Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Uh, let's have a brief conversation
Speaker 1: with our super producer, Max Williams before we pop the
Speaker 1: top on this one. Max, how you doing?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm holding in there. I'm holding in there
Speaker 2: like you know you're holding in there. Yeah, they're a
Speaker 2: little troublesome today, but we will push through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we very much, We very much hopefully will now.
Speaker 1: I am Ben Bullen and my partner in podcast as
Speaker 1: well as Max's Noel Brown is on Some Adventures will
Speaker 1: be returning soon and we have in the meantime been
Speaker 1: cooking up some ridiculous, some bizarre, special historical historical explorations.
Speaker 1: For this week, we are going to talk about one
Speaker 1: of the most important figures in all of modern horror fiction,
Speaker 1: and we are going to do it in a way
Speaker 1: to show you how weird this guy is. Now. When
Speaker 1: we were cooking up the idea for this episode, part
Speaker 1: of our continuing series on very Weird Authors, we looked
Speaker 1: around and I was thinking, who is the best guy
Speaker 1: to hang with us on this story? Now? Since HP
Speaker 1: Lovecraft is long past beyond the mortal Veil, we went
Speaker 1: to our second choice. Let us welcome Jonathan Strickland, aka
Speaker 1: the Quister, back to Ridiculous History. Dude, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: Doing pretty good? I'm feeling a bit weird. That's that's
Speaker 3: just a it's just a shout out to one of
Speaker 3: my favorite John Candy lines from Little Shop of Ours.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, No, I'm doing okay. I'm glad that
Speaker 3: you had me on because, uh, listeners probably don't know this,
Speaker 3: but I have. I have a fairly weird relationship with
Speaker 3: the subject matter.
Speaker 1: With the mythos and and actually in when I was
Speaker 1: researching this episode, I didn't mention it off air. I
Speaker 1: was saving it for this. I was researching this episode,
Speaker 1: one of the first things I do often is go
Speaker 1: to our alma mater how stuff works, and I want
Speaker 1: to give credit where it's due. Although we may not
Speaker 1: focus too much on Cuthulhu or an ecronomicon for to exploration,
Speaker 1: I immediately had that meme of a guy like slowly nodding
Speaker 1: in affirmation when I pulled up how Cthulhu works or
Speaker 1: how the Call of Cthulhu works, how the necronomicon works
Speaker 1: and saw that both of those articles were written by
Speaker 1: none other than you, and I reread them and I
Speaker 1: want you to know they hold up, They're good.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, that was fun to write. I mean
Speaker 3: so to kind of give you a quick overview of
Speaker 3: my own knowledge and experience with Lovecraft. I am the
Speaker 3: child of authors who have written in many genres, including
Speaker 3: speculative fiction, and so there's certainly a lovecrafty and influence
Speaker 3: in some of their works. But it also meant I
Speaker 3: grew up going to things like science fiction conventions from
Speaker 3: a very young age, like this is way before there
Speaker 3: was a dragon con. But I did all these sort
Speaker 3: of things and had this experience of being around culture
Speaker 3: that was certainly inspired by Lovecraft, if not like outwardly
Speaker 3: worshiping at the feet of this problematic author whom we
Speaker 3: will talk about extensively today. And my father, even as
Speaker 3: as an author, has adapted the works of Lovecraft for
Speaker 3: audio theater. He has for many, many years participated with
Speaker 3: a theatrical group here in Atlanta called the Atlanta Radio
Speaker 3: Theater Company or Artsy, and they've done several adaptations of
Speaker 3: Lovecraft works, including things like the Call of Cthulhu, the
Speaker 3: Color out of Space, Shadow over in Smith, done with Horror,
Speaker 3: Rats in the Walls. Yeah, all of these. And Dad
Speaker 3: would tell you that there are a couple of very
Speaker 3: difficult things that you need to do if you're adapting
Speaker 3: the works of Lovecraft, like a dialogue. One is one
Speaker 3: is like trying to, you know, downplay the racism quite
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, I have my priorities wrong. I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: in the correct the correct order. There any fan of fiction,
Speaker 1: anybody who is a writer or an author themselves. There
Speaker 1: are two, uh, there are two extremely interesting or is
Speaker 1: our pal Chuck would say hinky things about the mechanics
Speaker 1: of Lovecraft. Whom we are. You know, we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: But the first thing is, even as a kid, it
Speaker 1: always struck me. In multiple Lovecraft stories you will hear
Speaker 1: about what we call cosmic horror, the great old ones,
Speaker 1: the elder Gods, something something so eldrich and incomprehensible that
Speaker 1: the narrator says, there's way I can tell you, or
Speaker 1: explain or describe this thing to you, except for the
Speaker 1: next two pages, where I do so an obsessive detail.
Speaker 3: Right, The idea being that whatever the narrating protagonist has
Speaker 3: seen is so beyond human experience and perception that to
Speaker 3: attempt to contemplate it is to invite madness, which you
Speaker 3: could argue is either very lazy writing or it's brilliant
Speaker 3: in the sense of, you know, any good writer knows
Speaker 3: nothing they write is going to be as effective as
Speaker 3: the reader's imagination when it comes to conjuring up an
Speaker 3: idea of what these things might be. But to your point,
Speaker 3: the other difficulty my dad ran into was that most
Speaker 3: of these stories are written where you have a protagonist
Speaker 3: narrator and have almost no dialogue in them. It's almost
Speaker 3: all like description of what appen and and like a
Speaker 3: description of a conversation as opposed to a conversation playing out,
Speaker 3: which meant my dad had to invent all the conversations
Speaker 3: in order to which so they truly were adaptations. It
Speaker 3: was not like just just porting it wasn't an audiobook
Speaker 3: or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I love that point too, because that is the second
Speaker 1: point the the trouble with dialogue just from a mechanical perspective, Uh,
Speaker 1: you you nailed it with a single voice protagonist or
Speaker 1: narrator describing a conversation with Lovecraft sneaking in some of
Speaker 1: his own obsessions and be like, oh, Admiral of Staple White,
Speaker 1: despite being a partially a good old Puritan stock, had
Speaker 1: a bit of a foreign and cast in his eyes
Speaker 1: when he alluded to the incidents in Miskatonic University.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I gotta tell you, when you look
Speaker 3: in someone's eyes, you see that foreign shining in there.
Speaker 1: What is he? Anyway, this is our episode on This
Speaker 1: may be more than one episode, but this is our exploration. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Here, here's the too long didn't listen version. Lovecraft was
Speaker 3: xenophobic and racist, but we're going to talk more about
Speaker 3: his life and the sort of things that informed his
Speaker 3: experience and perhaps shaped his worldview. And this does not
Speaker 3: excuse anything that he wrote about or said in the
Speaker 3: in the following years, but perhaps it will give a
Speaker 3: greater understanding. And also, like when you start to wrestle
Speaker 3: with an author's flaws and and you're trying to measure
Speaker 3: that against either your admiration for their work or your
Speaker 3: admiration for the impact that they have had. Because even
Speaker 3: if you don't like Lovecraft stories, and there are plenty
Speaker 3: of reasons, not two chances are you have encountered something
Speaker 3: that directly or indirectly was was the result of Lovecraft's work, right,
Speaker 3: whether it's the Evil Dead series, which clearly draws from Lovecraft,
Speaker 3: or Stephen King, Stephen.
Speaker 1: King, Yeah, Fallout, Fallout, True True.
Speaker 3: True Detective, even though you could argue that that's drawing
Speaker 3: more from Chambers, who is a predecessor to Lovecraft.
Speaker 1: But Robert W. Chambers, the Yellow King.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Yellow King clearly has a huge infam But
Speaker 3: I would argue that a lot of lovecraft influence goes
Speaker 3: into True Detective too, not just Chambers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not just the plagiarism of Thomas Leggatti's work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which story.
Speaker 1: For another day. And we want to begin today's exploration
Speaker 1: with immense thanks to the world's foremost scholar on HP. Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: an academic professor named st. Joshi st is going to
Speaker 1: be our go to worse for a lot of the
Speaker 1: biographical info here and Jonathan Max. In my mind, after
Speaker 1: we've done this research, I think we can make a
Speaker 1: compelling argument that a lot of Lovecraft's work, a lot
Speaker 1: of his canon is inspired and informed by heartbreaking tragedy
Speaker 1: in his personal life, by his own mental health struggles
Speaker 1: and by several I'll say it ridiculous obsessions. So okay,
Speaker 1: we'll prove the case. HP Lovecraft. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He
Speaker 1: is born on August twentieth, eighteen ninety and he's born
Speaker 1: at his family's house. It's a really nice Victorian home
Speaker 1: in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft.
Speaker 1: She comes from an old family. She is I don't
Speaker 1: know if you want to call her blue blood, but
Speaker 1: you could trace her ancestry back to the arrival of
Speaker 1: George F. Phillips in Massachusetts, way back in sixteen thirty.
Speaker 1: So this kind of informs Lovecraft's later obsession with the past, right,
Speaker 1: the history and the importance of lineage and bloodline and
Speaker 1: is his father is a guy named Winfield Scott Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: who is a traveling silversmith salesman, which used to be
Speaker 1: a job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you could argue Paul Revere was a traveling silversmith,
Speaker 3: but it was only because he had to go from
Speaker 3: Plinty to Point B to Warren about the British. But
Speaker 3: you know, technically he was a traveling silversmith. No, I
Speaker 3: think you make some good points already been about this
Speaker 3: concept of lineage and ancestry and that importance, and it
Speaker 3: kind of is an it's instilling within Lovecraft this idea
Speaker 3: not just of the importance of lineage, but also a
Speaker 3: sense of entitlement, which I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 3: how strong that was for him. A lot of this
Speaker 3: is like armchair psychology, you know, a century removed, right,
Speaker 3: But I feel that there was a sense of an
Speaker 3: entitlement in that a lot of these families had built
Speaker 3: up like, oh, we deserve the things that we have,
Speaker 3: and when they're taken away, it's an enormous injustice. And
Speaker 3: as we'll see, like Lovecraft suffered quite a few massive
Speaker 3: setbacks in his family, massive setbacks, and I get the
Speaker 3: sense that he felt that that was almost a personal
Speaker 3: injustice visited upon him and his family.
Speaker 1: Oh one hundred percent. Also, one time in I can't
Speaker 1: remember what course I was taking, but one time I
Speaker 1: received an a minus on anotherwise perfect essay about Lovecraft
Speaker 1: because my thesis statement was, ultimately he decided, I did
Speaker 1: no one was white enough, no one's lineage was, you know,
Speaker 1: the perfect Anglican or Scandinavian stock. That I don't think
Speaker 1: he even cared for Scandinavian people.
Speaker 3: He just got weird. He did at one point praise Hitler.
Speaker 3: He said that the guy was kind of an idiot,
Speaker 3: but he had some good ideas, so.
Speaker 1: Very Kanye West of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, But one of the earliest setbacks, or earliest
Speaker 3: tragedies to visit upon him, was the loss of his
Speaker 3: father when he was just a wee toddler.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a heartbreaking story, one of the
Speaker 1: first tragedies he encounters when he's arguably too young to
Speaker 1: remember much about the experience. His father, as you said,
Speaker 1: Jonathan has what contemporary sources describe as a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 1: Now that's kind of like saying hysteria at this point
Speaker 1: in history, because it's a vague term that is used
Speaker 1: to describe a lot of unrelated things. His father is
Speaker 1: taken from Chicago back to Butler Hospital in Providence, and
Speaker 1: his father remains there convalescing or deteriorating for five years
Speaker 1: before he dies on July nineteenth, eighteen ninety eight. So,
Speaker 1: now for young Howard Phillips, his father has been in
Speaker 1: a very bad way, so bad that like something that
Speaker 1: a child should not have to witness. That's where his
Speaker 1: father's been He's told his father is paralyzed in comatose
Speaker 1: during the entirety of these five years, but later research
Speaker 1: would verify, with ninety plus accuracy, ninety plus percent accuracy,
Speaker 1: the Lovecraft's father actually expired due to a form of syphilis.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and that won't be the last time that syphilis,
Speaker 3: or as the English used to like to call it,
Speaker 3: the French disease. Well, we'll factor into this. I mean,
Speaker 3: I figure, if we're gonna talk about xenophobia and racism,
Speaker 3: we might as well just sort of pepper it into
Speaker 3: the conversation.
Speaker 1: Let's just yeah, you know what, I think it's good
Speaker 1: for the structure. I think you're on the money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the French called it the English disease
Speaker 3: to be fair, So it's.
Speaker 1: Those guys classic. Yeah. And look, so his father passes
Speaker 1: his way, his mother is alive, and his guardians then,
Speaker 1: or like the village that raises him, becomes his mother,
Speaker 1: his two aunts, and for a time, his grandmother. We
Speaker 1: may get to that later, but his grandfather is a
Speaker 1: particular interest to us because he is essentially a character
Speaker 1: ripped from the pages of Edward Gorey comic strip. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a prominent industrialist. His name get I know, we
Speaker 1: both know this, so silly. His name is Whipper van
Speaker 1: Buren Phillips.
Speaker 3: Oh, good old Whipple, Whipple choice, mister Whipple. I mean, like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's a reference that none of your listeners are going
Speaker 3: to know except for the old timers like me. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I So this is where I've been debating on where
Speaker 3: to put this particular thing, because I mean, it's something
Speaker 3: that's famous that a lot of people who are aware
Speaker 3: of Lovecraft outside of just his fiction, they know about this.
Speaker 3: But it's probably a good place to put it because
Speaker 3: it was the family pet. This This is where we
Speaker 3: have to mention that that I think Lovecraft he was
Speaker 3: very fond of cats, and he had he had a cat,
Speaker 3: a black cat. And I will not say the name
Speaker 3: of this black cat because it uses a particularly awful
Speaker 3: racial slur, and a lot of people who talk about
Speaker 3: Lovecraft mentioned this cat and mentioned the fact that he
Speaker 3: owned this cat and named this cat this terrible slur.
Speaker 3: I would contest that somewhat in that we do not
Speaker 3: know that it was Lovecraft who named that cat. It
Speaker 3: may have been, but it may have been one of
Speaker 3: the members of his family because he was just a
Speaker 3: child at the time. But I think it's more indicative
Speaker 3: that the family as a whole had no compunction, no
Speaker 3: compunction to avoid racial slurs, which, by the time at
Speaker 3: this time are racial slurs. It's not like, oh, it
Speaker 3: was a different time and people didn't consider it a slur. No,
Speaker 3: they did, They fully did. But yes, this would be
Speaker 3: right around that time. In fact, when we get to
Speaker 3: the point where the grandfather exits the picture, he exits
Speaker 3: the picture the same year that that cat disappears.
Speaker 1: And we know cats play a big role in a
Speaker 1: lot of Lovecrafty and work. Right, even that the parts
Speaker 1: of the canon or the mythos that he himself generated,
Speaker 1: which is at this point you could argue a fundamental,
Speaker 1: yet relatively small percentage of the overall mythos. Lovecraft is
Speaker 1: a precocious kid, very much. Yeah, he's reading at age three,
Speaker 1: around age six or seven, he is also actively writing
Speaker 1: stuff juvenilia, you know, maybe some nonfiction thoughts on science
Speaker 1: or paraphrasing of Greek and Arabic based works that he
Speaker 1: had been exposed to earlier. This is a great anecdote,
Speaker 1: since we are rightly dunking on some of his evil views.
Speaker 1: Will give you one very rare story about this guy
Speaker 1: being a cute kid. So he reads Arabian Nights when
Speaker 1: he's around five years old, and this rocks his world,
Speaker 1: Like this smacks his balls off and he is so
Speaker 1: into it. You know how when like some kids will
Speaker 1: watch a movie like Deadpool or Aceventura and then that's
Speaker 1: their personality for the summer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I that's I'm familiar. I can tell you
Speaker 3: what mine was when I was so I have distinct memories.
Speaker 3: This does not speak well of me, but I'm going
Speaker 3: to go ahead and share it anyway, because I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm almost fifty, so what the heck? Uh? When I
Speaker 3: was a kid, the game that I would play with
Speaker 3: my friends was that we would make up stories that
Speaker 3: exist within the rich mythological world of the Dukes of Hazard,
Speaker 3: and my designated role was to play the brave officer
Speaker 3: of the law, Roscoe P. Coltrane. True God, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: Like you know, a a an example of what the
Speaker 3: justice system is, you know what. I wish that were
Speaker 3: a joke, but it kind of isn't anyway anyway, for
Speaker 3: for like a summer. Yeah, like that was just like
Speaker 3: we were because that was a very popular show when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, and that was something that but
Speaker 3: like any kid can think about that, like from my dad.
Speaker 3: The book that got him, uh, kind of inhabiting imaginary
Speaker 3: worlds was Treasure Island, Robert Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island. So
Speaker 3: same sort of thing. Like if you had Red Treasure
Speaker 3: Island as a kid, and that really sparked your imagination,
Speaker 3: you might invent for yourself a persona related to pirates.
Speaker 3: So exactly so Lovecraft invents a persona inspired by Arabian nights,
Speaker 3: and this is one that would actually factor into his
Speaker 3: literary works. Many years later, he creates a persona named
Speaker 3: Abdul alhazread now in Lovecraft's later works, that's part of
Speaker 3: his title. You usually hear it as the mad Arab
Speaker 3: Abdul Alhazred, which again xenophobia and all that. But his
Speaker 3: claim to fame within the Lovecraft mythos is this is
Speaker 3: the author of the infamous Necronomicon.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and he has, through madness and through conspiring
Speaker 1: and parlaying with dark powers beyond the ken of human understanding.
Speaker 1: He is translated or imparted some very small percentage of
Speaker 1: knowledge from these other planes to the human world and
Speaker 1: doing so again. Absolutely, I have some bonkers. Anybody who
Speaker 1: reads the book runs the risk of going mad or
Speaker 1: being waylaid by these evil powers. But the reason we
Speaker 1: think that Jonathan and Max and I think this is
Speaker 1: a rare cute story is because you have to picture
Speaker 1: it in like a ridiculous history cinematic adaptation of Young Lovecraft.
Speaker 1: It's true, folks, at some point a five year old
Speaker 1: genuinely woke up one day in his house and walked
Speaker 1: around and told everyone he could meet. No, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not Howie anymore, call me Abdul Alhazarin.
Speaker 3: In Providence, Rhode Island. An important component of taking that
Speaker 3: picture into account.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, he was not a super diverse place. Uh. Then,
Speaker 1: like we said, he gets obsessed with Greek mythology, and
Speaker 1: you can see his You can see his earliest surviving work,
Speaker 1: The Pull of Ulysses, in eighteen ninety seven. It's pretty
Speaker 1: much paraphrasing stuff he read earlier. And then his first
Speaker 1: work we know about is actually weird fiction. It's called
Speaker 1: The New Bread Eavesdropper. He may have written it in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six, but from what I understand there are
Speaker 1: no extant copies, so we really don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was the best thing he ever wrote.
Speaker 3: We have references to this lost story, but we don't
Speaker 3: have the story itself. It's kind of like the Cardinio
Speaker 3: with William Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, okay, flex and those English lip muscles.
Speaker 3: Listen, I get so few opportunities to do it.
Speaker 1: Well, well done man. We also know it's strange this
Speaker 1: concept of what was called weird fiction at the time,
Speaker 1: because the ideas or stories that had stuff like cosmic
Speaker 1: horror in it, they already existed. Yes, at this point.
Speaker 3: Often we think of Lovecraft as being the creator of
Speaker 3: weird fiction, but that is that is not correct. Honestly,
Speaker 3: the more you dive into history in general, and Ben
Speaker 3: you know this, You've been diving into history for years now.
Speaker 3: But the more you dive into it, the more you realize, oh,
Speaker 3: things don't really have a clear cut beginning, middle and end.
Speaker 3: Usually it's almost always middle. You're almost always middle, and
Speaker 3: like there might appear to be an end, but then
Speaker 3: maybe a generation later, it resurfaces. That sort of think
Speaker 3: same thing is true of weird fiction in that while
Speaker 3: certain formats like the novel were relatively young. I mean,
Speaker 3: in the grand scheme of things, weird fiction was already
Speaker 3: something that was being explored by authors before Lovecraft was
Speaker 3: even born.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah. And really the idea of genres
Speaker 1: evolving and that kind of method of categorization that is
Speaker 1: still a continuing thing. You know, how how do we
Speaker 1: bucket this creative work? Which leads me to one brief
Speaker 1: soap box complaint that has nothing to do with this.
Speaker 1: With all due respect to the academics and the hungover
Speaker 1: substitute teachers in the crowd today, I think postmodern literature
Speaker 1: as a term is kind of dumb.
Speaker 3: I agree. I took a course in postmodern literature, and
Speaker 3: the the thing I took away from it is, oh,
Speaker 3: this is what we call stuff that we can't easily
Speaker 3: classify into some other bucket exactly.
Speaker 1: Just call it miscellaneous, yeah, modern miscellaneous.
Speaker 3: Anyway, it's it's It's why why I'm glad you use
Speaker 3: the term specul or we both use the term speculative fiction, right,
Speaker 3: because because that's something that is it's such a broad category.
Speaker 3: You could argue it has very little utility because it
Speaker 3: doesn't give you enough information about what the what what
Speaker 3: bucket this this story falls into. But it's very useful
Speaker 3: because the weird fiction genre has elements of science fiction,
Speaker 3: it has elements of horror, it has elements of psychological
Speaker 3: thriller in it. There are a lot of different components
Speaker 3: that go in together to make weird fiction, and typically
Speaker 3: you're talking about things that are matters that are much
Speaker 3: much larger than humans can comprehend, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's that. I think that's a great defining
Speaker 1: characteristic or axiom for what we call speculative or weird fiction.
Speaker 1: And you can see a bevy of tremendous, fantastic authors
Speaker 1: who later take up that mantle, in no small way
Speaker 1: informed by the works of Lovecraft. We're talking folks like
Speaker 1: Laird Baron. We're talking folks like you know, Roberty too
Speaker 1: many names, Roberty Howard, Robert Block, you know, Oh, Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Balingrad is a guy I've been really into.
Speaker 3: Got to check out so tons of tons of folks,
Speaker 3: some of whom actually corresponded with and collaborated with Lovecraft.
Speaker 1: Yes, many of whom, And I think that was one
Speaker 1: of the most progressive aspects of the way that they
Speaker 1: went about constructing this universe. All of those people that
Speaker 1: you and I just named, Jonathan, they owe a debt
Speaker 1: to Lovecraft, for sure, but they also, in doing so,
Speaker 1: owe a huge and often unacknowledged debt to Howard's very
Speaker 1: strange grandfather. Would who would grab this little kid, And
Speaker 1: this is, by the way, in the era where breaching
Speaker 1: was still a thing. Check out our bothersome episode on that.
Speaker 1: He would get young Howard when it was like grandpa time,
Speaker 1: and instead of telling him fun marry stories of Jack
Speaker 1: and the Beanstalk or nursery rhymes or grim adaptations or anything,
Speaker 1: he would tell him very disturbing, strange, Gothic informed stories
Speaker 1: that were probably not appropriate for a child.
Speaker 3: Yeah, keeping in mind that his grandfather would have been
Speaker 3: probably a contemporary of Edgar Allen Poe at that point, right.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 3: So, so, like you think about Poe and Poe's works
Speaker 3: and the kind of Gothic influence that Poe had, that's
Speaker 3: sort of what I imagine is him coming up with
Speaker 3: like ghost stories and things of that nature that really
Speaker 3: tap into that dark esthetic Leyden genre of Gothic horror.
Speaker 3: This is where we really talk about the Edward Gorey influence,
Speaker 3: which is funny because side note, Edward Gorey illustrated one
Speaker 3: of the books my dad wrote, so oh cool. It
Speaker 3: was one of the yeah, one of the later ones
Speaker 3: of Gory's career. But yeah, it's it's kind of just
Speaker 3: fun to think about that because you know, I've also
Speaker 3: had that experience, right, Like I as a kid, I
Speaker 3: grew up hearing my dad tell all these kind of
Speaker 3: crazy stories, things that would make it like it's all
Speaker 3: the all the trimmings, the stuff that hit the cutter
Speaker 3: room floor that didn't make it into his literary career.
Speaker 3: I got the benefit of getting to hear those.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you were the test audience. Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like some dark version of a known
Speaker 1: comic surprising people at the comedy cellar, right right, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this will make it in the set,
Speaker 1: but here's.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna work out some material
Speaker 3: here and see how much of this bomb's yeah, they'll
Speaker 3: tell your mom no.
Speaker 1: So this is yeah, this is you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: mentioning that we're gory stuff. And that's really cool fact
Speaker 1: that I just learned about you and your dad. But
Speaker 1: the reason we feel this is so gory esque is
Speaker 1: because at this point Lovecraft has all the things of
Speaker 1: a typical pseudo Victorian and gory character, you know, a
Speaker 1: gashly crumb tiny. He is not just isolated from other
Speaker 1: people in a very weird mansion. He doesn't just have creepy,
Speaker 1: somewhat Adams family esque relatives in charge of his upbringing.
Speaker 1: He also has a range of Victorian maladies, many of
Speaker 1: which we would call psychological.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's somewhat of a sickly child. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: like like he would have fit right in with the
Speaker 3: Secret Garden. But but these illnesses are not strictly or
Speaker 3: not only of the physical variety. As you mentioned, he
Speaker 3: appeared to exhibit some psychological issues as well, things that
Speaker 3: we wouldn't have a grander understanding of for many years.
Speaker 3: So you know, you have the double negative impact, not
Speaker 3: double negative in the sense of ain't no, but double
Speaker 3: negative in the sense of two negative things hitting him
Speaker 3: at the same time. One, he's the product of a
Speaker 3: storied family line, where typically that's something you just don't
Speaker 3: talk about, right If your relatives are a little bit funny,
Speaker 3: then you don't talk about that. Very great gardens but secondly,
Speaker 3: you also have a lack of understanding in general of
Speaker 3: psychological issues in the human mind, so there's very little
Speaker 3: recourse you can seek to actually help you. And so
Speaker 3: this kid has some major strikes against him from the
Speaker 3: get go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's often as a result not attending school. He's
Speaker 1: a very very intelligent person, no one is disputing that.
Speaker 1: But his grades and his records often indicate his intellectual potential.
Speaker 3: Right Individually, He goes and seeks out lots of information
Speaker 3: about subjects that really interest him. So he does study
Speaker 3: things like the sciences, particularly chemistry and astronomy. So it's
Speaker 3: not as if he's going forward ignorant of these things.
Speaker 3: He is seeking that information out because he found it
Speaker 3: fascinating on a personal level. So it wasn't necessarily due
Speaker 3: to the schools he was attending as a small child.
Speaker 3: It was more his innate curiosity that was fueling this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we you know you, Max and I being
Speaker 1: a house of works, folks, we love that. We love
Speaker 1: oh yeah, self directed learning.
Speaker 3: I mean that was that was kind of like the
Speaker 3: mission statement for the entire website was that it was
Speaker 3: all about curiosity.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And that's a lesson that I think
Speaker 1: holds true. I don't think. It's not my opinion, it
Speaker 1: holds true in the modern day. One of the best
Speaker 1: things you can do is be curious. Now, there are
Speaker 1: some diminishing returns past certain thresholds we've opened there, And
Speaker 1: maybe that's kind of a parable too that reflects later
Speaker 1: in Lovecraft's work. His life gets a little bit better
Speaker 1: when he makes it to high school, place called.
Speaker 3: Hope Street High School the fundamental opposite for most people,
Speaker 3: right right, Yeah, most people would be like Buffy the
Speaker 3: Vampire Slayer is a television series that was built on
Speaker 3: the premise that high school is hell and that the
Speaker 3: entire series, or at least the first half of that series,
Speaker 3: was based on that premise and exploring that in a
Speaker 3: very literal sense. And it's funny to me, of course,
Speaker 3: it would be Lovecraft who would find the opposite is true,
Speaker 3: that hey, things got better in high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Wow, being a freshman is awesome. He gets
Speaker 1: several long lasting friendships from his time in high school,
Speaker 1: and he also starts exploring the world of communication and
Speaker 1: publishing with all this knowledge he stored up in his
Speaker 1: I'll say it, creepy, little head. His first printed work
Speaker 1: appears so early, and thanks to St. Josie for doing
Speaker 1: the research work here. It's published in the Providence Sunday
Speaker 1: Journal in nineteen six, and pretty much immediately after that
Speaker 1: he starts writing for other local papers. He does columns
Speaker 1: on astronomy, he does local human interest stories, and he
Speaker 1: does something that personally impressed me because I've done something
Speaker 1: similar when I was a maladjusted younger person. He makes
Speaker 1: his own scientific journals, you could call them, and he
Speaker 1: distributes them like mixtapes or zines to his friends. So
Speaker 1: imagine we're in high school with this guy, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. We want to go play whatever sport there,
Speaker 1: play stickball or something, and he's like, no, first, please
Speaker 1: read by scientific journal. We're like, dude, is that handwritten?
Speaker 3: I've written a treatise, treat this one chemical reaction that
Speaker 3: I observed the other day. It's it's so compelling.
Speaker 1: He seems like a lot of fun at parties, right,
Speaker 1: And we're duncating out him out of affection. But we
Speaker 1: can say at this point, yes, he's eccentric. He's a
Speaker 1: little scamp, right, He's maybe a bit of a milk toast,
Speaker 1: bit of a Wallflower, but he seems well set to
Speaker 1: pursue a path toward wholesome nerdity. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's a word. But then Jonathan, everything goes wrong. There's
Speaker 1: more tragedy ahead, and this is where stuff really goes
Speaker 1: south for Lovecraft.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it does involve a little bit of backtracking
Speaker 3: to talk about the tragedies that befell because the first,
Speaker 3: like we just mentioned, his first work being published in
Speaker 3: nineteen oh six, well two years previous, nineteen oh four,
Speaker 3: that's when his grandfather passes and his beloved racist cat disappears.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that is yeah, and I'm glad to point
Speaker 1: that out, his beloved racist cat.
Speaker 3: To be fair, I don't know that the cat was racist,
Speaker 3: but we don't know if the cat was racist, Yes,
Speaker 3: but we do know the name of the cat was very,
Speaker 3: very racist.
Speaker 1: And the environment that approved of that name also.
Speaker 3: Extremely undeniably racist. Yes, and unrepentantly. Yes, proudly, one might say,
Speaker 3: proudly audaciously because because Lovecraft did make mention by name
Speaker 3: of this cat multiple times once he became an established author,
Speaker 3: so it's not like he was shying away from it.
Speaker 1: And he also wrote some terribly racist poetry. His first loves,
Speaker 1: indeed were essays and poetry before he got into fiction. Look,
Speaker 1: and it's quite possible that we would have never heard
Speaker 1: of Lovecraft as an author. After the death of his
Speaker 1: grandfather and the mismanagement of his family fortune, their nest egg,
Speaker 1: they went broke. They got into severe financial difficulties such
Speaker 1: that Lovecraft and his mom have to move out of
Speaker 1: their posh Victorian home. They lose the house. This is devastating,
Speaker 1: and now you know we're in just a much less
Speaker 1: well appointed domicile. This depresses Lovecraft so much so that
Speaker 1: a lot of scholars believe he was contemplating serious self harm.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen oh eight, right as he set to
Speaker 1: graduate Hope High School, he has a nervous breakdown, which
Speaker 1: means he leaves school without his diploma the Domino's fault.
Speaker 1: This means he also fails to enter Brown University, which
Speaker 1: he had always just assumed that he would.
Speaker 3: Enter, and he likely would have been able to had
Speaker 3: he not had his breakdown. Also, you might think, already
Speaker 3: we're talking nervous breakdown that may bring up echoes of
Speaker 3: the past due to you know, the passing of his father.
Speaker 3: And as we will see the mental health issues were
Speaker 3: not not solely relegated to his father and to himself.
Speaker 3: You could say that, I'm reminded of a silly line
Speaker 3: in Arsenic and Old Lace where something along the like
Speaker 3: insanity doesn't run in my family. It positively gallops.
Speaker 1: I remember that one. Yes, and there's there's some disturbing
Speaker 1: sand to that. You know. After this great failure in
Speaker 1: the world of the Ivory Tower, Lovecraft is going into
Speaker 1: self imposed solitude. You could say he's a hermit. You
Speaker 1: could say, you know, like in Japan, they have the
Speaker 1: thing called hikiko mori, which is people to simply lock
Speaker 1: themselves into do a very limited space and check out
Speaker 1: from the world. And he already had this tendency a
Speaker 1: lot of lonely children do to lose oneself in film
Speaker 1: and in fiction and works of fancy. At this point,
Speaker 1: he isn't really doing much with his life. He is again,
Speaker 1: as he said, he is intensely curious. He is a
Speaker 1: self taught person, so he's still pursuing his astronomical interest,
Speaker 1: which sometimes border on obsessive. He's still writing poetry. And
Speaker 1: during this time, as you so stutely eluded, Jonathan, during
Speaker 1: this time, he and his mom locked in a much
Speaker 1: smaller place, him not really talking to a lot of
Speaker 1: other people, they develop what is called what is often
Speaker 1: portrayed as an unhealthily close relationship. His mom still very
Speaker 1: much is distraught with the manner of her husband's death
Speaker 1: and losing her spouse, and she has what various schol
Speaker 1: will call a pathological and dangerous love hate relationship with
Speaker 1: her son. And we've seen it, you know. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: see somebody and their parents and you're like, you, guys,
Speaker 1: got a little why do you should move?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Interesting little side note here. This is a bit
Speaker 3: of a tangent, and I apologize, but I am wont
Speaker 3: to do such things. One of the authors who would
Speaker 3: eventually correspond with Lovecraft, as we'll mention, Lovecraft was crazy
Speaker 3: about correspondence. I think he was. It was estimated that
Speaker 3: he wrote more than one hundred thousand letters in his lifetime.
Speaker 3: One of those correspondents was Robert Block, who was a
Speaker 3: teenager when he first reached out to Lovecraft. And this
Speaker 3: is when Lovecraft is an established author. So this is
Speaker 3: further along in our timeline. But the reason I bring
Speaker 3: this up is Robert Block. You may be familiar with
Speaker 3: that name. That is the man who wrote the novel Psycho,
Speaker 3: which obviously then became adapted into a film by now
Speaker 3: Alfred Hitchcock and became famous. Really, it made Robert Block
Speaker 3: go from a notable author to a famous author. And
Speaker 3: while Block never ever mentioned anything about Lovecraft as an
Speaker 3: inspiration at all for any elements of Psycho, I think
Speaker 3: if you start reading about this kind of thing and
Speaker 3: you realize that Block and Lovecraft had a collaborative relationship
Speaker 3: and knew each other pretty well when Block was a
Speaker 3: young man, I think it's easy to draw some lines
Speaker 3: that may or may not be valid, but draw some
Speaker 3: lines between Lovecraft's experience and some of the story elements
Speaker 3: that you find in Psycho.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I haven't thought about that. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a tangent I would say, I would you know what,
Speaker 1: I would place it as circumstantial and compelling.
Speaker 3: Speculative is perhaps the best kindest word we can use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I wouldn't say speculative fiction, no, just speculators.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too, because that is you'll hear us refer
Speaker 1: to this fairly often, Pepper. Through our exploration here, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of authors yet to come who, most
Speaker 1: of whom will readily acknowledge the impact of Lovecraft's work
Speaker 1: on them, But then there are several who will shy
Speaker 1: away from that despite compelling speculation.
Speaker 3: Right right, And to be clear, Block and Lovecraft there's
Speaker 3: an undeniable connection because they incorporate elements of one another's
Speaker 3: work into their works. That's something else we'll chat about
Speaker 3: a little bit later on. But yes, whether or not
Speaker 3: Lovecraft's experience with his own mother had anything to do
Speaker 3: with informing the writing of Psycho that, I mean, it
Speaker 3: could be that Block was completely unaware of that element
Speaker 3: of Lovecrafts past. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you're making a really good
Speaker 1: case here. And then that as to our next question.
Speaker 1: So at this point, this guy's life is going ridiculously bad. Right.
Speaker 1: He is a hermit. His closest friend and greatest enemy
Speaker 1: is his biological mother.
Speaker 3: He has no real world skills with which he can
Speaker 3: use to attain a living like he came from a
Speaker 3: pampered background that was focused on more academia than any
Speaker 3: practical skills you might use if you need to, you know,
Speaker 3: make ends meet.
Speaker 1: Right, right, he has a patrician's philosophy and a peasant's pocketbook.
Speaker 1: And that's that's not an ideal situation, especially if you
Speaker 1: are forced to find the job and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't men shoes, I can't make barrels, I can't
Speaker 1: do the other what I assume or most popular industries
Speaker 1: at that time.
Speaker 3: Working in a cannery, a cattery.
Speaker 1: Yes, being a heneman. So here's the deal it could have.
Speaker 1: If history went just a little bit differently, we may
Speaker 1: well live in a world without Lovecraft. He may have
Speaker 1: just lingered, languish, died obscurity. But he read a He
Speaker 1: was a voracious reader then, as always, and he read
Speaker 1: a series of love stories by a pulp author named
Speaker 1: Fred Jackson, and they pissed him off so much.
Speaker 3: He's like, screw this, this ridiculous, sappy love stuff. This
Speaker 3: isn't even worth putting pen to paper. You should be
Speaker 3: ashamed of yourself. Hey, Hey, the argacy, the publication that
Speaker 3: published these, you should be ashamed for carrying this this
Speaker 3: tripe in your rag of a publication. And I am
Speaker 3: so angry. I'm going to do what countless YouTube comment
Speaker 3: will do in the future. I'm going to write a
Speaker 3: nasty response to it, except Lovecraft, being well educated and
Speaker 3: extremely well read, was able to put it into biting
Speaker 3: and sharp terms that your typical YouTube comment tends to lack.
Speaker 1: And he did it in verse just to put a
Speaker 1: little style on it. And he wrote a series of
Speaker 1: these things. His letter obviously is great for the argacy. Right,
Speaker 1: this is cooling because.
Speaker 3: They publish it. It's not just otherwise we would never
Speaker 3: even know about.
Speaker 1: This, right, Yeah, they publish it and Jackson's Defenders just
Speaker 1: like a YouTube comment page. I love the comparison. Jackson's
Speaker 1: Defenders come out of the woodwork. You know, why are
Speaker 1: you talking about my boy like this? And Lovecraft responds
Speaker 1: with yet more poison pen style verses. There's a heated
Speaker 1: debate that's selling copies left and right for the argus.
Speaker 1: People are picking it up to read the column like
Speaker 1: what are these I don't know if we need to
Speaker 1: beat me here, Max, but what are these assholes saying
Speaker 1: about each other at this time?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It's essentially the early twentieth century version of a
Speaker 3: disc track.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think that is a very good comparison.
Speaker 1: This is a beef, and this beef launches Lovecraft's career
Speaker 1: it's only because he got so pissed at these love stories.
Speaker 1: People are reading this, as we said, it's popular. One
Speaker 1: guy reading this is dude named Edward F. Das the AAS.
Speaker 1: He is the president of an outfit called United Amateur
Speaker 1: Press Association or UPA. They just like dropping a glass
Speaker 1: in a Greek restaurant.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I was thinking of go go Bardello's kind
Speaker 3: of kind of exclibs and whenever the song gets a
Speaker 3: little quiet, whoa bah. Yeah, this is a It's interesting
Speaker 3: because this is an organization designed for amateur writers. Right,
Speaker 3: It's not like this isn't like a professional organization. Quite
Speaker 3: the opposite. It's to it's to encourage amateur writers to
Speaker 3: pursue the craft and to perhaps make that transition from
Speaker 3: amateur to professional.
Speaker 1: By publishing their own zines.
Speaker 3: Which which is again something that we see today now,
Speaker 3: we see it where people are going through Amazon to
Speaker 3: self publish and just to bypass the entire publication industry
Speaker 3: out there, which has its ups and downs. Right, Like
Speaker 3: there's good and bad of that. Like anyone literally anyone
Speaker 3: can become a published author. One of the people on
Speaker 3: this podcast is a published author. I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: he didn't earn it. I'm just saying, do you hear that?
Speaker 1: Next? Anyway, we are looking forward to the next volume
Speaker 1: of uh Max's comprehensive critical discourse on Star Trek.
Speaker 2: Also, if you guys don't mind, I would like to
Speaker 2: jump in real quick with a completely off topic tangent.
Speaker 3: Sure, prepare yourself. It's about it's about.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be about football.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So I'm a University of Michigan fan. Uh, there's a
Speaker 2: running back and then a running back coach in Michigan
Speaker 2: history by the name of Fred Jackson. He's beloved, he's
Speaker 2: supposed to be a great guy, and uh, he's also
Speaker 2: known for just being hyperbolic all the time. Like he
Speaker 2: compared like all of his running back recruits to Mike Hart,
Speaker 2: who was like the all time leading rusher at Michigan.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, he's Mike Mike Hart, but fast. But
Speaker 2: that is not the story I want to tell right now.
Speaker 2: I want to tell the story about there's a running
Speaker 2: back by the name of Drake Johnston who goes in
Speaker 2: the store, goes into like the office Fred Jackson, and
Speaker 2: Fred Jackson just I guess he has a lot of drinks.
Speaker 2: So I'm cording this off of a m go blog,
Speaker 2: my favorite Michigan blog. I'm just gonna read a little
Speaker 2: bit of it, and I'm gonna see if you guys
Speaker 2: enjoy it, and then I'll shout so you guys can
Speaker 2: talk about uh, Lovecraft a little.
Speaker 1: More bonus points though, if you can somehow segue it
Speaker 1: back to Lovecraft. Oh, I see your conversational Parkour.
Speaker 2: All right, So I'm gonna read the quote here. I'm
Speaker 2: sitting in his office and there was a fridge right
Speaker 2: over there and he's like, you hungry, Johnson said. I'm like, no, man,
Speaker 2: I'm not hungry. So he's like, okay, I want to go.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go grab myself a coke. So grab
Speaker 2: himself a coke and sits down, takes two SIPs, and
Speaker 2: he's like, hey, Drake, you want something to drink? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, I'm good. He's like, I think I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get myself an orange juice. I'm like, dude, you
Speaker 2: have a coach just in front of you. He says
Speaker 2: it's fine. So I'm sitting there and maybe two minutes
Speaker 2: later he's like, I think I'm gonna gonna get myself
Speaker 2: a drink, and I'm like, coach, you already have two
Speaker 2: drinks in front of you. Man, your thirst can be
Speaker 2: quenched by what is in front of you. He's like,
Speaker 2: he says, I'm just gonna grab myself some water.
Speaker 3: You want some water.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, I have my gatoray in my hand.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 3: That's that.
Speaker 2: That's the whole story I mean. But like you know,
Speaker 2: Fred Jackson, is this trying to quench the thirst that
Speaker 2: that that Lovecraft that's actually his real name. That was
Speaker 2: that was like a made up one, that thirst, but
Speaker 2: it was that Lovecraft had. But it's a different type
Speaker 2: of thirst. Love prests. Thirst was for revenge and anger
Speaker 2: at the inferior Fred Jackson.
Speaker 3: Right, well, and he has the name love Craft, so
Speaker 3: he should know what a good romantic story should how
Speaker 3: that should be written. And clearly this inferior Fred Jackson
Speaker 3: had no, no concept of that. But this, this president
Speaker 3: of this amateur writer's organization, extends a hand to young Lovecraft,
Speaker 3: who who desperately needs a hand extended to him at
Speaker 3: this point in his life to join woo ba whoo bah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Lovecraft takes him up on it because his
Speaker 1: social dance card is not super crowded. He does this
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen. He will later go on to become
Speaker 1: the president of OPAH as well as the official editor.
Speaker 1: Hold the phone, look up into the nights, not just
Speaker 1: at the stars, but the darkness between the stars, which
Speaker 1: tells us the time is right for us to end
Speaker 1: Part one of our exploration on how HP Lovecraft was
Speaker 1: just so so weird. Thanks again to our super producer
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, to our composer Alex Williams. I did
Speaker 1: allot the research for this episode, and thanks to aj
Speaker 1: Bahamas Jacobs of course Jonathan, thank you for hanging out
Speaker 1: with us. Man, it's been a blast. You were yourself
Speaker 1: the whole time, and you know, Max and I and
Speaker 1: Nola as well, vicariously, we really appreciate that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I appreciate being invited on. I feel like you
Speaker 3: and I have a lot more to say about this,
Speaker 3: not just because we already have done that and we're
Speaker 3: retroactively going back to record this outro and I feel
Speaker 3: I feel ninety seven percent sure that I will remain
Speaker 3: myself for the entirety of the part two.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, man, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: trust fall for me, and I'm sure nothing will go wrong,
Speaker 1: so tune in. Later this week. We'll follow up with
Speaker 1: part two of HP Lovecraft being so just so very Weird.
Speaker 1: As my pal Noel always likes to say, We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.