00:00:06:00 - 00:00:09:11 Andrew Welcome to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:12 - 00:00:14:18 Sean In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:19 - 00:00:17:12 Andrew In each episode, we'll read and discuss one of them. 00:00:17:16 - 00:00:22:16 Sean I'm Andrew Leman, and I'm Sean Branney. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:23:06 - 00:00:25:20 Andrew For today's letter Sean 00:00:25:20 - 00:00:26:12 Sean Yes Andrew 00:00:26:21 - 00:00:30:09 Andrew I chose one that will take more than one day to read. 00:00:30:09 - 00:00:38:19 Sean It's more than one day to read and more than a month to read. Well, this is like the length of the manuscript about the mountains of madness. This is one of the longer. 00:00:39:16 - 00:00:47:17 Andrew This is one of those letters that gave Lovecraft his reputation for being an amazing letter writer among his correspondence, because it is an amazing letter. 00:00:47:17 - 00:00:52:21 Sean This is this is one of those situations like like Dickens, where it's like he's being paid by the word, you know? Yeah. 00:00:52:21 - 00:00:58:08 Andrew But, you know, you can tell in this particular letter that this is just flowing out of him. I mean, it is. 00:00:58:20 - 00:01:03:22 Sean There is some stream of consciousness going on, but really, we're tormenting these people. So let's begin the hearing. 00:01:04:11 - 00:01:10:23 Andrew It was written on February 27th of 1931 to Frank Belknap Long. 00:01:10:23 - 00:01:23:06 Sean We're going to break this into four parts. So we're you'll hear the first more or less quarter of it. We'll talk about it in this episode. And then in subsequent episodes, we'll do the second part of the letter, discuss third, etc.. 00:01:23:07 - 00:01:23:22 Andrew You'll enjoy it. 00:01:24:06 - 00:01:25:10 Sean Oh, yeah, no doubt. Okay. 00:01:25:10 - 00:01:54:03 Andrew Here comes, comes part one. Freyer's-Daeg. February 27, 1931. Young Bellamy. Well, sir, you certainly have given a good account of yourself as a controversialist, even if you do hang egotistically on your manuscript, as if it were a precious Egyptian papyrus! Bless me, but I write arguments longer than that two or three times a week of various correspondence and never give a damn about what becomes of them. 00:01:54:18 - 00:02:14:24 Andrew However, since this fits into your coming book, I'll forgive you, except for that super added touch about not lending the letter. Sink me, sir, But do you fancy spies of your rivals or following you about watching for pearls of polished wisdom to drop from your almost mustache lifted lip? It must be exquisite to live in a vision like that. 00:02:15:08 - 00:02:37:05 Andrew Some people need a quart of rye to get that way. Ah,me- the phantastical illusions of adolescence. But I vow I was never quite as bad as all that! In replying, I am going to attempt to avoid the usual long-windedness of argument by depending largely upon pencil notes which I appended to your text as I usually do with Harris and Weiss letters. 00:02:37:17 - 00:03:06:00 Andrew The return of this annotated text will eliminate a great deal of repetition and elaboration, though in addition I shall probably make enough comments to require at least a long envelope. However, if you deem these comments unduly long, reflect on how much longer they would have been had I not disposed of so much material otherwise! It is just as ridiculous to get excited and hysterical over a coming cultural change as to get excited and hysterical over one's physical aging. 00:03:06:07 - 00:03:32:10 Andrew Both are, let us grant contraventions of our egotistical will, but both are equally inevitable and there is no more sense in getting childishly rebellious about fading romance in poetry, than there is in pouting and screaming over one's wrinkling face, thinning hair, and stiffening joints. There is a legitimate pathos about both processes, but blame and rebellion are essentially cheap because inappropriate, emotions. 00:03:32:22 - 00:03:57:18 Andrew We laugh at an old woman who dyes her hair and shoots paraffin under a sagging cheek. And so must we laugh at an old esthete who tries to pump a spurious life into the dead heroics of a Byron or the putrescent pseudo-glamour of a picaresque romance. We laugh because of the obvious inadequacy of the gesture, the shabby pretense that something is so when it isn't so. 00:03:58:03 - 00:04:19:17 Andrew Don Quixote. Oh, yes, we are interested. Da da da. Isn't it interesting! Romance, the open road, inns, donkeys, windmills, Ha ha ha.... We are interested, I tell you, we're. Oh, so interested. Yes, Yes. I defy you to say we're not interested. This is glamour. Glamour, I tell you. Can't you see the moon shining? No, no. I am not yawning. 00:04:19:20 - 00:04:39:10 Andrew I swear to you that I am not yawning. This is literature. This is life. No, I don't know anything that's ever happened to me which the book links up with, nor have I felt many of the emotions depicted. but the professor says it's literature and that I ought to like it because it used to please and move people when they lived and thought and felt differently. 00:04:39:13 - 00:05:06:01 Andrew Hence, I swear I do like it. I do like it. I swear to you that I do like it. Ho hum. zzz..and so to bed. This represents the traditionalists ideal as applied to the majority of keen-minded young men reared with eyes open in this postwar generation. It all seems strange to the few surviving traditionalists to whom such vestiges actually do represent authentic emotional values. 00:05:06:10 - 00:05:26:20 Andrew But these human reliques must learn to readjust their perspectives and face the conditions as they are. And before they begin whining and pulling their long hair, let them ask themselves how such a "rebellion" would look if staged against some equally inevitable phenomenon like the washing away of England's east coast or the changing of their sons voices at puberty. 00:05:27:03 - 00:05:59:24 Andrew Fashions in feeling come and go as causative conditions come and go. And such conditions are parts of a vast natural cycle, far beyond the power of human will to change. Beat not against Darozhând. And make no mistake, pathos is indeed validly present; but this is a well-defined emotion, by no means interchangeable with resentment. It is wholly appropriate to feel a deep sadness at the coming of unknown things and the departure of those around which all our symbolic associations are entwined. 00:06:00:12 - 00:06:42:24 Andrew All life is fundamentally and inextricably sad with the perpetual snatching away of all the chance combinations of image and vista and mood that we become attached to, and the perpetual encroachment of the shadow of decay upon illusions of expansion and liberation which buoyed us up and spurred us on in youth. That is why I consider all jauntiness, and many forms of carelessly generalized humor, as essentially cheap and mocking and occasionally ghastly and corpselike. Jauntiness and non-ironic humor in this world of basic and inescapable sadness are like the hysterical dances that a mad-man might execute on the grave of all his hopes. 00:06:43:17 - 00:07:14:03 Andrew But if, at one extreme, intellectual poses of spurious happiness be cheap and disgusting, so at the other extreme are all gestures and fist-clenchings of rebellion equally silly and inappropriate, if not quite so overtly repulsive. All these things are ridiculous and contemptible because they are not legitimate applicable. Now don't mistake me as you seem to when you claim that I urge the sacrifice of pleasure in the interest of truth, or of some austere harmony dependent upon truth. 00:07:14:03 - 00:07:38:14 Andrew I am not asking any such sacrifice or claiming that either jauntiness or rebellion would be ridiculous if it had any depth or sincerity. But jauntiness never has depth or sincerity. The stink of pretence and spuriousness always clings about it. While cosmic rebellion is based on such glaring misconceptions of plain facts that it only grows in childishness as it grows in intensity. 00:07:39:01 - 00:08:02:17 Andrew It is never tragedy, but only petulance. The sole sensible way to face the cosmos and its essential sadness (and adumbration of true tragedy, which no destruction of values can touch) is with manly resignation, eyes open to the real facts of perpetual frustration, and mind and sense alert to catch what little pleasure there is to be caught during one's brief instant of existence. 00:08:03:08 - 00:08:44:08 Andrew Once we know, as a matter of course, how nature inescapably sets our freedom-adventure-expansion desires, and our symbol and experience affections, definitely beyond all zones of possible fulfillment, we are, in a sense fortified in advance, and able to endure the ordeal of consciousness with considerable equanimity. It generally happens, as I have said before, that one is able to snatch enough enjoyment to make life as endurable as oblivion; so that we are only occasionally tempted to chuck the whole thing off whilst to perhaps a quarter of us, according to chance, a real excess of pleasure piles up in such a way as to make existence actually preferable to non-existence. 00:08:44:22 - 00:09:12:18 Andrew Life, if well filled with distracting images and activities favorable to the ego sense's of expansion, freedom and adventure, its expectancy can be very far from gloomy, and the best way to achieve this condition is to get rid of the unnatural conceptions which make conscious evils out of impersonal and inevitable limitations... Get rid of these, and of those false and unattainable standards which breed misery and mockery through their beckoning emptiness. 00:09:13:07 - 00:09:45:03 Andrew A man of sense can usually achieve a high percentage of reasonably cheerful moments. But this can be done only by adhering to factors of sober reality. The false jollity dependent on illusion, is merely a momentary flash soon offset by corresponding moments of abysmal emotional depression.... Some former art attitudes - like sentimental romance, loud heroics, ethical didacticism, etc - are so patently hollow as to be visibly absurd and non-usable from the start. 00:09:45:17 - 00:10:12:21 Andrew Others, like those dependent on moods and feelings (pity, tragedy, personal affection, group loyalty, etc.) which are still empirical conduct factors, though intellectually undermined, have an excellent chance of survival. Fantastic literature cannot be treated as a single unit because it is a composite resting on widely divergent bases. I really agree that YogSothoth is a basically immature conception and unfitted for really serious literature. 00:10:13:09 - 00:10:34:24 Andrew The fact is I have never approached serious literature as yet. But I consider the use of actual folk myths as even more childish than the use of new artificial myths, since in employing the former, one is forced to retain many blatant, pure images and contradictions of experience which could be centralized or smoothed over if the supernaturalism were model to order for the given case. 00:10:35:17 - 00:11:00:16 Andrew The only permanently artistic use of Yog-Sothothery, I think, is in symbolic or associative phantasy of the frankly poetic type; in which fixed dream patterns of the natural organism are given an embodiment and crystallization. The reasonable permanence of this phase of poetic phantasy as a possible art form, whether or not favored by current fashion, seems to me a highly strong probability. 00:11:00:17 - 00:11:27:20 Andrew It will, however, demand ineffable adroitness -The vision of a Blackwood join to the touch of a De la Mare and is probably beyond my utmost powers of achievement. I hope to see material of this sort in time, though I hardly expect to produce anything even remotely approaching it myself. I am too saturated in the empty gestures and single moods of an archaic and vanished world to have any successful traffic with symbols of an expanded dream reality. 00:11:28:07 - 00:11:58:00 Andrew But there is another phase of cosmic fantasy which may or may not include frank Yog-Sothotery, whose foundations appear to me as better grounded than these of ordinary, oneiros-copy. Personal limitation. Regarding the sense of outsid ness. I refer to the aesthetic crystallization of that burning and inextinguishable feeling of mixed wonder and opression, which the sensitive imagination experiences upon scaling itself and its restrictions against the vast and provocative abyss of the unknown. 00:11:58:15 - 00:12:25:15 Andrew This has always been the chief emotion in my psychology, and whilst it obviously figures less in the psychology of the majority, it is clearly a well-defined and permanent factor from which very few sensitive persons are wholly free. Here we have a natural biological phenomenon so untouched and untouchable by intellectual disillusionment that it is difficult to envisage its total death as a factor in the most serious art. Reason as we may 00:12:25:15 - 00:12:49:06 Andrew we cannot destroy a normal perception of the highly limited and fragmentary nature of our visible world of perception and experience as scaled against the outside abyss of unthinkable galaxies and unplanned dimensions. An abyss where in our solar system is the merest dot by the same local principle that makes a sand grain a dot as compared with the whole planet Earth. 00:12:49:13 - 00:13:19:13 Andrew No matter what relativistic system we may use in conceiving the cosmos as a whole, and this perception cannot fail to act potently upon the natural physical instinct of pure curiosity, an instinct just as basic and primitive and as impossible of destruction by any philosophy whatsoever as the parallel instincts of hunger, sex, ego, expansion and fear. You grossly underestimate this physical instinct which appears to be is underdeveloped in you, is superficial. 00:13:19:13 - 00:13:49:00 Andrew Exhibitionism is in me. Yet its potent reality is attested by the life work of a Pliny, a Copernicus, a Newton, an Einstein, an Eddington, a SHAPLEY, a Huxley and Amundsen, a Scott, a Shackleton, a bird. Oh, but hell, what's the use? Who can tell a blind man what site is? At any rate, the lure of the unknown abyss remains as potent as ever under any conceivable intellectual, esthetic or social order, and will crop out as a forbidden thing. 00:13:49:02 - 00:14:27:14 Andrew Even in societies where the external ideal of altruistic collectivism reigns in types where this marriage cannot be gratified by actual research and pure science, or by the actual physical exploration of the unknown parts of the earth. It is inevitable that a symbolic esthetic outlet will be demanded. You can't dodge it. The condition must exist under all phases of cosmic interpretation, as long as a sense chained race of inquirers on a microscopic earth dot are faced by the black unfathomable gulf of the outside with its forever unexplainable orbs and its virtually certain sprinkling of utterly unknown lifeforms. 00:14:28:06 - 00:15:00:24 Andrew A great part of religion is merely a childish, undiluted pseudo gratification of this perpetual gnawing towards the ultimate inimitable void. Super added to this simple curiosity is the galling sense of intolerable restraint, which all sensitive people except self blinded earth gazers like little Augie Derleth feel as they survey their natural limitations in time and space as scaled against the freedoms and expansions and comprehension and adventurous expectancies which the mind can formulate as abstract conceptions. 00:15:01:13 - 00:15:25:02 Andrew Only a perfect clod can fail to discern the spirit and feelings in the greater part of mankind. Feelings so potent and imperious that if denied symbolic outlets in esthetics or religious fakery, they produce actual hallucinations of the supernatural and drive half responsible minds to the concoction of the most absurd hoaxes and the perpetuation of the most absurd specific myth types. 00:15:25:15 - 00:15:56:10 Andrew Don't let little Augie sidetrack you. The general revolt of the sensitive mind against the tyranny of corporeal enclosure, restricted sense equipment and the laws of force, space and causation is a far keener and bigger and better founded one than any of the silly revolts of long haired posers against isolated and specific instances of cosmic inevitability. But of course, it does not take the form of personal petulance because there is no convenient scapegoat to saddle the impersonal ill upon. 00:15:56:22 - 00:16:26:16 Andrew Rather, does it crop out as a pervasive sadness and unpalatable impatience manifested in a love of strange dreams and an amusing eagerness to be galled by the quack cosmic pretensions of the various religious services. Well, in our day, the quack circuses are wearing pretty thin, despite the premature senility of Fat Chesterbelloc and affected waste Land Shantih-dwellers and the nostalgic and unmotivated over beliefs of elderly and childhood crippled physicists. 00:16:27:06 - 00:16:52:24 Andrew The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space and matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality, when it must be gratified by images forming supplements rather than contradictions of the visible and mentionable universe. And what, if not a form of non supernatural cosmic art is to pacify this sense of revolt as well as gratify the cognate sense of curiosity. 00:16:53:10 - 00:17:24:03 Andrew Don't ask as they say in your decadent Cosmopolis. No. Young Belloc. You can't rule out a phase of human feeling and expression which springs from instincts wholly basic and physical. Cosmic fantasy of some sort is as assured of possible permanence, its status subject to caprices of fashion, as is the literature of struggle and eroticism. But of course, as I have said before, its later and less irresponsible forms will doubtless differ vastly from most of the weird literature we have had so far. 00:17:24:17 - 00:17:46:10 Andrew Like the lighter forms of dream fantasy and Yog-Sothothery. It will require a delicate and precise technique so that a crude old timer like myself would never be likely to excel in it. Nevertheless, if I live much longer, I may try my hand at something of the sort, for it is really closer to my serious psychology than anything else on or off the earth. 00:17:46:22 - 00:18:07:11 Andrew In the color out of space. I began to get near it, though. Dunewhich and The Whisperer represent a relapse and using up the ideas in my commonplace book, I shall doubtless perpetuate a great deal more childish hokum. Gratifying to me only through personal association with the past. Yet the time may come when I shall at least try something approximately serious. 00:18:07:24 - 00:18:33:12 Andrew There is, of course, no need of becoming serious, so long as thinly veiled childishness retains power to gratify me. But I am assuming that my real senility has not so far advanced as to check just yet that gradual mental maturing perceptible in me since 1919 or 1920, the period of galloping inactivation and apparently somewhat accelerated perhaps through Providence reorientation since 1927. 00:18:33:24 - 00:19:06:18 Andrew I am still a primitive and retarded type, as measured by good intellectual standards, but not quite so pathetic. A case of belated infertility as I was in 1920 or 21 or 22 when I spewed forth such an insufferable monitoring as the tree hypnosis, the moon bog, the hound, etc., etc.. Though a fat, middle aged clod who ought to have known better a decade before, or even in 1925, when during the Clinton St period, I allowed myself to sign such mawkish drivel as the horror at Red Hook. 00:19:06:22 - 00:19:32:20 Andrew And worse yet, He the only decent things I wrote in those days were sheer luck shots. Arthur, German, Ericsson and a few others. And yet I had a better time in some ways than I have now for my very infertility repulsive as it was in a middle aged man. Allowed me to retain as a subjective reality something of that sense of adventurous expectancy, which is now only a wistful esthetic memory. 00:19:33:11 - 00:20:03:21 Andrew I shall never find another Dunsanian city of wonder is utterly unreal and linked with incredible cloud mysteries as the exotic and unexplored labyrinth of seaborne towers that was the dim half fabulous Manhattan of 1922. Least of all, could I find such a Dunsanian place in any Manhattan of any later date. I grant them the virtues of infidelity, so long as they are valid, even though such phenomena must of necessity appear absurd to the mental adult. 00:20:04:03 - 00:20:26:18 Andrew What is hollow and insincere is the parade of infertility in art, and its feigning by the adult artist after its real essence has passed away. Dead childhood rattling his own bones in a mocking and hellish Danse macabre. I may add that I doubt his cosmic skepticism would have any tendency to destroy such a pleasing infertility. As I have described. 00:20:27:06 - 00:20:51:21 Andrew In 1920 through 27, I was as much of a skeptic as I am now. The only difference being that I had not reflected minutely and profoundly and had received so few direct visual impressions of varied scenes that my perspective had something of belatedly childish and jaded ness about it. Infantility, with all its rosy clouds of unrecognized emptiness, is an attribute of youth which no philosophy can touch. 00:20:52:01 - 00:21:20:01 Andrew Its keynote is golden inexperience. The fact that one has not had time or opportunities to see many things or think closely and deeply about many things. But such an idyllic, unstable equilibrium is for doomed to early destruction. Hence the wise man, as he who prepares for an adult life of reality rather than he who tries to defeat growth by dying his long hair and prattling unconvincing insincerity with the language but not the heart of true youth. 00:21:20:22 - 00:21:47:22 Andrew Of course, the nostalgia of maturity for old glamorous days and ways and images and conceptions and expectations is a terrifically acute and poignant reality, perhaps the only emotional reality of the first magnitude, but it's really artistic treatment recognizes it purely as an emotion and does not attempt any Aeson-like revival of the lost moods and perspectives. Okay. 00:21:48:04 - 00:21:56:07 Sean All right, Andrew, so tell us why. Apart from its its staggering length, what led you to choose this particular letter? Well, you're. 00:21:56:07 - 00:22:12:06 Andrew Probably going to find this really annoying, but the reason I started reading it in the first place is because I went through Ste Joshi has done this amazing index to the selected letters. And I was browsing through the index looking for potentially interesting topics. 00:22:12:06 - 00:22:14:05 Sean And it was anaxagoras that Bright would. 00:22:14:06 - 00:22:16:16 Andrew Know it was Jack Dempsey. 00:22:17:13 - 00:22:18:17 Sean The famous boxer. 00:22:19:13 - 00:22:23:12 Andrew I thought, Oh, I wonder what Lovecraft had to say about the boxer Jack Dempsey. 00:22:23:12 - 00:22:25:16 Sean So he figures massively in this letter. 00:22:25:17 - 00:22:37:08 Andrew Well, he we Lovecraft gets to him eventually. Anyway, that's why I started reading this letter. But having started it, it was like, Man, this letter is a PhD dissertation. This letter is crazy. 00:22:37:08 - 00:22:49:19 Sean Yeah, it is crazy. I'll absolutely give you that. So you fell down the Dempsey rabbit hole? Yeah. As this is our first Frank Belknap long letter, we should probably take a step back and let folks in on just who it is that Lovecraft's writing, too. Absolutely. 00:22:49:19 - 00:22:54:19 Andrew Frank Belknap Long was one of Lovecraft's very best friends business partner. 00:22:54:19 - 00:22:55:08 Sean Colleague. 00:22:55:11 - 00:22:59:00 Andrew Colleague. I mean, they were as close as Lovecraft got to anybody. 00:22:59:00 - 00:23:15:15 Sean I Yeah, I think that's a fair statement. Absolutely. So he was born in 1901, lived told actually relatively recently. He died in 1994. Yeah. And got to know Lovecraft through involvement in the amateur press circle like so many of his correspondence, he wrote. 00:23:15:15 - 00:23:19:05 Andrew A story that appeared in the amateur press that Lovecraft thought was really good. 00:23:19:05 - 00:23:20:12 Sean Was a Poe pastiche. 00:23:20:12 - 00:23:36:12 Andrew Yeah, Yeah. And Lovecraft thought, Oh, this kid is worth getting to know. And that's how they first got started writing to each other. And then they met in person in the early 1920s. Frank Belknap Long was born and raised in New York City. His dad was a dentist and they lived in in Harlem, right. 00:23:36:12 - 00:23:41:16 Sean Part of the KLM Club we've been talking about. Right. He was let in because his last name ends with L. 00:23:41:16 - 00:23:51:08 Andrew And according to Long, he and Lovecraft exchanged at least a thousand letters. Wow. And heartbreakingly, they're all lost. 00:23:51:09 - 00:23:58:12 Sean Do we know anything about what happened to them? It's interesting because long lived so. Yeah, long and well into the era of Lovecraft's fame. 00:23:58:20 - 00:24:16:22 Andrew Well, apparently he sent a bunch of them to Arkham House when they were collecting them, and and there are transcripts of the letters that Lovecraft wrote to Long up until 1931. So we we still have the Arkham House abridged transcripts, but everything after 1931, nobody knows where it is. 00:24:16:23 - 00:24:18:24 Sean Oh, wow. Yeah. The letter that we're. 00:24:18:24 - 00:24:22:21 Andrew Reading for the next month is the abridged version. 00:24:22:21 - 00:24:39:19 Sean I'll say, if we had that many more letters. Yeah, I'm not sure we'd be able to live long enough to record them all. He had a near-death experience in his youth. He contracted the same thing that killed Harry Houdini. He had appendicitis that developed into peritonitis, and he was hospitalized and just barely squeaked through. 00:24:39:20 - 00:24:40:23 Andrew How old was he when that happened? 00:24:41:14 - 00:24:58:11 Sean He was in this was in 1921. So he would have been 20 years old. And that's when I think Mr. Long Senior, his father was not real keen on the notion of Frank becoming a writer, but it was going through that experience that really convinced him he had to follow his muse, and Lovecraft certainly encouraged him to do so. 00:24:58:11 - 00:25:03:00 Sean And at 22 he sold his first story, Weird Tales, in 1924. 00:25:03:11 - 00:25:06:06 Andrew And he was the guy who invented the hounds of Tindalos. 00:25:06:06 - 00:25:11:14 Sean Oh, yes. Lasting and enjoyable. Part of the mythos. Challinor on. 00:25:11:22 - 00:25:15:03 Andrew He's the one who inserted John Dee into the history of the Necronomicon. 00:25:15:03 - 00:25:16:05 Sean Oh, that was Long's idea. 00:25:16:05 - 00:25:20:16 Andrew It was Long's idea. Oh. John Dee had done a translation of the Necronomicon into English, you. 00:25:20:16 - 00:25:27:17 Sean Know that I've. I've often wondered about how much and how Lovecraft knew what he knew about John D, so I did not know that. 00:25:28:02 - 00:25:31:03 Andrew Lovecraft worked d into the official chronology after the fact. 00:25:31:11 - 00:25:46:03 Sean All right. So Long And Lovecraft are pals. They've been pals for at least a decade or so. And then this comes in the mail. What would it be like to open this this, you know, massive manuscript and then and then to deal with its contents? 00:25:46:03 - 00:25:50:12 Andrew Well, clearly, Long was asking for it because this letter is a response to some. 00:25:50:12 - 00:25:55:06 Sean So you all I was taking Lovecraft side oh he was asking for a highly. 00:25:55:06 - 00:25:55:24 Andrew Provocative. 00:25:55:24 - 00:26:02:02 Sean Deserve to be upbraided for 70 pages here take your spanking Frank clearly they. 00:26:02:02 - 00:26:03:07 Andrew Loved this back and. 00:26:03:07 - 00:26:05:02 Sean Forth. Yeah no, it does. You know. 00:26:05:02 - 00:26:21:00 Andrew Lovecraft gives long, endless crap about his mustache and Long was 30 years old when he got this letter. And Lovecraft is still referring to him as an adolescent and a youth. And it's like, clearly Lovecraft is working this. You're younger than I am, so you have to listen to what I say. 00:26:21:00 - 00:26:39:06 Sean Well, Lovecraft's nickname for long was Sonny. Sonny Yeah. And, you know, Lovecraft embraced this persona of Grandpa Theobald. And a man much older than Lovecraft really was, which then, of course, made everyone else around him much younger than they actually were. It's kind of a bizarre, bizarre to do. 00:26:39:06 - 00:26:42:00 Andrew If I were Long, I can imagine it getting old pretty quick. 00:26:42:04 - 00:26:46:08 Sean One would think, you know, the tone is very aggressive in this letter. The tone. 00:26:46:08 - 00:26:49:03 Andrew Is aggressive. And it is you ought to think what I think. 00:26:49:03 - 00:27:08:01 Sean Yeah. And that's I think the most unflattering part about the whole thing is, is it? And it's never couched in terms of I think this it's this is so and that's a very I found it very offputting quality because he's so aggressive in trying to enforce his opinions on somebody else. 00:27:08:01 - 00:27:20:01 Andrew Yeah and he does occasionally say, you know this is fine for some people, but why should it bother us? And I don't know whether he's when he says us, is he referring to himself and Long or has he reverted into some sort of royal. 00:27:20:01 - 00:27:20:22 Sean We. 00:27:21:06 - 00:27:24:24 Andrew You know referring to himself as a stand in for all mankind. 00:27:25:04 - 00:27:45:04 Sean Could go either way. Well, I my read on that was that he expects more of Long and in this letter he demands it and he's like you have a sufficient enough intellect. You should be lining up with me. And if you're not, you are you are a naughty child and I am going to verbally spank you over and over and over again. 00:27:45:04 - 00:27:45:18 Sean In this letter. 00:27:45:21 - 00:27:50:21 Andrew Someone like an ST could write a book about this letter alone. I think it is so full of. 00:27:50:21 - 00:28:06:24 Sean Stuff As I was going through this letter preparing to talk about it, there were so many names and references that I had to look up and I had to think of going, Man, if I was, you know, Frank Long and this came in the mail, how much of this would I know from, you know, being alive at that point in time? 00:28:06:24 - 00:28:20:01 Sean And how much of this would he need to go over to Encyclopedia Britannica, you know, the Google of the day and find out the hell it's Lovecraft referring to because there are dozens and dozens and dozens of specific things cited in this letter. 00:28:20:24 - 00:28:28:05 Andrew I loved it in the very beginning of this letter that goes on and on and on. He says, If you think this letter's Long, just think how much longer it. 00:28:28:05 - 00:28:30:18 Sean Would have been. Yes, That's why I threatened if I weren't. 00:28:30:18 - 00:28:45:09 Andrew Writing it the short way. So, yeah, the first part of this letter is, you know, railing about traditionalism and sticking to the great tradition model of literature and, you know, apparently blaming Long for feeling that that's worth doing. 00:28:45:15 - 00:29:01:15 Sean Yeah, I wish I knew specifically what long's crime was that that pushed Lovecraft's buttons because clearly he's going off about, you know, something I think really touched a nerve in him and as you were saying in the introduction, the this really feels like stream of consciousness. And he never set his pencil down. 00:29:01:17 - 00:29:08:16 Andrew There's a there's a reference where he says beat not against Darrow John did I had to look high and low to figure out what that meant. 00:29:08:18 - 00:29:10:22 Sean Yeah. Didn't didn't solve that one myself. 00:29:10:22 - 00:29:18:24 Andrew It appears to be Darrow John was in the gods of Pagan by Dunsany and Dora O'Donnell. John is the God of destiny. 00:29:19:16 - 00:29:20:15 Sean So. All right. 00:29:20:21 - 00:29:38:19 Andrew It would seem that Long has called into question the validity of supernatural horror in literature, and Lovecraft is rising to its defense. You know, he starts off by, you know, talking about how stupid older forms of fiction are, especially he railing against Don Quixote. 00:29:38:19 - 00:29:41:10 Sean Apparently, it's the first novel which is. 00:29:41:19 - 00:29:45:15 Andrew Which is, you know, pretty ironic because Lovecraft is Don Quixote in many ways. 00:29:45:15 - 00:30:06:11 Sean Absolutely. Yes. Sadly, Frank Long ends up being Sancho Panza. Yeah, I did want to bring up one other quality that's so abundant in this letter, and I think, you know, we talk sometimes about there are the qualities of our that we love and the qualities about hard that the drivers crazy that manifest themselves in the letters. And this one is just the tediousness of his sarcasm. 00:30:06:24 - 00:30:21:09 Sean You know, there's so much real valid, meaty intellectual argument to be had here to see him kind of stoop to do that flailing of long with sarcasm. I was like, Oh, that's just it's not necessary. And it seems. 00:30:21:16 - 00:30:32:04 Andrew I don't imagine that it's I mean, he was writing the letter to Long. So of course, on some level it's directed at long. But I mean, he's reserving the sarcasm for all the idiots that Long, like now. 00:30:32:08 - 00:30:51:18 Sean But but he's but it's not. It's not for them at all. It's for Long. This also brought me back around to the notion of, you know, would Lovecraft like the fact that we're sitting here discussing this letter that was a personal communicator between him and Long and was never intended for the public at large. There's a part of him that might like it, and there's a part of him that might go, No, no, no. 00:30:51:19 - 00:30:59:24 Sean That was just for Frank talking about whatever I needed to set the record straight with him, with what he didn't understand and never intending this to be seen by a wider audience. 00:30:59:24 - 00:31:09:14 Andrew Well, that's certainly a factor to consider. Another thing that comes to mind is that, you know, the difference between, you know, you lose nuances of communication. 00:31:09:14 - 00:31:09:23 Sean Sure. 00:31:09:24 - 00:31:18:05 Andrew In writing that come through if you're talking to someone face to face. Right. And, you know, there are many, many of the time I have woefully misinterpreted somebody's email. 00:31:18:06 - 00:31:19:23 Sean Yeah, tone is is hard because. 00:31:19:23 - 00:31:31:13 Andrew You lose the you know Lovecraft and Long had been close friends for a decade when he wrote this letter. So I can only hope that Long was able to just go oh, that's the way Howard is and not take it personally. 00:31:31:15 - 00:31:53:01 Sean Because if you took it personally, it could be pretty brutal. Yeah, I wasn't so much, you know, worried about that. But I just did think about whether in some ways it makes this letter makes Lovecraft look bad and to me anyway, and whether that would have bothered Howard or if he would have just stood by his opinions and go, Well, this is what I this one I feel, damn it. 00:31:53:01 - 00:31:54:13 Sean And that very well may be the case. 00:31:54:13 - 00:32:06:10 Andrew Well, he clearly felt this man. He's on fire in this letter. Another reason that I kept reading this letter was because he he gets around it pretty short order to talking about comedy, how much he doesn't like it. 00:32:07:04 - 00:32:08:12 Sean That jauntiness. 00:32:08:12 - 00:32:21:08 Andrew and careless comedy. I mean, he appears to approve of ironic humor, right? But anything that's any comedy that's not ironic, he apparently thinks is contemptible and grotesque and. 00:32:21:13 - 00:32:40:13 Sean Which which is weird. That also made me in that part of the letter made me think again of Oscar Wilde, where not all of Wilde's comedy is ironic. I mean, it's it's a fantastic blend of highbrow, lowbrow and throws it all together. And I'm like, well, maybe. Maybe Lovecraft only read the picture of Dorian Gray, which which isn't comic. 00:32:40:13 - 00:33:02:21 Sean So yeah, I don't know. And Lovecraft is so entirely dismissive of things that do not appeal to him personally and dismisses them as having any merit going, Oh, comic comedy is is bad and which is such a different thing than going, I don't care for comedy. And, you know, novels about love are bad because romance doesn't speak to me, you know? 00:33:02:21 - 00:33:14:24 Sean And it's like, Oh, if it's not Dunsany it's bad. And I'm like, Oh, sometimes that that implies a kind of shallowness or a self-centered ness that I said I can come across. It's pretty off putting to me. 00:33:15:04 - 00:33:18:12 Andrew He attempted comedy himself from time to time. 00:33:18:17 - 00:33:32:08 Sean Yes. And and it's often not particularly successful or it strikes a fleeting note that makes one grin. And then you're like, okay, so it's sweet, Herman, And the joke is over. Once you've gotten through the first, you know, the first sentence or two. 00:33:32:09 - 00:33:35:22 Andrew Herbert West Re-Animator was intended to be a satire. 00:33:36:03 - 00:33:54:04 Sean Yes, I would agree. But West is clearly a spoof. But is it meant to be funny or is it just meant to sort of point a finger at guys who who write that sort of fiction seriously and go, oh, you guys are losers. I'm only doing it because I'm being paid to do it. And I know it isn't good. 00:33:54:04 - 00:34:03:09 Andrew but sweet. Herman Guard Is that meant to be a satire and an ironic commentary on I mean, it is itself a spoof of that kind of melodrama. 00:34:03:09 - 00:34:24:21 Sean Yeah. No, I think I think it's similar to Herbert West in that regard, but it's not particularly insightful or witty. And then there's something like, you know, reminiscence of Dr. Johnson, which is just sort of droll. You go, you know, it's worth a small smirk, but it's not. As comedy goes, it's certainly not going to leave them rolling in the aisles. 00:34:25:07 - 00:34:30:07 Andrew It also made that his whole attitude toward comedy reminded Me of the name of the Rose. 00:34:30:14 - 00:34:32:00 Sean Yeah, I thought the same thing. 00:34:32:00 - 00:34:33:22 Andrew Right, brother? You're a guy who just. 00:34:35:09 - 00:34:36:22 Sean Startles people and have. 00:34:36:22 - 00:34:37:19 Andrew There be comedy in the. 00:34:37:19 - 00:34:53:04 Sean World. I think Lovecraft, like Brother Yogi wants to dismiss the power of comedy and, you know, makes assertions like all life is fundamentally and inextricably sad. Like, No, no, it's it's not. 00:34:53:06 - 00:34:54:01 Andrew It needn't be. 00:34:54:05 - 00:35:18:00 Sean It's not. It's just not. It's it's a deep, profound. The sadness he's extolling about is a part of life. But, you know, he's choosing to grapple with it and and wallow in it. And this is more lugubrious demonstrations, I find. And and so, you know, this letter is full of frustrating bits like that. And that's and it's that's okay. 00:35:18:01 - 00:35:20:03 Sean Yeah, that's interesting. That's what makes it engaging. 00:35:20:05 - 00:35:22:12 Andrew But clearly it's got it's pushing your buttons. 00:35:22:12 - 00:35:24:13 Sean Some way drove me crazy. 00:35:25:09 - 00:35:48:08 Andrew Lovecraft uses a number of seemingly technical philosophic turns of phrase in this letter that I thought were interesting. He uses one phrase that comes up three or four times is adventurous expectancy. And that seems to be because I think that phrase is going to come up in other letters as well. And it seems to be, you know, a key thing that Lovecraft thinks about is adventurous expectancy. 00:35:48:13 - 00:36:20:22 Andrew And I'm not entirely clear on exactly what he means by it, but I do think it is one of the things that makes Lovecraft's writing endure. It's one of the things that I think attracts the people who like it is that sense of something's going to happen, something weird and interesting is just around the corner, right? And it goes along with what he was, what he says later about the sense of of wonder and curiosity that is engendered when you contemplate yourself as scaled with the whole universe. 00:36:21:05 - 00:36:37:06 Andrew And that is part of, I think, what keeps me interested in Lovecraft's fiction is the senses of adventurous expectancy and that wonder and curiosity of where I fit into this much greater, incomprehensibly vast universe. 00:36:37:08 - 00:37:09:04 Sean Sure. And you know, so much of this letter is about science, and science is the tool that meaningfully begins to shine a light against the edges of, you know, the darkness beyond which human perception does not go. And I think quite rightly, Lovecraft sees that that particular intersection of that darkness and that light being shown by science as the most fertile ground for storytelling because it's there, you're completely on board with the truth of the situation. 00:37:09:04 - 00:37:23:23 Sean I mean, Mountains of Madness came to mind for me again with all the paleontology and geology that built on that story to go, you know, this is real, this is real, this is proven. This is something we know. This is something we know. This is something we know. And then that flashlight in the cave suddenly hit something that breaks all those rules. 00:37:24:00 - 00:37:29:22 Sean Yeah. And we, the reader, are catapulted into a strange and thrilling and believable new space. 00:37:29:22 - 00:37:56:00 Andrew That's where to me, you know, this first part of this long, long letter becomes a defense of Lovecraft's own efforts in promoting supernatural horror in literature. In this letter, he talks about how it's much better to make up fake myths, right, that you can use in your storytelling to serve that and not rely on actual religions or actual myths, because then you're forced to accept how stupid they are. 00:37:56:00 - 00:38:11:06 Andrew And how you know, you the only way you could believe in any of those myths is is to not believe in science. And believing in science is crucially important for the supernatural horror to work. So you have to abandon the real myths and only use the fake ones that he makes up. 00:38:11:20 - 00:38:35:00 Sean And that's not even just in a literary sense, I think in a life sense. Lovecraft is about abandoned the stupid myths that we have clung to, to explain thunder and lightning or day and night or the sun or whatever you want and cling to something that seems to produce reproducible, predictable results and that genuine understanding of things rather than just to build. 00:38:35:00 - 00:38:43:08 Andrew On them with your supernatural things, not contradict them. Right. Which is part of his, you know, secret recipe for writing compelling, weird fiction. 00:38:43:09 - 00:39:02:01 Sean Absolutely. And cosmic horror, you know, it's grounded in the cosmos. And even the gods of the Lovecraftian pantheon are really gods is a term humans might use to explain them, but usually they're some other kind of entity that we just don't understand that completely fits into the fabric of nature. 00:39:02:01 - 00:39:15:22 Andrew Which brings us to Yog-Sothoth and spends quite a bit of time talking about of author in this letter. It makes me wonder whether long was specifically, you know, bagging on Yog-sothoh in the previous letter is that. 00:39:16:03 - 00:39:17:13 Sean Frankly Frank wouldn't have done that. 00:39:17:13 - 00:39:34:16 Andrew I think he might have it because this seems to be you know, Lovecraft is, you know, rising to the defense of Yog-Sothoth in a way I think the first time Yog-Sothoth appears in the story of Lovecraft is in 1927, in the case of Charles Dexter Ward, which is just, you know, three or four years before this letter gets written. 00:39:34:16 - 00:39:35:19 Andrew So Yog-Sothoth is. 00:39:35:19 - 00:39:37:11 Sean A relative newcomer to. 00:39:37:11 - 00:39:56:04 Andrew The fiction of Lovecraft. So it could be that Long, you're saying, Oh, I don't know about this young star you've cooked up. And I think this letter is Lovecraft saying, Oh, don't don't tell me how to write weird fiction. Let me tell you how to write weird fiction, because, you know, he goes on in this letter to talk about how he talks Yog-Sothothery is immature. 00:39:56:04 - 00:40:18:13 Andrew You know, I myself have not yet attempted serious literature, but there is a place for Yog-Sothoth in serious literature, and this is how it would work. It's there's not only a place for weird literature, it's absolutely required because human curiosity will force people to invent gods and myths. And if you if you don't let them, they'll even hallucinate them. 00:40:18:13 - 00:40:21:08 Andrew They'll believe in insane conspiracy theories. They'll believe in. 00:40:21:16 - 00:40:22:11 Sean They'll believe anything. 00:40:22:11 - 00:40:35:12 Andrew They'll believe anything because it's part of human nature. So better to invent Yog-Sohoth and write stories about him than to, you know, believe in actual religion, which leads to all sorts of unpleasantness. 00:40:35:22 - 00:41:02:24 Sean Absolutely. There's a little section in here that just got me to raise my eyebrow when his fleeting references to Mr. Derleth, which when for August Derleth, is writing to all of Lovecraft's other correspondence, saying after Lovecraft died, saying, Please send me your correspondence, and then finding Derleth themselves, getting dinged in this letter. And this made me think, Oh God, there's got to be other references out there too. 00:41:02:24 - 00:41:12:18 Sean Where? Oh, yeah. August. I always get the impression he's a fairly self impressed and very serious man getting dinged by Lovecraft. This little Augie Derleth. 00:41:12:18 - 00:41:19:08 Andrew And yeah, I suspect August had quite a few surprises when he got around to actually reading all these letters. 00:41:19:08 - 00:41:28:14 Sean And yet this came out of selected letters. So during the chose to let these dings against him stay in there or maybe one quandary slip them in there and just didn't tell him to under left at all. 00:41:28:22 - 00:41:32:01 Andrew I think I think it speaks well of Derleth that he. 00:41:32:01 - 00:42:00:06 Sean Let these through in the midst of Lovecraft's so many assertive opinions in this letter, there are also a refreshing number of moments of self-reflection and self-deprecation in there. You know, he's always one to put himself in check and very quickly say, you know, these are my literary theories, but they're usually not successful. And I have not I am not a good enough writer to actually do what I am suggesting should be done right. 00:42:01:00 - 00:42:33:18 Sean And that does, I think, go a long way to mitigate some of the tonal things we were talking about before. I was happy to see when he's talking about the period when he was living in New York, he called it the Clinton Street period. He allowed himself to sign such mawkish drivel as the horror at Red Hook. And and worse yet, he my marginal note and my copy of the letter was Thank you, Howard, for at least calling out, you know, his weaker works as weaker works and, you know, attempts to do something that just didn't come together. 00:42:33:23 - 00:42:44:07 Andrew At the same time and know in the very next sentence, he he puts Arthur Jermyn as one of what he apparently considers to be one of his better stories. Yeah. And that took me by surprise. 00:42:44:10 - 00:42:45:09 Sean It's like to me as well. 00:42:45:10 - 00:42:55:12 Andrew I would not have thought. I don't think Arthur Jermyn is a particularly good story. And for him to say, Oh, that's one of my better ones, maybe it's just relativistic, it's it's better than he. 00:42:56:01 - 00:42:58:09 Sean Well, you know, let's keep the bar low here. 00:42:58:14 - 00:43:15:22 Andrew But it's it is interesting to hear him assess his own pieces and where he ranks them. And in the context of the letter where he's talking about, you know, what he's trying to achieve, if he thinks Arthur Jermyn achieves the same thing that the music of Eric Zann achieves. Yeah. Then I need to reread Arthur Jermyn because I don't get it. 00:43:15:22 - 00:43:35:01 Sean Yeah I certainly don't see that. And you know, he always held in the highest esteem of his color out of space as the one story that came closest to being what he was trying to do. And I absolutely feel that. I think it's a great embodiment of what Lovecraft articulates as his goal being. But yeah, I go Arthur Jermyn, not so much. 00:43:35:01 - 00:43:48:09 Andrew And it's maybe worth thinking about that. When he was writing this letter in in February of 1931, he was just starting to work on at the Mountains of Madness. So while he's espousing all of these theories too long, he's also working on it on that story. 00:43:48:09 - 00:44:05:17 Sean Yeah, we're sometimes critical of the amount of time and effort that went into the writing letters because we wish there was more fiction, but in some ways, I'm sure the letters end up being sort of a sounding board and an intellectual place where he's working through what he's trying to do in Mountains of Madness, while he's using those ideas to beat up on poor Frank Belknap Long. 00:44:05:17 - 00:44:13:15 Andrew Absolutely. And I think, you know, we can lament that he wrote so many letters, but you could also just read the letters because they're pretty they're pretty good and interesting. 00:44:13:18 - 00:44:21:05 Sean Well, I mean, I think most fans would probably still go for the fiction over the letters, but they they give us the list. 00:44:21:05 - 00:44:22:04 Andrew We'll read them for you. 00:44:22:04 - 00:45:01:16 Sean How about that? I was struck again, you know, this this is 1931 when he wrote this of the impact of Dunsany on Lovecraft. How many times Dunsany and his work and reappears in the letters as this somebody who really achieved this breaking through and this revelation of another world in a meaningful literary way. And and the almost the pain that's in here that when Lovecraft saying he'll he'll never find another Dunsany city of wonder that you know you only get to read a story the first time once and that's your your journey there and. 00:45:01:16 - 00:45:17:18 Andrew Talking about you know how nostalgia for for those things that you have lost those first impressions that you'll never get back. You know, he he famously starts supernatural horror literature by saying the oldest emotion of mankind is fear. But nostalgia is, as. 00:45:18:03 - 00:45:27:19 Andrew is a close second, apparently. And there's another emotion, curiosity, which is also one of the main fundamental driving emotions in Lovecraft's life. 00:45:27:19 - 00:45:54:21 Sean But what never makes the list. What never makes the list is love. No, it's never about other people. It's never about, you know, his friendships, which he clearly he you know, he adores Frank Long at some level, but it's never about love. And that's that's so fascinating to me that I think I think most people would, you know, chalk that up as the most powerful human emotion. 00:45:54:22 - 00:46:00:09 Sean Yeah. And it's man, it's the word. He's like least likely to use. It's it's interesting. 00:46:00:15 - 00:46:01:19 Andrew That's nature for you. 00:46:02:01 - 00:46:06:11 Sean That's Howard for. Yeah. So well, should that wrap it up on this one? 00:46:06:12 - 00:46:19:23 Andrew We've scratched just the smallest surface of this letter. But luckily for you, there's three more parts to go. So our thanks today to Arkham House for saving the letters that got saved to Frank Belknap Long. This one came from selected letters. Volume three. 00:46:19:24 - 00:46:25:17 Sean You can order your own copies of the selected letters of H.P. Lovecraft. I think you can ask Milescom. 00:46:25:17 - 00:46:28:02 Andrew I'm your obedient servant, Andrew Leman. 00:46:28:03 - 00:46:30:01 Sean And I'm cordially and respectfully yours Sean Branney. 00:46:30:07 - 00:46:35:05 Andrew You've been listening to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:46:35:05 - 00:46:39:06 Sean If you've enjoyed our show, we'd appreciate it. If you take a moment to post a review or. 00:46:39:08 - 00:46:41:11 Andrew Tell all your friends about voluminous. 00:46:41:11 - 00:47:07:16 Sean Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org