W. Scott Poole – Page 2

The SFFaudio Podcast #595 – READALONG: Wasteland by W. Scott Poole

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #595 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons talk about the Blackstone Audio audiobook Wasteland: The Great War And The Origins Of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Great War And The Origins Of Modern Horror, hate notes!, starting prep on new Wastelands, this dude on the internet, Ghost, that was a shit book?, come on the podcast and tell me, a 2 star review by Ancient History: Not Quite Wastepaper, a good vacation read, Arthur Machen, a weird crit, Godzilla with tentacles, conclusions vs. omissions, a random collection of sentences, a reference to a Lovecraft poem, citation needed, a starting point for casual pulp history, pop horror studies, drop your class, wont come on the podcast, doesn’t listen to podcasts, most undergraduate essays are terrible, not a primary source, good for what it is, not the book I wanted, a book that doesn’t exist, cultural historian, making a puzzle by picking 1,000 pieces of a million pieces, rank it with stars, rating vs. review, the lowest review on goodreads or Amazon, looking at negative criticism, highly accurate, captured what this book is about, the title is unclear, a word is missing, this is a book about movies, Vladimir Putin in this book?, election interference, absolutely delusional, doing it throughout the book, where’s the E.C. Comics?, this isn’t about the origins of modern in general (films), he’s really not touching on literature, its all about these movies, why is Machen in here so much?, no films related to Arthur Machen, does that make it a bad book, you have to know what you’re getting, mistakes, assassinated not executed, Evan knows history, the horror of the trenches, his thesis is good, high-school world history, the Balfour Declaration, the Russo-Japanese war, ensconced in film and literature of this period, who is this audience for this book?, or Marissa for example, something interesting, 700 good pieces, why is Vladimir in here, World War Z, Annabelle (2014), you have to talk about Max Brooks, he shoehorns thing into it, the Great War never really ended, U.S. Army bases, military nerds, the whole reaction against horror, the Frankfurt School, German movies and German filmmakers, very broad, Ringu (1998), Wiemar Germany, Der Orchideengarten, Jesse doesn’t speak German, that horror and weird sensibility, consistent with Poole’s thesis, human psychology, lot of people, worthy of inclusion, as much about art, Pablo Picasso, photography, Scott Poole’s interests, there’s nothing wrong with that, it isn’t a survey, a modest pop history of horror, In Flanders Fields, propaganda in Canada, November 11th in Canada, The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason, buying poppies, it’s fucking sick, yo, I honor the veterans by knowing what happened, you’re not conforming, a social faux-pas,

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

the last stanza is fucking evil, the poppy, Mr Jim Moon’s podcast, the dreaming and desensitizing flower, the juice of the poppy, why are we doing this?, putting your body in a meat-grinder to make some rich guy richer, why the United States is still in Iraq, so evil, shell shock, how it translates into art and fiction, College of Charleston, Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism In The South Carolina Upcountry, a book his students would dig, in a conservative state, to know his students, he’s very grounded, an interesting fact, At The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole, listener and student Mike Nowak, a really good introduction to the subjects, Media Studies, fan writing, Will is not a horror guy, a bold thesis, horror as we know it is a reaction to WWI and the Western Front, Frankenstein (1931), weird horror, body parts sewn together is not in the novel, study the body, no stitching or gluing, what extracts, the Dracula connection, its all subconscious, the waxen bodies, the mirror, Monsters Of The Market: Zombies, Vampires And Global Capitalism by David McNally, a revolving door, The Body Snatchers, “We Are The Dead”, George Orwell, used to mollify and distract, the horror, how the Hell did Canada get into this stupid thing?, conscription, how did Mackenzie King deal with conscription in Quebec?, Lovecraft insane love of a homeland they’ve never visited, other people’s business, seeing Justin [Trudeau], pretending to be sad, don’t talk, observing silence, blue helmets, the Gallipoli campaign, noble sacrifice (fucking disaster), the right attitude, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Neville Chamberlain, peace in our time, prevent another fucking meatgrinder, he has not fully learned his lesson, all in favour of empire, offense vs. defense, a slog of death, how much ink has been spilled, Chamberlain and Stalin, who is to blame for WWII?: Woodrow Wilson, who held the knife?: Hitler, Who put him on the path?: Wilson, Russia-gate, Ukraine-Gate, that brainworm shit is what caused Hitler is to have an audience, what’s to explain this?, City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, make everything chemically, how your government’s fucked up, pride, we’re better than them, we rule the waves, we rule the world, what these few guys at the top, we gotta blame things domestically, all that raping in Belgium, my son died because some people got raped, let’s extract value from those people, all the people starving in Germany after the war, Iran and Cuba sanctions, dual monetary system, Cuba’s so fucked up, to punish Cuba, the same kind of evil pride, the Soviet Union:

Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

too honest, hiding the truth, there’s a real sense that the horror we see after WWI and WWII is a way of mass dealing with the wars, kids reading E.C. Comics, faces rotting off, radiation fears, zombies and rotting bodies, Tales From The Crypt, the same reaction, a mass collective horror, our kids are going to be turned into juvenile delinquents, the Comics Code Authority, no blood aloud, no corrupt police officials, don’t show the undead, can’t use the word weird, they way they got out of that in the 1970s, Curtis Publications, Robert E. Howard, an exception for literature, Dracula, Frankenstein, a guy on staff named Marv Wolfman, that’s just his name, Werewolf By Night, The Thing, It, Swamp Thing, The Heap, the censorship, a face dripping off, nuclear war, controlling the population and feeding them bullshit, The Epoch Times, Falun Gong, super creepy, propaganda against China, Scientology for Chinese, a hate-on for the Chinese state, actual propaganda delivered to my mailbox, removed hashtags, #BidenDropOut, understanding how history works, is your only defense against being railroaded it another war, its a soporific and analgesic, sit their silently waiting, think about what you owe them, why is my brother Johnny mangled like that?, Goebbels censoring films, a worry, motifs and themes that can repurposed by the alt-right, Steve Bannon, Lovecraft’s current popularity, the alt-right don’t read the pulps, labeling people, a Nick Carter pulp:

In @monstersamerica’ book, IN THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, H.P. Lovecraft called himself “Carter” aftr Nick Carter in his LARP-like adventures

a dangerous kid, Nick Carter Weekly, Frank Belknap Long’s cat was named Felis, the surficial level, The Call Of Cthulhu, a giant death’s head with wings, Steve Bannon is a thought leader in that he’s read some books, Trump has not read a book in his whole life, cultural Marxism, the place that it comes from is there is massive distress and the response from the elites is not to deal with it but to spin, Lovecraft’s politics are stupid (loving England), owning the idiots, owning the elites than nothing, memes are easy and fun, the social distress, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle, immigration controls, embrace xenophobia, bracketing concerns, solve it in this very narrow way, one third of Americans didn’t pay their rent on April 1st, 2020, what’s going to happen?, this is massive distress, the perfect time for understanding how things happen, a great meme, distracted boyfriend meme, “sweet ass”, Tine, Quaran, Guillo, worried about hairproducts, podcasters have never done a podcast, rent strikes, world war, civil war, back to the blame game, you had a working class revolution in Germany, a 1918 class war, ordered away from the front, eat this shitless shit sandwich, propagandized, blamed and squeezed, stuff happens, the left is in power and unable to deliver anything, she’s a leftist, are you being nice to people?, the Social Democratic party (of Germany), the socialist couldn’t deliver, forty or fifty years of Neoliberalism, after Biden loses, it mirrors the current moment, The People’s Republic Of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, you can’t win if you’re willing to capitulates to ridiculous talking points, Donald Trump is the most dangerous president in modern history, in what sense?, a terrible candidate, guys in the street angry, why people who are upset are going to buy into this shit, at least they have passion, the Russian Revolution happened because of this shit, the street movements, political institutions developing independently, the populists, movement culture, another failed movement, agricultural cooperatives, communes in Iowa, the wreckage of their failed attempts, the rage needs to be organized, the USA by 2021, Trump’s lack of action, what North Dakota is doing vs. what California is doing, New York, the cusp of something, peachy-keen, you don’t get Trump after Obama if Obama did so well, we don’t have a single royal family to execute the heads of, what Evan likes about Lenin, Will’s Lenin’s birthday tweet, one weird trick, if we just talk about x…, fooling them into letting us win, they suffered for those beliefs, writing in England, important cultural differences between different types of people in the Russian Empire, a jailhouse of nations, this peasant movement, what are we gonna do over the next couple of decades, modern WWII Russian movies, informed by Hollywood computer graphics,

PANFILOV’S 28 MEN (2016) is a Russian WWII movie about 28 legendary men from the 316th Rifle Division in the Battle Of Moscow funded by crowdsourcing, Russia, Kazakhstan, and a WWII computer game (WAR THUNDER) “Trump’s my guy” Instead of starting with action the movie starts with scene setting. It nods towards the “legendary” status of the story it is telling, has the officers layout a plan, soldiers tell each other tall tales & semi-mytholgocal stories while they dig foxholes and build dummy howitzers Not a shot is fired for the first half hour of the film. It’s all dialogue, character building. This is a film that COULD NOT HAVE BEEN made in HOLLYWOOD. As to the story being a TRUE story…

Russia’s Culture Minister:

“It is my deep conviction that even if this story was invented from the start to the finish […], it is a sacred legend which it’s simply impossible to besmirch. And people who try to do that are total scumbags.”

the movie knows that it’s kind of bullshit, how the propaganda spread, the story is known to be false, it doesn’t matter because it’s important, Russian WWII movies are not anti-German, the Great Patriotic War, Quentin Tarantino, Spaghetti Western WWII movies, he’s more about the movie than he is about the propagandist history, be distant from the propaganda, this is emblematic, its their honoring that tradition like Robin Hood, more true than reality, Enemy At The Gates, War Of The Rats, Ron Perlman, that game you played is Russian, the reason most people are 100% with trump is because he’s a thumb in the eye to the elites, he’s owning the libs, he’s got them bamboozled, he’s gonna be indicted!, fantasy is a persistent human genre of thought, Poole’s footnote, clever footnotes, footnote 13, male academics cite themselves more than their female colleagues, my fellow academics, a knowing understanding, a good teacher, interested in his subject, writing a textbook, there’s more studying to be done, how E.C. Comics was shut down, The Orchidgarden, 1919-1921, the covers on Instagram, this horrible giant orchid growing out of a greenhouse, a snail, bilateral symmetry, elves, holding a human skull, a lady looks in the mirror, full of rich imagery of distorted bodies, mythological horrors, Germany’s rich with this, the books that are available, where are the North African films on WWII?, where are the Chinese films on WWII?, the Russian movies are made in a modern capitalist culture, political officers, there are issues, we’re defending the motherland, Russians aren’t the boogeyman, the invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea, promised not expand NATO, that’s our access to the Black Sea!, c’mon man!

Wasteland by W. Scott Poole

Der Orchideengarten

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The SFFaudio Podcast #491 – READALONG: Some Notes On A Nonentity: The Life Of H.P. Lovecraft by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #491 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa, Mr Jim Moon and Wayne June talk about the PS Publishing hardcover comic (graphic novel) Some Notes On A Nonentity: The Life Of H.P. Lovecraft by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt

Talked about on today’s show:
the first readalong of a comic book, a momentous occasion, Jesse’s mortgage completion, a hardcover “graphic novel”, the phrase is pretentious, Maus, Watchmen, fuck you it’s a comic book, dense art, rich, Lovecraft’s father is masked, plague doctor, a Venetian masque mask, died in an insane asylum, his mental malady, and THAT is all I care to say on the matter, the broken mask, his wife, out of Lovecraft’s own head, Lovecraft’s biography, poetry, In The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole, so racist, one year in New York, gets robbed, each story gets a big illustration, feeling bad, tearing up, that last panel, alone standing on the stage, moving, the first time seeing it, emotionally invested in his story, so human, how mad he was, super weird, fucked up, a gentleman doesn’t work, she had a mastectomy, living the life of a country gentleman, writing for amateurs, submitting on his behalf, he made it so hard for his friends, the desire to be the aristocracy, class distinctions, a time of transition, New England, a class system in operation, full of very old rich families, bad investments by his uncle, the whaling industry, super-super-rich, the details, a garbage can on page 52, Eight O’clock Coffee, hitting harder home, Lovecraft was offered the editorship of Weird Tales, Chicago, selling the furniture, a disaster caused by his 17th century deal of himself, the story of their entire marriage, rooted in the wrong place, so many biographies, a weird outsider, 1920s the Great Depression, debt collection service, not suited for the job, coax or hit, flower them into paying, the hard times coming, Ohio, outright rejection, sitting down and reading Weird Tales magazine, editorial response to letters, poems, the first two issues of Weird Tales, Farnsworth Wright, maybe it’s a good thing Lovecraft didn’t take that job, or maybe it’s a terrible thing, which it would be, a crazy, this is the magazine where everyone worships Lovecraft, every letter asks for more Lovecraft, he’s not connecting, as soon as Lovecraft dies the magazine fills up with Lovecraft, eminently forgettable, jealousy, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, so many scenes just alone in a room (and enjoying that), how much he loved to travel and adventure, three times to Quebec, retracing Lovecraft’s footsteps, chronological version of his life, when things happend in relation to the story, R.H. Barlow, the format, an entertainment style, no dry intellectual series of facts, why comics are so great, rewarded with pictures, seeing all the major players, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Loveman and Galpin, how different Lovecraft’s America was, architecture, page 74, Sonia in deep pain, a painful episode, moving a cow, a cat on his head, what a weird dude he was, Edith Miniter, why this is such a great book, showing the connection between experience and fiction, Superman, Batman, DC Comics, Marvel, X-Men, underground comics, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy’s Cat, drug dealers handing out comics, headshops, Guru, crystals, hemp pants, the preserve of shops like this, collected editions, Knockabout Press, Jason Thompson’s Mockman comics, Savage Sword Of Conan, black and white comics, so much more to see in black and white, the line of the mouth, how the room is organized around distancing characters apart, arm-in-arm, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, the Fungi From Yuggoth Cycle, three sonnets, the stacks on high, never designed for colour, bullshit complaint, Jesse shut himself down, what if I’m wrong, even the fonts, a whole sense that you can’t get when reading a regular biography, a one man job, each page is signed (and dated), years of labour, a treasure of art and information, the framing, on a stage, back on the stage, the last image on the last page, the empty stage, the other perspective, page 77, a gentleman does not divorce his wife, the little Janus head, people chasing after him, the night walks, what a great biography, a work of genius!, written in first person, a cool way to sneak in his opinions and thoughts, to segue into his letters, seamless, page 60, humming, finances are not great, every time Jesse calls Wayne or Jim, The Recluse, Supernatural Horror In Literature, an amateur magazine, a guy desperately in need of a Patreon, Wayne is no gentleman, the Weird Tales letters pages, huge proof, almost getting a major collection, the worst salesman ever, the copyright, with the kind permission of, maybe sometimes you’re doing work for hire when you don’t know you were, an entire issue of Weird Tales could have been under copyright, the collection was under copyright, persisting in comics, Image Comics, Alterna Comics, working for Marvel, Steve Ditko, Roy Thomas, so many times his life could have gone a lot better, a gentleman doesn’t press the matter, barristers and solicitors, no resources, exasperation in his life, to hell with it, what would WWI have taught Lovecraft had he survived enlistment?, artillery making mush, gas, just war?, subject to propaganda, a terrible shame, a pointless war, Mr Jim Moon studied the WWI at university, who said what to who’s aunt, the assassination, pride, self-destructive pride, a full page for Arthur Machen, The Bowmen, Out Of The Earth, tell me more about that, what’s that dude melting?, the whole genre of weird fiction, that little bit of Latin, the devil incarnate is humanity in truth, the first issue of Weird Tales, the attention to detail that you never get in commercial works, done because they love it, really inspiring, to honour it, in the best tradition, the Necronomicon convention in Rhode Island, The Journal Of William Hope Hodgson Studies, Carnacki, mummy horror, Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Machen with Jack The Ripper, Saucy Robot Stories, pulp fiction from the 1930s, Helen O’Loy, prolific, a Lovecraft expert, covers for Necronomicon Press, annotated H.P. Lovecraft, the Jason C. Echkardt Tumblr, The Derelict by William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft as a communicable disease, you should write a story about this location, I haven’t been kissed by a woman since I was a very small child, working the night-shift as a movie theater ticket taker, R’Lyeh theatre, a 900 word biography, the connection between amateur magazines and blogs and podcasts, done for the love of the stuff, Wayne needs his own booth, a whole bunch of people who’ve read, holy shit that’s Kim Stanley Robinson coming up the escalator, that’s Larry Niven asleep beside me, go in disguise, that getting out of bed thing, eye contact is the start of a lot of terrible, a Venetian mask, cosplaying as Wayne June, stock left, PSPublishing, Best Eldritch Wishes, Best Lovecraftian Wishes, attention to detail, collecting author signatures, there’s so much going on on the internet, it’s a big place, bigger than you can imagine, two pages with hand drawn maps, damn it’s got it all!

Some Notes On A Nonentity The Life Of H.P. Lovecraft by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt

Some Notes On A Nonentity The Life Of H.P. Lovecraft by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt page 6

Some Notes On A Nonentity The Life Of H.P. Lovecraft by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt page 34

Some Notes On A Nonentity by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt page 75

Some Notes On A Nonentity The Life Of H.P. Lovecraft by Sam Gafford and Jason C. Eckhardt page 65

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #435 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Green Meadow by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred V. Jackson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #435 – The Green Meadow by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred V. Jackson read by the great Wayne June. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (17 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, Bryan Alexander, and Wayne June!

Talked about on today’s show:
The Crawling Chaos, a tiger, a plague year, drugs, a meteorite, professors, translators, how it struck an ending, baffling, three big paperbacks, the revision work, Arkham House, Horror Of The Museum, like a fragment, an extended commonplace book entry, strongly echoed in The Shadow Out Of Time, the mythos shopping list, the artificial checklist, Memory, What Rhe Moon Brings, prose poems, the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, completely ignored, what to make of it, prose poem aspects, the only audiobook version in the universe, the way it struck Wayne, 1918/19, an early effort, Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, atypical formula, loosely connected to the frighteningly uncaring universe, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo, The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce, nature as a threat, 100%, the gauntlet thrown down: “The text, as far as preserved, is here rendered as literally as our language permits, in the hope that some reader may eventually hit upon an interpretation and solve one of the greatest scientific mysteries of recent years.” a hoax, dreams, a frame, figuring out what it means, a series of images, the power of the description, its so clear that life is the enemy, the sea and the sky are in a war with life, he breaks off from life, a peninsula, things of the air, the forms of the air that are non-alive join with the sea, conspiring, the living against the non-living, cataract, ending in the Dreamlands, Bryan’s take, the fantasies vs. the horror, appreciated and enjoyed, the massive frame, WWI, German, one of the many loathsome policies of the Wilson administration, the tonal shift, the quick catastrophe, the Harvard guy blows it,

I saw clearly the source of the chanting, and in one horrible instant remembered everything. Of such things I cannot, dare not tell, for therein was revealed the hideous solution of all which had puzzled me; and that solution would drive you mad, even as it almost drove me. . . . I knew now the change through which I had passed, and through which certain others who once were men had passed! and I knew the endless cycle of the future which none like me may escape.

Kafka’s fragments, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, the four professors, Potowonket, Lovecraft country village, Dr. Richard M. Jones, the “late” professor Chambers of Harvard, how did he manage to do it?, the indestructible pages, he found out what happened and he followed the path, why the text is cut-off, it’s not a fragment,

. . . . All is before me: beyond the deafening torrent lies the land of Stethelos, where young men are infinitely old. . . . The Green Meadow . . . I will send a message across the horrible immeasurable abyss. . . .

that sort of scene, The Quest Of Iranon, Sarnath, the book is the message, that’s not so interesting, a real scholar, Democritus, idola (eidolon), air spirits you absorb through your pores, influencing your eidolon, really creepy, the theme: oh those scary trees – watch out!, papyri, center for Hellenic studies at Harvard, Professor Rooms, he original atomic theory, souls of the dead, Homer, audible and visible in sleep, the Poe connection again, Dreamlands,

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters—lone and dead,—
Their still waters—still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,—
By the mountains—near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
By the grey woods,—by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,—
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,—
There the traveller meets, aghast,
Sheeted Memories of the Past—
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by—
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
’T is a peaceful, soothing region—
For the spirit that walks in shadow
’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not—dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fring’d lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

msiing the one thing Lovecraft never puts in (the dead girlfriend), the dead trans-gendered boyfriend, not a good girl to hang out with, The Man Whom The Trees Loved, forest and verdure being alluring but having a terrible force, Arthur Machen, Jesse makes his students do his homework for him, vocab words, Jesse thinks regular people read about teacups and tea-cozies, how insane people were in whatever period, why are they so upset, they haven’t invented rocketships, between 1895-1925, astral projections, the long nights, cursing the gods, the ancient blasphemies and terrible delving, terribly upset and thoroughly enjoying himself, his astral body, over-leaped the bounds of corporeal entity, he planeted the seed, this explains the whole story, old science fiction (before the rocketships), David Lindsay’s A Voyage To Arcturus, Jack London’s The Star Rover, a lot less vikings and Japanese invasions of Korea, bringing Hypnos and the Dreamlands all together, the checklist, you can frame it in the wrong way, how good this story is, the abrupt ending is foretold by the huge frame, the narrator does almost nothing, a malignant hatred, grotesquely huge horrible, unthinkable things, the land breaks off, its up to us to do all the work, typical Lovecraft, unthinkable indescribable things, this horrible thing (existence) is just hitting them, existence (consciousnesses) attacks him, the hopeless uncaring universe, William Blake’s The Tyger, he thinks it is a reference to Rudyard Kipling, less and less of an isthmus, a description of bodily decay, let’s go off to another planet, so good, Virginia Jackson was a prodigious dreamer herself, holding on to all those details, turning a dream into a story, an alien place, why are the trees scaly, he had become an ant, a field of broccoli, lichen and fungi, grey lichen, a point of alien-ness, adapting it for film, stop-motion animation, whatever is going on in this alien planet, Scythian (Greek description of everybody to the top right of the Black Sea), if all the Mediterranean, the planet is being destroyed, the sea has defeated the trees, night gaunts?, dong interpretation, life is terrible-horrible, god is life, god is DNA, the enemy of life is non-life, nihilistic, living where young man are, scythe, the earliest recorded hashish smokers, the smoke rings of the hashish smokers, what’s lurking in the Green Meadow, human-ish,

While the words were utterly undistinguishable, the chant awaked in me a peculiar train of associations; and I was reminded of some vaguely disquieting lines I had once translated out of an Egyptian book, which in turn were taken from a papyrus of ancient Meroë. Through my brain ran lines that I fear to repeat; lines telling of very antique things and forms of life in the days when our earth was exceeding young. Of things which thought and moved and were alive, yet which gods and men would not consider alive. It was a strange book.

a prototype for the Necronomicon, who are the chanters?, The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, Alan Moore’s Providence, a test out, a strange narrative and a strange book, a persistent meme, people get upset (and Jesse finds it hilarious), look at these crazy people, the Yellow Peril, what they should have been worried about, not just for space (it’s also for time), mis-named, semi-based on a real guy, projecting yourself outside your body, that’s cool, when King Kuranes walks off the cliff, Celephais, a fucking meteorite came down from the sky with a book in it, it took 2,000 years to reach the Earth, chalk and slate, the lure of life that isn’t horror, the siren call of human contact, parties, suicide, the shadowy figures were that which were really real, reverting to the main theme, oblivion is to be preferred, why is this story called “The Green Meadow” instead of “The Scary Trees“

My eyes could now discern several things amidst the omnipresent verdure—rocks, covered with bright green moss, shrubs of considerable height, and less definable shapes of great magnitude which seemed to move or vibrate amidst the shrubbery in a peculiar way. The chanting, whose authors I was so anxious to glimpse, seemed loudest at points where these shapes were most numerous and most vigorously in motion.

the sense of vibration and oscillation, wake up buddy!, shrubbery, a three headed knight, A Voice In the Night by William Hope Hodgson, The Derelict, a fungus, eater of the dead, green vs. grey, so green even the trunks and rocks are green, the forward and backward nature, the perpetuation is the horror, if anyone could become President then Lovecraft could become President, give me a clean planet like Mars or Mercury bathed in the solar rays, a walk in the woods with Wayne June, green is my favorite colour, just beneath the skin, existence sucks, In The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole, there’s still lots of interesting books to read, that strange book he read, Lovecraft is so funny, a joke, falling along his normal path and message, it’s not deadly serious, the most important scientific discovery in the history of the world, The Colour Out Of Space, that’s how Joseph Smith found his books, the hoax religion, there nice people to hang out with, sure they don’t like coffee but they don like ice-cream, really cool underwear, chloroform in print, before we go completely sideways, the Fiddler’s Green myth, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, better than anything Gaiman has written since (except for the first volume), appeals to sailors, reading a lot of comics, mermaid, mermaids are the angels for sailors, DC and Marvel horror comics, mermaid discovers meat, lamia, sirens, a Valhalla for sailors, common ways of dying in folk-songs, Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Billy Budd by Herman Melville, dance-houses doxies and tapster, ladies of negotiable affection, were dance halls a way of getting around prostitution laws, an earlier version of Match.com, off the rails and into the sea and off the hook.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #429 – READALONG: In The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #429 – Jesse, Marissa, Mr Jim Moon and Wayne June talk about the Tantor Media audiobook In the Mountains of Madness: The Life, Death, And Extraordinary Afterlife Of H. P. Lovecraft by W. Scott Poole.

Talked about on today’s show:
a biography (not the novel), who would make that mistake, W. Scott Poole, The Extraordinary Afterlife Of H.P. Lovecraft, the writing style, some reservations, a very interesting book, S.T. Joshi, Michel Houellebecq, current thoughts about Lovecraft, have we all fallen into a trap?, there must be something wrong with him, first biography, I Am Providence, primary materials, letters to the editors, here’s Lovecraft’s vision, man, Lovecraft’s childhood, why do we care so much, a forerunner, his mom and his wife, everybody hears about Lovecraft’s mom: he’s hideous looking, the L. Sprague DeCamp biography, a strange man with an ugly lantern jaw, Stephen King, progressive and interesting, an open minded woman, his politics, cautiously taking issue, Lovecraft’s racism, history, a crock of bull, dismissing the man of his time argument, science, eugenics, racial theory, phrenology, condemns overly harshly, divorcing the work from the creator of it, celebrating his creativity without celebrating his politics, what if Rembrandt was a wife-beater, a conservative, his grandfather, a pedestal, we all get our politics from our parents and our family, unusual and extreme, not a happy fact, commonplace views, The Birth Of A Nation, bringing Lovecraft away, strange and creative, humanizing, they weren’t terrible mad women, playful, reading Shakespeare, annoying the neighbours, psychoanalysis, they must be psychopaths, a wax cylinder, Lovecraft’s singing was like a fox terrier being strangled, cats and ice-cream, good evidence, an admirable person, an only parent, every kind of toy, chemistry sets and magazine subscriptions, school as torture and punishment, she sounds awesome, expand your mind in different ways, he’s filling in gaps with a lot of speculation, really interesting new evidence, non-standard childhood behavior, starting a detective agency after you’re playing dungeons and dragons style wargames, .22 pistol, tailing suspicious looking characters all over Providence, an absurdly early age, Sarah Susan Lovecraft, conclusions, this book is so 2016/2017 with suppositions, hard to argue with facts, beyond precioucious, Mr Jim Moon’s rubbish detective agency, toddlers with automatic weapons, gun control, football, every male was given a badge that ranked them beta or delta, fuck you society!, ugly vs. striking, William Hope Hodgson, going with it and going against it, amateur journalism and reading pulp magazines, why my sympathy resonates with Lovecraft in his stories, he’s interested in school, Teddy Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, war was masculine, WWI was a mistake, pulled some strings, a strange sickly twilight individual, a walker and rambler vs. mad recluse, go for a walk and read books, social anxiety and mild depression, most of the people Jim knows, the subtitle, becoming H.P. Lovecraft, the stories themselves, August Derleth and Cthulhu plushies, Hypnos, Hypnos tattoos, very funny, a sarcastic take on the hipsters, THE answer, the secret history of why today is the way it is today, Gary Gygax comic book biography, Little Wars by H.G. Wells, war-gaming, the great grandfather of modern gaming, he’s not really a fantasist in most cases, Wells’ stamp, Doctor Who could not exist without The Time Machine, Lovecraft’s marriage to Sonia Greene, she bank rolled amateur journalism (their version of blogging or podcasting), The United Amateur, she comes off pretty well as a wife, he comes off pretty badly, a raconteur, carousing, a dynamic person, the teenage daughter, Lovecraft’s stepdaughter, some beautiful poetry, I’m after him, completely unemployable, he’s a rich man who has come down in the world, Lovecraft’s main attempt to make money was to revise other people’s writing, Marissa can make a living, Wayne can make a living, one ad in Weird Tales, rewriting, 100,000 letters, Ted Chiang, unwilling to compromise, manual labour, his job-seeking letter, 17th furniture was the peak of furniture design, no normal customer, mattresses mattresses mattresses, extraordinarily striking, he can’t grant his wife a divorce, his own worst enemy, he didn’t want a job, 14-18 hours a day, get yourself a Sonia, never ate in a restaurant, alone in their cave, not the normal thing, was H.P. Lovecraft a gay man?, his only woman kisser, time spent, some gay friends, his first love was books and writing, M.R. James, there might might be some very racy letters we’ll never see, asexuality, an old flame, we shouldn’t go there, he’s like most people, relationships are difficult, completely open-minded, he had the opportunity with R.H. Barlow, dwelling, everybody was in love with Lovecraft, it’s great to spend time with a brilliant mind, a 14 year old fan, Jesse’s students, interesting ideas, talking about art or sports, really normal, spending time with heroes, letters back and forth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, kind of a leap, getting together in physical space, we think he’s fascinating, trying to explain the fascination, a name to conjure with, a funky coffee house, a bowler hat and a tattoo with Lovecraft’s face, why Lovecraft plays a huge role as a totemic symbol, buying books with his name on the side, sex toys, Savage Sword of Conan, the Lovecraft influenced stories of Robert E. Howard, how did Mr Jim Moon discover Lovecraft, The Hound, Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, Trail Of Cthulhu, the role playing game, hitting thew jackpot, battered old paperbacks, Wayne’s dad was an SF reader, a stationery store’s upstairs, a metaphor of some kind, half-way up the ladder, Cool Air, it gave me chills, becoming obsessed with Lovecraft, what was in the used bookstore, do you think his writing style sets you up for that?, one of those writers, a bigger thrill everytime, like Shakespeare, into the flow, richer and richer, At the Mountains Of Madness, a gift card for Chapters, filed in the biography section, Scott Danielson, damn it!, the audiobook is missing the back-matter, Necronomicon fake-lore, good essays about Lovecraft by Angela Carter and Colin Wilson, the Chaosium Necronomicon, related short stories, The Adder by Fred Chapel, corrupting neighbouring books, why “In” in the title, forgotten perfectly, Lovecraft’s dad: ‘the chamber maid has insulted me and strange men are raping my wife’, sanitarium, he was “noisy”, the treatment was enemas every second day, damaged genitals, Poole’s theory, syphilis, Guy de Maupassant, in the background of Lovecraft’s psychology, bringing the sexual horror to the surface, high on morphine, not a friendly way to go, talking insensibly, high on opioids, that’s fucked up, drugs, who knows?, lose yourself in some good comic books because life is fucking horrible, the core of Lovecraft’s philosophy, Lovecraft thought about suicide, so polite, he hasn’t learned enough about geology yet, not the coward’s way out, Howard’s suicide, a lot more depressive, powerful and beautiful, The Thing On The Roof, getting right into the action, the requisite ending, in touch with that horror, why worry about getting married when you’re worried about how mortal you are, a lot of sympathy, marriage instead of suicide, what’s missing, what was Lovecraft doing all those years when he wasn’t writing?, astronomy, running clubs, becoming something, the eighth biography?, there’s something going on, he’s pointed to a lot of things, some much at odds with the myth of Lovecraft, he’s maladjusted, he’s anti-social, seven weeks of blackberry picking, Winnie the Pooh, more to the man, off the hip astrology, the intentional fallacy, a secret autobiography, what makes a weird tale, a whole other side, chit chatting with friends, walks and get-togethers, a different picture emerges, did you come here to praise him or bury him, a hatchet job, sour grapes, de Camp, he finds other people’s writings, that’s not great, get a handle on a whole life, it feels like we get to know him, a person we can know, incredibly like having a friendship, where did this mythology come from?, The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, people don’t like them, you have to do that, death is waiting for each and every one of us, existence is horrible, taking a step-back from you, reputation and mythology, absolutely an athiest, a pessimist, an atheistic existentialist, they don’t like it, an academic, a course on Lovecraft, what was H.P. Lovecraft’s philosophy?, material, atheism, cosmicism, racism, Cthulhu plushie racist, a quick bit of googling, it’s everywhere, something you have to get passed, tentacles, I like coffee, Freudian symbolism, who have you been dating?, chimera, the irony is bigger, I Am Providence, now he’s dirt, the fortune he was heir to and then lost, made it’s money from whaling, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, compromise, working at a gas station, humiliating, his worldview, bemoaning the decline of the aristocracy, pledged allegiance to King George, an unrepentant Tory, The Rats In The Walls, why we’re so interested in the man, writing true, making hay out of trends, the flavour of the week, no skin of his nose, rejected, he could suffer any indignity, a beautiful tragedy, it could have been a lot worse, he was so generous, the lord dispensing wealth, he was giving out what he wished he had recieved, mentoring, Robert Bloch, a life-line in the amateur press, fan letter, highfalutin poetry, the marketing came after by his fans, my point for Wayne, I could make Wayne so much money, he needs a Patreon, Audio Realms is out of business, the complete H.P. Lovecraft one book a month, some sort of barrier, it’s like you can’t lower yourself to that, he’s just lazy, you’re still alive, you’re killing me, At The Mountains Of Madness is a big job, that book is an expedition, Poole makes an argument that Prometheus is a retelling of At The Mountains Of Madness, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, a massive debt to Lovecraft, a link still unexplored, a thing podcast, thing it, them, they!, the mysterious pronouns in dark places.

In The Mountains Of MadnessTheExtraordinary Afterlife Of H.P. Lovecraft by W. Scott Poole

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!