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It is not hard to guess that this, the
second issue of Crypt of Cthulhu devoted to Lovecraft's revisions, was
prompted by the recent recovery of the Rimel-Lovecraft collaboration "The
Tree on the Hill". It deserved critical attention, and a second revisions
issue seemed the ideal format. More about that in a moment, but the idea of
"Revisions Issue II" was also tempting because of new articles on the
theme submitted since Crypt No. 11. One of these was David E. Schultz's
"On 'The Loved Dead'", our cover article. In some areas, the issue of Weird
Tales containing "The Loved Dead" was yanked off the stands
because of the story's treatment of necrophilia. As you can see, we are trying
for the same result with our cover.
By far the most conspicuous feature in
the issue is the "Symposium on 'The Tree on the Hill'". A word of
explanation is in order. The first question to be asked concerning any Lovecraft
revision piece is, "How much of it is the Old Gent's?" We thought it
might be an interesting experiment to set a pack of no less than eight literary
bloodhounds on the trail. Burleson, Cannon, Fulwiler, Joshi, Mariconda, Murray,
Schultz, and your editor each received a copy
of the story and set to work independently. They were not to compare notes, and
the only hint they had was a letter from Lovecraft to Rimel (quoted several
times in the symposium) and Rimel's brief remark over the telephone that indeed
HPL "did help me with that one". Only later was a copy of the story
sent to Rimel, who had not seen it for many years. Trying to reconstruct who
wrote what, Rimel estimated that Lovecraft had written the whole of the third
section, as well as the excerpt from the Chronicle of Nath, and still
more besides, though he could not precisely delineate the rest. None of the
eight sleuths knew of this second contact with Rimel until after they had
completed their task. We think you will enjoy comparing their results.
We will let the other articles speak
for themselves and will pause only to draw attention to some special items of
scholarly interest. First, S. T. Joshi presents a corrected text of the
Lovecraft-Barlow revision "Till 'A the Seas", transcribed from
Barlow's original typescript, with Lovecraft's hand-written additions and
substitutions indicated in brackets. Thus the extent of HPL's involvement in the
tale need no longer be a matter of conjecture. In the same vein, you will find a
brief but revealing piece which more closely defines
Lovecraft's role in two more revisions, "Out of the Eons" and
"The Crawling Chaos". Finally, we present "Irony", a poem by
Wilson Shepherd revised (actually rewritten) by Lovecraft. Lovecraft's marginal
comments on Shepherd's draft are included in brackets beside each stanza.
Lovecraft's version of the poem, "The Wanderer's Return", follows. The
careful reader will notice how Shepherd's simpler theme of science's
hypocritical refusal to recognize new facts is replaced by the mocking,
fatalistic cosmicism of Lovecraft. Note, too, the implicit reference to Azathoth, which would seem to align "The Wanderer's Return" with the
Mythos.
Robert M. Price
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