01 July, 2008

Random spout on H.P. Lovecraft

"Howard Phillips Lovecraft, heaven knows, had a talent for writing which was of no mean proportion; only what he did with this talent was a shame and a caution and an eldritch horror. If he had only gotten the Hell out of his auntie's attic and obtained a job with the Federal Writers Project of the WPA, he could have turned out guidebooks that would be classics and joys to read, forever. Only he stayed up there, muffled up to the tip of his long, gaunt New England chin against the cold which lay more in his heart than in his thermometer, living on 19 cents worth of beans a day, rewriting (for pennies) the crappy manuscripts of writers whose complete illiteracy would have been a boon to all mankind; Ah, but life is a boon and producing ghastly, grisly, ghoulish and horrifying works of his own as well--of man-eating Things which foraged in graveyards, of human/beast crosses which grew beastier and beastlier as they grew older, of gibbering shoggoths, and Elder Beings which smelt real bad and were always trying to break through Thresholds and Take Over--rugose, squamous, amorphous nasties, abetted by thin, gaunt New England eccentrics who dwelt in attics and who eventually Never Seen Or Heard From Again. Serve them damn well right, I say.

In short, Howard was a twitch, boys and girls, and that's all there is to it"...

I offer up no explaination other than the fact that it's been running around my head for too long, it had to come out in the end... ;)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Alas, a lot of the greats had feet of clay. Poe was an odd bird too, I've always thought that the spark of madness needed to be there to boost the genius. Spike Milligan is another example.

Unknown said...

Wish I had been able to meet Lovecraft...a trip to New England is definitely in order...

Anonymous said...

nice Rudimentary Peni reference dude, but give Blinko some credit next time.