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Dear Dr. Price:
My warmest thanks for the copies of
CRYPT OF CTHULHU. What a delight it is to see this continuing interest in HPL!
And how astonished he would have been had anyone predicted that one day a
magazine such as this would become a reality!
Naturally, I found everything in the
issues of great interest to me. And --- by the way --- Ballantine does plan to
put out a "best" [of Lovecraft] collection, edited by Michaud; I've
done a long (7,500 word) Introduction, probably for '83 publication.
With all good wishes,
Robert Bloch
Los Angeles, CA
Dear Mr. Price,
Just a quick line to say very many
thanks indeed for sending me CRYPT OF CTHULHU. It is absolutely delightful, and
I am very glad to have it --- I've got quite a large collection of odd bits and
bobs of Lovecraft and things about him --- and although you don't mention it,
I'm sure you know our awful little book THE NECRONOMICON. This is, of course, a
spoof although I get a lot of letters from people asking me for further details
about it, quite convinced that it is all true.
My very best wishes for the little
magazine - I think you deserve to reach a wider public.
Yours with warm regards,
Colin Wilson
Cornwall, England
Dear Bob:
Many thanks for CRYPT 3. Your readers
might like to learn the origin of the strange name "Fvindvuf" as von
Junzt's given name (p. 15). When Robert Bloch wrote THE SHAMBLER FROM THE STARS,
he asked Lovecraft's permission to kill a character obviously modeled on
Lovecraft. Lovecraft sent formal permission signed as witnesses by Abdul
Alhazred, von Junzt, Gaspard du Nord, and the Tcho-Tcho Lama. This document is
reproduced facing p. 311 of MARGINALIA (Arkham House, 1944).
HPL evidently went to the trouble of
mastering the conventions of German longhand, which are quite different from
those of English. Hence "Friedrich", as written by a German, looks
like "Fvindvuf" to one unfamiliar with that script. In letters to
Lovecraft, Howard stated Junzt's full name as Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt.
"Abdul Alhazred" (p. 9) was a
make-believe name adopted for himself by HPL when as a child he went through a
period of Arabian Nights phantasy. (See HPL to Long, 1/26/21, in SELECTED
LETTERS, I, p. 122. ) It is not a real Arabic name. "Abdul" is not a
name but afragment of one, from "'Abd-al-" meaning "servant
of". When in 1973 George Scithers published a hoax volume, AL-AZIF (THE
NECRONOMICON), I contributed an introduction in which, as part of the joke, I
derived Abdul Alhazred from 'Abdallah Zahr-ad-Din, "Servant-of-God
Flower-of-the-Faith". The name was probably derived by Lovecraft from
Hazard, the name of a family to whom he was related.
As for REH's Lovecraftian imitations,
[my wife and l] say in our [forthcoming] biography that (THE BLACK STONE aside),
Howard "was at his best when he followed his own ideas, as in the Conan
stories, and at his worst when he consciously imitated other writers, as Sax
Rohmer in SKULL-FACE, Burroughs and London in AL-MURIC, and Lovecraft in THE
CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT."
For wider contact with REH enthusiasts,
you could subscribe to AMRA by writing George H. Scithers, Box 8243, Phila. , PA
19101. You could also write the Official Editor of the Robert E. Howard Amateur
Press Assn. (REHUPA), Brian Earl Brown, 16711 Burt Rd. (#207), Detroit, MI
48219.
Cordially yours,
L. Sprague deCamp
Villanova, PA
Dear Bob,
"Lovecraft's Concept of
Blasphemy" [vol. 1, no. 1] is quite a good article, and it deserves wider
publication. But I don't think the example from "Supernatural Horror in
Literature" synopsizing The Gods of the Mountain is quite a case of
blasphemy in the first, religious, sense. I don't see how the
"presumption" of this act is any different from the overstepping of
bounds detailed in your second definition.
Remember that Dunsany had no religious
beliefs either, & tended to use religious concepts frivolously, even as he
did in the ironic ending of this play: the blasphemers are turned to stone, and
the gullible city folk conclude they must have really been gods all along.
For all Lovecraft may have meant
something specific by the term "blasphemy", as your article so
admirably shows, he did belabor the point and reduce it to a cliche' in his more
turgid moments.
Turgidity and cliche' bring us by quite
natural turnings (or by commodius vicus of recirculation, to coin a
phrase) to Lin Carter [vol. 1, no. 2]. I don't think you make a very good case
for his Mythos pastiches possessing any merit. In fact, there's a fannish term
for what you've done: "to gerberize". This is named after a tactless
fellow named Gerber who would inadvertently blacken hopelessly the very
reputations he was trying to defend. You've synopsized all the stories, & by
putting them all together the formularized nature of them is more readily
apparent. And the "good" passages are simply awful, a crystallization
of everything that's wrong with post-HPL Mythos writing. I will give Carter
credit for an appropriate title: "The Utmost Abomination".
Enjoyed the article on the
Corpse-Eating Cult of Leng [vol. 1, no. 2]. I might mention that there is pretty
good evidence that HPL read Magic & Mystery in Tibet. It was quite
popular in his lifetime, and he seems to have paraphrased a couple pages of it
in the Commonplace Book, i.e., the passage about rolangs wrestling
corpses. On this subject I wrote a brief article for NYCTALOPS (in the next
issue) called "H. P. Lovecraft and Tibetan Corpse-Wrestling".
I would like to see the Oriental
Connection in HPL explored by somebody who knows the territory better than I do.
He probably read at least a few books on Oriental magic and mysticism, and there
may be some elements as yet undetected.
May your abysses never yawn out of
boredom,
Darrell Schweitzer
Strafford, PA
Dear Bob,
Thank ye most kindly for the second
issue of CRYPT OF CTHULHU. It pleased me very much to find it lurking so
blasphemously within the nethermost abysses of my foetid mailbox.
As with #1, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
The articles and reviews are highly readable and very interesting and
informative. I also find that there are very definite artistic talents lurking
in your depths. Especially liked "Kermit Marsh III" and
"Zoth-Ommog".
Your format for CRYPT is well thought
out and executed. Very nice quality. Keep up the keeping with CRYPT.
Michael H. Cline
River Ridge, LA
Gentlemen:
In the Nameless Name of He Who Sleeps
But shall Awake, the Dreamer in R'lyeh, Greetings.
I have just found the second issue of Crypt
of Cthulhu, and am most interested in issue #1 and future subscription. Many
thanks, and may I say that it is delightful to see someone working to make the
world safe for Cthulhu.
Yours in the Yellow Sign and the
Pallid Mask,
Robert C. Carey, Jr.
Brooklyn
New York
Dear Mr. Price:
Re "What Was the 'Corpse-Eating
Cult of Leng'?" [vol. 1, no. 2], I would suggest the district of Lhasa is
your best guess for the location of Leng. Weston LaBarre's "Anthropological
Perspectives on Hallucinations and Hallucinogens" (in Hallucinations:
Behavior, Experience, Theory edited by Siegel and West), contains
information germane both to the corpse-eating cult and to Derleth's "Beyond
the Threshold", in which reference is made to both Leng and the Windigo
legend. "Kayakangst (Kayak psychosis) may be related to the 'windigo
psychosis' that seizes lonely hunters in winter among the high latitude
Algonquin Indians in the Northern United States and Canada. . . . [T]he hunter
is believed to be possessed by the spirit of a cannibal giant whose bones are
made of ice, and when the windigo-possessed hunter returns without game he
attempts to bite chunks out of the flesh of his campmates." (p. 15)
On page 19, he describes the ability of
certain Tibetan monks to sing two notes at the same time (!) in order to
"invoke fearsome cosmic demons". In light of this information, may I
suggest that the search for Leng is concluded?
James Piatt
Florence, AZ
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