May 22, 2025 • 56 mins
Newly inspired by his recent associations in amateur magazine circles, HP Lovecraft returns to fiction. In the second part of this series, Ben, Max and special guest Jonathan Strickland witness Lovecraft's work building a mythos with his friends and collaborators, his love life, his tragedies and triumphs. Also his strange hatred of so many things (including, oddly, seafood).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear a big shout out
for our super producer, the madness over Ennsmith, Max Williams. Yes, Yes,
that's the classic Williams enthusiasm. Folks, they call me Ben
Bollen in this part of the world. My podcast partner
(00:50):
in crime, Noel Brown is on is on Revengers, He's
on Adventures. But we'll be returning soon. In the meantime,
this is part two of a fascinating exploration we're having
with a special guest. We asked ourselves a while back,
why is HP Lovecraft so very weird? And we thought
(01:11):
there could be none better to explore this with us
than the man, the myth, the legend, a good friend
of our show, a brother in arms on a personal level.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, Let's welcome him back with a big
round of applause or whatever sound effect Max chooses. It's
Jonathan Strickland, a.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Man called Jonathan, man called Jonathan All what may sound strange,
do you? Everybody tells him what to do?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Hey, if I'm going to give myself a Lovecraftian nickname.
I think that's gonna be the Sandwich horror instead of
this horror. Yeah. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of
role for Sandwich. Have you ever watched that series? Wait yet,
it's been on for a while, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
the guy's been doing it for a few years. But
(02:07):
he does a thing where he rolls dice to determine
what kind of bread, what kind of filling, what kind
of roughage, what kind of sauce, and like you know,
obviously it went wild on TikTok, but it's also on
YouTube shorts and I remember hearing about it when my brother.
My brother and me worked up a table of wild
magic modifiers and so I just got a wild hair
(02:32):
to track it down and watch all of them and
highly entertaining. But yeah, there's a lot of there's a
lot of like Eldrich horror in that series as well. Honestly,
you never know if it's gonna emerge or not.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
AMC. They have a cookbook there too, And I love
that you're doing nicknames, Max. I hope you like yours.
And of course my true name is unpronounceable in the
human tongue. If you haven't checked out episode one, please
please please do give it a listen. Otherwise, without further ado,
we welcome you to the Darkness. He also is president
(03:14):
briefly of another organization that is the PEPSI to Opah's coke,
the National Amateur Press Organization or NAPA. So it's Uppah
and NAPA and he just wants to hang out with
both of them. This is what gets him back into
writing fiction. If you like Call of Cuthulhu Mounts Madness,
(03:34):
this is.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Why you done. Which horror that kind of thing. Yeah,
I would say that this actually reminds me a lot.
I mean, it's a different era, but it reminds me
a lot of a storyline that plays out in the
Apple TV Plus series Mythic Quest, which is which is
about a video game company that's making a massively multiplayer
(03:58):
online role playing game. There is a character in that
show named CJ, who is a former Nebula Award winning
science fiction author who won his award back in nineteen
seventy four and has been coasting on it ever since.
And I get the sense that that the characterization of CJ,
(04:22):
at least some elements of his personality are drawn from
HP Lovecraft. This this desire for being included in an
esteemed group of literary professionals, also a desire to be
viewed as a a particularly accomplished contributor to that group.
(04:45):
I don't know that HP was thriving on it in
the way that you know CJ is like a parasite
in mythic quest. I don't. I don't think HP necessarily
was a parasite at all. I think, in fact, he
was quite the opposite. He seemed to be. One of
the nice things we can say about HP Lovecraft is
he genuinely seemed to be enthusiastic about encouraging young writers
(05:08):
to write.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yes, yeah, and not in a creepy, grooming way, even
though they talked about really creepy things like in a
genuine collegiate manner that did result in actual friendship. This
is why, as you mentioned earlier, he ultimately becomes one
of the most prolific letter writers of his century. I
(05:33):
kind of don't want to imagine him on Twitter or
social media, but for him being able to take the
time to put the thoughts in order right, he was
doing great.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I was like, there's another example I can give. I
think it was Robert Block, who wrote when he wrote
to him, because Block was Block was significantly younger than Lovecraft.
Block I think was born in like nineteen seventeen, so
much younger than Lovecraft. But he came across some of
Lovecraft's stories because they had been republished in various pulp magazines,
(06:08):
and he wrote to Lovecraft to say, hey, do you
happen to know where I can find your other works?
Because I love these that I've come across, but I
do not know where I can find your other stories.
And Lovecraft have a book, and Lovecraft sent him copies
of all the stories, and uh, you know, obviously, I'm
(06:29):
sure part of that was Lovecraft was flattered by the
attention and you know, the appeal to him as an
author of great skill. But I think it also speaks
to his genuine desire to have this sort of collaborative
creative network of writers. Uh. I think I think a
(06:51):
lot of the things we attribute to Lovecraft are at
least partly the work of this massive group of other writers,
writers who all helped work within each other's worlds.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, which he also encouraged. And I think that was
that is perhaps one of the greatest modern innovations in
Lovecraft's UVU if we're being if we're being pretentious because
it's not really his past. A certain point people would
write to him and say, oh, I love this story, right,
(07:27):
I love the way this is constructed. I love you know,
insert ambiguous, nebulous threats here. And here's something I've been
thinking about. How how do you see these two things
working together? And be like, oh, that's great, let me
think about it. Okay, So in this world, you know,
I've got I've got Cuthulhu or something, or you know,
(07:51):
the goat with a thousand young and he kind of
works this way, and so maybe this is one of
those thousand young I don't know, tell me what you think.
I look forward to writing back, and then they would
write back, and they would It's just something that can
seem kind of rare because think about it today, I'm
thinking of another like a big multi format universe, maybe
(08:14):
Stephen King's Connected.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Or or comic book universes. Right, that's great because these
comic book universes are literally made up of the contributions
of hundreds of different authors and artists, and the attempt
to fashion a an interconnected universe of all these disparate
(08:37):
stories and try to make them make sense within a
larger narrative is an ongoing challenge. It's why you have
these like universe resetting events in DC or Marvel in particular.
But it's it's the closest I can think of. It's
a bunch. And in that case, you've got like a
corporate overlord who's making sure that you've got a bunch
(09:00):
of different authors who are all kind of working toward
the same goal. But in this case it was much
more organic than that.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, and and the I love that comparison. I think
that's apropos. I would also say for the important thing
about the Stephen King example is imagine if you are
King is a superstar by this point, But imagine if
you are someone who just likes reading scary stories, and
you have an idea for a scary story that you
(09:31):
want to set in the universe Stephen King is created.
There are there is an entire industry of legal experts
who can't wait to smack someone down for trying that,
you know what I mean, Unless you're his son, Unless
you are Joe Hill, who I think is quite talented.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Oh yeah, no, no doubt. I mean you know, Doctor
Sleep is great, but yeah, I it's funny because King
himself did this within his own work, right where you
would have seemingly disconnected storylines, and then he would gradually
reveal that, oh no, these actually exist within the same universe,
and in fact one will reference and perhaps even transform another.
(10:15):
So King King kind of did this as a one
man show, but in Lovecraft's time, what we're talking about
is literally like a dozen authors, all of whom are
working in genres that are maybe not directly weird fiction,
but are somewhat related. Like Robert E. Howard famously would
be sword and sorcery, right like he's that's the creator
(10:37):
of Conan the Barbarious. Yeah, And so you would have
these people who are working in different areas of speculative fiction,
but they would start to incorporate elements of each other's work,
and you get this incredibly rich tapestry where if you
are a voracious reader, if you're someone who's subscribing to,
(10:58):
you know, one of the these pulp magazines, you get that
rewarding feeling of oh, I recognize that reference, just as
if you are like a diehard Marvel Cinematic Universe fan
and you sit there through the whole movie and you
wait until that you know, Stinger at the end of
the credits, and you think, oh my gosh, they're referencing
this other, like incredibly obscure thing that's was mentioned once
(11:22):
in like a television episode of Agents of Shield or something.
It's that same kind of endorphin release, you know, that
feeling of oh, I recognize this. That makes me feel
included and special. But we're not done with Lovecraft's tragedies
because just as all this is going, there's another setback
(11:42):
in his life.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Absolutely, and this is I think it's appropriate that we
spend some time on the good parts so that you
know it's not just a wretched march to the grave here,
but there are more tragedies ahead. As you said, Lovecraft's
mother hers a quote unquote nervous breakdown in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's the family business.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah. She is admitted to Butler Hospital, and just like
her husband before her, she does not emerge there alive.
She dies in the facility on May twenty fourth, nineteen
twenty one, with some gallbladder related complications. So not syphilis
in this case.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Although there were some at least some elements that I
read where there was speculation that perhaps she too had
oh syphilis. Yeah, but again possible. Yeah, it's speculation because again,
like we're talking about a time where records aren't as
thorough the actual medical practices and as thorough. It all
(12:44):
depends upon what you have access to. So again this
could be elements of speculation. But there have been those
who have suggested that perhaps she too was inflicted by syphilis.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah. And this is horrific either way you slice it.
And because this is the most important person in Lovecraft's
life at this point, for better or worse, he is
shattered and he spends a few weeks in a very
dark emotional place. But eventually he says, you know, stiff
(13:22):
upper lip, we must soldier on. And he goes to
a journalism convention in Boston. This is on Independence Day
in nineteen twenty one, and despite being an avowed racist
and a virulent anti Semite, he hits it off with
a Jewish woman named Sonia half to Green, She's seven
(13:46):
years older than him. They feel like they click. This
is the closest thing this guy's ever going to get
to a meet greet in a rom com and he
is head over the heels, head over the heels. I'm
still learning English, He's asked, yes, yes, just so. So
he visits Sonia in her apartment in Brooklyn in nineteen
(14:10):
twenty two, and then by March third, nineteen twenty four,
they're married. There's a bit of acrimony in the Lovecraft
household because he does not tell his two aunts, who
raised them and still of course have very much come
(14:30):
from that patrician mindset. Lillian D. Clark and Annie Eve
Phillips Gamwell find out that their lovely nephew got married
via the post.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, this is like they receive a letter. It's like
breaking up via text. So Ben, quick question for you,
do you think that HP lovecrafts let us say in
the language of Facebook, it's complicated relationship with his mother
may have played some part in him becoming enamored of
(15:04):
a woman seven years his senior.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
One hundred percent. I would take it a step further
with you. Let's keep walking down that one, because I
would also argue is fraught relationship with his mother informed
his decision to marry literally the first other lady who
was nice to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, just
(15:28):
to have that constant maternal figure.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
And to be fair, I never met the man.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
We have to see you.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
No, it could be that we are way off base
and we're viewing this from a lens in the twenty
first century that just simply cannot see the minutia. But
there are certain indicators that appear to support that narrative.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
There we go. We do know some facts that are inarguable.
Post matrimony. Lovecraft moves into Sonia's place. She's got that
apartment in Brooklyn, and at first it looks like our
newly minted couple is going to be doing okay. Sonya
owns a hat shop off Fifth Avenue, which even back
(16:14):
then is a big deal. Lovecraft is making a living,
a modest living, but it's living nonetheless as a professional writer.
Several of his earlier stories have been accepted by Weird Tales,
one of the pre eminent pulp publications of the day.
But unfortunately, tragedy comes back again, back into the fore.
(16:38):
Their happy honeymoon period is all too brief. Sonya's hat
shop goes bankrupt. Lovecraft turns down some opportunities that he
should have taken to rise in the world of publishing.
He could have been the editor of magazine that was
(17:01):
coming out sort of adjacent to Weird Tales, not a competitor,
but like a compliment, like, if you like this, you'll
also like that.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
The problem was that this job would have necessitated a move.
He would have had to move to Chicago, and that
was a pretty big ask when you've got, like, at
the same time, you have this failing business that is
not in Chicago, and clearly your wife cannot accompany you
(17:29):
without abandoning the business entirely. So it was a tough call, right, Like,
it's not as simple as hey, you can stay exactly
where you are and take this gig. It's no, you
have to up end your life and start over in
a new city, but you will have this gig. And
ultimately love Craft says, you know, it's too rich for
my blood to have to move over there. I'm going
(17:50):
to stay where I am. I've got my wife whom
I can always depend upon, who will be stalwart and
true and will never get sick ever. Right, And then
she got.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Sick, and then she had then her health turns south
as well, as she has to go to a sanitarium
in New Jersey, and Lovecraft needs to do his best
to support her and himself and probably a few cats
at this point, And so he tries to find a job.
(18:24):
He is, and we say this with great affection, he's
a little bit nebbish, you know what I mean? This
guy his hands, they don't have callouses.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, it's not like I mean we mentioned this earlier.
It's not like he had any work experience whatsoever. Like
we mentioned that when he was doing the whole hermit thing,
and same is true. Now, right, he's thirty four and
he lacks any practical skills that he can apply to
landing your regular kind of job. So what are you
(18:55):
gonna do. He's in a really bad way.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, he's in a non ideal situation and he has
to move again. And this is a guy who very
much hates moving, just to be clear. And so he
has to go to like a bachelor apartment, a single apartment,
and it's near a area of Brooklyn called Red Hook.
This will go on to inform a lot of his
(19:20):
writing in a very non complimentary way to the neighborhood
and the people of Red Hook.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yes, he's having to associate with folks outside of his
normal realm of experience, and he has a negative point
of view about that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, the foreign hordes, the masses of foreigners in the city,
and to the point where you know, you can read,
I don't think it's a spoiler at this at this juncture,
you can read where there are characters in Lovecraft stories
who go who you know immediately leg just intuitively know
(20:02):
that the foreigners in Red Hook practice secret religions to
squamous and unclean gods. Why because they had, you know,
like a bit of an air to their eyebrows.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, if you if you read any Lovecraft stories, like
a lot of them end up incorporating characters who are black,
and they are also typically antagonists or sometimes depicted as barbaric,
and you know, to Lovecraft, civilization was the epitome of
(20:35):
human achievement, and so anything that was considered uncivilized in
Lovecraft's eyes, would be equivalent to being evil. So he
depicted a lot of black characters as being primitive, barbaric, uncivilized,
(20:57):
and as a result of those things, also prone to
worshiping these sort of profane figures that ultimately would have
an incredibly negative impact on the typically the protagonist. I
don't know if any of y'all have read a lot
of Lovecraft, but if you have, you probably are aware
that there's a better than eighty five percent chance the
(21:18):
protagonist is not making it out alive or sane by
the end of the story, of course.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, and that's you know, I enjoy that part of
this structure. Actually, that the that you know, it's it's
upending a lot of the conventional rules of stories of
that time.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, unless you're unless you're Robert Chambers, who already did
it in The Yellow King.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
But okay, yeah, yeah, and The Yellow King is great. Oh,
I love that one story, the repairer of reputations. Do
check out The Yellow King. Just know it's an anthology
of short stories by Robert Chambers. Uh, not every one
of them, slaps, I'm just gonna be diplomatic.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well, and not all of them. I don't think people
would categories categorize all of them as falling into weird fiction.
But the ones that do, the ones that do really
like you can see, not that you know. It's speculated
that Lovecraft didn't encounter a lot of those stories told
after he was already writing, so it seems like it
was not a case of any sort of influence or plagiarism.
(22:20):
I don't want to suggest that, but Chambers established a
lot of tropes that Lovecraft and his contemporaries would continue
to engage in. M M.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, and Lovecraft also, you know, you have to bring
Algernon Blackwood into the conversation and several other things that
you know, Lovecraft was not just like he wasn't reticent
to criticize stuff he didn't like. He was also never
reticent to praise stuff that he enjoyed or felt informed him.
(22:52):
So we have to give him points there. But despite
the fact that he has generated these friendships, this massive
correspondence as a couple of what we would call irl
friends there in New York, he's still depressed, he still
feels isolated, and he still cartoonishly xenophobic. So in nineteen
(23:17):
twenty six he returns to Providence. He just feels like
he has to do it. The scuttle butt here is
that his aunts don't want him to bring his wife.
He doesn't know what will happen with Sonia, but he
goes anyway, and so.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well, of course, and yeah, so leading up to this,
when he was in Red Hook, Sonya was actually in Cleveland.
She was still seeking treatment in Cleveland. So that's one
of the reasons why he felt so isolated, is that
his wife, Like you can start to see a pattern
with like his dependence. I'm sure there was like a
codependent kind of thing going on between him and his mother,
(23:59):
and is inspect something similar was going on between him
and his wife, and he's separated from her while she's
seeking treatment in Cleveland, he's in Red Hook. They reunite
when they go to Providence in nineteen twenty six, but
you know, through one means or another, that relationship becomes
unsustainable and nineteen twenty nine it comes to an end.
(24:20):
But this is also right around the time where Lovecraft
is finally actually experiencing the success of his work. You know,
he's been at it for quite some time, but this
is like the renaissance of Lovecraft that we're entering into here.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And
we have to recognize this paradox, which unfortunately may sound
familiar to a lot of people. Your professional life goes
really well, and your personal life takes. Your personal life
goes really well, and your professional life takes and it
seems that Lovecraft is always trying to find that balance, right,
(25:01):
often without success.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
See also every stand up comedian ever.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yes see also literally every stand up comedian. Come at
us for that one. All right, so you nailed at
Jonathan Lovecraft returns to Providence nineteen twenty six, like you said,
and the last ten years of his life. He may
have found some kind of balance here, possibly his best
(25:26):
decade as a writer, maybe some of his best personal
years as well. His life at this point isn't super eventful,
you know, he's not living out real life pirate cosplay
or anything. He does travel to a lot of historic
sites around the Eastern Seaboard to soak in their culture
(25:47):
with varying reactions, and they all kind of they start
to inform his fiction, you know, his generally, like the
one the work that even non Lovecraft fans know the
most about is probably going to be The Call of
Cudulhu in twenty six or at the Mountains of Madness
in nineteen thirty one. While he's writing these stories that
(26:10):
will go on to cement his legacy, he's doing another
legacy cementing move, which is he's writing about these to
his friends, his peers. You know what I mean, what
do you guys think rightw what do you guys think
about breeding with fish people to worship a fish god?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
All right? What do you think about this little story
I got called Dagon, which ends up being one of
my favorites of Lovecraft. That's actually my favorite film adaptation
of Lovecraft. Oh come on, but only if you're going
as like a fairly strict following of Like, if you're
(26:52):
going into the more loose adaptations of Lovecraft, my favorite
is re Animator. I mean, it's always going to be
re Animator. Evil Dead is obviously inspired by Lovecraft's signed adaptation, though,
but Reanimator is and it's bonkers and I love it
and it's fantastic. I mean, there's so many great adaptations
(27:12):
of Lovecraft. But again, like that collaborative nature, that camaraderie
that was built up between all these different authors who
are sharing ideas and nurturing one another's ideas and informing
one another's ideas, I would argue that a Lovecraft story
is not solely a Lovecraft story. It is the product
of this collaborative universe, just as I would say Robert E. Howard,
(27:37):
a Roberty Howard's story is again a product of this
that you know, the the prime author is whomever actually
wrote the piece, but that that piece would not exist,
at least not in the form that we are familiar
with without this collaborative relationship going on between all these
different authors who are encouraging each other to participate in
(28:02):
this process. And again, it's one of those things where
I'm like, I'm not aware of too many other instances
where something like this has happened, at least not organically,
where it wasn't just like some sort of weird content
farm kind of approach.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Right, Yeah, that's the key part there, that it would
organically arose as he was he was not just enjoying
his own success and pursuing it, but he was hoping
interest would be contagious.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
He wanted other people to pick up the toys that
he had built and play with them and maybe, you know,
make some toys of their own, and there's something human
and astonishing about that. We also know we're going to
set them up before we have to do the drop here.
We also know that he was not one hundred percent
(28:55):
immovable in some of his ideas and prejudices. Depression occurred
during his lifetime. He witnessed this, and it led him
to support Roosevelt, which might be surprised based on some
of the stuff we already know about his background and
his racist perspective. But he became a socialist towards the.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
End well, and like the Great Depression affected him as
well as you know, affecting working people all over the place.
In that publications like like Weird Tales began to scale
back like they were still printing. Because as we are
all familiar at this point, I think some of us
are now becoming directly familiar that times of recession or depression,
(29:39):
entertainment often is one of the few industries that continues
to do well as people seek escape from the stresses
of life. Well, same was true back then during the
Great Depression, which, by the way, not that great. If
you ask me, it's a terrible name. It was a
pretty awful depression. But yeah, we're even with that. They
(30:01):
had to scale back. They just couldn't afford to continue
publication on the same schedule that they had been doing,
which in turn had a cascading effect on all the
different authors who are contributing to those publications, and so
Lovecraft himself was feeling the effects of the depression, just
like other people were, and perhaps the hardships of his
(30:25):
life once his grandfather had passed and his legacy was
mishandled so dramatically, gave him a little bit of reflection
into how life isn't all tea time and Gothic tales
by the fire.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And we've spoken at length about the intensely problematic views
regarding Lovecraft there have been. Of course, there are still
continual additions to the existing mythos, even here in twenty
twenty five, and there are authors like Matt Ruff, the
(31:04):
creator of Lovecraft Country, who kind of navigate these issues
by centering people of color in their lovecrafty and explorations.
And we know, look Lovecraft, we still know how he
would have reacted if he saw the effect that he
(31:25):
has had upon fiction and speculative fiction. Weird horror today
because the last two or three years of his life
were also filled with more heartbreak. His aunt, Miss Clark, died,
he moved in with his other aunt, Miss Gamwell, to
another basically an apartment, and his later stories were more
(31:48):
and more difficult to sell. They were kind of struggling
under the weight of the world building he had created.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Against something that Marvel fans can kind of identify with
that the lung you the longer you go with this
interconnected mythos, the more is required of the consumer of
that art to have at least some familiarity with the
stuff that came before, or else they're completely lost.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah. Yeah, shout out to everybody who just saw uh,
you know, iron Man.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Three, right right, but yeah, to your to your point,
like we're getting toward the end of his life here,
and we'll just I can't think we can skip ahead
to say that he had cancer and by the time
the cancer was discovered, it had progressed to a point
where the writing was already on the wall, and so
(32:43):
he too began to fall apart, and eventually he passed
away due to the cancer he had. And so, uh,
you know, there are there's definitely tragedy in his life.
I don't want to just paint Lovecraft as this xenophobic,
(33:03):
you know, racist blowhard who you know who expouse espoused
views that were absolutely terrible. But we also can't completely
divorce ourselves of that because he actually that informed his writing.
I mean, it's it's clear in some of his stories.
You can't I don't think death of the author is
(33:25):
something we can easily apply here because those views inform
much of his work.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Agreed one hundred percent, and I think we could add
a little bit of arm armchair psychology here with the following.
Tell me when you guys think about this. I have,
after doing a bunch of reading for this stuff and
over the years as a fan of love crafting and work,
I have come to the light conclusion that one of
(33:57):
his mental issues may have been something we would right
kignies as obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, in that his
racism is that aphobia is. It's one of his many
weird hang ups, probably the most dangerous. But he had
a lot of very strident opinions for and against things,
(34:19):
and he did obsess over them to what would be
considered an abnormal degree. Give you one of the fun ones,
and this made me think of you, Jonathan. He hated seafood.
He hated seafood. Now, not all of our listeners may
know this, you and I have talked about over the
(34:40):
years under many adventures, but he is he actively hates it.
I don't know if you actively hate it, but you
definitely can't eat it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah, No, I can't eat it because I have a
severe shellfish allergy, one that will send me to the
emergency room if I have any shelfish or at least
lobster and shrimp are the known shellfish that I am
allergic to. I have eliminated all shellfish, including stuff outside
(35:11):
of things like lobsters and shrimp and stuff from my
diet because after having that experience a couple of times,
I don't want to ever have it again. Plus it
was pretty scary the last time. And also it means
that I have to be careful around seafood in general
because of cross contamination. So I don't hate seafood. I
do avoid seafood unless I am extremely certain that the
(35:36):
seafood restaurant or whatever is very good about avoiding cross contamination.
So I would not go so far as to cast
fish as the bad guys in my stories.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
But maybe there's an untrusty there's an untrustworthy mollusk from Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yes, maybe, yeah, I could have like a I don't know,
a ship d crab. Maybe that's how they walk man. Yeah, yeah,
they're always they're always edging away from you, you know.
But yeah, Lovecraft like famously despised seafood to the point
where where he made a big deal of it. And
and also, at least according to what we came across, uh,
(36:21):
appeared to never really evolve his his dietary. UH preferences
beyond a small child and like to eat like lots
of sweet stuff and not not so much anything of
real nutritional value. He'd mess with a sandwich, Yeah, he
would mess with a sandwich, probably a PB and J
(36:42):
if I had to guess, but yeah, crust. Yeah, but
he's cut on the diagonal. But he uh he he
definitely despised seafood, which, if you're growing up in Rhode Island,
that's rough, y'all.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
That's a that's right, Yeah, that's such a waste. And
Max will throw it to you in in the second
four of the update on the condition if you're comfortable.
But for now, what you need to know is we
discovered one of the few times that Lovecraft is on
record swearing. He did not swear casually, you know, nor conversationally.
(37:15):
But the story goes and got this thanks to our
friends a mental floss that he hated seafood so much,
so cartoonishly that one time a friend of his was
trying to you know, get him outside, get him out
of his creepy little room, and they said, hey, come
with me. Let's you know, we'll go after dinner. And
(37:36):
when Lovecraft found out that the dinner was steamed clams,
Lovecraft said, quote, while you are eating that god stuff,
I'll go across the street for a sandwich. Please excuse me.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
I do love that he was reluctant to swear in public,
but he had no problem throwing racial slur around.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Right. Yeah, that's a weird demarcation of decorum. All right,
so let's before we wrap up next. I saw you
pop on what's going on? My friend? Oh?
Speaker 5 (38:12):
I just wanted to commiserate with Jonathan that because of
the condition, I cannot eat any shellfish as well. So
you and I can sit around eating like plain chicken
together and being and talk about how much we like
it despite.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Not Was there a time when you could eat shellfish?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Is there years ago?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Any particular shellfish that you really miss?
Speaker 5 (38:35):
Muscles are probably my favorite shellfish. I personally, I have
a very much a love hate relationship with shrimp. I
just I just know too much about them at the
gnography class in yeah school.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
And I they're just like really gross to me.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, sure, crab, lobster, all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Just seems so annoying to eat. I mean, oysters are good,
but also oysters are just like.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
They're the boog of the sea.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Yeah, it's like, what, there's not really anything in this well.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Also, also opening up an oyster is taking your life
in your own hands. Tried to use a knife to
pry one of those shells open without like shoving it
through your.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Hand, Johnny, I remember ten years of food and beverage experience.
I mean I was mostly front of house, but I'm
pretty good with knives in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, see me. No, I'm being a left hander and
all that kind of stuff. Yeah lefties though, I'm just
saying like a lot of tools were made for right handers,
and it does get annoying when you're getting to that.
Speaker 5 (39:30):
That's why wors pure is because we have grown up
with the spiral and the spiral notebook digging into our hands.
You know, the desks in public school, they're always on
the right side, at the left side. Actually, when I
went with Georgia State and where I got my degree from,
they had left handed ones, but it was always like
I would always sit in the right hand one and
right would sit in left hand ones. We all complain
(39:50):
about stupid desk is.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Because yeah, yeah, well, well for me, it's shrimp. Poe
Boys like I too, share a deep understanding of shrimp
and the issues, and.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I'm just a little I like the little line of poop.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah do you. Yeah, it's always it's great picking picking
up a shrimp in a restaurant and seeing that there
and thinking, oh, you didn't even take the basic step
of deveining the shrimp. But no, Yeah, I miss Poe
boys a lot. Uh, but I've gotten to the point
where I've eliminated pretty especially any place that does fried seafood.
(40:26):
Obviously you've got to be careful about the oil. So, uh,
the thing I really miss is kalamari. I miss kalamari
a lot.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Well, you know, hey, if it makes you guys feel better,
there's a big problem with counterfeit klamari. So a lot
of your friends you're bragging about eating it may not
maybe eating pig intestine.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Uh, yeah, I've I've often heard that, but I've also
heard it debunked. But you know, there, I'm not sure
because there is that one Lovecraft story where the monsters
are pig intestines, so.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yes, yeah, yeah, they're also oh we should mention this too.
Also not every he has at least a few stories
where the human esque or human descended villains are not
just the quote unquote foreigners that he would describe. There's
one in particular, I'm trying to remember it. That's about
(41:19):
a southern family of white folks who used to be
well thought of, but then they became inbred and they
committed mis engenation and turned into like mole people. Yeah,
do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (41:34):
I don't remember that one. For the sake of transparency,
it has been a long time since I've read Lovecraft's works.
I did read. I think I pretty much read every
single published work he had, besides you know, the compilations
of letters. But I've read like pretty much all of
his short stories and everything. But it's been years, and
(41:56):
with so much other media, either directly or indirectly inspired
by Lovecraft, it's easy for me to conflate things. So
I don't want to. I don't want to say something
and then just be totally wrong, simply because you know,
my brain's got scrambled. Back in twenty twenty four, pretty
darn good. And it turns out anything before twenty twenty four,
(42:18):
I can never be entirely sure if I'm remembering it
or if I'm inventing it.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
It is the Lurking Fear by HP Lovecraft. I think
I'll have to reread it. I believe that's the uh,
that's the story. So everybody could get a little bit
of xenophobia from Lovecraft. I think that's the one where
he also talks trash about Dutch people or something.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Well, I mean again, you know you walk around in
wooden shoes long enough, you're gonna bound to tick somebody off.
I knew that from my clogging days.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yes, that is true. We've got we've got to include
that in the thank you credits. Big thanks to our
super producer, mister Max Williams. I've been a research associate
for a lot of this. We hope you enjoyed it.
Big thanks as well to Alex Williams who composed this
slap and bop A J. Bahamas Jacobs also known as
the Puzzler, and of course Jonathan Strickland. Thanks to you,
(43:23):
this is this was really awesome. Man. I loved learning
more with you and I appreciate you not being the
quister today.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Oh yeah, no, it's that's why you should Sorry, no, yeah,
it's really fun. Oh excuse me, sorry, I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Time you were so close? I trust you.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
God.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
All right, get weird with it, all right, Max, I'm
going to need you to help me out on this.
I imagine our friend's alter ego is here to play
a game.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yes, welcome to the Quiztor segment, the most cringe worthy
segment and all love podcasting. Where I the quiz to
quiz beloved hosts. Where's Noel? Noel should be here.
Speaker 4 (44:19):
We're a little better off with Noah here.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
But I mean I agree to change because I had
to put on my quizler shirt.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
All right, Well, I just want to tell you sucking
up does work, so excellent job there, Max.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Ye that really is, folks, that really is. He really
is wearing it.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
We're all on video and he just proved it.
Speaker 5 (44:39):
Well, Ben, Ben and Noill get the credit. They just like,
you know, Ben reached out of me. He's like, what's
your dress? And what's that shirt? Actually I think you
have I think you have my dress, Bend, but like,
what's that shirt you wear?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Max?
Speaker 5 (44:48):
Last time that to you.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
And also and I just had ridiculous history shirts.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
I do have to admit that I'm wearing a shirt
with a black cat on it, but it is not
Lovecraft's cat. I want to make that very clear.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's good myth busting now, quister arch
nemesis of Low these several years. That sounded less dramatic
when I had to be accurate. But of Low these
several years with our good friend and partner in crime,
Noel on Adventure, it falls to young Max Williams and
(45:20):
I to play your insidious game.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yes, and this game is where I present to you
three scenarios. Two of them are real and one I
made upsis And so tis down to the to determine
which of these is the one that I made up.
And I will present to you the three scenarios, and
upon the presentation, you will have three minutes to confer
between the two of you to determine which of the
(45:44):
three are fake. I want to say this one is
I think pretty. This one's not hard, but it was
fun to write.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Don't set us up like that, man. We'll try to
make it look really.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Bad when we flail and do awful of this one.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
I'm in your head, dude, I know how you work.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I have faith in you. But as always, if you
wish to ask a question for clarification's sake, and if
I happen to know the answer, you can do so,
but you have to preface it with a phrase of
my own choosing. For this particular quiz, that phrase shall be,
of course, it must be yah yah cutoul photogon right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(46:24):
popping photogon photogon. Yet pronunciation is very clear, I mean,
despite the fact that Lovecraft wrote it in such a
way that you're not supposed to be able to say
it with the human tongue. I am being very persnickety. No, uh,
here are your three scenarios. I shall start with scenario
number one. One of Lovecraft's predecessors, mister Edgar Allan Poe,
(46:48):
receives credit for helping establish the genre of mystery fiction. However,
did you know that Poe's own journey included debunking the
famous mechanical turk The York was an invention of Wolfgang
von Kemplin from nearly a century before, and appeared to
be a humanoid automaton capable of playing expert levels of chess.
(47:10):
By the time Poe investigated it, Kimpland was long dead,
and a man named Johann Meltzel, who took this Turk
from Europe to America, was doing exhibitions across the eastern
coast of the United States. Poe argued that because the
Turk occasionally lost in chess games, it must therefore be
(47:32):
controlled by a person either inside the device or from
some remote location, because machines would win every single time. Now,
as we all know from chat GPT, that's not necessarily
a guarantee. But our Poe boy was at least right,
but for the wrong reason. Scenario number two. Lovecraft contemporary
(47:54):
and correspondent Robert E. Howard is probably best known for
the creation of the beefcake Barbarian conan. Howard became part
of the Lovecraft Circle. These are the authors who collaborated
with one another, sharing stories and concepts in an effort
to weave together a rich tapestry of mythology. Two Gun Bob,
as he was known within the circle, made a major
(48:15):
contribution to the Lovecraftian mythology the Necronomicon. While Lovecraft had
invented the name Abdullah has read many years before the
two corresponded.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
It was Robert E.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Howard who first incorporated what later storytellers would call the
Book of the Dead into a sword and sorcery tale
titled The Tomb of the Witch. The necronomicon is only
mentioned in the story and holds no significance for the plot,
but Lovecraft liked the sound of the title, and, with
Robert E. Howard's permission, used it in his own works.
(48:48):
You can really argue the necronomicon didn't really hit the
big time until far after Lovecraft's death, and that's why
I say groovy scenario number three. Before becoming a famous
crime novelist, Robert Albert Bloch was a young member of
the Lovecraft Circle, contributing to publications like Weird Tales and
(49:09):
such and participating in the group Mythology created by Lovecraft,
Roberty Howard, August Durleis, Jay Vernon, Shay Clark, Ashton Smith,
and many many others. Bloch's first published piece in Weird
Tales wasn't a short story, but rather a critique of
Conan's stories, showing that not all authors within the Lovecraft
(49:31):
circle fell over themselves to praise one another's work. Block
himself served as an inspiration for a character named Robert
Blake and Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark. Lovecraft killed
off Blake in that story as a playful response to
Block having previously invented a character based on Lovecraft, only
to have him killed off in a tale titled The
(49:53):
Shambler from the Stars. Oh and Lovecraft also doxed Block
by including his real life address in the story. Block
eventually shifted away from weird fiction and became better known
for the crime stories he wrote, including the novel Psycho.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Begin Okay, okay, So I am going to run over
to this grandfather clock that we paid way too much
money for again. Uh, and then we're going to start
the timer. And then we're going to start the timer
right now, all right.
Speaker 5 (50:26):
I don't even remember what we're supposed to be doing.
Is we're find one that's fake or one that's real.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
The one that's fake to a real one is made up.
We have a ticking clock of two minutes fifty seconds,
and we can ask this is our time for you
and I to work together to determine what we think
is most likely. We can also ask the quister a
question as long as we begin it like this, I
Cthulhu Fagan.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Oh my gosh, you're just you're just needling me on purpose.
Go ahead, mister mister bowl.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Okay, all right, that I did mispronounce it, so quister. Uh,
just for a quick recap, the idea is that Edgar
Allan Poe mythbusted the mechanical Turk. Scenario one, HP Lovecraft
got the idea and the name of the Necronomicon not
from his own head but from another author. Scenario two
(51:22):
and scenario three, that members of the mythos weren't above
dunking on each other's works or even playfully, uh, setting
up fictional characters based on.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Each other, right, and and then killing them off playfully,
and then.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Killing them off with whatever passes for playfulness that in
that circle. Okay, I'm going to say it this way, Max,
I think it's number two.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
You think it's number two. I was between one or two?
Speaker 5 (51:49):
Hold on second maybe, uh yeah, yeah, to fill a
fulopen Ah, yes, Max, I mean this is.
Speaker 4 (51:57):
Just pretty stiple question.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
John, there, are you well aware that this seconment is
one hundred percent a very transparent ripoff of where Wait,
don't tell me he's bluffed the listener. Uh where where
where people tell a story?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
And three?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
There's three?
Speaker 4 (52:10):
There's three stories and only one of them is real?
Speaker 3 (52:12):
Sorry, I don't, I don't. I'm not familiar with this.
Is this a new a new program? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Well, what what? Where could I hear such an idea?
I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean
to think I like to think of it as podcasters
are just part of a large collaborative effort, and no
one's ideas are all their own.
Speaker 5 (52:33):
I mean it's we've been having a running series on
intellectual property, So I don't know. I think it's something
we all share in the world of art. Ben, this
is one hundred percent out of my spectrum. So I
was thinking one or two, and you if you think
it's two, I say.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Two, let's lock it in, Okay, three? Two? One boom,
locked in? All right, Christ, we're going with number two
as the fake story.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Well, gentlemen, you're right. I told you this was going
to be a relatively easy one. Yes, no, so, in fact,
Robert Block, not Robert Block. I'm sorry, Robert E. Howard.
There are so many Roberts.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Robert E.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Howard did contribute some titles of books that would find
their ways into Lovecraft's work, but Necronomicon was in fact
something Lovecraft himself came up with independently. It does find
itself in it mentioned in other author's works, often as
just one of those books that litters an arcane occultist's
(53:36):
bookshelf sort of thing. But yes, number two is a fiction.
There was no story called the Tomb of the Witch.
I completely invented that. That no such stories. It's similar
to titles that Robert E. Robert E. Howard did, right,
but not that one. That's a fabrication. So congratulations, We
(54:00):
all follow up.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
Was Robert E. Robert E. Howard or whatever was he
named after? Robert E.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Lee?
Speaker 3 (54:07):
I do not believe.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
So.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
He had a rather unfortunate and tragic story of his own.
His his his life was was cut short. Yeah. I
think he was only something like thirty six when he
shuffled off the mortal coil by his own hand, if
I were calling correctly.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
Even even younger I think he was.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
I have only been thirty. He was only thirty, Yeah,
he was quite young.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Well, with this, we gratefully accept the laurels of victory,
knowing that there will be yet another conflict on the
horizon and are continuing cosmic horror of a trick quiz
show that happens at the end of every not every episode,
but just enough for us to not be able to
(54:52):
predict it. With that quister aka Johnson Strickland. We can't
thank you enough for for hanging out with us on
the show Man and I hope you had a good time.
Maybe we can do some more of these in the future.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
Yeah, it was a pleasure dropping the quister for this
because tired. No, it was great because, as you know,
I hung up the podcasting headphones not that long ago,
and so occasionally I do miss it and it's fun
to get on the microphone and wrap about stuff with
y'all and to explore these topics and to really kind of,
(55:30):
you know, have fun indulgent curiosity.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
Just so you know, we we cut the part where
you were wrapping because it was bad, not because it
was bad. You had a tight sixteen I expect it.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
Well, yeah, because it starts with a hip hop hippie
to the hippi, I don't stop rocking. All right, that's
our show.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear a big shout out
for our super producer, the madness over Ennsmith, Max Williams. Yes, Yes,
that's the classic Williams enthusiasm. Folks, they call me Ben
Bollen in this part of the world. My podcast partner
(00:50):
in crime, Noel Brown is on is on Revengers, He's
on Adventures. But we'll be returning soon. In the meantime,
this is part two of a fascinating exploration we're having
with a special guest. We asked ourselves a while back,
why is HP Lovecraft so very weird? And we thought
(01:11):
there could be none better to explore this with us
than the man, the myth, the legend, a good friend
of our show, a brother in arms on a personal level.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, Let's welcome him back with a big
round of applause or whatever sound effect Max chooses. It's
Jonathan Strickland, a.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Man called Jonathan, man called Jonathan All what may sound strange,
do you? Everybody tells him what to do?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Hey, if I'm going to give myself a Lovecraftian nickname.
I think that's gonna be the Sandwich horror instead of
this horror. Yeah. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of
role for Sandwich. Have you ever watched that series? Wait yet,
it's been on for a while, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
the guy's been doing it for a few years. But
(02:07):
he does a thing where he rolls dice to determine
what kind of bread, what kind of filling, what kind
of roughage, what kind of sauce, and like you know,
obviously it went wild on TikTok, but it's also on
YouTube shorts and I remember hearing about it when my brother.
My brother and me worked up a table of wild
magic modifiers and so I just got a wild hair
(02:32):
to track it down and watch all of them and
highly entertaining. But yeah, there's a lot of there's a
lot of like Eldrich horror in that series as well. Honestly,
you never know if it's gonna emerge or not.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
AMC. They have a cookbook there too, And I love
that you're doing nicknames, Max. I hope you like yours.
And of course my true name is unpronounceable in the
human tongue. If you haven't checked out episode one, please
please please do give it a listen. Otherwise, without further ado,
we welcome you to the Darkness. He also is president
(03:14):
briefly of another organization that is the PEPSI to Opah's coke,
the National Amateur Press Organization or NAPA. So it's Uppah
and NAPA and he just wants to hang out with
both of them. This is what gets him back into
writing fiction. If you like Call of Cuthulhu Mounts Madness,
(03:34):
this is.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Why you done. Which horror that kind of thing. Yeah,
I would say that this actually reminds me a lot.
I mean, it's a different era, but it reminds me
a lot of a storyline that plays out in the
Apple TV Plus series Mythic Quest, which is which is
about a video game company that's making a massively multiplayer
(03:58):
online role playing game. There is a character in that
show named CJ, who is a former Nebula Award winning
science fiction author who won his award back in nineteen
seventy four and has been coasting on it ever since.
And I get the sense that that the characterization of CJ,
(04:22):
at least some elements of his personality are drawn from
HP Lovecraft. This this desire for being included in an
esteemed group of literary professionals, also a desire to be
viewed as a a particularly accomplished contributor to that group.
(04:45):
I don't know that HP was thriving on it in
the way that you know CJ is like a parasite
in mythic quest. I don't. I don't think HP necessarily
was a parasite at all. I think, in fact, he
was quite the opposite. He seemed to be. One of
the nice things we can say about HP Lovecraft is
he genuinely seemed to be enthusiastic about encouraging young writers
(05:08):
to write.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yes, yeah, and not in a creepy, grooming way, even
though they talked about really creepy things like in a
genuine collegiate manner that did result in actual friendship. This
is why, as you mentioned earlier, he ultimately becomes one
of the most prolific letter writers of his century. I
(05:33):
kind of don't want to imagine him on Twitter or
social media, but for him being able to take the
time to put the thoughts in order right, he was
doing great.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I was like, there's another example I can give. I
think it was Robert Block, who wrote when he wrote
to him, because Block was Block was significantly younger than Lovecraft.
Block I think was born in like nineteen seventeen, so
much younger than Lovecraft. But he came across some of
Lovecraft's stories because they had been republished in various pulp magazines,
(06:08):
and he wrote to Lovecraft to say, hey, do you
happen to know where I can find your other works?
Because I love these that I've come across, but I
do not know where I can find your other stories.
And Lovecraft have a book, and Lovecraft sent him copies
of all the stories, and uh, you know, obviously, I'm
(06:29):
sure part of that was Lovecraft was flattered by the
attention and you know, the appeal to him as an
author of great skill. But I think it also speaks
to his genuine desire to have this sort of collaborative
creative network of writers. Uh. I think I think a
(06:51):
lot of the things we attribute to Lovecraft are at
least partly the work of this massive group of other writers,
writers who all helped work within each other's worlds.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, which he also encouraged. And I think that was
that is perhaps one of the greatest modern innovations in
Lovecraft's UVU if we're being if we're being pretentious because
it's not really his past. A certain point people would
write to him and say, oh, I love this story, right,
(07:27):
I love the way this is constructed. I love you know,
insert ambiguous, nebulous threats here. And here's something I've been
thinking about. How how do you see these two things
working together? And be like, oh, that's great, let me
think about it. Okay, So in this world, you know,
I've got I've got Cuthulhu or something, or you know,
(07:51):
the goat with a thousand young and he kind of
works this way, and so maybe this is one of
those thousand young I don't know, tell me what you think.
I look forward to writing back, and then they would
write back, and they would It's just something that can
seem kind of rare because think about it today, I'm
thinking of another like a big multi format universe, maybe
(08:14):
Stephen King's Connected.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Or or comic book universes. Right, that's great because these
comic book universes are literally made up of the contributions
of hundreds of different authors and artists, and the attempt
to fashion a an interconnected universe of all these disparate
(08:37):
stories and try to make them make sense within a
larger narrative is an ongoing challenge. It's why you have
these like universe resetting events in DC or Marvel in particular.
But it's it's the closest I can think of. It's
a bunch. And in that case, you've got like a
corporate overlord who's making sure that you've got a bunch
(09:00):
of different authors who are all kind of working toward
the same goal. But in this case it was much
more organic than that.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, and and the I love that comparison. I think
that's apropos. I would also say for the important thing
about the Stephen King example is imagine if you are
King is a superstar by this point, But imagine if
you are someone who just likes reading scary stories, and
you have an idea for a scary story that you
(09:31):
want to set in the universe Stephen King is created.
There are there is an entire industry of legal experts
who can't wait to smack someone down for trying that,
you know what I mean, Unless you're his son, Unless
you are Joe Hill, who I think is quite talented.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Oh yeah, no, no doubt. I mean you know, Doctor
Sleep is great, but yeah, I it's funny because King
himself did this within his own work, right where you
would have seemingly disconnected storylines, and then he would gradually
reveal that, oh no, these actually exist within the same universe,
and in fact one will reference and perhaps even transform another.
(10:15):
So King King kind of did this as a one
man show, but in Lovecraft's time, what we're talking about
is literally like a dozen authors, all of whom are
working in genres that are maybe not directly weird fiction,
but are somewhat related. Like Robert E. Howard famously would
be sword and sorcery, right like he's that's the creator
(10:37):
of Conan the Barbarious. Yeah, And so you would have
these people who are working in different areas of speculative fiction,
but they would start to incorporate elements of each other's work,
and you get this incredibly rich tapestry where if you
are a voracious reader, if you're someone who's subscribing to,
(10:58):
you know, one of the these pulp magazines, you get that
rewarding feeling of oh, I recognize that reference, just as
if you are like a diehard Marvel Cinematic Universe fan
and you sit there through the whole movie and you
wait until that you know, Stinger at the end of
the credits, and you think, oh my gosh, they're referencing
this other, like incredibly obscure thing that's was mentioned once
(11:22):
in like a television episode of Agents of Shield or something.
It's that same kind of endorphin release, you know, that
feeling of oh, I recognize this. That makes me feel
included and special. But we're not done with Lovecraft's tragedies
because just as all this is going, there's another setback
(11:42):
in his life.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Absolutely, and this is I think it's appropriate that we
spend some time on the good parts so that you
know it's not just a wretched march to the grave here,
but there are more tragedies ahead. As you said, Lovecraft's
mother hers a quote unquote nervous breakdown in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's the family business.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah. She is admitted to Butler Hospital, and just like
her husband before her, she does not emerge there alive.
She dies in the facility on May twenty fourth, nineteen
twenty one, with some gallbladder related complications. So not syphilis
in this case.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Although there were some at least some elements that I
read where there was speculation that perhaps she too had
oh syphilis. Yeah, but again possible. Yeah, it's speculation because again,
like we're talking about a time where records aren't as
thorough the actual medical practices and as thorough. It all
(12:44):
depends upon what you have access to. So again this
could be elements of speculation. But there have been those
who have suggested that perhaps she too was inflicted by syphilis.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah. And this is horrific either way you slice it.
And because this is the most important person in Lovecraft's
life at this point, for better or worse, he is
shattered and he spends a few weeks in a very
dark emotional place. But eventually he says, you know, stiff
(13:22):
upper lip, we must soldier on. And he goes to
a journalism convention in Boston. This is on Independence Day
in nineteen twenty one, and despite being an avowed racist
and a virulent anti Semite, he hits it off with
a Jewish woman named Sonia half to Green, She's seven
(13:46):
years older than him. They feel like they click. This
is the closest thing this guy's ever going to get
to a meet greet in a rom com and he
is head over the heels, head over the heels. I'm
still learning English, He's asked, yes, yes, just so. So
he visits Sonia in her apartment in Brooklyn in nineteen
(14:10):
twenty two, and then by March third, nineteen twenty four,
they're married. There's a bit of acrimony in the Lovecraft
household because he does not tell his two aunts, who
raised them and still of course have very much come
(14:30):
from that patrician mindset. Lillian D. Clark and Annie Eve
Phillips Gamwell find out that their lovely nephew got married
via the post.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, this is like they receive a letter. It's like
breaking up via text. So Ben, quick question for you,
do you think that HP lovecrafts let us say in
the language of Facebook, it's complicated relationship with his mother
may have played some part in him becoming enamored of
(15:04):
a woman seven years his senior.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
One hundred percent. I would take it a step further
with you. Let's keep walking down that one, because I
would also argue is fraught relationship with his mother informed
his decision to marry literally the first other lady who
was nice to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, just
(15:28):
to have that constant maternal figure.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
And to be fair, I never met the man.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
We have to see you.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
No, it could be that we are way off base
and we're viewing this from a lens in the twenty
first century that just simply cannot see the minutia. But
there are certain indicators that appear to support that narrative.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
There we go. We do know some facts that are inarguable.
Post matrimony. Lovecraft moves into Sonia's place. She's got that
apartment in Brooklyn, and at first it looks like our
newly minted couple is going to be doing okay. Sonya
owns a hat shop off Fifth Avenue, which even back
(16:14):
then is a big deal. Lovecraft is making a living,
a modest living, but it's living nonetheless as a professional writer.
Several of his earlier stories have been accepted by Weird Tales,
one of the pre eminent pulp publications of the day.
But unfortunately, tragedy comes back again, back into the fore.
(16:38):
Their happy honeymoon period is all too brief. Sonya's hat
shop goes bankrupt. Lovecraft turns down some opportunities that he
should have taken to rise in the world of publishing.
He could have been the editor of magazine that was
(17:01):
coming out sort of adjacent to Weird Tales, not a competitor,
but like a compliment, like, if you like this, you'll
also like that.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
The problem was that this job would have necessitated a move.
He would have had to move to Chicago, and that
was a pretty big ask when you've got, like, at
the same time, you have this failing business that is
not in Chicago, and clearly your wife cannot accompany you
(17:29):
without abandoning the business entirely. So it was a tough call, right, Like,
it's not as simple as hey, you can stay exactly
where you are and take this gig. It's no, you
have to up end your life and start over in
a new city, but you will have this gig. And
ultimately love Craft says, you know, it's too rich for
my blood to have to move over there. I'm going
(17:50):
to stay where I am. I've got my wife whom
I can always depend upon, who will be stalwart and
true and will never get sick ever. Right, And then
she got.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Sick, and then she had then her health turns south
as well, as she has to go to a sanitarium
in New Jersey, and Lovecraft needs to do his best
to support her and himself and probably a few cats
at this point, And so he tries to find a job.
(18:24):
He is, and we say this with great affection, he's
a little bit nebbish, you know what I mean? This
guy his hands, they don't have callouses.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, it's not like I mean we mentioned this earlier.
It's not like he had any work experience whatsoever. Like
we mentioned that when he was doing the whole hermit thing,
and same is true. Now, right, he's thirty four and
he lacks any practical skills that he can apply to
landing your regular kind of job. So what are you
(18:55):
gonna do. He's in a really bad way.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, he's in a non ideal situation and he has
to move again. And this is a guy who very
much hates moving, just to be clear. And so he
has to go to like a bachelor apartment, a single apartment,
and it's near a area of Brooklyn called Red Hook.
This will go on to inform a lot of his
(19:20):
writing in a very non complimentary way to the neighborhood
and the people of Red Hook.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yes, he's having to associate with folks outside of his
normal realm of experience, and he has a negative point
of view about that.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, the foreign hordes, the masses of foreigners in the city,
and to the point where you know, you can read,
I don't think it's a spoiler at this at this juncture,
you can read where there are characters in Lovecraft stories
who go who you know immediately leg just intuitively know
(20:02):
that the foreigners in Red Hook practice secret religions to
squamous and unclean gods. Why because they had, you know,
like a bit of an air to their eyebrows.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, if you if you read any Lovecraft stories, like
a lot of them end up incorporating characters who are black,
and they are also typically antagonists or sometimes depicted as barbaric,
and you know, to Lovecraft, civilization was the epitome of
(20:35):
human achievement, and so anything that was considered uncivilized in
Lovecraft's eyes, would be equivalent to being evil. So he
depicted a lot of black characters as being primitive, barbaric, uncivilized,
(20:57):
and as a result of those things, also prone to
worshiping these sort of profane figures that ultimately would have
an incredibly negative impact on the typically the protagonist. I
don't know if any of y'all have read a lot
of Lovecraft, but if you have, you probably are aware
that there's a better than eighty five percent chance the
(21:18):
protagonist is not making it out alive or sane by
the end of the story, of course.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, and that's you know, I enjoy that part of
this structure. Actually, that the that you know, it's it's
upending a lot of the conventional rules of stories of
that time.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, unless you're unless you're Robert Chambers, who already did
it in The Yellow King.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
But okay, yeah, yeah, and The Yellow King is great. Oh,
I love that one story, the repairer of reputations. Do
check out The Yellow King. Just know it's an anthology
of short stories by Robert Chambers. Uh, not every one
of them, slaps, I'm just gonna be diplomatic.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Well, and not all of them. I don't think people
would categories categorize all of them as falling into weird fiction.
But the ones that do, the ones that do really
like you can see, not that you know. It's speculated
that Lovecraft didn't encounter a lot of those stories told
after he was already writing, so it seems like it
was not a case of any sort of influence or plagiarism.
(22:20):
I don't want to suggest that, but Chambers established a
lot of tropes that Lovecraft and his contemporaries would continue
to engage in. M M.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, and Lovecraft also, you know, you have to bring
Algernon Blackwood into the conversation and several other things that
you know, Lovecraft was not just like he wasn't reticent
to criticize stuff he didn't like. He was also never
reticent to praise stuff that he enjoyed or felt informed him.
(22:52):
So we have to give him points there. But despite
the fact that he has generated these friendships, this massive
correspondence as a couple of what we would call irl
friends there in New York, he's still depressed, he still
feels isolated, and he still cartoonishly xenophobic. So in nineteen
(23:17):
twenty six he returns to Providence. He just feels like
he has to do it. The scuttle butt here is
that his aunts don't want him to bring his wife.
He doesn't know what will happen with Sonia, but he
goes anyway, and so.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well, of course, and yeah, so leading up to this,
when he was in Red Hook, Sonya was actually in Cleveland.
She was still seeking treatment in Cleveland. So that's one
of the reasons why he felt so isolated, is that
his wife, Like you can start to see a pattern
with like his dependence. I'm sure there was like a
codependent kind of thing going on between him and his mother,
(23:59):
and is inspect something similar was going on between him
and his wife, and he's separated from her while she's
seeking treatment in Cleveland, he's in Red Hook. They reunite
when they go to Providence in nineteen twenty six, but
you know, through one means or another, that relationship becomes
unsustainable and nineteen twenty nine it comes to an end.
(24:20):
But this is also right around the time where Lovecraft
is finally actually experiencing the success of his work. You know,
he's been at it for quite some time, but this
is like the renaissance of Lovecraft that we're entering into here.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And
we have to recognize this paradox, which unfortunately may sound
familiar to a lot of people. Your professional life goes
really well, and your personal life takes. Your personal life
goes really well, and your professional life takes and it
seems that Lovecraft is always trying to find that balance, right,
(25:01):
often without success.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
See also every stand up comedian ever.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yes see also literally every stand up comedian. Come at
us for that one. All right, so you nailed at
Jonathan Lovecraft returns to Providence nineteen twenty six, like you said,
and the last ten years of his life. He may
have found some kind of balance here, possibly his best
(25:26):
decade as a writer, maybe some of his best personal
years as well. His life at this point isn't super eventful,
you know, he's not living out real life pirate cosplay
or anything. He does travel to a lot of historic
sites around the Eastern Seaboard to soak in their culture
(25:47):
with varying reactions, and they all kind of they start
to inform his fiction, you know, his generally, like the
one the work that even non Lovecraft fans know the
most about is probably going to be The Call of
Cudulhu in twenty six or at the Mountains of Madness
in nineteen thirty one. While he's writing these stories that
(26:10):
will go on to cement his legacy, he's doing another
legacy cementing move, which is he's writing about these to
his friends, his peers. You know what I mean, what
do you guys think rightw what do you guys think
about breeding with fish people to worship a fish god?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
All right? What do you think about this little story
I got called Dagon, which ends up being one of
my favorites of Lovecraft. That's actually my favorite film adaptation
of Lovecraft. Oh come on, but only if you're going
as like a fairly strict following of Like, if you're
(26:52):
going into the more loose adaptations of Lovecraft, my favorite
is re Animator. I mean, it's always going to be
re Animator. Evil Dead is obviously inspired by Lovecraft's signed adaptation, though,
but Reanimator is and it's bonkers and I love it
and it's fantastic. I mean, there's so many great adaptations
(27:12):
of Lovecraft. But again, like that collaborative nature, that camaraderie
that was built up between all these different authors who
are sharing ideas and nurturing one another's ideas and informing
one another's ideas, I would argue that a Lovecraft story
is not solely a Lovecraft story. It is the product
of this collaborative universe, just as I would say Robert E. Howard,
(27:37):
a Roberty Howard's story is again a product of this
that you know, the the prime author is whomever actually
wrote the piece, but that that piece would not exist,
at least not in the form that we are familiar
with without this collaborative relationship going on between all these
different authors who are encouraging each other to participate in
(28:02):
this process. And again, it's one of those things where
I'm like, I'm not aware of too many other instances
where something like this has happened, at least not organically,
where it wasn't just like some sort of weird content
farm kind of approach.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Right, Yeah, that's the key part there, that it would
organically arose as he was he was not just enjoying
his own success and pursuing it, but he was hoping
interest would be contagious.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
He wanted other people to pick up the toys that
he had built and play with them and maybe, you know,
make some toys of their own, and there's something human
and astonishing about that. We also know we're going to
set them up before we have to do the drop here.
We also know that he was not one hundred percent
(28:55):
immovable in some of his ideas and prejudices. Depression occurred
during his lifetime. He witnessed this, and it led him
to support Roosevelt, which might be surprised based on some
of the stuff we already know about his background and
his racist perspective. But he became a socialist towards the.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
End well, and like the Great Depression affected him as
well as you know, affecting working people all over the place.
In that publications like like Weird Tales began to scale
back like they were still printing. Because as we are
all familiar at this point, I think some of us
are now becoming directly familiar that times of recession or depression,
(29:39):
entertainment often is one of the few industries that continues
to do well as people seek escape from the stresses
of life. Well, same was true back then during the
Great Depression, which, by the way, not that great. If
you ask me, it's a terrible name. It was a
pretty awful depression. But yeah, we're even with that. They
(30:01):
had to scale back. They just couldn't afford to continue
publication on the same schedule that they had been doing,
which in turn had a cascading effect on all the
different authors who are contributing to those publications, and so
Lovecraft himself was feeling the effects of the depression, just
like other people were, and perhaps the hardships of his
(30:25):
life once his grandfather had passed and his legacy was
mishandled so dramatically, gave him a little bit of reflection
into how life isn't all tea time and Gothic tales
by the fire.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And we've spoken at length about the intensely problematic views
regarding Lovecraft there have been. Of course, there are still
continual additions to the existing mythos, even here in twenty
twenty five, and there are authors like Matt Ruff, the
(31:04):
creator of Lovecraft Country, who kind of navigate these issues
by centering people of color in their lovecrafty and explorations.
And we know, look Lovecraft, we still know how he
would have reacted if he saw the effect that he
(31:25):
has had upon fiction and speculative fiction. Weird horror today
because the last two or three years of his life
were also filled with more heartbreak. His aunt, Miss Clark, died,
he moved in with his other aunt, Miss Gamwell, to
another basically an apartment, and his later stories were more
(31:48):
and more difficult to sell. They were kind of struggling
under the weight of the world building he had created.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Against something that Marvel fans can kind of identify with
that the lung you the longer you go with this
interconnected mythos, the more is required of the consumer of
that art to have at least some familiarity with the
stuff that came before, or else they're completely lost.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah. Yeah, shout out to everybody who just saw uh,
you know, iron Man.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Three, right right, but yeah, to your to your point,
like we're getting toward the end of his life here,
and we'll just I can't think we can skip ahead
to say that he had cancer and by the time
the cancer was discovered, it had progressed to a point
where the writing was already on the wall, and so
(32:43):
he too began to fall apart, and eventually he passed
away due to the cancer he had. And so, uh,
you know, there are there's definitely tragedy in his life.
I don't want to just paint Lovecraft as this xenophobic,
(33:03):
you know, racist blowhard who you know who expouse espoused
views that were absolutely terrible. But we also can't completely
divorce ourselves of that because he actually that informed his writing.
I mean, it's it's clear in some of his stories.
You can't I don't think death of the author is
(33:25):
something we can easily apply here because those views inform
much of his work.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Agreed one hundred percent, and I think we could add
a little bit of arm armchair psychology here with the following.
Tell me when you guys think about this. I have,
after doing a bunch of reading for this stuff and
over the years as a fan of love crafting and work,
I have come to the light conclusion that one of
(33:57):
his mental issues may have been something we would right
kignies as obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, in that his
racism is that aphobia is. It's one of his many
weird hang ups, probably the most dangerous. But he had
a lot of very strident opinions for and against things,
(34:19):
and he did obsess over them to what would be
considered an abnormal degree. Give you one of the fun ones,
and this made me think of you, Jonathan. He hated seafood.
He hated seafood. Now, not all of our listeners may
know this, you and I have talked about over the
(34:40):
years under many adventures, but he is he actively hates it.
I don't know if you actively hate it, but you
definitely can't eat it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah, No, I can't eat it because I have a
severe shellfish allergy, one that will send me to the
emergency room if I have any shelfish or at least
lobster and shrimp are the known shellfish that I am
allergic to. I have eliminated all shellfish, including stuff outside
(35:11):
of things like lobsters and shrimp and stuff from my
diet because after having that experience a couple of times,
I don't want to ever have it again. Plus it
was pretty scary the last time. And also it means
that I have to be careful around seafood in general
because of cross contamination. So I don't hate seafood. I
do avoid seafood unless I am extremely certain that the
(35:36):
seafood restaurant or whatever is very good about avoiding cross contamination.
So I would not go so far as to cast
fish as the bad guys in my stories.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
But maybe there's an untrusty there's an untrustworthy mollusk from Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yes, maybe, yeah, I could have like a I don't know,
a ship d crab. Maybe that's how they walk man. Yeah, yeah,
they're always they're always edging away from you, you know.
But yeah, Lovecraft like famously despised seafood to the point
where where he made a big deal of it. And
and also, at least according to what we came across, uh,
(36:21):
appeared to never really evolve his his dietary. UH preferences
beyond a small child and like to eat like lots
of sweet stuff and not not so much anything of
real nutritional value. He'd mess with a sandwich, Yeah, he
would mess with a sandwich, probably a PB and J
(36:42):
if I had to guess, but yeah, crust. Yeah, but
he's cut on the diagonal. But he uh he he
definitely despised seafood, which, if you're growing up in Rhode Island,
that's rough, y'all.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
That's a that's right, Yeah, that's such a waste. And
Max will throw it to you in in the second
four of the update on the condition if you're comfortable.
But for now, what you need to know is we
discovered one of the few times that Lovecraft is on
record swearing. He did not swear casually, you know, nor conversationally.
(37:15):
But the story goes and got this thanks to our
friends a mental floss that he hated seafood so much,
so cartoonishly that one time a friend of his was
trying to you know, get him outside, get him out
of his creepy little room, and they said, hey, come
with me. Let's you know, we'll go after dinner. And
(37:36):
when Lovecraft found out that the dinner was steamed clams,
Lovecraft said, quote, while you are eating that god stuff,
I'll go across the street for a sandwich. Please excuse me.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
I do love that he was reluctant to swear in public,
but he had no problem throwing racial slur around.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Right. Yeah, that's a weird demarcation of decorum. All right,
so let's before we wrap up next. I saw you
pop on what's going on? My friend? Oh?
Speaker 5 (38:12):
I just wanted to commiserate with Jonathan that because of
the condition, I cannot eat any shellfish as well. So
you and I can sit around eating like plain chicken
together and being and talk about how much we like
it despite.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Not Was there a time when you could eat shellfish?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Is there years ago?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Any particular shellfish that you really miss?
Speaker 5 (38:35):
Muscles are probably my favorite shellfish. I personally, I have
a very much a love hate relationship with shrimp. I
just I just know too much about them at the
gnography class in yeah school.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
And I they're just like really gross to me.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, sure, crab, lobster, all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Just seems so annoying to eat. I mean, oysters are good,
but also oysters are just like.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
They're the boog of the sea.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Yeah, it's like, what, there's not really anything in this well.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Also, also opening up an oyster is taking your life
in your own hands. Tried to use a knife to
pry one of those shells open without like shoving it
through your.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Hand, Johnny, I remember ten years of food and beverage experience.
I mean I was mostly front of house, but I'm
pretty good with knives in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, see me. No, I'm being a left hander and
all that kind of stuff. Yeah lefties though, I'm just
saying like a lot of tools were made for right handers,
and it does get annoying when you're getting to that.
Speaker 5 (39:30):
That's why wors pure is because we have grown up
with the spiral and the spiral notebook digging into our hands.
You know, the desks in public school, they're always on
the right side, at the left side. Actually, when I
went with Georgia State and where I got my degree from,
they had left handed ones, but it was always like
I would always sit in the right hand one and
right would sit in left hand ones. We all complain
(39:50):
about stupid desk is.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Because yeah, yeah, well, well for me, it's shrimp. Poe
Boys like I too, share a deep understanding of shrimp
and the issues, and.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I'm just a little I like the little line of poop.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah do you. Yeah, it's always it's great picking picking
up a shrimp in a restaurant and seeing that there
and thinking, oh, you didn't even take the basic step
of deveining the shrimp. But no, Yeah, I miss Poe
boys a lot. Uh, but I've gotten to the point
where I've eliminated pretty especially any place that does fried seafood.
(40:26):
Obviously you've got to be careful about the oil. So, uh,
the thing I really miss is kalamari. I miss kalamari
a lot.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Well, you know, hey, if it makes you guys feel better,
there's a big problem with counterfeit klamari. So a lot
of your friends you're bragging about eating it may not
maybe eating pig intestine.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Uh, yeah, I've I've often heard that, but I've also
heard it debunked. But you know, there, I'm not sure
because there is that one Lovecraft story where the monsters
are pig intestines, so.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yes, yeah, yeah, they're also oh we should mention this too.
Also not every he has at least a few stories
where the human esque or human descended villains are not
just the quote unquote foreigners that he would describe. There's
one in particular, I'm trying to remember it. That's about
(41:19):
a southern family of white folks who used to be
well thought of, but then they became inbred and they
committed mis engenation and turned into like mole people. Yeah,
do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (41:34):
I don't remember that one. For the sake of transparency,
it has been a long time since I've read Lovecraft's works.
I did read. I think I pretty much read every
single published work he had, besides you know, the compilations
of letters. But I've read like pretty much all of
his short stories and everything. But it's been years, and
(41:56):
with so much other media, either directly or indirectly inspired
by Lovecraft, it's easy for me to conflate things. So
I don't want to. I don't want to say something
and then just be totally wrong, simply because you know,
my brain's got scrambled. Back in twenty twenty four, pretty
darn good. And it turns out anything before twenty twenty four,
(42:18):
I can never be entirely sure if I'm remembering it
or if I'm inventing it.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
It is the Lurking Fear by HP Lovecraft. I think
I'll have to reread it. I believe that's the uh,
that's the story. So everybody could get a little bit
of xenophobia from Lovecraft. I think that's the one where
he also talks trash about Dutch people or something.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Well, I mean again, you know you walk around in
wooden shoes long enough, you're gonna bound to tick somebody off.
I knew that from my clogging days.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yes, that is true. We've got we've got to include
that in the thank you credits. Big thanks to our
super producer, mister Max Williams. I've been a research associate
for a lot of this. We hope you enjoyed it.
Big thanks as well to Alex Williams who composed this
slap and bop A J. Bahamas Jacobs also known as
the Puzzler, and of course Jonathan Strickland. Thanks to you,
(43:23):
this is this was really awesome. Man. I loved learning
more with you and I appreciate you not being the
quister today.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
Oh yeah, no, it's that's why you should Sorry, no, yeah,
it's really fun. Oh excuse me, sorry, I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Time you were so close? I trust you.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
God.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
All right, get weird with it, all right, Max, I'm
going to need you to help me out on this.
I imagine our friend's alter ego is here to play
a game.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yes, welcome to the Quiztor segment, the most cringe worthy
segment and all love podcasting. Where I the quiz to
quiz beloved hosts. Where's Noel? Noel should be here.
Speaker 4 (44:19):
We're a little better off with Noah here.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
But I mean I agree to change because I had
to put on my quizler shirt.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
All right, Well, I just want to tell you sucking
up does work, so excellent job there, Max.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Ye that really is, folks, that really is. He really
is wearing it.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
We're all on video and he just proved it.
Speaker 5 (44:39):
Well, Ben, Ben and Noill get the credit. They just like,
you know, Ben reached out of me. He's like, what's
your dress? And what's that shirt? Actually I think you
have I think you have my dress, Bend, but like,
what's that shirt you wear?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Max?
Speaker 5 (44:48):
Last time that to you.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
And also and I just had ridiculous history shirts.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
I do have to admit that I'm wearing a shirt
with a black cat on it, but it is not
Lovecraft's cat. I want to make that very clear.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yes, yes, yeah, that's good myth busting now, quister arch
nemesis of Low these several years. That sounded less dramatic
when I had to be accurate. But of Low these
several years with our good friend and partner in crime,
Noel on Adventure, it falls to young Max Williams and
(45:20):
I to play your insidious game.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yes, and this game is where I present to you
three scenarios. Two of them are real and one I
made upsis And so tis down to the to determine
which of these is the one that I made up.
And I will present to you the three scenarios, and
upon the presentation, you will have three minutes to confer
between the two of you to determine which of the
(45:44):
three are fake. I want to say this one is
I think pretty. This one's not hard, but it was
fun to write.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Don't set us up like that, man. We'll try to
make it look really.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Bad when we flail and do awful of this one.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
I'm in your head, dude, I know how you work.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I have faith in you. But as always, if you
wish to ask a question for clarification's sake, and if
I happen to know the answer, you can do so,
but you have to preface it with a phrase of
my own choosing. For this particular quiz, that phrase shall be,
of course, it must be yah yah cutoul photogon right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(46:24):
popping photogon photogon. Yet pronunciation is very clear, I mean,
despite the fact that Lovecraft wrote it in such a
way that you're not supposed to be able to say
it with the human tongue. I am being very persnickety. No, uh,
here are your three scenarios. I shall start with scenario
number one. One of Lovecraft's predecessors, mister Edgar Allan Poe,
(46:48):
receives credit for helping establish the genre of mystery fiction. However,
did you know that Poe's own journey included debunking the
famous mechanical turk The York was an invention of Wolfgang
von Kemplin from nearly a century before, and appeared to
be a humanoid automaton capable of playing expert levels of chess.
(47:10):
By the time Poe investigated it, Kimpland was long dead,
and a man named Johann Meltzel, who took this Turk
from Europe to America, was doing exhibitions across the eastern
coast of the United States. Poe argued that because the
Turk occasionally lost in chess games, it must therefore be
(47:32):
controlled by a person either inside the device or from
some remote location, because machines would win every single time. Now,
as we all know from chat GPT, that's not necessarily
a guarantee. But our Poe boy was at least right,
but for the wrong reason. Scenario number two. Lovecraft contemporary
(47:54):
and correspondent Robert E. Howard is probably best known for
the creation of the beefcake Barbarian conan. Howard became part
of the Lovecraft Circle. These are the authors who collaborated
with one another, sharing stories and concepts in an effort
to weave together a rich tapestry of mythology. Two Gun Bob,
as he was known within the circle, made a major
(48:15):
contribution to the Lovecraftian mythology the Necronomicon. While Lovecraft had
invented the name Abdullah has read many years before the
two corresponded.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
It was Robert E.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Howard who first incorporated what later storytellers would call the
Book of the Dead into a sword and sorcery tale
titled The Tomb of the Witch. The necronomicon is only
mentioned in the story and holds no significance for the plot,
but Lovecraft liked the sound of the title, and, with
Robert E. Howard's permission, used it in his own works.
(48:48):
You can really argue the necronomicon didn't really hit the
big time until far after Lovecraft's death, and that's why
I say groovy scenario number three. Before becoming a famous
crime novelist, Robert Albert Bloch was a young member of
the Lovecraft Circle, contributing to publications like Weird Tales and
(49:09):
such and participating in the group Mythology created by Lovecraft,
Roberty Howard, August Durleis, Jay Vernon, Shay Clark, Ashton Smith,
and many many others. Bloch's first published piece in Weird
Tales wasn't a short story, but rather a critique of
Conan's stories, showing that not all authors within the Lovecraft
(49:31):
circle fell over themselves to praise one another's work. Block
himself served as an inspiration for a character named Robert
Blake and Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark. Lovecraft killed
off Blake in that story as a playful response to
Block having previously invented a character based on Lovecraft, only
to have him killed off in a tale titled The
(49:53):
Shambler from the Stars. Oh and Lovecraft also doxed Block
by including his real life address in the story. Block
eventually shifted away from weird fiction and became better known
for the crime stories he wrote, including the novel Psycho.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Begin Okay, okay, So I am going to run over
to this grandfather clock that we paid way too much
money for again. Uh, and then we're going to start
the timer. And then we're going to start the timer
right now, all right.
Speaker 5 (50:26):
I don't even remember what we're supposed to be doing.
Is we're find one that's fake or one that's real.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
The one that's fake to a real one is made up.
We have a ticking clock of two minutes fifty seconds,
and we can ask this is our time for you
and I to work together to determine what we think
is most likely. We can also ask the quister a
question as long as we begin it like this, I
Cthulhu Fagan.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Oh my gosh, you're just you're just needling me on purpose.
Go ahead, mister mister bowl.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Okay, all right, that I did mispronounce it, so quister. Uh,
just for a quick recap, the idea is that Edgar
Allan Poe mythbusted the mechanical Turk. Scenario one, HP Lovecraft
got the idea and the name of the Necronomicon not
from his own head but from another author. Scenario two
(51:22):
and scenario three, that members of the mythos weren't above
dunking on each other's works or even playfully, uh, setting
up fictional characters based on.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Each other, right, and and then killing them off playfully,
and then.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Killing them off with whatever passes for playfulness that in
that circle. Okay, I'm going to say it this way, Max,
I think it's number two.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
You think it's number two. I was between one or two?
Speaker 5 (51:49):
Hold on second maybe, uh yeah, yeah, to fill a
fulopen Ah, yes, Max, I mean this is.
Speaker 4 (51:57):
Just pretty stiple question.
Speaker 5 (51:58):
John, there, are you well aware that this seconment is
one hundred percent a very transparent ripoff of where Wait,
don't tell me he's bluffed the listener. Uh where where
where people tell a story?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
And three?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
There's three?
Speaker 4 (52:10):
There's three stories and only one of them is real?
Speaker 3 (52:12):
Sorry, I don't, I don't. I'm not familiar with this.
Is this a new a new program? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Well, what what? Where could I hear such an idea?
I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean
to think I like to think of it as podcasters
are just part of a large collaborative effort, and no
one's ideas are all their own.
Speaker 5 (52:33):
I mean it's we've been having a running series on
intellectual property, So I don't know. I think it's something
we all share in the world of art. Ben, this
is one hundred percent out of my spectrum. So I
was thinking one or two, and you if you think
it's two, I say.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
Two, let's lock it in, Okay, three? Two? One boom,
locked in? All right, Christ, we're going with number two
as the fake story.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Well, gentlemen, you're right. I told you this was going
to be a relatively easy one. Yes, no, so, in fact,
Robert Block, not Robert Block. I'm sorry, Robert E. Howard.
There are so many Roberts.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Robert E.
Speaker 3 (53:13):
Howard did contribute some titles of books that would find
their ways into Lovecraft's work, but Necronomicon was in fact
something Lovecraft himself came up with independently. It does find
itself in it mentioned in other author's works, often as
just one of those books that litters an arcane occultist's
(53:36):
bookshelf sort of thing. But yes, number two is a fiction.
There was no story called the Tomb of the Witch.
I completely invented that. That no such stories. It's similar
to titles that Robert E. Robert E. Howard did, right,
but not that one. That's a fabrication. So congratulations, We
(54:00):
all follow up.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
Was Robert E. Robert E. Howard or whatever was he
named after? Robert E.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Lee?
Speaker 3 (54:07):
I do not believe.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
So.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
He had a rather unfortunate and tragic story of his own.
His his his life was was cut short. Yeah. I
think he was only something like thirty six when he
shuffled off the mortal coil by his own hand, if
I were calling correctly.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
Even even younger I think he was.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
I have only been thirty. He was only thirty, Yeah,
he was quite young.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Well, with this, we gratefully accept the laurels of victory,
knowing that there will be yet another conflict on the
horizon and are continuing cosmic horror of a trick quiz
show that happens at the end of every not every episode,
but just enough for us to not be able to
(54:52):
predict it. With that quister aka Johnson Strickland. We can't
thank you enough for for hanging out with us on
the show Man and I hope you had a good time.
Maybe we can do some more of these in the future.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
Yeah, it was a pleasure dropping the quister for this
because tired. No, it was great because, as you know,
I hung up the podcasting headphones not that long ago,
and so occasionally I do miss it and it's fun
to get on the microphone and wrap about stuff with
y'all and to explore these topics and to really kind of,
(55:30):
you know, have fun indulgent curiosity.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
Just so you know, we we cut the part where
you were wrapping because it was bad, not because it
was bad. You had a tight sixteen I expect it.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
Well, yeah, because it starts with a hip hop hippie
to the hippi, I don't stop rocking. All right, that's
our show.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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