot of them are sort of more poetical and have a different formality to the sign off of them. So it goes a later, which is like much more human. It's much more of a normal guy going. 00:32:44:21 - 00:33:02:05 Andrew At the end of the previous paragraph. It's a very sweet thing where you saying, you know, I'll forgive the poor old timetables if they're the agents which give Providence him an occasional glimpse of your August presence. But even so, they're damn stingy about it. It's like, I wish I could see you more often. It is, right. It's a very sweet way of saying I miss you. 00:33:02:11 - 00:33:09:03 Andrew Yeah, James, I miss you. Yeah. And I wish. I wish you could be here more often. It's just a very sweet little note. 00:33:09:09 - 00:33:32:21 Sean Yeah. And one last thing. After talking about the sign offs, the salutation in this is is unusual as he addresses Morton as the flowing fountain of factual fulgent. Yeah, well, in all. Well, maybe not all, but in the vast majority of the Morton letters, it's all a string of four alliterative letters, words that go together. And it's that's. 00:33:32:21 - 00:33:33:14 Andrew Their running thing. 00:33:33:14 - 00:33:38:19 Sean It's a running gag. I don't know if if Morton use them back to Lovecraft, but Lovecraft always uses them with Morton. 00:33:38:19 - 00:33:53:04 Andrew I think I read somewhere in Joshi that although Morton was one of Lovecraft's big correspondents, most of the actual original letters, nobody knows where they are anymore. They. Oh, really? Morton sent them in to Arkham House, and so they exist as Arkham House transcripts and all those. 00:33:53:04 - 00:33:54:09 Sean But the originals are lost. 00:33:54:10 - 00:33:55:02 Andrew The originals are. 00:33:55:07 - 00:33:56:10 Sean All we have are the typescript. 00:33:56:10 - 00:34:09:11 Andrew All we have is Arkham House's TypeScript. So they sent them back to Morton, presumably? Well, no, they probably didn't send them because Morton died in like 1941. Right. So I don't know. Apparently nobody knows where the original letters are. 00:34:09:15 - 00:34:10:20 Sean Well, they might have gotten trashed. 00:34:10:20 - 00:34:14:19 Andrew They might have. All we have left Are the transcripts prepared by Arkham House? Yeah. 00:34:14:19 - 00:34:34:18 Sean We're lucky in a lot of ways that the boys in Arkham House captured what they did right on the heels of Lovecraft's death. Yeah, because I thought it was interesting that the none of the can over letters are in the Arlington letters. Selected letters. So I don't know if they didn't reach out to him because Canova is referred to in other bits of Lovecraft correspondence. 00:34:34:18 - 00:34:41:23 Sean So one would presume Douglas knew about him. And I don't know if Conover didn't want to or wasn't asked to. I don't actually know what the story. 00:34:41:23 - 00:34:46:08 Andrew Himself, I mean, would have only been 17 or 18 at the time, so maybe he just wasn't. 00:34:46:09 - 00:34:56:21 Sean Well, I don't know.Barlow's got it covered and he's only 19 when Lovecraft dies, so I don't know what the story is there, but by God, lots of stories where we don't know what's going on. That's true. 00:34:57:04 - 00:34:59:02 Andrew I have one other little piece I want to read. 00:34:59:03 - 00:35:00:00 Sean Oh, yeah, bring it on. 00:35:00:09 - 00:35:21:09 Andrew Lovecraft mentions at the end of this letter he was trying to find an article by Edmund Wilson. Hmm. Wilson was in the 1920s and thirties, you know, the editor of Vanity Fair and The New Republic. He was a very major figure in American literature. He was a critic who promoted the careers of T.S. Eliot and Sinclair Lewis and all these heavy hitters of the twenties. 00:35:21:16 - 00:35:35:12 Andrew And he, very famously in the forties, wrote a very mean review about Lovecraft saying that Lovecraft was a hack and that his stories were all terrible, which was really punching down for Edmund Wilson. Sure. You know Titanic figure in Lovecraft. 00:35:36:00 - 00:35:36:22 Sean Minor pulp writer. 00:35:36:23 - 00:35:56:17 Andrew To be trashing a guy who, you know, never published a hardback book in his life. Anyway, I was looking up Edmund Wilson, and I just wanted to contrast we've we've noticed how generous Lovecraft could be in writing answers to fan mail. You know, he would give you the shirt off his back this. Was Edmund Wilson's standard response to fan mail. 00:35:57:13 - 00:36:35:15 Andrew Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to read manuscripts, write books and articles to order right forwards or introductions, make statements for publicity purposes, do any kind of editorial work, judge literary contests, give interviews, conduct educational courses, deliver lectures give talks or make speeches, take part in writers Congresses, answer questionnaires, contribute to or take part in symposiums or panels of any kind, contribute manuscripts for sales, donate copies of his books to libraries, autograph books for strangers, allow his name to be used on letterheads, supply personal information about himself, supply photographs of himself, supply opinions on literary or other subjects. 00:36:35:21 - 00:36:41:23 Andrew And this was the standard pre printed postcard that Edmund Wilson would send when people wrote him fan mail. 00:36:41:23 - 00:36:42:19 Sean What a charmer. 00:36:42:19 - 00:36:56:19 Andrew What a charmer. So it's like you couldn't have two more opposite approach to dealing with your fans than Lovecraft and Edmund Wilson. Edmund Wilson also apparently hated J.R.R. Tolkien and thought he was writing juvenile trash. So. 00:36:56:19 - 00:37:17:16 Sean Well, I would say these days there's the names. Tolkien and Lovecraft are quite a bit more familiar than Wilson. Yeah, he should have let people use his name and likeness and send them books and yeah, agreed to be interviewed, etc.. Our thanks today to hippocampus Press for their collection of the letters from Lovecraft to James F Morton. 00:37:17:16 - 00:37:22:02 Andrew You can learn more about them at WWW.hippocampuspress.com 00:37:22:07 - 00:37:24:14 Sean I'm your obedient servant Sean Branney. 00:37:24:14 - 00:37:26:13 Andrew And I am cordially and respectfully yours Andrew Leman 00:37:26:13 - 00:37:30:18 Sean You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:37:30:22 - 00:37:35:12 Andrew If you've enjoyed the show, we sure would appreciate it. If you'd take a moment to post a review or a rating. 00:37:35:12 - 00:37:38:07 Sean Or even better, tell a friend or two about voluminous. 00:37:38:07 - 00:38:05:06 Andrew Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org