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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the boredom of Bond

Image
Now that I've finished the Penguin Modern Classics omnibus 'Quantum of Solace ' I can now say I have read every James Bond story (by Ian Fleming). In some ways the last story proper 'The Living Daylights' is a case of saving the best for last. But it's not just one of the best-written Bond tales - it's one of the most realistic in the way it compresses the danger and excitement of Bond's job role into a few short, tense moments surrounded by hour after hour of boredom. Arriving in Berlin to act as sniper-cover for an escaping agent, Bond is told this agent's window for escape is between 6-7pm on one of three consecutive nights. As per sod's law he eventually makes his attempt on the third night, making for a combination of long boring stretches of daytime, tense excitement for an hour or two, then more tedium: "The next day, and the next night watch, were duplicates of the first [...] the rest was a killing of time and a tightening of the
Read more

Beryl's bank

Image
A foreign colleague of mine was confused recently by my reference to "the Bank of Mum and Dad". Very soon after, I picked up 'The Beryl Coronet' to read and was met with a classic example of that very 'bank'. Arthur Holder is marked by his own father Alexander Holder as something of a disappointment. Cleverly, this colours not only Holder Sr's perception of Arthur's apparent role in the theft of the Beryl Coronet itself, but also colours our perception of it, as readers. Sherlock Holmes, of course, sees through this almost immediately and is able to store (one can hardly say 'restore') Arthur in his father's affections. Still though, can Holder Sr be blamed for this? It does look as if all Arthur ever did was hold out his hand and expect money every time - which he usually got. 'The Bank of Mum and Dad' is a popular destination of first financial resort - and the Holder branch obviously gave better terms than most. "I have n
Read more

the criminal Sherlock Holmes!

Image
One of the reasons I rebel against the strict rules of 'the Great Game' these days is that there are a great many instances in the Holmes stories of Watson laying various people (including himself) open to charges of serious breaches of the law, such that if they were indeed genuine historical records would have seen the stories' characters most likely flung in jail. Doyle wrote a good deal of biographical prose but never at any point did he casually reveal that he let a murderer go free or that he did a spot of breaking & entering on occasion. Sherlock Holmes himself, perhaps surprisingly, comes off the worst in this regard - and it is something of a surprise to say the least that the world's foremost exponent of criminal detection puts his foot in it a great many times. Doyle seems to play with this - 'Charles Augustus Milverton' begins with the 'realistic' framing device of having Watson say that names, places and even the decade of this case have
Read more