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May 10 1982 A. D.
Dear Dr. Price:
Let me tell you how very pleased I am
with #5 and its contents. You're doing an outstanding job --- no wonder you get
praise from your readers!
As for L. Sprague deCamp, he's simply
too young to remember that THE BLACK PIRATE was released in 1926. It's still
around in black-and-white. Marvelously enough, Doug Fairbanks, Jr., had
preserved a pristine two-color Technicolor print which I saw about three years
ago --- a really exhilarating experience in time-travel!
Best,
Robert Bloch
Los Angeles, CA
17 April 1982
Dear Mr. Price,
Today I received in the mail issues 2,
3, and 4 of CRYPT OF CTHULHU, and was just really tremendously impressed by
them. They are absolutely tremendous, works of indubitable quality, and you, as
editor and occasional writer are obviously an entity of impeccable taste, as
well as being a gentleman, scholar, and true participator in the Cause.
In issue two, there appeared an article
under the title of "The Statement of Lin Carter", by yourself. I
personally very much enjoy Mr. Carter's Cthulhu narratives, particularly those
of the "Xothic Myth Cycle", which strike me also as being at least on
a level with the Derleth pastiches.
Incidentally, were you aware of Richard
A. Lupoff's earlier Mythos story, "The Whisperers" (Fantastic
Stories, September 1977), or that the revised edition of The Book of
Philip Jose Farmer (Berkley, Feb. 1982) contains a Mythos story, "The
Freshman"? (Not wanting to appear infallible, however, I must confess to
having missed Lupoff's second Mythos narrative until I read about it in Crypt.
)
In future issues of Crypt, I
hope you will have articles on such topics as the Eltdown Shards, and the Mythos
stories of Campbell, Lumley, Myers, and other modern practitioners.
All best wishes and good luck with Crypt.
Hope it lasts as long as Whispers, Weirdbook, etc.
Charles Gray
Little Rock, AR
7 May 82
Dear Bob:
Many thanks for CRYPT I, 5. I think you
do Lovecraft and Howard an injustice by classing them as
"pseudo-intellectuals". The term was popularized by the politician
George Wallace, who used to call Northeasterners who disapproved of his policies
"pointy-headed pseudo-intellectuals". I don't know whom he considered
a true intellectual; George Wallace, perhaps?
When in doubt, see the dictionary.
Webster's Second International, among several definitions of "intellectual
(n.)", gives one pertinent to this case: "Endowed with intellect
to a high degree; fond of and given to learning and thinking; as, an
intellectual person." This says nought about the intellectual's education
or his ability to reach sound conclusions. It is enough to qualify him that he
likes to think and talk about abstract questions like science, history,
politics, and the arts.
This describes both Lovecraft and
Howard. True, both suffered severe limitations, partly self-imposed, in their
intellectual pursuits. Among these, lack of higher education was preeminent.
Lovecraft never finished high school; Howard rejected a chance to go to college
because he could not endure classroom discipline. But, in intercourse with each
other and with others, both showed lively intelligence and keen interest in
subjects of the kind called "intellectual". If they adopted positions
now deemed wrong or even crackpot, such ideas were commonplace and respectable
in their day.
For a true pseudo-intellectual, take a
onetime student in a class in psychology taught by my wife Catherine. This young
man filled his papers with recondite polysyllabic verbiage, which would have
convinced many naive readers that this man had truly plumbed the secrets of the
cosmos. A closer examination showed that the student did not know the meanings
of the learned-sounding words he used and, in fact, was writing meaningless
gobbledygook. As W. S. Gilbert put it, "If this young man expresses himself
in terms too deep for me, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep
young man must be!"
Cordially,
L. Sprague deCamp
Villanova, PA
Dear Bob,
I enjoyed the HPL & Modern Science
issue, but I think most of your contributors are stretching to make their
points. Nevil Kingston-Brown does an admirable job of explaining some basic
physics, but when he tries to show great scientific insight on the part of HPL,
he falls flat. You could make the same case for every space opera in which one
character asks the other "Gee how do we travel faster than light? I guess
Einstein was wrong." You could also just as readily make a case for
Buddhist monks presaging Einstein, since many of the concepts of modern physics
are very Zen. Somtow Sucharitkul mentions going back to Buddhism to some extent,
now that its basic tenets have been confirmed by modern physics.
You know, serious occultists claim that
HPL had the same sort of "insight" into occult matters. But Don
Burleson is closer to the truth when he states that "a fantasy writer
sometimes assumes a narrative stance (persona) such that it is convenient to
pretend to believe in something in which the flesh-and-blood writer does not
literally believe."
Lovecraft's gift was that of
the visionary poet, not the scientist. He surely
wrote about these things because they felt right,
or, as LeGuin once explained (she was talking about fantasy in general), because
they are true, albeit not factual. It is useless to try to figure out a
scientific reason for Lovecraft's use of the solar planets in "The Shadow
Out of Time". It was the image he was after. This is why the story
holds up, regardless of subsequent discoveries. It is the same reason that The
Time Machine holds up. The image is that of life slowly, inexorably drawing
inward as the sun dies. We will even overlook the fact that stars like the sun
don't die like that. But the image effectively portrays HPL's idea of life as a
meaningless happenstance in the impersonal universe, unable to overcome the
forces which randomly direct its destiny. You might also ask why the Great Race
doesn't simply develop interstellar travel & emigrate to the planets of a
younger star. The answer is that it would rob the story of much of its power. It
is a magnificent, bleak vision, but it is not, literally, a speculation, anymore
than the final scenes of The Time Machine are.
Re: the biological wonders of Dr.
Munoz, what I've always wondered is what the Good Doctor does for energy. It
must be very tiring to be dead for 18 years. What does he do when he needs a
little extra pep? Does he start each day with a heaping bowl of Necro Crunchies,
the Breakfast of Corpses? I seriously doubt he photosynthesizes. If he is
spring-operated, and winds himself up, isn't this the perpetual motion machine
long sought after? (Though I doubt he would do well at the patent office.) Being
dead, with few of his organs functioning, he is presumably unable to eat &
digest food in the normal fashion. Poe's "M. Valdemar" is more
plausible in this aspect, because what little he does could be attributed to
residual biochemical energy. But again, Lovecraft was not writing "hard
science" fiction in which all of this is supposed to make strict scientific
sense.
Obviously it was a response to the old
cliche that certain old people look "well preserved". . . .
By the way, I found a new Mention of HPL, for those that catalogue such, in The Eureka Years: Boucher &
McComas's Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1949-54, ed. Annette
Peltz McComas (Bantam 1982). Lovecraft is mentioned in correspondence between
Bradbury and the editors (pp. 43-44). Boucher & McComas were having Bradbury
revise "The Exiles". It was their idea that HPL appear in this tale.
Boucher asks for "The real HPL, that is --- not the saintly wonder man that
Augie and Wandrei have created." McComas adds: "We think that what we
mean by the 'real' Lovecraft emerges somewhat even from the most idolatrous
accounts. . . . A curious introvert, frustrated sexually, financially and
creatively, ridden by neurotic dreads of cold and fish (and almost morbidly
devoted to his one debauchery: ice cream), seeking refuge in thoughts of an
Eighteenth Century which he did not understand but created in his own image,
compensating in tremendous letter-writing for his failures in personal
relations." Lovecraft appears in the story itself as so preoccupied with
letter writing & ice cream that he won't help the various spirits of fantasy
writers to resist the landing (on Mars) of the book-burning neo-Puritans of the
scientific age.
With an oozing squish, the flap of
leathern wings, a
fetid stench, and a hearty 'lä Shub-Niggurath', together
with his faithly arachno-fungoid companion Mzyziggle,
the masked-epistolarian of the hypercosmical spaces
takes his leave . . . .
Darrell Schweitzer
Strafford, PA
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