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Pickman's Model
H. P. Lovecraft Group Read
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June 2022: "Pickman's Model"
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I just finished reading "Pickman's Model". What a polished gem it is! I can see why this was one of the last short stories Lovecraft wrote. It looks to me like he has mastered the form. What else is there left for him to accomplish in it?That said, I am still rating the story only four stars because the story is told at one remove. We don't learn about Pickman directly through third person omniscient point of view, or even first person. We're told Pickman's story by one acquaintance to another. I think telling the story from either of the first two perspectives would have been stronger choices.
That's the only bone I have to pick with this story, however. It is a chilling tale told in the form of a poetic Browning dramatic monologue, minus the verse. It's truly eerie once we figure it out, which for me was early, but that didn't ruin it. With Lovecraft the elegance with which he states something is every bit as important as the plot of his writing.
Since this is our last Lovecraft short story, they're all novelettes or longer from now on, I recommend giving this one a read. I doubt you'll be sorry you did. The best online source, if you want to read it that way: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/...
I haven't looked, but I would be surprised and let down if somebody hasn't already retold this in a modern setting as "Pickman's 3D Model" or some such.That's how I see it best working on screen. ha
Although, I have to say this suffers (for me, at least) from the same as other HPL works, with the indescribable horrors and whatnot. I can understand how it works, right? Let the reader fill in the blanks, and the odds are they'll think of something far more meaningful to them than you ever could, but... try, I guess? I do like how the shift between the narration/conversation and the quoting of others shows that HPL isn't all stiff-necked. He could have, had he chosen, written a first-person story from a much looser point of view, but it seems as if he never wanted to. I think we really missed out in that regard.
I am surprised to read you state that HPL seldom used first person narration. I have the impression that he used it most of the time. True, his first person narrator then usually (not always, e.g. "The Shunned House" and "Cool Air") tells a long story in third person, but there's still that first person narrator. "Pickman's Model" was, to my mind, an exception. I prefer HPL's usual mode of using first person.My favorite HPL story we have read so far is "In the Vault," another example of first person narration of a story then told by the narrator in third person. But it works!
Not that he seldom used first-person, but that that first-person was seldom so loose as how Pickman speaks in the recounting. Pickman the man sounds much more organic that almost anything or anybody else he's written, ha.
I see. Lovecraft's usual first person narrator like this one in "The Shunned House" sounds stuffy as hell: "All of this material I cannot hope to give, for my uncle was a tireless antiquarian and very deeply interested in the shunned house; but I may refer to several dominant points which earn notice by their recurrence through many reports from diverse sources." I mean, honestly, would anyone ever really speak this way?The "I" in "Pickman's Model" I agree with you is much more down to earth, e.g., "No, I don’t know what’s become of Pickman, and I don’t like to guess." Or, "Now if you’re game, I’ll take you there tonight. I think you’d enjoy the pictures, for as I said, I’ve let myself go a bit there." That's much more the way people actually speak.
So, what's the difference? I think it's that in most HPL stories the first person narrator is telling the reader the story directly. It's being recorded for the sake of posterity. Therefore, HPL will be his very stuffiest. But in "Pickman's Model" we're getting the narration from an average intelligence character, rather than the usual stand-in for HPL himself, hence the less stuffy I. That's why I felt the story was being told at one remove, or at a distance. We don't get HPL, or his stand-in's take on the situation, we're getting whatever this character talking to Eliot's take on the situation is. I guess I've become used to HPL's "stuffiness"--I prefer to call it eloquence--and missed it in this story.
This story reminded me of The Festival, only creepier.
The Night Gallery show (Season 2, Episode 11), based on the Lovecraft short story, read a lot into Lovecraft's story. But it worked nicely. I really liked the visual depiction of the model in the paintings. It's a pity the director decided to actually bring the monster into the story itself. It worked better when it was suggested rather than made actual. Still, I think the teleplay adds much that is logical and consistent with Lovecraft's story. It makes it really powerful to see it visually portrayed. Louise Sorel as Mavis was inspired casting. It was nice to see her in a role as a sympathetic character rather than the villain she normally portrayed.
With the completed reading of this story, easy times are officially over. Based on what you have read so far, you need to now decide if you're all that into Lovecraft. That's because reading the last nine Lovecraft works is going to take some serious devotion. The first sixteen works averaged 11 text pages each. The last nine average 64. Yep, that's almost six times the amount of monthly Lovecraft reading you have been doing so far. By late 1926, Lovecraft's nine year apprenticeship was over. He had by this time come into all of his powers as a literary artist, had made a deep and insightful study of his authorial predecessors, and was now ready to up his game. He all but abandoned the short story form to write only longer works for nine years until late 1935. Lovecraft wrote no notable fiction the last sixteen months of his life before his death in early 1937 (from intestinal cancer), even if he continued to publish.
That's not to say he wrote novels. He actually only wrote one, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a fairly short one as novels go, at that. It was published posthumously. Given the density of Lovecraft's prose, it's long enough. It's on deck for our reading pleasure this summer (August). Lovecraft found his stride in the novella form. He wrote five in total, all of them considered great, all of them to be read here in this group. The first of Lovecraft's five great novellas is The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. It was written in 1926, though not published until six years after his death. We are slated to read this for July. The other three of the nine works previously mentioned we will be reading are novelettes.
I am breaking pattern here by letting the group know early what's coming up in terms of our group reads because some people wanting to participate may need to have forewarning to carve out time in their schedules for reading these works.
So what about June's story, "Pickman's Model"? It's considered Lovecraft's last great short story, written in September, 1926. It was published in the October 1927 issue of Weird Tales and was greatly appreciated by the fans of the time.
There is a visual depiction of this story. It was done as a Night Gallery episode in the early 1970s. I have this series on DVD now and will be watching and discussing that rendition. I've written before about getting a DVD of the Night Gallery series. I really think you're really missing out if you don't have it.
So, when you get there, let's talk about the ending. Fritz Leiber, in his essay "A Literary Copernicus", praises the story for the "supreme chill" of its final line. Peter Cannon disagrees. He calls the tale "a well-nigh perfect example of Poe's unity of effect principle", but cites as its "one weakness" the "contrived ending". An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia dismisses the entire story as "relatively conventional". What do you think? Let's begin discussion of the story in June.