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Crypt No. 15 is an excellent
issue. I was naturally quite interested in your reviews of Psycho II ---
book and film. You are one of the few who noticed how I gave various characters
certain of Norman Bates's attributes, and also my reasons for doing so. It's
comforting to know I'm not entirely without perceptive readers!
I'm quite pleased with issue No. 16 [Tales
from the Crypt of Cthulhu] --- closest thing to being in Weird Tales
again that I can imagine!
--- Robert Bloch
Los Angeles, CA
I'm very pleased with your treatment of
"The Tree on the Hill". On re-reading the story, it is obvious that
HPL did quite a lot of rewriting! Of course, it's slightly deflating to realize,
as I do now, that HPL practically rewrote the whole of "Tree". I can
spot his style almost anywhere. Incidentally, the town "Hampdon", I
also used in "The Metal Chamber". My own weak effort to build some
kind of "western" Arkham. I matured much more slowly than did Robert
Bloch and a few others of those palmy, dreamy, hard-times days.
If I had saved the pages HPL did on
"The Tree on the Hill" they would now be invaluable! But many moves,
trying to make a living, and etc., made me dunk a lot of material, including
several letters from C. A. Smith. He suggested changes in one stanza of
"Dreams of Yith" which I followed, so HPL didn't do all of the
"revisions. "
--- Duane Rimel
Boise, ID
I much enjoyed reading Tales from
the Crypt of Cthulhu. You are right. I have read virtually every scrap of
REH's work to see print (and some that hasn't), and "The Hand of
Obeah" is the most outrageously awful thing Two-Gun ever perpetrated. Must
have been about 14 at the time and high on smoking cornsilk. Still --- most
interesting for its reflection of REH's racial attitudes, its foreshadowing of
"Black Canaan" and others, and for presenting the worst Jules de
Grandin imitation yet unearthed.
--- Karl Edward Wagner
Chapel Hill, NC
Tales from the Crypt of Cthulhu
is probably your best shot to date and I love it! It has style; so very
evocative of the late lamented EC; a great job by your "thinkers" and
by Fabian. Just love it.
--- Brian Lumley
Crouch End, London
The Fabian cover [of Tales from the
Crypt of Cthulhu] is just terrific --- I like to busted a gut when I saw it.
"The Old Gent" --- ha! ha!
The CAS tale "Double Cosmos"
was a real treat. Smith seems to have used a lot of drug imagery in his tales
and poems, well before the drug craze of the '60s. Probably most influenced by
Baudelaire, DeQuincy, etc., but his use of it as a method of seeing beyond
everyday experience to the true nature of this and other worlds is remarkable in
being ahead of its time. I wonder if Alan Watts ever read Smith? Probably not,
but he would no doubt have enjoyed him.
--- Richard L. Tierney
Mason City, IA
Issue No. 16 is, in my judgment, the
best yet.
While it is fun to read some of the
issues that, seriously or otherwise, see a bit of Lovecraft wherever they look,
the best of your issues have always contained examinations of the better Weird
Tales writers in terms of their own contributions to the genre. I would
rather read someone's views on a particular Lovecraft tale (or the tale of one
of his contemporaries) than someone trying to connect Lovecraft to some
outlandish ideas. (One of the worst issues contained the King Kong connection ["Cthulhu
and King Kong", Crypt No. 9]).
No. 16 is so good because it feeds us
what the pulps fed us: fiction that pretended to be nothing but fiction. Fiction
that was exciting and unsettling.
--- David S. Siegel
Croton-On-Hudson, NY
As you know, my subscription lapsed
with No. 14. Within a week of my non-renewal the bad dreams started. Then
the noises beneath my basement. Last week my washer and dryer disappeared. The
only evidence the police could find was a gaping hole in my basement floor and
some noisome "fish" or "reptile" scales. This week the final
indignity was perpetrated upon me: My Donna Death inflatable doll (the premium
from my last renewal) disappeared. Enclosed please find my 16 dollars.
I don't mind the bad dreams --- they're
better than most novels I purchase, and you can keep the washer and dryer. But
would you please return my Donna Death doll? After all, you wouldn't want me to
wander the earth forlorn and deathless, or would you?
--- Ken Humphreys
Stratford, CT
I was much interested in R. L.
Tierney's "Has Kadath Been Sighted? " [Crypt No. 14]. I spent
more than a year in China, Mongolia, and the western provinces back in '45-'46,
and even tried to get to Tibet twice, once through Kalgan and once through
Darjeeling.
I noticed that Tierney's bibliography
was shy one reference which I found most interesting: Leonard Clark, The
Marching Wind, which I read in '59. It was his personal search for the
"Amne Machen". Since this was 24 years ago, my memory is hazy, but as
I seem to remember, Clark actually obtained a triangulation reading and found AM
to exceed Mt. Everest significantly.
--- D. B. Vance
Berkeley, CA
I received and enjoyed the latest Crypt
today. An excellent job all-round, as always seems to be the case with Crypt of
Cthulhu.
A "Dunsanian" issue [No. 15]
was long overdue. It may be a little nostalgic of me, but I have always felt
that the Dunsany-influenced stories of HPL were among his best writing. Why, to
this day, I remember my first readings of "The Cats of Ulthar" and Dream-Quest,
though believe it or not, I got my start in reading HPL not by
"reading" him at all! My first contact with his works came through the
recording "Roddy McDowall Reads the Horror Stories of H. P.
Lovecraft".
Cannot wait for Tales from the Crypt
of Cthulhu --- sounds great! Like getting a "lost" issue of Weird
Tales in the mail.
--- Daniel Gobbett
Riverdale, MD
In his essay "The Dream World and
the Real World in Lovecraft" [Crypt No. 15], S. T. Joshi says the
narrator of "Polaris" is afflicted with "ancestral memory".
This is certainly a reasonable theory, for HPL did write tales of ancestral
memory (among them "The Rats in the Walls", one of his best works).
However, I don't believe this is the correct interpretation of the story. It
seems more likely that the narrator is suffering from memories of a previous
incarnation.
In a letter to Rheinhart Kleiner dated
November 8, 1917, Lovecraft explained the theme of his poem "Nemesis"
(November 1, 1917): "It presents the conception, tenable to the orthodox
mind, that nightmares are the punishment meted out to the soul for sins
committed in previous incarnations --- perhaps millions of years ago!" (Selected
Letters I, 51, 52).
This would serve equally well as an
explanation of "Polaris", written less than a year later. The
narrator's "sin", of course, is falling asleep while on sentry duty.
"Polaris" is one of
Lovecraft's most autobiographical stories, reflecting his feelings of guilt,
frustration, and uselessness during World War I. Like the narrator, HPL was
"denied a warrior's part", for he "was feeble and given to
strange faintings when subjected to stress and hardships" (D 21).
In May, 1917, one month after the
United States declared war on Germany, Lovecraft applied for enlistment in the
National Guard. He was accepted, but his mother and family physician persuaded
the Army to reject him as physically unfit. When his draft questionnaire arrived
in December, Lovecraft discussed it with the head physician of the local draft
board, who instructed him to class himself as totally and permanently unfit. In
a letter to Kleiner dated February 23, 1918, Lovecraft said wryly that the
doctor "decided that a man who cannot stay up all day as a civilian, is not
exactly a General in the making" (Selected Letters I, 56).
--- William Fulwiler
Duncanville, TX
Your latest Crypt [No. 15] had
many great moments --- and the cover was one of them! (Read; Eckhardt should be
canonized!) The two "Polaris" articles, and "Pombo" were
very good, but the Fun Guy and "Cats" seemed unexceptional. Murray's
article on the Mythos discussed a great topic, but what did we learn that a
cursory reading of the stories couldn't have told us? Lastly, Joshi's long
article was probably best, but I think he turned a blind eye to the simplest
explanation of the Dream World vs. Real World controversy: that certain places
and events in one world have an adumbration in the other, much as a
three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow (pardon the overused
analogy). He seems very reluctant to accept this; similarly that passages
between the worlds exist (such as would allow Pickman to travel from Boston to
Pnath. . . . ). Joshi really is awe-inspiring, though.
--- Steve Behrends
Rochester, NY
I'd very much like to make some
comments on Crypt of Cthulhu No. 13, which I bought at a recent
convention. As I've been an enthusiastic fan of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis,
and H. P. Lovecraft for a great many years, your magazine came as a pleasant
surprise. I wouldn't have thought of connecting the mythoses (mythi?) of
Lovecraft and the Inklings, yet now that I've seen it done, the idea seems
obvious!
I agree definitely with Edward T.
Babinski's comment that fear is not the only or even the strongest emotion in
Lovecraft's tales. There is also a rather anarchic glee at "letting the
gorilla out of his cage", to quote Stephen King.
Another thought on Babinski's
Lovecraft/Williams article: there are a couple of extremely Lovecraftian images
in Williams "Arthurian" sequence of poems. There is an evil Empire,
apparently ruled by a "headless" entity (like Azathoth, mindless),
supported by "tentacled", shapeless creatures that eat souls.
Robert C. Carey's comments on the
Golden Dawn were as intriguing as any material on this mysterious group of
brilliant and talented wizards always is. I wonder if they gave Tolkien the idea
for Gandalf and the Istari?
Charles Garofalo's description of the
very "eldritch" giant insect in Perelandra makes me wonder if
C.S. Lewis ever read anything by Lovecraft? He was a great reader of science
fiction and wrote Out of the Silent Planet partly to refute the cliched
concept of "nasty aliens".
"Screwtape's Letter to
Cthulhu" was a most unnerving and enlightening piece of correspondence.
Also very funny. A good piece of pastiche, and made its point well!
--- Diane Fox
Lakemba, Australia
I read the article "Homosexual
Panic in 'The Outsider'" [Crypt No. 8] rather carefully.
Overall, I think your theory is quite insightful, but I would broaden the
conclusion and push it a little further.
I agree that Lovecraft is creating a
symbolic image of himself, as some have suggested. In the first line he
identifies the story as about himself. "Unhappy is he to whom the memories
of childhood bring only fear and sadness" --- who can that be but
Lovecraft?
The protagonist grows to maturity
essentially captive and isolated in an ancient, decaying house, "Infinitely
old and infinitely horrible." Houses are classically female symbols. That
it is all, ultimately, underground, passages through long tunnels and abundant,
even for Lovecraft, references to "slimy" and "damp" and
"dripping", suggest female sexuality, albeit a malignant one.
(Freudians actually talk like this.) That "female", the house that
sheltered him through his childhood, can only be his mother.
The subject escapes suffocating evil,
significantly, via the only masculine symbol, the "one black tower",
that is "partially ruined".
Yet the subject is damned when
separated from the house, and the source of his horror is not only in the
reactions of others to him; "the fetid nightmare" is what he
calls himself.
We know that Lovecraft's mother
suffocated him, kept him with her to the extent that he never spent a night away
from home until she died; we know also that she abhorred his maleness and as an
infant dressed him as a girl, and it is clear to me that the first part of the
story is a vivid image of his early life.
What is it that Lovecraft sensed about
himself that he detested, that he hid from others and himself?
I think that it is entirely plausible
that it was homosexual desires, given his view of the prototypical woman in his
life as engulfing and dominating. However, the story gives us no clue, and the
repressed wish may also, or in addition, have been matricide or incest.
"Homosexual Panic" is a
terrible fear that a heterosexual feels when he considers that he may be gay.
(It does not imply that this is true.) The panic occurs when the
individual is unable to suppress that aspect of himself from consciousness.
I do not think that "The close
correspondence between the story's character and the experience of many gays is
entirely coincidental." ----I think it is exactly to the point!, both in
society's reaction to the gay, but more saliently of the gay to himself.
Further, whether or not Lovecraft was a
latent homosexual, I think that there is one of perhaps many etiologies of male
homosexuality that indeed stems from fear, hatred, and desire of one's mother,
further linking the basic dynamics if not the particulars of the implied
pathology.
--- M. Eileen McNamara, M.D.
New Haven, CT
Thinking back, perhaps readers have
thought that I have been somewhat harsh in my judgment of the genre of horror
literature ["Mail-Call of Cthulhu", in issue No. 14]. Perhaps Mr.
Ramsey Campbell ["Mail-Call", issue No. 15] may have read things into
my letter that I did not intend at all. For this, I humbly beg readers'
indulgence. I didn't desire to make this an all-inclusive comment; rather I
meant simply to stress that the sort of thing to which I objected has become all
too prevalent (though by no means universal).
Yes, it is true that the secret of
successful weird fiction is to leave something to the reader's imagination.
After all, the person's imagination can more vividly conjure up more fantastic
things than any writer can dream up. Possibly this is why so few horror tales
translate well to the screen. For only the human mind can envision what the
author has created. The movie camera can only fail to or only partially capture
the real essence of the tale.
--- Ronald Shearer
Wallington, NJ
I've enjoyed your publication since
sometime last year --- picked up at "The Turning Page" in Milwaukee. I
enjoy the theme issues, as long as you also feature "Fun Guys",
Reviews, "Mail-Call", Editorial, and Donna Death. Yours is nearly the
perfect journal --- perhaps some HPLish/CAS type poetry and a portfolio or two
would be good also.
--- E. T. Caldwell
Menomonie, WI
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