Sean McBride's Blog, page 20

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; He

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“For a full three seconds I could glimpse that pandemoniac sight, and in those seconds I saw a vista which will ever afterward torment me in dreams.”

Welcome back to another Blind Read! I had to take the series on hiatus for a little while for work reasons, but we’re back and I’m determined to finish with the rest of H.P. Lovecraft!

This is the story He, written in 1925 at the height of his “fame” (it’s in quotation marks because Lovecraft was not popular while he was alive. The majority of his fame came from August Derleth, continuing on his legacy after he died). Despite his vast vistas explored in such stories as At the Mountains of Madness, this, for me, was his most atmospheric piece. It is also his first work in a city that takes place outside of New England.

We follow our intrepid narrator who is excited to go to New York. It is a place he’s heard a lot about and has read about extensively, and he has an expectation in his head. An image of New York of yesteryear. He imagines walking through the boroughs and seeing the history first hand. He wants to be inspired by the muse of New York, by the poetry of the city. When he gets there he is disappointed because the world has moved on. New York is, well, new. Buildings are built up, there is no nostalgia. There is only the bustle of the city, the history is dead and gone.

Our narrator goes into a depression, desperate to leave the city, but decides to take one more excursion. He tries to go as deep into the heart of the city as he can, escaping down alleyways, and travelling through slums. He soon becomes lost and meets up with a strange man. The man takes him even further into the depths of the city and they end up in a room the man (the titular He) leads them to. The man knows what our narrator is looking for. The man becomes the muse.

The room is decorated as an 18th century library, and the man takes our narrator to a window with a yellow curtain (I cant help but think of the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper) . He peels the curtain aside and shows the narrator various vistas. They start off small and verdant field, followed by cities. Our narrator asks the man if he can take him further. The man, properly egged on, uses his magic to take them to a far off place…but something goes wrong. The man takes in too much of the other world energy and it instantly transforms him into a blubbering creature, eventually nothing but a ball with eyes and arms. Our narrator flees, and lives to tell the story.

This is the story of Lovecraft getting the most out of a difficult situation. Lovecraft was a homebody, nearly a hermit. I truly believe that when he went to New York (which I’m sure he did), he had much the same experience. He went for the nostalgia, he went for the muse, he went to write poetry, but instead found a cinderblock and steel city, devoid of the wonder he craved. This story was his effort to extract that wonder. The world had moved on from him and his mythos, so he needed to create a character to bring that back. He wanted a way to bring that wonder back to New York.

But New York had already moved on. The narrator accepted it, as Lovecraft had. So this elegiac tale was about dreams. He dreamed that there was someone strong enough to take him backwards. Take him back through the nostalgia. No one, however is strong enough to take him forward. No one can withstand the steady, unrelenting march of time. not even this incredibly old magician. He too succumbed to time, and was reduced to nothing more than a ball with eyes. Something that had no power, except to watch as the world moved on.

I’d love to hear what you think!

Join me next week as we do a blind read of The Horror At Red Hook!

Quarantine woes and hopes

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Quarantine has been a strange thing. I keep telling myself that it isn’t that bad. I get to stay home, I get to read, I get to write. All the things that I have wanted time to do, and sneak minutes here and there, in between spending time with my family and work. I’ve been more productive in my writing that I have at any point in my life. I’ve gotten more done around the house than I ever thought possible. I’ve read more books so far in quarantine than I have in some years. All of these things should make me happy, right? They should make me feel fulfilled, because they hang over me as things I want to do while I’m doing other things. Now I’m actually doing them, and I feel as though it’s not enough. I need to get more done. I’m being too lazy when I decide to slow down and watch a television show. That’s 43 minutes that could have been used on something else. Something more productive. I only have so long in quarantine after all. Things seem to be coming to a close here. This forced “vacation” is almost done. Will I be happy with myself when I do go back to work? Will I be happy when I know that I have to sneak a few minutes here and there for these things that I’ve been able to do freely for going on two months?

Years ago I started collecting John Steinbeck novels. Not just buying them at Barnes and Noble, but actually seeking out First Editions and unique printings. He is my favorite author, you see, and I want to be able to look at my book shelf and feel the nostalgia. I want to look upon those unique covers and have the stories rush back to me. I find that having those unique covers delivers this feeling, much more so than the standard Penguin Classics black monochrome delivery. Sure those look good an a shelf. They’re good for OCD, because they’re all the same size. All the same color. They’re easy on the eyes. But something gets lost in the translation. They begin to blend. They become a concept. They are Steinbeck on a shelf, but they lose all personality. They lose their individuality.

A few days ago I picked up my first edition of “The Moon is Down”, which was first published in 1942. I put on gloves because I didn’t want to damage the pages. I felt strange doing this. I was in my home. It was my book. Why was I wearing gloves to read a book in my home? I was sure I could be careful enough with it that I wouldn’t damage it. So I took the gloves off and started to read. It was freeing in a way that I couldn’t describe.

But there was still that need to get stuff done. I had something I wanted to savor, and I could only think of what I wanted to read next. I felt an overwhelming melancholy because I realized that I wasn’t enjoying it like I should. Much like I was gulping down my expensive coffee that I carefully spend twenty five minutes every morning making, because I just needed the caffeine. I was missing something.

Yesterday I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I sat in my reading chair and I had The Moon is Down open in front of me, but I couldn’t focus on it. I took a deep sigh, reveling in the strange feeling of shame I was feeling, and I caught a familiar scent. It was the book. The indescribable scent of an old book. Remember that the book I was reading was published in 1942. The book in my hands was 78 years old. Something happens to books as they age that gives them a familiar scent. A scent that every book lover craves. I know there is a science behind it, and I can wager why, but I’ve never wanted to, because something about that scent elicits mystery. It elicits fantasy and memory. It represents hope.

I leaned in and took a deep breath, taking in the memory of the first time I found a Steinbeck book in the corner of a used book store in Seattle. I remember seeing a brownish/crimson cover. The title was “The Pearl”. The book was battered, but it was a price I could afford. I bought it.

I took another deep breath. It made me think of the Cemetery of Forgotten books, a mysterious library from my favorite book “The Shadow of the Wind”.

I took another deep breath and I thought about searching through old used book stores for copies of John Steinbeck books with my fiancee (now wife), as favors for attendees of our wedding.

I felt pressure release from the back of my head with every inhale. I felt my eyes relax. I felt my brain let go of some of those desires to just get stuff done.

To me, it was a figurative “stop and smell the roses” moment. But I don’t care about flowers. I care about books and emotion. This was the first time in quarantine that I let myself enjoy what I was doing.

Dont mis-understand. The point is not to say that I stopped working. The point is not to say “watch more tv and relax”. The point is to enjoy the work. The point is to have fun with what you are doing. The point is the journey, not the output. The point is, in 78 years someone will read a book and take a deep breath and be taken to a place of wonder. If I can enjoy what I’m doing, maybe. Just maybe. That deep breath can come from something that I have created. And I can give that solace, and nostalgia, and mystery, and fantasy, and hope, that I find now.

Updates and more

So most of us are stuck at home “Sheltering in place” during the coronavirus pandemic.  I’m taking the time to get caught up with my writing and all the work that goes along with that.

2019 was a difficult year for me.  I worked my butt off for the majority of the year, working 16 hours days trying to get a promotion, which I didn’t get in the end.  The reality of many writers is that they have to work day jobs to make ends meet.  I’m under no preconceptions that I’m going to break it through to the bigs, or even break through to make enough money to subsist upon without a full time day job.  So I strove for this promotion to try and make life easier for my family.

I learned quite a bit during this time period, but the portion of my life that really suffered was my writing.  I just didn’t have the time, nor the mental capacity to work that much, have a family life, and write at the same time.  I dropped off my Instagram.  I dropped off my Patreon.  I basically didn’t do anything but my day job.

That time period is over.  My life has regained some normalcy (well, pandemic aside).  So I’m trying to put that much effort into research, writing, promotion, and advertising.  I know most of this means nothing to most of you.  This is basically just an apology post for letting life get in the way of priorities, and this is my effort to get back some of the time I’ve lost.  That’s what I’m looking at this quarantine as…extra days added onto my life to regain my writing chops after the 2019 doldrums.

That being said.  Here is an update for the present and future of my writing, as well as updates to this website to make it more user friendly and give more access to my writing.

Anyway.  Here it goes!

Elsie Jones Adventures:

Another fatality of 2019.  My contract has expired with the publisher, which means that I’ve lost my venue for releasing these books.  I’ve also lost my artist.  Where I’m going to be working hard to either get him back, or procure a new artist.  My intention is still to release all 15 of these books.  In fact I’ve retained the rights to the books, so if I have to do full self publishing, I will do it.  There is a very good chance that I will be re-releasing the first three, and will continue to produce the rest afterwards.  Especially since 12 books are written, and the final 3 are outlined.  I would love to see these see the light of day.  I love the stories told in these books.

The Legacy (and Patreon):

My adventure novel (My version of Indiana Jones) which I was serially publishing on Patreon ostensibly came grinding to a halt last August when the whole work thing happened.  Since December I have been back at work on the novel, however I have not posted anything on Patreon since then.  For my patrons, I am going to resume posting Chapters (The first one will be posted on 03/26/2020), without payment attached.  I believe that in the midst of COVID-19 and the many month lapse on my part, you all deserve more of the novel for free.  Not to mention that writing a serial novel is way harder than I anticipated, and will eventually have to go back through and edit earlier chapters for continuity errors that I have created in the last few chapters.  The good news is, I have the rest of the novel organized and plotted out.  It will be a sprint, but my hope is to finish with the first draft by the end of next week (the purposed end of my shelter in place).  The good news with this, is that even if I cant quite complete it within this time frame, I’ll still be able to post bi-weekly Patreon posts until the novel is completed there.  This was also why I’ve waited until now to post them; not starting in December when I began working on the novel again.  I didn’t want to cause any more delay in the pace of release.

The Book of Antiquity

This book has been for a ride.  I started this originally on a rainy day in 2004, and it had a basic idea.  A kid is trying to find a book that can change the world, set in a realistic/fantasy setting.  Think the world of Pan’s Labyrinth.  Over the years is has gone through 3 full iterations (meaning I’ve written this book in total 3 times).  and I’ve never been happy with any of them.  There are moments of brilliance, but they are stuck in a slog of sophomoric writing and ideas.  It has gone from a single novel to a trilogy, to a tetrology.  It has gone from a fantasy to a steampunk to a western.  The main characters have never really changed, but in every iteration I’ve gained more characters.  What I’ve come to realize is that I was trying to shoehorn in too many ideas, and I had such an ambitious plot that the characters were just flat.  This is now going to be a series of books, and Teen books at that.  They will be all of the above themes, but spread out enough to give the characters time to blossom; as well as having many more characters.  The reason for this is, told through the lens I originally had in mind, it was just too restrictive.  Now I can slow down the narrative and make it more emotive.  Now it doesn’t have to be about how it ends, it can be about the journey.  I’ve outlined most of the first book, and I have to say, I am far more excited about this than I ever have been before.  This was always my opus.  My big idea that I always came back to.  Now that I have it in a frame that I like, I cant wait to tell it to you.

All Other Writings:

They are still on the table, but the projects mentioned above are taking precedence.  I’m going to spend my time completing The Legacy and finding a home for Elsie Jones.  Once the Legacy is completed (in draft form), I’ll be diving head first into The Monster in the Woods, which is the first book in The Revolution Cycle.  Otherwise known as the Book of Antiquity.  I will be re-editing all of Elsie Jones and writing them the way I want to write them, and despite the trappings of what 2020 looks like, it’s an exciting time for my work!

 

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; Celephais, and The Silver Key

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.” – Walt Whitman

“If youth knew, if age could.” – Sigmund Freud

“Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty.  Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

 

Ah the origin story.  The tales where we uncover the history of the characters we follow, and find out what makes them tick; why they are the way they are.  Here we have the dreamlands.  What brings King Kuranes and Randolph Carter to the dreamlands?  What made King Kuranes a king??

Welcome back to another blind read!  Sorry for the limited blogs, but I’ve been extremely busy with writing and vacations (hey!  Vacations are work too!).  To make up for my truancy, I’ll be covering two short stories this week.  Celephais and The Silver Key.  But first, a brief synopsis:

Celephais:  Kuranes creates the city of Celephais while being a child dreamer.  Then as he grows old, he goes to the dreamlands and becomes a King over the city that he created (keeping it simple, but this is pretty much it!)

The Silver Key:  Randolph Carter used to dream all the time as a child.  He would travel constantly, but as the story begins Carter is 30 and has been unable to get to the dreams that he once had.  That is until he meets a man at Miskatonic University (there is a brief description of the events of “The Statement of Randolph Carter” [ Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Statement of Randolph Carter ]) which opens his eyes to the world that he once knew.  He starts to dream again and has a dream about his grandfather who tells him to go back to his childhood home, and look for a box in the attic.  He goes and finds a box with arabesque designs.  When he opens it he finds a parchment with symbols reminiscent to what he saw in the Necronomicon, and inside of the parchment is the eponymous key.  His dreams become more vivid and more reminiscent to what they once were.  He goes to the place of his childhood, and there he goes into a crevice, holding the key.  He then enters a dream state.  The story ends how Carter, beginning at the age of ten, when he found the crevice, knew glimpses of the future that he could not possibly know.  We also find that a narrator has been telling us this story, a narrator who is a king of a city that he hopes to see Carter in one day.

So there you have it!  The origin stories of Kuranes and Carter!  Celephais seems more like a fragment from “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, than an actual story, just a little more illumination of Kuranes, whereas The Silver Key seems much more like a full story, not to mention, it looks like it’s continued on in the next story of the book “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, even though that’s a collaboration.

There are some major links between these two stories, that both seem to link with Lovecraft’s personal life and ideals, and to the evolving dreamlands.  Take youth for example.  There is a romanticizing of what it means to be young in both of these stories.  The innocence, the ignorance.  It reminds me of all those horror stories back in the eighties (yes I know they continue on now, but that’s because it’s a trope.  I would be interested in researching this and finding out where it actually stems from), where the child could see or interact with the supernatural element, but the parent could not.  Seemingly because of the lost innocence, and lost open mindedness.  The stories deal with this in two different ways:

Celephais is a lamentation of the innocence.  Kuranes moves forward with his life, but regrets his decisions, and thus in “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” he reverts Celephais to a version of Cornwall, so that he may re-live his past experiences.

The Silver Key is an effort to spurn the vagaries of everyday life and get back the mystical nature of youth.  In fact Carter actually goes back in time and becomes himself as a 10 year old, to re-establish those experiences and memories.

This seems allegorical to Lovecraft himself (There is even a portion of “The Silver Key” where the narrator tells us that writing helps get back the mystery, through opening of one’s mind).  Both of these stories show that at some point, there was belief in wonder, belief in the mystical, that came from Lovecraft’s youth.  But then, like with many of us, life happens.  You grow up.  You have responsibilities that take away time and energy from the mysteries of life, making it easy to become bitter, hardened, or ignorant of the fantasy that can be apparent in life. I really felt as though Lovecraft was saying in these two stories that writing saved his life.  He was getting bogged down with the stresses of everyday life, bills, housing, love and intimacy, but when he was able to sneak away into the worlds that he created he no longer feared about these mundane issues.  He freed his mind in his fantastic worlds, just like Kuranes and Carter did in their dreaming.

Another interesting factor is drugs.  There is a finite stigma against all drugs, but there is a certain amount of research that proves that in controlled environments that drugs can be helpful.  For example LSD, and marijuana (or Hashish in Kuranes’ case).  In modern medicine, these drugs are used as a better alternative for treating things like PTSD and anxiety disorders, and at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, they would be far more prevalent if Big Pharma didn’t get their hands into government pockets and stymie their progression.  In Lovecraft there is countless mentions of drugs helping dreamers get back to their “dream state”, of characters opening their eyes to the actual world that is around them, instead of believing and trusting in the veil.  I think this subject is probably better suited for an entire post later on, but I think it very worth noting here, because of the content of these stories and the stigma of drugs.  Is it considered juvenile?  Irresponsible, to take these drugs to try and open up your consciousness?  Is it ignoring your responsibilities or reverting, to try and recover youth?  Or is there in fact a veil, that needs to be punctured, and we must attempt this in any way possible?

What do you think?

Join me next time for a blind read of “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”!

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, conclusion

“If you say int he first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off…” – Anton Chekhov

“But oh God, under the weight of life, things seem brighter on the other side.  No way out of here…” – Dave Matthews Band “Big Eyed Fish”

“Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.” –  Joseph Campbell “The Hero’s Journey”

 

In literature when we go on a journey with a character, there is always a mental journey as well as a physical journey.  Why is our hero, our hero?  Why is it he/she that has been chosen to do this task?  If they chose it, then why?  These are the questions asked from any good protagonist on a hero’s journey, so what did Randolph Carter learn?

Welcome back to another Blind Read!  We’ll be talking about the epic conclusion of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, and some theories that i have from reading it.  Again these are all my own theories, but feel free to give me some of your own!

The last time we saw Carter her was at the gates of Sarkomand and the great abyss.  He finds some Ghouls who are trapped by the same evil merchants and helps them escape.  Then calls upon the remainder of the ghouls to fight against these horrible minions.  With the help of Nodens he gains the help of the night-gaunts.  With these night-gaunts (whom “even the Great Ones fear”) and the Ghouls, they have an epic battle against the Shantak birds and moon-beasts and the fish like creatures (of which one can only assume are off shoots of Dagon).  Once they win the fight, mainly because of the vastly superior night-gaunts, they all go back to Sarkomand and the ghouls go back down to the abyss and Carter, again with the help of the night-gaunts, flies to Kadath.

Upon reaching Kadath he finds that the castle is empty, all except for a Pharaoh like man, who gives him directions to the sunset city, and tells Carter that he must get the Great Ones (Earth’s Gods) back to their homes on Kadath.  He tells Carter that they got the glimpse of the Sunset City from him, for it is a recreation of New England, Boston and Providence specifically, and the earth gods loved it so much that they went there.

Carter leaves, flying out on a Shantak, but realizes that he has been tricked.  The Pharaoh like man was actually Nyarlathotep and he is having the Shantak take Carter to the center of the universe and the seat of Azathoth to be devoured (I think this means both physical and mental).  Carter realizes the ploy, and leaps from the Shantak, and creates a kick, to bring him out of the dream.  He finds himself back in Boston, and revels in his sunset city.

In a brief epilogue, Nyarlathotep is bitter that Carter escaped, but he has been able to bring the Great Ones back to Kadath and mocks them as they brood.

This is without a doubt the most uplifting story that I’ve read by Lovecraft, and that has me wondering.  I understand that this story was published posthumously by August Derleth, and where I’ve not seen information to state that Lovecraft didn’t finish this story, it does seem, from the battle scene on, like a different type of story.  I wonder if Derleth took over this story and finished it, to have the dreamlands be a thing. But I digress.

I have three main points for the end of this story and they all revolve around the quote’s up at the top of the page.  The first is Chekhov.

There are many call backs throughout this story.  We have Pickman coming back at the end.  We have the slant-eyed merchant continuing to re-emerge as a sinister being (no doubt spurned on by Nyarlathotep).  Finally, we have the duplication of New England as the sunset city, in the same way that King Kuranes created Cornwall to be the place of his dreamland life.  This was the foreshadowing of where Lovecraft was going to take the story.  Kuranes goes to great lengths to describe how he created the land that he wanted, and that he had been chasing for all these years, while he’s speaking with Carter.  Then when we go back to the beginning of the story:

“…and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory…”

Lovecraft is saying right here that what he is chasing after is a memory.  it wasn’t until the end that I remembered that line, and the whole story was brought full circle.  That cyclical journey.

If we continue in that line it brings me to my next point.

“…the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.”

He is both trying to remember what the sunset city was in his dreams, but he is also trying to reconcile the memory of New England with what it is now.  His memories were what built the sunset city, and it’s wonderful and glorious vision.

The way that Carter views his current situation is that New England is run down, and the city of his dreams is so beautiful that he wants to go there.  “Oh god, under the weight of life, things seem so much brighter on the other side.”  He thinks that by going to the sunset city he will find heaven, or at least some version of it that he can live in, in the dreamlands.  This is merely a projection however, because the reality is that the sunset city is his own creation, just like King Kuranes created Cornwall.  He is searching for an idyllic memory, when what he is truly looking for is right outside of his bedroom when he wakes up.

That’s the major irony of the story, because things aren’t better on the other side.  They are only better once you come to realize that the world is what you make of it, and when Carter wakes, he realizes that he is in his Sunset City finally, and the journey to Kadath, while spectacular, was unnecessary.

The last point is one that is very interesting to me, particularly when it comes to the cannon of Gods.  The Great Old ones are the “Earth Gods” as Nyarlathotep calls them.  Carter has nearly transcended the gods, and has completed his mythological journey (quest), by creating something that the Great Ones want to experience.  At the end of the story, the Great Ones actually go to the Sunset City in the dreamlands.  They see all the glory that it beholds.

The dreamlands are of neither time, nor of space.  We see that because of the things that the dreamers can do, create cities and such.  Stay with me now, because I’m going to get a little crazy.

So back to Carters journey for a second.  The Great Ones are the Gods of Earth and everything on Earth has to do with them, not directly, but in the Lovecraftian world, we developed from these moon creatures.  So when Carter created the Sunset City based upon New England, there was a link between the Great Ones and the vision of the city.  They saw something in it that called back to the time that they were here, and that was the point of his journey.  To bring solace to the Great Ones, to lure them back into complacency and slumber, because they could experience the world, without having to come to our world.

The tragedy of the journey is that he ultimately fails.  That is where the menace and horror of the story come in.  Nyarlathotep tricks Carter, and instead of making sure that the Great Ones know about the city, he is taken elsewhere, and Nyarlathotep can collect the Great Ones and take them back to Kadath, where they don’t want to be.  Nyarlathotep wants the Great Ones to long for Earth, he wants them to come to earth a sew destruction (just because of their nature, not because of malice).  So he brings them away from their reverie in experiencing what the Earth is like, just having a small taste, and then brings them back to the cold wastes of Kadath, and taunting them, on their loss…until they get frustrated enough to escape and head back to New England.

What do you think?

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Pt. 3

Dark tales told in a circle, with the only illumination coming from the campfire.  The master storyteller, eliciting the terror from their subjects as they tell their story.  Cadence and timing is paramount to the proper telling, and this story teller has it down to a science.

Welcome back to another Blind read!  This time we delve deeper into the Dream Quest of Randolph Carter, and we get some new illumination on the cannon of gods prevalent in the world.  But first, a recap…

We last left off when Carter got to Celephais, and we pick up this week with the introduction of King Kuranes.  He is the king of Celephais and has died in real life, thus becoming a permanent denizen of the Dreamlands.  King Kuranes has made Celephais look like Cornwall, because he had a longing for being in a land of his childhood.  They speak for a while about the dreamlands in general, and Kuranes tries to talk Carter out of going on his trek to Kadath, but Carter is set in his path and he joins another ship, to head out to the plateau of Leng to find Kadath.

On this ship they find their way to Inquanok, a city made out of Onyx.  The sailors tell Carter that the city was made from a number of quarries, where they mined the Onyx, but there is one Quarry farther on, that no one goes to any more, that quarry has larger and unknown quantities of Onyx.  It is here that Carter wants to go because he has heard that the great city of Kadath is built of Onyx, much like Inquanok.  There is  temple to the Elder Ones here in Inquanok, and it is overseen by a “High Priest, with inner secrets”.

Carter continues on and goes to an old sea tavern, where he finds, again, the slant-eyed merchant.  Who seems to have followed him on his journey.

The next day Carter purchases a yak to travel to the unknown quarry to find answers and hopefully get closer to Kadath.  He is sure that he is very close, because of the Onyx connection.

He travels through the quarries, and eventually the yak gets spooked and runs away, and finally the Slant Eyed Merchant finds him and captures him with aid of the horrible Shantaks.

I have to say, I love getting a little more knowledge about the gods of Lovecraft.  I know that this one was published after Lovecraft died and I wonder how much of the influence of this story comes from August Derleth.  But I digress.

The most interesting thing I have come to realize about Lovecraft is his style of writing.  I have always had a bit of trouble getting into his verbose style, but what i have come to realize is that Lovecraft is best read as though he were  storyteller around a campfire.  The tone and inflection are the same, and if you read anything, especially “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath”, in this way, the story comes through so much more vividly and beautifully.  Every author has their own voice, and once you have come to realize that voice the experience of reading that author becomes that much greater, and though I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all the Lovecraft I have, up to now, I know that with this understanding, I will absolutely love everything else!  I just wish I hadn’t gotten through more than half of his works before coming to this realization!

Ok, back to the story…The first notable mention is the delving in to dream.  King Kuranes is the ruler of Celephais, and he is dead in the waking world.  It is not made clear in the story as to whether he died in the dream world or in the waking world, but he still has the power to change the landscape and make it that of the Cornwall of his childhood.  There are a few interesting ti bits in this that we can examine.  The first is that King Kuranes is a friend of Carters, even back in the waking world.  Carter is an experienced dreamer, that we know from the description at the beginning of this story, and he has known Kuranes mainly through dream, but Carter has known him in the waking world.  In fact “who in Carter’s latter dreams had reigned alternatively in the rose-crystal Palace of Seventy Delights at Celephais and in the turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian.”  So the question is, how can Kuranes still be a living monarch in the dreamlands when his body is dead in the waking world.  Did he die while dreaming?  Is this why he can stay here?  Are the dreamlands some sort of afterlife that we come to when we die?  Or are only experienced dreamers able to come to the dreamlands after they die, their dreams tying them to the dreamlands?

I tend to cater more towards the latter, because the image of the “rose-crystal Palace of Seventy-Delights”, elicits an image of the 72 virgins from the Quran.  We as humans tend to think of the afterlife as a reward for a life well lived here on earth.  If the dreamlands are a vision of this afterlife, where you have alternative versions of heaven, hell and purgatory, then this could be an example.  Kuranes is able to actually change the landscape and create the Cornish fields of his childhood after all.  This seems as though this is his afterlife, based upon the life he lived in Cornwall as a child.  I hope to have a better sense of what the dreamlands actually are once we get a little farther into the story.

Next set of business is the clarification to the cannon of gods.  This is what I’ve been waiting for, for so long!  While Carter is speaking to Kuranes, they discuss the danger of his quest, and Kuranes tells him what little he knows, as a way of warning Carter away from the quest.  We find out that there are three different types of gods…Other Gods, Elder Ones and Great Ones.  The whole point of this quest is to find the Great Ones, to find more information about that sun kissed city, but Kuranes warns him because, he says, the Other Gods had ways of protecting the Great Ones from “impertinent curiosity”.  He made it sound as though the Other Gods would gather the Elder Ones, The truly malignant forces in the universe, to avert this curiosity.  These Elder Ones were such as Azathoth and Nyarlathotep.  We are as of yet unclear as to who the Great Ones are, and we know that the Other Gods (from both this story and the short story “The Other Gods) guard the outer Hells and barren space, “…especially where form does not exist…”.  In fact when reading the short story “The Other Gods”, when Barzai the (not so) wise climbs Hatheg-Kla to do the same thing that Carter is trying to do here, (seek out the Great Ones), the Other Gods, do something horrible and Barzai is seen no more.  The Other Gods guarded the Great Ones from “impertinent curiosity”.

The question is why is it so important for the Other Gods to protect the Great Ones, that they would pull in the malignant Elder Ones?

Hopefully we will gain an answer at the conclusion of this story!

Ok, one last little anecdotal note, which shows how pervasive Lovecraft is in our culture.  The slant-eyed merchant is known to deal with a “High-priest, not to be described, which wears a yellow silken mask over it’s face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery.”  This seems to me to be the basis for the “King In Yellow”. which is a play in a book by Robert Chambers.  The play is said to induce madness and despair for all who read it.  Could it be that there is a correlation between worlds?  Is the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, connected to the slant-eyed merchant in some way?  Could that be where he got his information to write the Necronomicon?

What do you think?

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, pt 2

Worlds converge and lands that were once thought to be unique are connected by the dream.

Welcome back to another blind read!  It’s been a little while, and I apologize for the silence, but it’s been a really busy month! And that’s a good busy, because it’s been all surrounding writing.

Like I mentioned in the last edition of the Blind read, I’m taking a different tact for this story.  There is a bit of fluidity in the story, however there is far more to analyze than there has been in previous stories.  That being said lets get back into a little bit of a recap.  I’ve read nearly half of the story of Randolph Carter journeying through the Dreamlands in his search for Kadath.

The last we saw Carter, he was just escaping the turbaned men, who were trying to take him in the Abyss to Nyarlathotep.  The Cats of Ulthar helped him escape, and he boards another ship and sails away to Oriab.  He travels across the land and finds a carving of the gods he is trying to find, and is surprised that they look much like the sailors in Celephais.  He vows to head to Celephais, when he is captured by winged horrors called Night-Gaunts.  The Night-Gaunts take him to the underworld, supposedly to die.  There, in the underworld, he finds a former friend, Richard Pickman, who has become a Ghoul.  Pickman and his Ghoul friends help Carter avoid the Ghasts (horrible creatures of the underworld), and ascend the staircase to get back to the Enchanted Wood, a higher level of the dreamlands.  He then heads off to find Celephais.

There are a few concepts that I’d like to cover here that I find particularly prescient.

The first is completely meta, and touched upon a little in the last Blind Read ( https://seanmmcbride.com/2018/05/11/blind-read-through-h-p-lovecraft-the-dream-quest-of-unknown-kadath-pt-1/ ), but this is a story (which was published posthumously, so it may have never been intended for publication) where Lovecraft brings together many different stories he previously created.  This is the story which establishes the dreamlands as we now know them.  Despite what I’ve heard that Lovecraft wasn’t looking for cohesion or a “mythos” (forgive me, I forget where I read this, but I’ll do a little research and edit in the link if I find it), this book seems to disavow that concept.  It seems as though Carter was to become his hero of dreams.  The interesting part of this is that the dreamlands and the mythos are considered to be two separate collections, but it seems as though they are irrevocably intertwined.  We have Nyarlathotep as a central being of insidiousness, and Azathoth as the ruler of all creation and destruction.  These Outer Gods have a direct link through the dreamlands, where despite Nyarlathotep heading to earth in the story of his own name, it seems like the easiest way to contact these gods is through the dreamlands.  On top of that We have the concept of the story itself.  Carter is striving to find the gods, specifically by travelling through the dreamlands.  This is a blind read, and I’m only about half way through the story, but that seems almost like incontrovertible evidence to me.

Speaking of gods, there is a mention of a new one, I had never heard from before, which I’m pretty sure comes from Celtic mythology.  Carter is taken by Night-Gaunts to the underworld to be left to die.  The way the text is written it seems as though the underworld is a deeper level of the dreamlands, but more on that presently.

This new god’s name is Nodens, who in Celtic mythology is known as a Pan (the Roman god of mischief, amongst other things), and Nodens controls the Night-Gaunts.  So here we have another god who is trying to stop Carter, or at least delay him from reaching Kadath to ask the gods about the golden city.  If Pan is truly the inspiration for Nodens, then we know that he has more fun in playing with emotions, than with dealing in absolutes, like death.  So Nodens has his servants the Night-Gaunts kidnap Carter and try to deliver him to the despair of the underworld and revel in his misery.

This now brings us to the final point.  This portion of the story is a metaphor for depression.

The Night-Gaunts are a black winged, slightly humanoid creature, who does no harm, but delivers Carter to the underworld.  Much like the demons and devils from medieval art are portrayed.  These devils that speak half-truths into the subjects ears and put them on a downward spiral.  In the dreamlands, the Night-Gaunts are much the same, but have a more active role in actually taking Carter to the underworld.  He is not hurt, in fact he is gently placed and left alone to wallow in his despair.  He is left to die, but he is in no way injured.  He is just in the underworld.

Carter just never let go of his hope and his drive to find the golden city of his dreams.  He then soon sees what happens when one does give up hope.  He meets Richard Pickman, a former friend from Boston, who was a very talented painter.  Pickman has become a Ghoul.  A horrible former joke of the person he once was.  Luckily Pickman retains enough of his former self to understand that Carter was once a friend and rallies the other Ghouls to help him escape the underworld.  To escape the depression of what the underworld represents.  It is already too late for Pickman, he cannot leave the underworld, and returns to his life of horrors once Carter is safely out.

This section is the first truly horrifying section of the story, because previously Carter is merely travelling.  Now he had made a descent.  He is taken deeper into the dreamlands, where he has trouble seeing the light, he has trouble seeing the point of his quest.  So the deeper into the dreamlands you get, the depression takes over your mind, and derails you.  Much like the afterlife dreams in Richard Matheson’s “What Dreams May Come”.  Were these Ghouls sent here because of what they did in their lives?  Is this their hell?

What do you think?

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Pt. 1

At which point the inception was implanted in his mind.  What was the truth?  What was reality and what was dream?  Was there any truth to what he had experienced, or was the implantation of the concept there to set the pace?  Curiosity killed the cat (with the exception of the cats of Ulthar).

Welcome back to another Blind Read!  This time we’re diving into the Dreamlands, a place where I’ve been interested in for quite some time, and dying to dive into.  But low and behold!  We’ve already read many stories that take place in the Dreamlands and were just unaware that that’s what they were!

This story, much like “At the Mountains of Madness”, seem to be a world building exercise for Lovecraft.  This is a bit of a departure from the weird stories that I’ve been devouring.  This one is more of an adventure, that incorporated elements of some of the other stories.  Because of this correlation, it shines some new light on those other stories and what their meanings might have really been.  I’ll get more into that in other posts, however, because that would be a post in and of itself.  Here I’d like to talk a little about the story and the concept of Inception.

So we start the story with Randolph Carter, after just hearing his statement in the previous Blind Read.  Here we find that Carter is a experienced “dreamer”, and through this lucid dreaming, has the ability to travel throughout the Dreamlands.

The story starts with our intrepid traveler dreaming about a beautiful sunset city:

“Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it.  All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows…and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.”

OK, lets start with how many times Carter was able to see the fabled city.  Three is an interesting choice, not only for the religious implications, but also in western Occultism (though I wonder how much of Western Occultism actually stems from Lovecraft).  Knowing a little bit of Lovecraft’s religious views, however I proscribe that there are a few different things going on here.  The first is that 3 is a prime number, whose only factors are one and itself.  Once Carter viewed the city three times, he was unable to view it any more.  Could this have something to do with the exclusivity of the city and that there are 3 levels of the Dreamlands?  Could he have only viewed the city once (the first factor), but because there are three different layers of the Dreamlands, he was able to view it three times?  One for each layer?

While you chew on that, thee is also an Odd number, truly the first Odd number.  Where number 1 can be mixed into other equations, the number 3 throws a wrench into things.  So this could be that Lovecraft is trying to make us feel on edge, through a subsumed psychosomatic response?  Just like we talked about in the Blind Read of “At the Mountains of Madness” ( https://seanmmcbride.com/2018/03/23/blind-read-through-h-p-lovecraft-at-the-mountains-of-madness-conclusion/ ) Lovecraft uses Trypophobia (or the fear of small holes, as in a honeycomb) through his description of architecture.  Something that nature made, that was not quite natural.  Also his use of odd angles in “The Dreams in the Witch House”.  He uses these slightly off themes to set the pace for the story.

Then we see some of the grand architecture through his description of the city.  This hearkens back to stories like “The Tree”( Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Tree ), where we get some grand beauty, with a yearning to be where it is so pristine and wonderful.  Doubtless this is what Carter feels.  He has a desire to reach this city, but there is something ominous about it.  Just like there was in “The Tree”.  It is off limits, unattainable, and in fact the visions were stripped from him, and every person he asks tells him to drop it.  That the pursuit of the city is not one he should continue.  Could this all be a ruse set about by Nyarlathotep to enslave Carter?

This brings me to my final point in the inception (see what I did there?) of the “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” Blind Read.  The last time we saw Carter he passed out as his friend was killed by some horrible monstrosity in a tomb.  Could this have been the Inception of the Dream for Carter?  Could whatever creature that was down in that tomb, have imprinted the idea of the Golden City into Carter’s mind?  Could they have knowledge that Carter is an experienced Dreamer that is capable of actually getting to Kadath?  We are told that only three travelers had gone to the outer reaches, and only one came back sane.  Could this be a implanted call from the messenger god Nyarlathotep?  Is that why the call is so strong that Carter can’t stop his search, even though he is told to stop at every turn, and nearly dies in his dreams many times?

What do YOU think?

Join me next week as we talk about world building and how other short stories are in connection through the Dreamlands

 

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Statement of Randolph Carter

Ignorance is the foundation for Evil.  Ignorance, not in derogatory terms, but in it’s definition; a lack of knowledge, is the cause of the greatest of all issues.

Welcome back to another Blind Read!  Today we’re tackling an introduction to Randolph Carter, in the short vignette, and we’re covering the nature of evil, and how in Lovecraft, it always seems as though a willed ignorance is the cause of much of the horror.

The Statement of Randolph Carter has our titular character telling officials of what happened to his friend Harley Warren.

It seems as though Mr. Warren delved into strange occult books.  He was fascinated with something, and kept digging deeper and deeper.  He searched the world for the book that would tell him what he was looking for, and eventually he found it.  Carter says that many of the books he is looking at are in Arabic, proving that he is looking for some ancient knowledge, but that the book that holds the secrets are in a language that Carter doesn’t understand.

Carter helps Warren carry equipment to a site, but when the open the tomb Warren turns to Carter, with confidence, and tells him that he is to stay there.  That Carter’s sensibilities are too soft to experience what is down in the catacombs of the tomb.

Warren heads down and clicks on a phone, so that he can communicate with Carter.  Warren eventually finds what he’s looking for, but realizes that he’s made a mistake.  Whatever it is that he was looking for is far worse, far more powerful, far more demented, than what he anticipated.  He screams and screams for Carter to run, that it’s too late for Warren to save himself, but Carter could get out.

Carter promises to save Warren, but cant bring himself to go down into the tomb.  Eventually he hears a voice that tells carter “You fool.  Warren is dead!”

I’ll get to the idea of ignorance, but first there is something that has been happening in quite a few Lovecraft stories which had been bothering me; in many of the stories, the narrator of the story passes out from fear before they get a glimpse of the true horror that is coming for them.  Why is it that these Elder creatures and beasts are letting these people live?  They come upon them, helpless, but they always let them go to tell their story.  This is useful for Lovecraft to tell his tales, but is there a thematic reason for this benevolence?

I think there may be more to it.  How else could all these old books like The Necronomicon be written?  The knowledge had to have been obtained for the first time somehow.  Could it be that the Elder Gods allowed some man to write down this knowledge?  Or could it be that they want the knowledge to get out?

There is another possibility…do they have a moral code?  I have always assumed that the Elder Gods have a chaotic nature, but do they not attack people that don’t wish to delve into their secrets?  Do they stop their rampage when they find something helpless?  Are they like the Predator?  An alien creature who is a hunter, who never kills when the prey is helpless?  There seems to be some credence to this theory.

So if the Elder Gods are indeed this way, then why would anyone strive to find their secrets?  Is it just curiosity?  Power?  Which brings me to my next point.  It seems like the cause of much of the issues that begin in Lovecraft, happens when ignorance takes over.

These brash adventurers, who with to go after this forbidden knowledge, are in fact ignorant of what the knowledge they seek really means.  In every story these men find these books and seek their knowledge.  What we infer is that these men see that there is hidden power or knowledge and that’s where they stop.  It is their ignorance of what is actually going on that causes their deaths.

So are the Elder Gods actually evil?  Or are they only trying to stop the ignorant from accessing knowledge (like strange angles that will enable you to travel to another dimension), that they are not ready for?

What do you think?

Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dreams in the Witch House

“To die, to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub,

for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

must give us pause.” – Hamlet Act III Scene 1

Aye, there’s the rub.  What dreams come from death, but who’s death are we talking about? What brings about these dreams? and do the dreams have a steak in reality?

Welcome back to another Blind Read!  This time we’re diving into a new level of Lovecraftian fiction.  Welcome to the Dreamlands.  I’ve been excited to look into this a little more (in fact I even mentioned it in a previous Blind Read), because we have already begun to tackle some of the Cannon of the Mythos, so beyond Lovecraft’s weird fiction, he has the Cthulhu mythos and the Dreamland stories.

The story follows along our protagonist, Walter Gilman, who is a student of Miskatonic University in Arkham, Mass.  Gilman is interested in weird science, so much so that he studies the Necronomicon in the library of Miskatonic U and familiarizes himself with the lore behind it.

But that isn’t quite enough for him.  He finds a local house that was known as a residence of a Witch by the name of Old Keziah and her pet Brown Jenkin (a strange animal like furball, with a humanistic face that looks strangely like Old Keziah, and also has anthropomorphic features).

He finds that he has strange dreams in this house.  He goes into strange realities and sees Old Keziah and brown Jenkin nearly every time, but he also sees strange things like spheres and polyhedrons of light, which lead him around.

He eventually comes to the realization that there are odd angles in the house.  Walls tilted at incomprehensible angles that twist the mind, and whenever something strange happens it comes from those angles.

The dreams continue to get stranger, and things follow him back into the real life.  He wakes and finds his feet are muddy after dreaming about walking in a muddy field.  He wakes and finds his ankle has dried blood on it, after he is bitten by Brown Jenkin in the dream.  He assumes that a rat bit him, but can find no blood in the room at all.

He begins to wonder about his somnambulism, and borrows flour from his landlord and places it around his room and outside of it, to try and see his footsteps and figure out what he gets up to in his sleep walking fits, but when he wakes nothing is disturbed.

The dreams continue to darken as they get closer to May Eve.

“May Eve was Walpurgis night, when hell’s blackest evil roamed the earth and all the slaves of Satan gathered for nameless rites and deeds.”

Around this time and around Hallows eve children from the poorer neighborhoods seemed to disappear.  They are well known in Arkham as dark days, and as the day nears the dreams get even stranger.

Gilman sees a “black man” in his dreams, who holds out a book to him and Old Keziah wants him to sign it and gain a new name (hers was Nahab).  The story centers around this strange ritual of Walpurgis night and this strange “black man”.

A local child goes missing, which happens nearly every Walpurgis night, and in his dreams, Gilman sees Old Keziah holding a knife up, with the “black man” watching in the distance.  She is obviously making a sacrifice of the child and attempting to drain it’s blood into a strange metal bowl with  bunch of unrecognizable symbols.

There is much confusion, and Gilman finds himself struggling with Keziah.  He for some reason wonders if he actually signed the book that the “black man” held.  The book of Azathoth.

Gilman succeeds in stopping Keziah and strangles her with the cross that a fellow tenant gave him.

But Gilman never wakes.  The same tenant hears him screaming and goes to him.  Under the blanket there is a bunch of blood coming up, and eventually a creature looking like Brown Jenkin pops out from underneath the covers, but it has a strange resemblance to Gilman in the face, and it has hands instead of claws.  The creature runs to the corner, where the inverted angles appear and disappears into the wall.

The landlord evacuates the house, and there is a fire.  In the wreckage they find bones from across the ages.  Old Keziah had been up to her terribleness for years.

This is without a doubt my favorite of anything I’ve read by Lovecraft thus far.  Terrifying and, just perfectly Lovecraft.

Lovecraft immediately puts you on edge with his mention of odd angles.  What he does so well is bring the supernatural into our world so succinctly.  There are alternate dimensions, but the fact that thee is a scientific way to get to those alternate dimensions…or to bring those dimensions to us, is utterly, and fantastically terrifying.  In addition to that, the fact that one can indeed think of those angles and gain access to those dimensions is spectacular.

Which brings me (surreptitiously I know, but bear with me) to my next point.  Walpurgis night is a brilliant temporal setting.  The names of the people involved in the story are mainly Polish and Czech names, and Saint Walpurga is a Catholic saint who is known to have driven witches out of many Germanic provinces.  So by making this about Walpurgis night, Lovecraft is basically retelling the story of Walpurga through his own lens.  Gilman, ostensibly drives the witchcraft out of Arkham by destroying Old Keziah, and limiting the connection with our world to that of the Elder Gods.

There are a few gods mentioned in the story.  There is much mention of Azathoth, who “rules from the bed of chaos”.  There is Nyarlathotep, who we know has been to our plane, and lead people out of Egypt to supplicate themselves to his will (could there be an actual connection?  Nyarlathotep is just a mention in this story, but does he have a reason why he can come to our world?  is he a master of the angles?).  Then there is Shub-Niggurath “The goat with a thousand young”.

We know that the book is Azathoth’s who is the master of chaos.  Could Shub-Niggurath be Azathoth’s concubine?  Is that where the thousand young came from?  Then if we correlate to Christianity with the connection with Walpurgis night, we see the connection with Satan being sometimes correlated to a goat.  Thus we have hell being another dimension led by Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath, with Nyarlathotep potentially being the “black man” trying to get Gilman to sign Azathoth’s book and “getting a new name”.

So Gilman actually did sign the book, and that’s why he had his transformation into a creature somewhat like Brown Jenkin, but, because he killed the only other human (old Keziah), and the Witch House was destroyed, there is a loss of connection with that hellish world.

Which brings us back to angles.  In our culture good is the default.  We have a thought that to be bad, or to do evil things means that you are off, that your brain does something different that other people’s brains.  Lovecraft gives a reason here.

Angles.

If you have the ability to see in different angles then you have access to hell.  This is how you can have someone, who is structurally the same as every other human being, but their ability to see a way into another dimension, without the need of a loadstone (like the Witch House and it’s odd angles), is what leads them to evil deeds.

What do you think?