Posts

aquatic germs

As writers develop their themes and characters, it can often seem to the reader that earlier books seem to pre-empt later ones, as if a germ of an idea has hatched only to await further incubation (to mix my metaphors!). One such seems to be in Fleming's Casino Royale (yes, I'm re-reading the Bond books). In a passage of otherwise 'straight' prose of Bond at the baccarat table are these sub-marine descriptions: The two cards slithered towards him across the green sea. Like an octopus under a rock, Le Chiffre watched him from the other side of the table. (p.86, Penguin, 2004) Does this not bring to mind the brilliant chapter in the next book, Live and Let Die , in which Bond walks across the sea-bed towards Mr Big's lair, and observes all the aquatic life teeming about him? Almost as if Fleming, searching for similes for his first book, was struck by the picture those words conveyed and decided to render them in a more literal (yet even more poetic, even lyrical) f
Post a Comment
Read more

library lore

There is of course a vast library's worth (probably several libraries' worth) of pastiche 'Lovecraftian' and 'Sherlockian' books, and my strong suspicion has always been that the larger the quantity the poorer the quality. This suspicion has not abated since the explosion of self-published books popping up on Amazon and the like. And apart from anything else, how much of it does anyone actually need? Does anyone read them all? Are there individuals out there who only read books featuring Sherlock Holmes stories? Is there an avid Cthulhu fan who gets everything - everything - that purports to be an untold tale of HPL's Elder Gods? Perhaps. In fact, probably. The only collections of non-HPL 'Lovecraftiana' I think I'll ever need is Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and its 80s sequel New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and I have been dipping into both recently.  The original Tales was edited by August Derleth and published by Arkham House (though I was f
Post a Comment
Read more

HPL Dictionary Corner: 'Mountains' special

From At The Mountains of Madness comes "austral" :  a simple one this, meaning "from the South" (in this case, the south Antarctic) and "Nefandrous" (in context: a "monstrous, nefandrous analogy" ) This might be one of the most appropriate HPL descriptors ever, for on looking it up I read: " unmentionable, that ought not to be spoken of; hence, atrocious, appalling " And we all know how HPL loves to mention the unmentionable and speak the unspeakable!
Post a Comment
Read more

more on your Doorstep

Thinking again about 'The Thing on the Doorstep' has caused me to re-read it again since  this post . Luckily all HPL's stories are eminently repeatable and I found myself gulping the story down in a local café as greedily as I did my tea and cake. If not more so! One thing that I'd somehow not picked up on, when I was focussing more on the body-swap, were the connections to 'the Cthulhu Mythos'. There is the mention of three infamous books, including the Necronomicon - indeed, it's that eldritch tome which contained the spell making body-swap sorcery possible. But in one info-packed passage, a raving Edward Derby mentions hideous (and to HPL fans, familiar) creatures: "Dan - for God's sake! The pit of the shoggoths! [..] Ia! Shub-Niggurath! [..] The Hooded Thing bleated 'Kamog! Kamog!' [..] in the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins [..] I saw a shoggoth - it changed shape...." This is shocking indeed
Post a Comment
Read more

'baffling alienage' - HPL's body swap

Image
Having mentioned 'The Thing on the Doorstep' recently it behooved me to have another read of it. My prompt was this note  on modern-day 'sex and Cthulhu' type stories. THING (I'll adopt that reference from here on), I said, was an example of just how disinteresting sex was for HPL as a literary device, and probably in life - for the plot of the story would give ample room for sexual content if HPL had been interested in exploring it. The central arena for this potential for sex is its theme of the mind/body swap - transference - possession - call it what you will. The narrator, Dan Upton, tells how his friend Edward Derby was preyed upon by the soul/mind of his young wife Asenath, who would swap bodies with him, lock 'him' in the attic, and go about in his body. When Edward rebels, having learned 'Asenath' is in fact 'her' own father Ephraim, he eventually comes to a rather sticky end... leaving Dan to clean up matters as best he can. This
Post a Comment
Read more

sex and Cthulhu? Yawn!

I saw recently there is a new Lovecraftian comic book coming out, but it was immediately clear from the preview art that this is one of those stories that feel the need to add sex to the mix - some of the covers for the comic are positively pornographic! (interested parties can look for  The Girl Who Was Cthulhu  in their local comic shop - you may need to wear dark sunglasses when doing so) I suppose it's no longer a 'recent' trend to do this with HPL or his concepts - writers have been dragging the Elder Gods down into the world of earthy/Earthly sexuality since the days of New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. This new comic though seems to tie into a more recent theory in some quarters, that because of the apparent absence of sex from HPL's tales, this is really a sign that not only is sex present in sublimated form somewhere in the tales but that in fact the tales are therefore really all about sex. With literary theory you can of course 'prove' anything - the &
Post a Comment
Read more

Watson as narrator

Image
I've been neglecting my reading lately, which always makes me feel somehow guilty. But the lure of Baker Street still holds true as I make my way through the Ronald Howard TV series (I should really say 'Sheldon Reynolds TV series' as he produced it, but you know what I mean). And one particular aspect of this series has got me thinking not only about Dr Watson's media portrayals but about the Dr Watson of the printed stories. H. Marion Crawford's portrayal is one of the best as far as I'm concerned. As with his co-star's Holmes, the portrayal is more of a kind of 'folk memory' version - plucky, brave, frequently laughing out loud, a handy boxer when fisticuffs are required, wonderfully exaggerated with his facial expressions - and Holmes' constant companion (even when shoving in earplugs to cope with his violin-playing). So yes, it's a bit broader than Doyle's original, but the spirit of it feels 'right' - this is not Nigel Bruc
Post a Comment
Read more