Category Archives: H P Lovecraft

Free Time Fridays – August 15, 2014

A new MEME this week! Read about it at Shannon’s eatupmyfreetime blog.

ShannonFTFFree Time Fridays is a weekly meme created and hosted by eatupmyfreetime.

On Fridays we will recap how we spent our free time during the week + our plans for the weekend! ie. Did you read? If so, what books? Did you shop? Listen to any cool tunes? Binge watch any cool TV shows? Take any trips lately? I want to hear all about it!! You can either mention ALL of the ways you spent your free time that week or focus on one activity. Whatever your heart desires!

 

First I think I need a definition of Free Time! When I was working, I always thought that after retirement, I’d have oodles of free time to read, read, read. Well, this was before the days of the Internet, book groups, trivia hangouts and certainly before the days of blogs. Do I read more now than before I retired? No. Do I occasionally (often), at the end of a day, log off and think that I could have read an entire book in the time I just spent on the Internet? Yes. C’est la vie.

 

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This week I spent nearly an entire day preparing for the group read at the Nutshell Cubbyhole of The Haunter of the Dark by H. P. Lovecraft.

HaunterAndFirst I discovered it was a sequel to The Shambler from the Stars by Robert Bloch which appeared in the September 1935 issue of Weird Tales. (Bloch is the author of Psycho among other things.) Naturally I had to find this story and read it first.

Lovecraft’s story was written in November of 1935 and published in the December 1936 issue of Weird Tales.

This stone, once exposed, exerted upon Blake an almost alarming fascination. He could scarcely tear his eyes from it, and as he looked at its glistening surfaces he almost fancied it was transparent, with half-formed worlds of wonder within.  –  The Haunter of the Dark

Another discovery was that Bloch had written a third tale many years later. The Shadow from the Steeple appeared in the September 1950 issue of Weird Tales and I can hardly wait to get to it! Fortunately all three have been reprinted together by Arkham House in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

 

That pretty much sums up my free time (so-called) for this past week. It’s your turn now. How did you spend your free time this week or what are you looking forward to this weekend?

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Brown University Now Has William Hart’s H. P. Lovecraft CD’s

Thank you so much, Will, for all the time and effort you expend in your devotion of H. P. Lovecraft and your generous willingness to share.

Everyone, remember, you may make your own copies of Will’s recordings free and he has even supplied artwork.

CthulhuWho1's Blog

Brown University Lovecraft CD's Acknowledgment Received 08-Nov-2013

My personal Lovecraftian treat for 2013!

In late August, 2013, I sent a set of twelve CD’s of my Lovecraftian readings to Holly Snyder of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, as a donation to the H. P. Lovecraft Collections of the John Hay Library.

And just last week, on Friday, the 8th. of November I received the acknowledgment letter I have posted above.

These CD’s represent the current sum total of my unabridged H. P. Lovecraft readings to date; and have been burned and printed by me, just for the John Hay library; as they are, as they say in all those infomercials, “Not Available in Stores!”

I do freely provide all of my Lovecraft readings here on my blog and on YouTube for anyone who wants to download them, but I also like the idea that a very limited edition set of the CD’s are in the Brown…

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The World’s Largest H. P. Lovecraft Audio Links Gateway!

Thank you, Will, for this labor of love.

CthulhuWho1's Blog

This really should be called, “The World’s Largest English Language H. P. Lovecraft Audio Links Gateway!”  But that title, while a bit more truthful, was just too long.  I do apologize though, to those looking for non-English Language links in this Gateway; as the focus here, is on Lovecraft’s actual words, rather than translations.

Lovecraft said it best,

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think,

is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

But some of us still try!

And that is why this site has been created; to correlate all of the over 1200 known links to audio readings, and dramatizations of H. P. Lovecraft’s works that are freely available to listen to (most with just one click); and to download if desired.

All of these links connect with the files on their original sites, and are not stored here on…

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Azathoth Monument

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Thank you to the Miskatonic Books blog for alerting me to the news of a monument to the “god of Chaos“ which mysteriously appeared yesterday. Their blog entry includes a link to the newspaper article and that site also has a video report from Channel 4, KFOR in Oklahoma.

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The plaque on the monument reads:
“In the Year of Our Lord 2012 Creer Pipi claimed this land for Azathoth”

 

“Azathoth” is a fragment and can be read at the H. P. Lovecraft Archive.

Howard Lovecraft thought of writing a novel with that title. In a letter to Frank Belknap Long dated June 9, 1922, he wrote:

“Like you, I am impressed with the futility of all effort–and the only reason I ever read or write anything is that I would be still more miserable if I didn’t. As it is, I am not nearly so active and studious as I was in youth–when I felt that it led somewhere. Nowadays I am active only in order to kill boredom–but that is something. The only legitimate artistic motive is to please oneself–to utter things because they have to be uttered, or because it is by uttering them that one may be most comfortable. Imagination is the great refuge. That is the theme of the weird Vathek-like novel Azathoth, on whose opening pages I have been experimenting. I planned it long ago, but only began work–or play–on it a few days ago. Probably I’ll never finish it–possibly I’ll never get even a chapter written–but it amuses me just now to pretend to myself that I’m going to write it.”

 

Vathek: An Arabian Tale is a novel by William Beckford which Howard had read during the prior year.

Azathoth is mentioned in four of Lovecraft’s stories: The Dreams in the Witch House, The Haunter of the Dark, The Thing on the Doorstep and The Whisperer in Darkness.