Latest / Ridiculous History / HP Lovecraft Was A Super Weird Dude, Part Two: The Horror Stories That Changed The World

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HP Lovecraft Was A Super Weird Dude, Part Two: The Horror Stories That Changed The World · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
0:30
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear a big shout out
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Speaker 1: for our super producer, the madness over Ennsmith, Max Williams. Yes, Yes,
0:41
Speaker 1: that's the classic Williams enthusiasm. Folks, they call me Ben
0:46
Speaker 1: Bollen in this part of the world. My podcast partner
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Speaker 1: in crime, Noel Brown is on is on Revengers, He's
0:54
Speaker 1: on Adventures. But we'll be returning soon. In the meantime,
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Speaker 1: this is part two of a fascinating exploration we're having
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Speaker 1: with a special guest. We asked ourselves a while back,
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Speaker 1: why is HP Lovecraft so very weird? And we thought
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Speaker 1: there could be none better to explore this with us
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Speaker 1: than the man, the myth, the legend, a good friend
1:18
Speaker 1: of our show, a brother in arms on a personal level.
1:22
Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians, Let's welcome him back with a big
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Speaker 1: round of applause or whatever sound effect Max chooses. It's
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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a.
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Speaker 2: Man called Jonathan, man called Jonathan All what may sound strange,
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Speaker 2: do you? Everybody tells him what to do?
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Speaker 3: Hey, if I'm going to give myself a Lovecraftian nickname.
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Speaker 3: I think that's gonna be the Sandwich horror instead of
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Speaker 3: this horror. Yeah. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of
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Speaker 3: role for Sandwich. Have you ever watched that series? Wait yet,
2:03
Speaker 3: it's been on for a while, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
2:05
Speaker 3: the guy's been doing it for a few years. But
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Speaker 3: he does a thing where he rolls dice to determine
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Speaker 3: what kind of bread, what kind of filling, what kind
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Speaker 3: of roughage, what kind of sauce, and like you know,
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Speaker 3: obviously it went wild on TikTok, but it's also on
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Speaker 3: YouTube shorts and I remember hearing about it when my brother.
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Speaker 3: My brother and me worked up a table of wild
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Speaker 3: magic modifiers and so I just got a wild hair
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Speaker 3: to track it down and watch all of them and
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Speaker 3: highly entertaining. But yeah, there's a lot of there's a
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Speaker 3: lot of like Eldrich horror in that series as well. Honestly,
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Speaker 3: you never know if it's gonna emerge or not.
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Speaker 1: AMC. They have a cookbook there too, And I love
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Speaker 1: that you're doing nicknames, Max. I hope you like yours.
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Speaker 1: And of course my true name is unpronounceable in the
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Speaker 1: human tongue. If you haven't checked out episode one, please
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Speaker 1: please please do give it a listen. Otherwise, without further ado,
3:03
Speaker 1: we welcome you to the Darkness. He also is president
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Speaker 1: briefly of another organization that is the PEPSI to Opah's coke,
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Speaker 1: the National Amateur Press Organization or NAPA. So it's Uppah
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Speaker 1: and NAPA and he just wants to hang out with
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Speaker 1: both of them. This is what gets him back into
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Speaker 1: writing fiction. If you like Call of Cuthulhu Mounts Madness,
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Speaker 1: this is.
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Speaker 3: Why you done. Which horror that kind of thing. Yeah,
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Speaker 3: I would say that this actually reminds me a lot.
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Speaker 3: I mean, it's a different era, but it reminds me
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Speaker 3: a lot of a storyline that plays out in the
3:49
Speaker 3: Apple TV Plus series Mythic Quest, which is which is
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Speaker 3: about a video game company that's making a massively multiplayer
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Speaker 3: online role playing game. There is a character in that
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Speaker 3: show named CJ, who is a former Nebula Award winning
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Speaker 3: science fiction author who won his award back in nineteen
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Speaker 3: seventy four and has been coasting on it ever since.
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Speaker 3: And I get the sense that that the characterization of CJ,
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Speaker 3: at least some elements of his personality are drawn from
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Speaker 3: HP Lovecraft. This this desire for being included in an
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Speaker 3: esteemed group of literary professionals, also a desire to be
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Speaker 3: viewed as a a particularly accomplished contributor to that group.
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Speaker 3: I don't know that HP was thriving on it in
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Speaker 3: the way that you know CJ is like a parasite
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Speaker 3: in mythic quest. I don't. I don't think HP necessarily
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Speaker 3: was a parasite at all. I think, in fact, he
4:56
Speaker 3: was quite the opposite. He seemed to be. One of
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Speaker 3: the nice things we can say about HP Lovecraft is
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Speaker 3: he genuinely seemed to be enthusiastic about encouraging young writers
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Speaker 3: to write.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and not in a creepy, grooming way, even
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Speaker 1: though they talked about really creepy things like in a
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Speaker 1: genuine collegiate manner that did result in actual friendship. This
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Speaker 1: is why, as you mentioned earlier, he ultimately becomes one
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Speaker 1: of the most prolific letter writers of his century. I
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Speaker 1: kind of don't want to imagine him on Twitter or
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Speaker 1: social media, but for him being able to take the
5:39
Speaker 1: time to put the thoughts in order right, he was
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Speaker 1: doing great.
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Speaker 3: I was like, there's another example I can give. I
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Speaker 3: think it was Robert Block, who wrote when he wrote
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Speaker 3: to him, because Block was Block was significantly younger than Lovecraft.
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Speaker 3: Block I think was born in like nineteen seventeen, so
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Speaker 3: much younger than Lovecraft. But he came across some of
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Speaker 3: Lovecraft's stories because they had been republished in various pulp magazines,
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Speaker 3: and he wrote to Lovecraft to say, hey, do you
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Speaker 3: happen to know where I can find your other works?
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Speaker 3: Because I love these that I've come across, but I
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Speaker 3: do not know where I can find your other stories.
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Speaker 3: And Lovecraft have a book, and Lovecraft sent him copies
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Speaker 3: of all the stories, and uh, you know, obviously, I'm
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Speaker 3: sure part of that was Lovecraft was flattered by the
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Speaker 3: attention and you know, the appeal to him as an
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Speaker 3: author of great skill. But I think it also speaks
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Speaker 3: to his genuine desire to have this sort of collaborative
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Speaker 3: creative network of writers. Uh. I think I think a
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Speaker 3: lot of the things we attribute to Lovecraft are at
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Speaker 3: least partly the work of this massive group of other writers,
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Speaker 3: writers who all helped work within each other's worlds.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, which he also encouraged. And I think that was
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Speaker 1: that is perhaps one of the greatest modern innovations in
7:14
Speaker 1: Lovecraft's UVU if we're being if we're being pretentious because
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Speaker 1: it's not really his past. A certain point people would
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Speaker 1: write to him and say, oh, I love this story, right,
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Speaker 1: I love the way this is constructed. I love you know,
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Speaker 1: insert ambiguous, nebulous threats here. And here's something I've been
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Speaker 1: thinking about. How how do you see these two things
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Speaker 1: working together? And be like, oh, that's great, let me
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Speaker 1: think about it. Okay, So in this world, you know,
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Speaker 1: I've got I've got Cuthulhu or something, or you know,
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Speaker 1: the goat with a thousand young and he kind of
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Speaker 1: works this way, and so maybe this is one of
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Speaker 1: those thousand young I don't know, tell me what you think.
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Speaker 1: I look forward to writing back, and then they would
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Speaker 1: write back, and they would It's just something that can
8:04
Speaker 1: seem kind of rare because think about it today, I'm
8:08
Speaker 1: thinking of another like a big multi format universe, maybe
8:14
Speaker 1: Stephen King's Connected.
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Speaker 3: Or or comic book universes. Right, that's great because these
8:21
Speaker 3: comic book universes are literally made up of the contributions
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Speaker 3: of hundreds of different authors and artists, and the attempt
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Speaker 3: to fashion a an interconnected universe of all these disparate
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Speaker 3: stories and try to make them make sense within a
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Speaker 3: larger narrative is an ongoing challenge. It's why you have
8:46
Speaker 3: these like universe resetting events in DC or Marvel in particular.
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Speaker 3: But it's it's the closest I can think of. It's
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Speaker 3: a bunch. And in that case, you've got like a
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Speaker 3: corporate overlord who's making sure that you've got a bunch
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Speaker 3: of different authors who are all kind of working toward
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Speaker 3: the same goal. But in this case it was much
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Speaker 3: more organic than that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and and the I love that comparison. I think
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Speaker 1: that's apropos. I would also say for the important thing
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Speaker 1: about the Stephen King example is imagine if you are
9:22
Speaker 1: King is a superstar by this point, But imagine if
9:24
Speaker 1: you are someone who just likes reading scary stories, and
9:29
Speaker 1: you have an idea for a scary story that you
9:31
Speaker 1: want to set in the universe Stephen King is created.
9:35
Speaker 1: There are there is an entire industry of legal experts
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Speaker 1: who can't wait to smack someone down for trying that,
9:44
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Unless you're his son, Unless
9:47
Speaker 1: you are Joe Hill, who I think is quite talented.
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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, no doubt. I mean you know, Doctor
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Speaker 3: Sleep is great, but yeah, I it's funny because King
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Speaker 3: himself did this within his own work, right where you
10:00
Speaker 3: would have seemingly disconnected storylines, and then he would gradually
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Speaker 3: reveal that, oh no, these actually exist within the same universe,
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Speaker 3: and in fact one will reference and perhaps even transform another.
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Speaker 3: So King King kind of did this as a one
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Speaker 3: man show, but in Lovecraft's time, what we're talking about
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Speaker 3: is literally like a dozen authors, all of whom are
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Speaker 3: working in genres that are maybe not directly weird fiction,
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Speaker 3: but are somewhat related. Like Robert E. Howard famously would
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Speaker 3: be sword and sorcery, right like he's that's the creator
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Speaker 3: of Conan the Barbarious. Yeah, And so you would have
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Speaker 3: these people who are working in different areas of speculative fiction,
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Speaker 3: but they would start to incorporate elements of each other's work,
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Speaker 3: and you get this incredibly rich tapestry where if you
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Speaker 3: are a voracious reader, if you're someone who's subscribing to,
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Speaker 3: you know, one of the these pulp magazines, you get that
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Speaker 3: rewarding feeling of oh, I recognize that reference, just as
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Speaker 3: if you are like a diehard Marvel Cinematic Universe fan
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Speaker 3: and you sit there through the whole movie and you
11:12
Speaker 3: wait until that you know, Stinger at the end of
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Speaker 3: the credits, and you think, oh my gosh, they're referencing
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Speaker 3: this other, like incredibly obscure thing that's was mentioned once
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Speaker 3: in like a television episode of Agents of Shield or something.
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Speaker 3: It's that same kind of endorphin release, you know, that
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Speaker 3: feeling of oh, I recognize this. That makes me feel
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Speaker 3: included and special. But we're not done with Lovecraft's tragedies
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Speaker 3: because just as all this is going, there's another setback
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Speaker 3: in his life.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and this is I think it's appropriate that we
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Speaker 1: spend some time on the good parts so that you
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Speaker 1: know it's not just a wretched march to the grave here,
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Speaker 1: but there are more tragedies ahead. As you said, Lovecraft's
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Speaker 1: mother hers a quote unquote nervous breakdown in nineteen nineteen.
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Speaker 3: It's the family business.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. She is admitted to Butler Hospital, and just like
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Speaker 1: her husband before her, she does not emerge there alive.
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Speaker 1: She dies in the facility on May twenty fourth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: twenty one, with some gallbladder related complications. So not syphilis
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Speaker 1: in this case.
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Speaker 3: Although there were some at least some elements that I
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Speaker 3: read where there was speculation that perhaps she too had
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Speaker 3: oh syphilis. Yeah, but again possible. Yeah, it's speculation because again,
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Speaker 3: like we're talking about a time where records aren't as
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Speaker 3: thorough the actual medical practices and as thorough. It all
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Speaker 3: depends upon what you have access to. So again this
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Speaker 3: could be elements of speculation. But there have been those
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Speaker 3: who have suggested that perhaps she too was inflicted by syphilis.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is horrific either way you slice it.
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Speaker 1: And because this is the most important person in Lovecraft's
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Speaker 1: life at this point, for better or worse, he is
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Speaker 1: shattered and he spends a few weeks in a very
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Speaker 1: dark emotional place. But eventually he says, you know, stiff
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Speaker 1: upper lip, we must soldier on. And he goes to
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Speaker 1: a journalism convention in Boston. This is on Independence Day
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Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one, and despite being an avowed racist
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Speaker 1: and a virulent anti Semite, he hits it off with
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Speaker 1: a Jewish woman named Sonia half to Green, She's seven
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Speaker 1: years older than him. They feel like they click. This
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Speaker 1: is the closest thing this guy's ever going to get
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Speaker 1: to a meet greet in a rom com and he
13:55
Speaker 1: is head over the heels, head over the heels. I'm
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Speaker 1: still learning English, He's asked, yes, yes, just so. So
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Speaker 1: he visits Sonia in her apartment in Brooklyn in nineteen
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Speaker 1: twenty two, and then by March third, nineteen twenty four,
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Speaker 1: they're married. There's a bit of acrimony in the Lovecraft
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Speaker 1: household because he does not tell his two aunts, who
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Speaker 1: raised them and still of course have very much come
14:30
Speaker 1: from that patrician mindset. Lillian D. Clark and Annie Eve
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Speaker 1: Phillips Gamwell find out that their lovely nephew got married
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Speaker 1: via the post.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like they receive a letter. It's like
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Speaker 3: breaking up via text. So Ben, quick question for you,
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Speaker 3: do you think that HP lovecrafts let us say in
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Speaker 3: the language of Facebook, it's complicated relationship with his mother
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Speaker 3: may have played some part in him becoming enamored of
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Speaker 3: a woman seven years his senior.
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Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I would take it a step further
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Speaker 1: with you. Let's keep walking down that one, because I
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Speaker 1: would also argue is fraught relationship with his mother informed
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Speaker 1: his decision to marry literally the first other lady who
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Speaker 1: was nice to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, just
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Speaker 1: to have that constant maternal figure.
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Speaker 3: And to be fair, I never met the man.
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Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, so.
15:36
Speaker 1: We have to see you.
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Speaker 3: No, it could be that we are way off base
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Speaker 3: and we're viewing this from a lens in the twenty
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Speaker 3: first century that just simply cannot see the minutia. But
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Speaker 3: there are certain indicators that appear to support that narrative.
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Speaker 1: There we go. We do know some facts that are inarguable.
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Speaker 1: Post matrimony. Lovecraft moves into Sonia's place. She's got that
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Speaker 1: apartment in Brooklyn, and at first it looks like our
16:06
Speaker 1: newly minted couple is going to be doing okay. Sonya
16:10
Speaker 1: owns a hat shop off Fifth Avenue, which even back
16:14
Speaker 1: then is a big deal. Lovecraft is making a living,
16:19
Speaker 1: a modest living, but it's living nonetheless as a professional writer.
16:24
Speaker 1: Several of his earlier stories have been accepted by Weird Tales,
16:28
Speaker 1: one of the pre eminent pulp publications of the day.
16:32
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, tragedy comes back again, back into the fore.
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Speaker 1: Their happy honeymoon period is all too brief. Sonya's hat
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Speaker 1: shop goes bankrupt. Lovecraft turns down some opportunities that he
16:51
Speaker 1: should have taken to rise in the world of publishing.
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Speaker 1: He could have been the editor of magazine that was
17:01
Speaker 1: coming out sort of adjacent to Weird Tales, not a competitor,
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Speaker 1: but like a compliment, like, if you like this, you'll
17:07
Speaker 1: also like that.
17:08
Speaker 3: The problem was that this job would have necessitated a move.
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Speaker 3: He would have had to move to Chicago, and that
17:17
Speaker 3: was a pretty big ask when you've got, like, at
17:22
Speaker 3: the same time, you have this failing business that is
17:25
Speaker 3: not in Chicago, and clearly your wife cannot accompany you
17:29
Speaker 3: without abandoning the business entirely. So it was a tough call, right, Like,
17:33
Speaker 3: it's not as simple as hey, you can stay exactly
17:36
Speaker 3: where you are and take this gig. It's no, you
17:39
Speaker 3: have to up end your life and start over in
17:41
Speaker 3: a new city, but you will have this gig. And
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Speaker 3: ultimately love Craft says, you know, it's too rich for
17:48
Speaker 3: my blood to have to move over there. I'm going
17:50
Speaker 3: to stay where I am. I've got my wife whom
17:54
Speaker 3: I can always depend upon, who will be stalwart and
17:57
Speaker 3: true and will never get sick ever. Right, And then
18:02
Speaker 3: she got.
18:02
Speaker 1: Sick, and then she had then her health turns south
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Speaker 1: as well, as she has to go to a sanitarium
18:12
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, and Lovecraft needs to do his best
18:17
Speaker 1: to support her and himself and probably a few cats
18:20
Speaker 1: at this point, And so he tries to find a job.
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Speaker 1: He is, and we say this with great affection, he's
18:27
Speaker 1: a little bit nebbish, you know what I mean? This
18:29
Speaker 1: guy his hands, they don't have callouses.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not like I mean we mentioned this earlier.
18:34
Speaker 3: It's not like he had any work experience whatsoever. Like
18:38
Speaker 3: we mentioned that when he was doing the whole hermit thing,
18:44
Speaker 3: and same is true. Now, right, he's thirty four and
18:47
Speaker 3: he lacks any practical skills that he can apply to
18:51
Speaker 3: landing your regular kind of job. So what are you
18:55
Speaker 3: gonna do. He's in a really bad way.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's in a non ideal situation and he has
19:03
Speaker 1: to move again. And this is a guy who very
19:06
Speaker 1: much hates moving, just to be clear. And so he
19:09
Speaker 1: has to go to like a bachelor apartment, a single apartment,
19:13
Speaker 1: and it's near a area of Brooklyn called Red Hook.
19:17
Speaker 1: This will go on to inform a lot of his
19:20
Speaker 1: writing in a very non complimentary way to the neighborhood
19:28
Speaker 1: and the people of Red Hook.
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Speaker 3: Yes, he's having to associate with folks outside of his
19:34
Speaker 3: normal realm of experience, and he has a negative point
19:39
Speaker 3: of view about that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the foreign hordes, the masses of foreigners in the city,
19:45
Speaker 1: and to the point where you know, you can read,
19:48
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a spoiler at this at this juncture,
19:51
Speaker 1: you can read where there are characters in Lovecraft stories
19:57
Speaker 1: who go who you know immediately leg just intuitively know
20:02
Speaker 1: that the foreigners in Red Hook practice secret religions to
20:06
Speaker 1: squamous and unclean gods. Why because they had, you know,
20:11
Speaker 1: like a bit of an air to their eyebrows.
20:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you if you read any Lovecraft stories, like
20:17
Speaker 3: a lot of them end up incorporating characters who are black,
20:24
Speaker 3: and they are also typically antagonists or sometimes depicted as barbaric,
20:31
Speaker 3: and you know, to Lovecraft, civilization was the epitome of
20:35
Speaker 3: human achievement, and so anything that was considered uncivilized in
20:41
Speaker 3: Lovecraft's eyes, would be equivalent to being evil. So he
20:48
Speaker 3: depicted a lot of black characters as being primitive, barbaric, uncivilized,
20:57
Speaker 3: and as a result of those things, also prone to
21:00
Speaker 3: worshiping these sort of profane figures that ultimately would have
21:06
Speaker 3: an incredibly negative impact on the typically the protagonist. I
21:10
Speaker 3: don't know if any of y'all have read a lot
21:12
Speaker 3: of Lovecraft, but if you have, you probably are aware
21:15
Speaker 3: that there's a better than eighty five percent chance the
21:18
Speaker 3: protagonist is not making it out alive or sane by
21:21
Speaker 3: the end of the story, of course.
21:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's you know, I enjoy that part of
21:26
Speaker 1: this structure. Actually, that the that you know, it's it's
21:29
Speaker 1: upending a lot of the conventional rules of stories of
21:33
Speaker 1: that time.
21:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, unless you're unless you're Robert Chambers, who already did
21:37
Speaker 3: it in The Yellow King.
21:38
Speaker 1: But okay, yeah, yeah, and The Yellow King is great. Oh,
21:43
Speaker 1: I love that one story, the repairer of reputations. Do
21:46
Speaker 1: check out The Yellow King. Just know it's an anthology
21:50
Speaker 1: of short stories by Robert Chambers. Uh, not every one
21:54
Speaker 1: of them, slaps, I'm just gonna be diplomatic.
21:57
Speaker 3: Well, and not all of them. I don't think people
22:00
Speaker 3: would categories categorize all of them as falling into weird fiction.
22:04
Speaker 3: But the ones that do, the ones that do really
22:07
Speaker 3: like you can see, not that you know. It's speculated
22:11
Speaker 3: that Lovecraft didn't encounter a lot of those stories told
22:14
Speaker 3: after he was already writing, so it seems like it
22:17
Speaker 3: was not a case of any sort of influence or plagiarism.
22:20
Speaker 3: I don't want to suggest that, but Chambers established a
22:24
Speaker 3: lot of tropes that Lovecraft and his contemporaries would continue
22:28
Speaker 3: to engage in. M M.
22:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Lovecraft also, you know, you have to bring
22:34
Speaker 1: Algernon Blackwood into the conversation and several other things that
22:38
Speaker 1: you know, Lovecraft was not just like he wasn't reticent
22:44
Speaker 1: to criticize stuff he didn't like. He was also never
22:47
Speaker 1: reticent to praise stuff that he enjoyed or felt informed him.
22:52
Speaker 1: So we have to give him points there. But despite
22:55
Speaker 1: the fact that he has generated these friendships, this massive
22:59
Speaker 1: correspondence as a couple of what we would call irl
23:02
Speaker 1: friends there in New York, he's still depressed, he still
23:12
Speaker 1: feels isolated, and he still cartoonishly xenophobic. So in nineteen
23:17
Speaker 1: twenty six he returns to Providence. He just feels like
23:21
Speaker 1: he has to do it. The scuttle butt here is
23:25
Speaker 1: that his aunts don't want him to bring his wife.
23:30
Speaker 1: He doesn't know what will happen with Sonia, but he
23:34
Speaker 1: goes anyway, and so.
23:37
Speaker 3: Well, of course, and yeah, so leading up to this,
23:41
Speaker 3: when he was in Red Hook, Sonya was actually in Cleveland.
23:45
Speaker 3: She was still seeking treatment in Cleveland. So that's one
23:48
Speaker 3: of the reasons why he felt so isolated, is that
23:50
Speaker 3: his wife, Like you can start to see a pattern
23:53
Speaker 3: with like his dependence. I'm sure there was like a
23:55
Speaker 3: codependent kind of thing going on between him and his mother,
23:59
Speaker 3: and is inspect something similar was going on between him
24:02
Speaker 3: and his wife, and he's separated from her while she's
24:05
Speaker 3: seeking treatment in Cleveland, he's in Red Hook. They reunite
24:09
Speaker 3: when they go to Providence in nineteen twenty six, but
24:13
Speaker 3: you know, through one means or another, that relationship becomes
24:16
Speaker 3: unsustainable and nineteen twenty nine it comes to an end.
24:20
Speaker 3: But this is also right around the time where Lovecraft
24:26
Speaker 3: is finally actually experiencing the success of his work. You know,
24:32
Speaker 3: he's been at it for quite some time, but this
24:35
Speaker 3: is like the renaissance of Lovecraft that we're entering into here.
24:40
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And
24:43
Speaker 1: we have to recognize this paradox, which unfortunately may sound
24:47
Speaker 1: familiar to a lot of people. Your professional life goes
24:51
Speaker 1: really well, and your personal life takes. Your personal life
24:54
Speaker 1: goes really well, and your professional life takes and it
24:57
Speaker 1: seems that Lovecraft is always trying to find that balance, right,
25:01
Speaker 1: often without success.
25:03
Speaker 3: See also every stand up comedian ever.
25:06
Speaker 1: Yes see also literally every stand up comedian. Come at
25:10
Speaker 1: us for that one. All right, so you nailed at
25:13
Speaker 1: Jonathan Lovecraft returns to Providence nineteen twenty six, like you said,
25:18
Speaker 1: and the last ten years of his life. He may
25:22
Speaker 1: have found some kind of balance here, possibly his best
25:26
Speaker 1: decade as a writer, maybe some of his best personal
25:29
Speaker 1: years as well. His life at this point isn't super eventful,
25:34
Speaker 1: you know, he's not living out real life pirate cosplay
25:38
Speaker 1: or anything. He does travel to a lot of historic
25:42
Speaker 1: sites around the Eastern Seaboard to soak in their culture
25:47
Speaker 1: with varying reactions, and they all kind of they start
25:50
Speaker 1: to inform his fiction, you know, his generally, like the
25:56
Speaker 1: one the work that even non Lovecraft fans know the
26:00
Speaker 1: most about is probably going to be The Call of
26:02
Speaker 1: Cudulhu in twenty six or at the Mountains of Madness
26:06
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one. While he's writing these stories that
26:10
Speaker 1: will go on to cement his legacy, he's doing another
26:14
Speaker 1: legacy cementing move, which is he's writing about these to
26:17
Speaker 1: his friends, his peers. You know what I mean, what
26:19
Speaker 1: do you guys think rightw what do you guys think
26:23
Speaker 1: about breeding with fish people to worship a fish god?
26:30
Speaker 3: All right? What do you think about this little story
26:33
Speaker 3: I got called Dagon, which ends up being one of
26:36
Speaker 3: my favorites of Lovecraft. That's actually my favorite film adaptation
26:40
Speaker 3: of Lovecraft. Oh come on, but only if you're going
26:45
Speaker 3: as like a fairly strict following of Like, if you're
26:52
Speaker 3: going into the more loose adaptations of Lovecraft, my favorite
26:55
Speaker 3: is re Animator. I mean, it's always going to be
26:57
Speaker 3: re Animator. Evil Dead is obviously inspired by Lovecraft's signed adaptation, though,
27:03
Speaker 3: but Reanimator is and it's bonkers and I love it
27:07
Speaker 3: and it's fantastic. I mean, there's so many great adaptations
27:12
Speaker 3: of Lovecraft. But again, like that collaborative nature, that camaraderie
27:17
Speaker 3: that was built up between all these different authors who
27:20
Speaker 3: are sharing ideas and nurturing one another's ideas and informing
27:24
Speaker 3: one another's ideas, I would argue that a Lovecraft story
27:29
Speaker 3: is not solely a Lovecraft story. It is the product
27:32
Speaker 3: of this collaborative universe, just as I would say Robert E. Howard,
27:37
Speaker 3: a Roberty Howard's story is again a product of this
27:40
Speaker 3: that you know, the the prime author is whomever actually
27:46
Speaker 3: wrote the piece, but that that piece would not exist,
27:49
Speaker 3: at least not in the form that we are familiar
27:51
Speaker 3: with without this collaborative relationship going on between all these
27:56
Speaker 3: different authors who are encouraging each other to participate in
28:02
Speaker 3: this process. And again, it's one of those things where
28:04
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm not aware of too many other instances
28:09
Speaker 3: where something like this has happened, at least not organically,
28:12
Speaker 3: where it wasn't just like some sort of weird content
28:15
Speaker 3: farm kind of approach.
28:17
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's the key part there, that it would
28:20
Speaker 1: organically arose as he was he was not just enjoying
28:26
Speaker 1: his own success and pursuing it, but he was hoping
28:30
Speaker 1: interest would be contagious.
28:32
Speaker 4: Right.
28:33
Speaker 1: He wanted other people to pick up the toys that
28:36
Speaker 1: he had built and play with them and maybe, you know,
28:39
Speaker 1: make some toys of their own, and there's something human
28:42
Speaker 1: and astonishing about that. We also know we're going to
28:46
Speaker 1: set them up before we have to do the drop here.
28:49
Speaker 1: We also know that he was not one hundred percent
28:55
Speaker 1: immovable in some of his ideas and prejudices. Depression occurred
29:00
Speaker 1: during his lifetime. He witnessed this, and it led him
29:05
Speaker 1: to support Roosevelt, which might be surprised based on some
29:08
Speaker 1: of the stuff we already know about his background and
29:10
Speaker 1: his racist perspective. But he became a socialist towards the.
29:16
Speaker 3: End well, and like the Great Depression affected him as
29:21
Speaker 3: well as you know, affecting working people all over the place.
29:25
Speaker 3: In that publications like like Weird Tales began to scale
29:29
Speaker 3: back like they were still printing. Because as we are
29:32
Speaker 3: all familiar at this point, I think some of us
29:34
Speaker 3: are now becoming directly familiar that times of recession or depression,
29:39
Speaker 3: entertainment often is one of the few industries that continues
29:43
Speaker 3: to do well as people seek escape from the stresses
29:48
Speaker 3: of life. Well, same was true back then during the
29:50
Speaker 3: Great Depression, which, by the way, not that great. If
29:53
Speaker 3: you ask me, it's a terrible name. It was a
29:55
Speaker 3: pretty awful depression. But yeah, we're even with that. They
30:01
Speaker 3: had to scale back. They just couldn't afford to continue
30:04
Speaker 3: publication on the same schedule that they had been doing,
30:07
Speaker 3: which in turn had a cascading effect on all the
30:10
Speaker 3: different authors who are contributing to those publications, and so
30:15
Speaker 3: Lovecraft himself was feeling the effects of the depression, just
30:19
Speaker 3: like other people were, and perhaps the hardships of his
30:25
Speaker 3: life once his grandfather had passed and his legacy was
30:29
Speaker 3: mishandled so dramatically, gave him a little bit of reflection
30:34
Speaker 3: into how life isn't all tea time and Gothic tales
30:40
Speaker 3: by the fire.
30:43
Speaker 1: And we've spoken at length about the intensely problematic views
30:51
Speaker 1: regarding Lovecraft there have been. Of course, there are still
30:56
Speaker 1: continual additions to the existing mythos, even here in twenty
31:01
Speaker 1: twenty five, and there are authors like Matt Ruff, the
31:04
Speaker 1: creator of Lovecraft Country, who kind of navigate these issues
31:08
Speaker 1: by centering people of color in their lovecrafty and explorations.
31:14
Speaker 1: And we know, look Lovecraft, we still know how he
31:20
Speaker 1: would have reacted if he saw the effect that he
31:25
Speaker 1: has had upon fiction and speculative fiction. Weird horror today
31:29
Speaker 1: because the last two or three years of his life
31:32
Speaker 1: were also filled with more heartbreak. His aunt, Miss Clark, died,
31:39
Speaker 1: he moved in with his other aunt, Miss Gamwell, to
31:43
Speaker 1: another basically an apartment, and his later stories were more
31:48
Speaker 1: and more difficult to sell. They were kind of struggling
31:51
Speaker 1: under the weight of the world building he had created.
31:54
Speaker 3: Against something that Marvel fans can kind of identify with
31:59
Speaker 3: that the lung you the longer you go with this
32:01
Speaker 3: interconnected mythos, the more is required of the consumer of
32:08
Speaker 3: that art to have at least some familiarity with the
32:11
Speaker 3: stuff that came before, or else they're completely lost.
32:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, shout out to everybody who just saw uh,
32:19
Speaker 1: you know, iron Man.
32:20
Speaker 3: Three, right right, but yeah, to your to your point,
32:24
Speaker 3: like we're getting toward the end of his life here,
32:28
Speaker 3: and we'll just I can't think we can skip ahead
32:30
Speaker 3: to say that he had cancer and by the time
32:36
Speaker 3: the cancer was discovered, it had progressed to a point
32:39
Speaker 3: where the writing was already on the wall, and so
32:43
Speaker 3: he too began to fall apart, and eventually he passed
32:51
Speaker 3: away due to the cancer he had. And so, uh,
32:56
Speaker 3: you know, there are there's definitely tragedy in his life.
32:59
Speaker 3: I don't want to just paint Lovecraft as this xenophobic,
33:03
Speaker 3: you know, racist blowhard who you know who expouse espoused
33:11
Speaker 3: views that were absolutely terrible. But we also can't completely
33:16
Speaker 3: divorce ourselves of that because he actually that informed his writing.
33:19
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's clear in some of his stories.
33:21
Speaker 3: You can't I don't think death of the author is
33:25
Speaker 3: something we can easily apply here because those views inform
33:31
Speaker 3: much of his work.
33:33
Speaker 1: Agreed one hundred percent, and I think we could add
33:37
Speaker 1: a little bit of arm armchair psychology here with the following.
33:41
Speaker 1: Tell me when you guys think about this. I have,
33:45
Speaker 1: after doing a bunch of reading for this stuff and
33:48
Speaker 1: over the years as a fan of love crafting and work,
33:52
Speaker 1: I have come to the light conclusion that one of
33:57
Speaker 1: his mental issues may have been something we would right
34:00
Speaker 1: kignies as obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, in that his
34:05
Speaker 1: racism is that aphobia is. It's one of his many
34:10
Speaker 1: weird hang ups, probably the most dangerous. But he had
34:13
Speaker 1: a lot of very strident opinions for and against things,
34:19
Speaker 1: and he did obsess over them to what would be
34:24
Speaker 1: considered an abnormal degree. Give you one of the fun ones,
34:28
Speaker 1: and this made me think of you, Jonathan. He hated seafood.
34:34
Speaker 1: He hated seafood. Now, not all of our listeners may
34:37
Speaker 1: know this, you and I have talked about over the
34:40
Speaker 1: years under many adventures, but he is he actively hates it.
34:46
Speaker 1: I don't know if you actively hate it, but you
34:49
Speaker 1: definitely can't eat it.
34:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I can't eat it because I have a
34:54
Speaker 3: severe shellfish allergy, one that will send me to the
34:57
Speaker 3: emergency room if I have any shelfish or at least
35:01
Speaker 3: lobster and shrimp are the known shellfish that I am
35:05
Speaker 3: allergic to. I have eliminated all shellfish, including stuff outside
35:11
Speaker 3: of things like lobsters and shrimp and stuff from my
35:14
Speaker 3: diet because after having that experience a couple of times,
35:17
Speaker 3: I don't want to ever have it again. Plus it
35:20
Speaker 3: was pretty scary the last time. And also it means
35:23
Speaker 3: that I have to be careful around seafood in general
35:25
Speaker 3: because of cross contamination. So I don't hate seafood. I
35:29
Speaker 3: do avoid seafood unless I am extremely certain that the
35:36
Speaker 3: seafood restaurant or whatever is very good about avoiding cross contamination.
35:42
Speaker 3: So I would not go so far as to cast
35:44
Speaker 3: fish as the bad guys in my stories.
35:48
Speaker 1: But maybe there's an untrusty there's an untrustworthy mollusk from Brooklyn.
35:56
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe, yeah, I could have like a I don't know,
35:59
Speaker 3: a ship d crab. Maybe that's how they walk man. Yeah, yeah,
36:04
Speaker 3: they're always they're always edging away from you, you know.
36:07
Speaker 3: But yeah, Lovecraft like famously despised seafood to the point
36:12
Speaker 3: where where he made a big deal of it. And
36:15
Speaker 3: and also, at least according to what we came across, uh,
36:21
Speaker 3: appeared to never really evolve his his dietary. UH preferences
36:28
Speaker 3: beyond a small child and like to eat like lots
36:31
Speaker 3: of sweet stuff and not not so much anything of
36:34
Speaker 3: real nutritional value. He'd mess with a sandwich, Yeah, he
36:39
Speaker 3: would mess with a sandwich, probably a PB and J
36:42
Speaker 3: if I had to guess, but yeah, crust. Yeah, but
36:45
Speaker 3: he's cut on the diagonal. But he uh he he
36:48
Speaker 3: definitely despised seafood, which, if you're growing up in Rhode Island,
36:52
Speaker 3: that's rough, y'all.
36:54
Speaker 1: That's a that's right, Yeah, that's such a waste. And
36:58
Speaker 1: Max will throw it to you in in the second
37:00
Speaker 1: four of the update on the condition if you're comfortable.
37:03
Speaker 1: But for now, what you need to know is we
37:05
Speaker 1: discovered one of the few times that Lovecraft is on
37:09
Speaker 1: record swearing. He did not swear casually, you know, nor conversationally.
37:15
Speaker 1: But the story goes and got this thanks to our
37:17
Speaker 1: friends a mental floss that he hated seafood so much,
37:22
Speaker 1: so cartoonishly that one time a friend of his was
37:27
Speaker 1: trying to you know, get him outside, get him out
37:30
Speaker 1: of his creepy little room, and they said, hey, come
37:33
Speaker 1: with me. Let's you know, we'll go after dinner. And
37:36
Speaker 1: when Lovecraft found out that the dinner was steamed clams,
37:41
Speaker 1: Lovecraft said, quote, while you are eating that god stuff,
37:47
Speaker 1: I'll go across the street for a sandwich. Please excuse me.
37:52
Speaker 3: I do love that he was reluctant to swear in public,
37:55
Speaker 3: but he had no problem throwing racial slur around.
38:01
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that's a weird demarcation of decorum. All right,
38:06
Speaker 1: so let's before we wrap up next. I saw you
38:09
Speaker 1: pop on what's going on? My friend? Oh?
38:12
Speaker 5: I just wanted to commiserate with Jonathan that because of
38:14
Speaker 5: the condition, I cannot eat any shellfish as well. So
38:18
Speaker 5: you and I can sit around eating like plain chicken
38:20
Speaker 5: together and being and talk about how much we like
38:23
Speaker 5: it despite.
38:23
Speaker 3: Not Was there a time when you could eat shellfish?
38:27
Speaker 1: Yes?
38:28
Speaker 3: Okay?
38:29
Speaker 4: Is there years ago?
38:30
Speaker 3: Any particular shellfish that you really miss?
38:35
Speaker 5: Muscles are probably my favorite shellfish. I personally, I have
38:39
Speaker 5: a very much a love hate relationship with shrimp. I
38:42
Speaker 5: just I just know too much about them at the
38:46
Speaker 5: gnography class in yeah school.
38:48
Speaker 4: And I they're just like really gross to me.
38:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, crab, lobster, all that stuff.
38:54
Speaker 4: Just seems so annoying to eat. I mean, oysters are good,
38:57
Speaker 4: but also oysters are just like.
38:59
Speaker 1: They're the boog of the sea.
39:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, what, there's not really anything in this well.
39:04
Speaker 3: Also, also opening up an oyster is taking your life
39:08
Speaker 3: in your own hands. Tried to use a knife to
39:10
Speaker 3: pry one of those shells open without like shoving it
39:13
Speaker 3: through your.
39:13
Speaker 5: Hand, Johnny, I remember ten years of food and beverage experience.
39:17
Speaker 5: I mean I was mostly front of house, but I'm
39:19
Speaker 5: pretty good with knives in the kitchen.
39:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, see me. No, I'm being a left hander and
39:23
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. Yeah lefties though, I'm just
39:26
Speaker 3: saying like a lot of tools were made for right handers,
39:28
Speaker 3: and it does get annoying when you're getting to that.
39:30
Speaker 5: That's why wors pure is because we have grown up
39:33
Speaker 5: with the spiral and the spiral notebook digging into our hands.
39:36
Speaker 5: You know, the desks in public school, they're always on
39:39
Speaker 5: the right side, at the left side. Actually, when I
39:41
Speaker 5: went with Georgia State and where I got my degree from,
39:45
Speaker 5: they had left handed ones, but it was always like
39:47
Speaker 5: I would always sit in the right hand one and
39:49
Speaker 5: right would sit in left hand ones. We all complain
39:50
Speaker 5: about stupid desk is.
39:51
Speaker 3: Because yeah, yeah, well, well for me, it's shrimp. Poe
39:56
Speaker 3: Boys like I too, share a deep understanding of shrimp
40:01
Speaker 3: and the issues, and.
40:03
Speaker 1: I'm just a little I like the little line of poop.
40:05
Speaker 3: Yeah do you. Yeah, it's always it's great picking picking
40:10
Speaker 3: up a shrimp in a restaurant and seeing that there
40:12
Speaker 3: and thinking, oh, you didn't even take the basic step
40:15
Speaker 3: of deveining the shrimp. But no, Yeah, I miss Poe
40:20
Speaker 3: boys a lot. Uh, but I've gotten to the point
40:23
Speaker 3: where I've eliminated pretty especially any place that does fried seafood.
40:26
Speaker 3: Obviously you've got to be careful about the oil. So, uh,
40:30
Speaker 3: the thing I really miss is kalamari. I miss kalamari
40:34
Speaker 3: a lot.
40:36
Speaker 1: Well, you know, hey, if it makes you guys feel better,
40:38
Speaker 1: there's a big problem with counterfeit klamari. So a lot
40:41
Speaker 1: of your friends you're bragging about eating it may not
40:44
Speaker 1: maybe eating pig intestine.
40:46
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, I've I've often heard that, but I've also
40:49
Speaker 3: heard it debunked. But you know, there, I'm not sure
40:53
Speaker 3: because there is that one Lovecraft story where the monsters
40:56
Speaker 3: are pig intestines, so.
40:58
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, they're also oh we should mention this too.
41:02
Speaker 1: Also not every he has at least a few stories
41:07
Speaker 1: where the human esque or human descended villains are not
41:11
Speaker 1: just the quote unquote foreigners that he would describe. There's
41:15
Speaker 1: one in particular, I'm trying to remember it. That's about
41:19
Speaker 1: a southern family of white folks who used to be
41:24
Speaker 1: well thought of, but then they became inbred and they
41:28
Speaker 1: committed mis engenation and turned into like mole people. Yeah,
41:33
Speaker 1: do you remember that one?
41:34
Speaker 3: I don't remember that one. For the sake of transparency,
41:38
Speaker 3: it has been a long time since I've read Lovecraft's works.
41:41
Speaker 3: I did read. I think I pretty much read every
41:44
Speaker 3: single published work he had, besides you know, the compilations
41:48
Speaker 3: of letters. But I've read like pretty much all of
41:52
Speaker 3: his short stories and everything. But it's been years, and
41:56
Speaker 3: with so much other media, either directly or indirectly inspired
42:02
Speaker 3: by Lovecraft, it's easy for me to conflate things. So
42:04
Speaker 3: I don't want to. I don't want to say something
42:07
Speaker 3: and then just be totally wrong, simply because you know,
42:10
Speaker 3: my brain's got scrambled. Back in twenty twenty four, pretty
42:14
Speaker 3: darn good. And it turns out anything before twenty twenty four,
42:18
Speaker 3: I can never be entirely sure if I'm remembering it
42:21
Speaker 3: or if I'm inventing it.
42:29
Speaker 1: It is the Lurking Fear by HP Lovecraft. I think
42:34
Speaker 1: I'll have to reread it. I believe that's the uh,
42:38
Speaker 1: that's the story. So everybody could get a little bit
42:42
Speaker 1: of xenophobia from Lovecraft. I think that's the one where
42:46
Speaker 1: he also talks trash about Dutch people or something.
42:50
Speaker 3: Well, I mean again, you know you walk around in
42:52
Speaker 3: wooden shoes long enough, you're gonna bound to tick somebody off.
42:55
Speaker 3: I knew that from my clogging days.
42:59
Speaker 1: Yes, that is true. We've got we've got to include
43:03
Speaker 1: that in the thank you credits. Big thanks to our
43:06
Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams. I've been a research associate
43:09
Speaker 1: for a lot of this. We hope you enjoyed it.
43:12
Speaker 1: Big thanks as well to Alex Williams who composed this
43:15
Speaker 1: slap and bop A J. Bahamas Jacobs also known as
43:19
Speaker 1: the Puzzler, and of course Jonathan Strickland. Thanks to you,
43:23
Speaker 1: this is this was really awesome. Man. I loved learning
43:28
Speaker 1: more with you and I appreciate you not being the
43:31
Speaker 1: quister today.
43:32
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, it's that's why you should Sorry, no, yeah,
43:38
Speaker 3: it's really fun. Oh excuse me, sorry, I don't know what.
43:47
Speaker 1: Time you were so close? I trust you.
43:53
Speaker 2: God.
43:54
Speaker 1: All right, get weird with it, all right, Max, I'm
43:59
Speaker 1: going to need you to help me out on this.
44:01
Speaker 1: I imagine our friend's alter ego is here to play
44:05
Speaker 1: a game.
44:05
Speaker 3: Yes, welcome to the Quiztor segment, the most cringe worthy
44:09
Speaker 3: segment and all love podcasting. Where I the quiz to
44:13
Speaker 3: quiz beloved hosts. Where's Noel? Noel should be here.
44:19
Speaker 4: We're a little better off with Noah here.
44:22
Speaker 5: But I mean I agree to change because I had
44:26
Speaker 5: to put on my quizler shirt.
44:28
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I just want to tell you sucking
44:31
Speaker 3: up does work, so excellent job there, Max.
44:34
Speaker 1: Ye that really is, folks, that really is. He really
44:36
Speaker 1: is wearing it.
44:37
Speaker 3: We're all on video and he just proved it.
44:39
Speaker 5: Well, Ben, Ben and Noill get the credit. They just like,
44:42
Speaker 5: you know, Ben reached out of me. He's like, what's
44:43
Speaker 5: your dress? And what's that shirt? Actually I think you
44:45
Speaker 5: have I think you have my dress, Bend, but like,
44:47
Speaker 5: what's that shirt you wear?
44:48
Speaker 2: Max?
44:48
Speaker 5: Last time that to you.
44:49
Speaker 4: And also and I just had ridiculous history shirts.
44:52
Speaker 3: I do have to admit that I'm wearing a shirt
44:54
Speaker 3: with a black cat on it, but it is not
44:56
Speaker 3: Lovecraft's cat. I want to make that very clear.
44:58
Speaker 2: Wow.
44:59
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, that's good myth busting now, quister arch
45:04
Speaker 1: nemesis of Low these several years. That sounded less dramatic
45:10
Speaker 1: when I had to be accurate. But of Low these
45:13
Speaker 1: several years with our good friend and partner in crime,
45:16
Speaker 1: Noel on Adventure, it falls to young Max Williams and
45:20
Speaker 1: I to play your insidious game.
45:23
Speaker 3: Yes, and this game is where I present to you
45:25
Speaker 3: three scenarios. Two of them are real and one I
45:28
Speaker 3: made upsis And so tis down to the to determine
45:33
Speaker 3: which of these is the one that I made up.
45:35
Speaker 3: And I will present to you the three scenarios, and
45:39
Speaker 3: upon the presentation, you will have three minutes to confer
45:41
Speaker 3: between the two of you to determine which of the
45:44
Speaker 3: three are fake. I want to say this one is
45:48
Speaker 3: I think pretty. This one's not hard, but it was
45:51
Speaker 3: fun to write.
45:52
Speaker 1: Don't set us up like that, man. We'll try to
45:54
Speaker 1: make it look really.
45:55
Speaker 4: Bad when we flail and do awful of this one.
45:58
Speaker 1: I'm in your head, dude, I know how you work.
46:01
Speaker 3: I have faith in you. But as always, if you
46:05
Speaker 3: wish to ask a question for clarification's sake, and if
46:07
Speaker 3: I happen to know the answer, you can do so,
46:10
Speaker 3: but you have to preface it with a phrase of
46:12
Speaker 3: my own choosing. For this particular quiz, that phrase shall be,
46:15
Speaker 3: of course, it must be yah yah cutoul photogon right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
46:24
Speaker 3: popping photogon photogon. Yet pronunciation is very clear, I mean,
46:30
Speaker 3: despite the fact that Lovecraft wrote it in such a
46:32
Speaker 3: way that you're not supposed to be able to say
46:33
Speaker 3: it with the human tongue. I am being very persnickety. No, uh,
46:38
Speaker 3: here are your three scenarios. I shall start with scenario
46:42
Speaker 3: number one. One of Lovecraft's predecessors, mister Edgar Allan Poe,
46:48
Speaker 3: receives credit for helping establish the genre of mystery fiction. However,
46:53
Speaker 3: did you know that Poe's own journey included debunking the
46:57
Speaker 3: famous mechanical turk The York was an invention of Wolfgang
47:02
Speaker 3: von Kemplin from nearly a century before, and appeared to
47:06
Speaker 3: be a humanoid automaton capable of playing expert levels of chess.
47:10
Speaker 3: By the time Poe investigated it, Kimpland was long dead,
47:14
Speaker 3: and a man named Johann Meltzel, who took this Turk
47:18
Speaker 3: from Europe to America, was doing exhibitions across the eastern
47:22
Speaker 3: coast of the United States. Poe argued that because the
47:26
Speaker 3: Turk occasionally lost in chess games, it must therefore be
47:32
Speaker 3: controlled by a person either inside the device or from
47:35
Speaker 3: some remote location, because machines would win every single time. Now,
47:40
Speaker 3: as we all know from chat GPT, that's not necessarily
47:44
Speaker 3: a guarantee. But our Poe boy was at least right,
47:47
Speaker 3: but for the wrong reason. Scenario number two. Lovecraft contemporary
47:54
Speaker 3: and correspondent Robert E. Howard is probably best known for
47:57
Speaker 3: the creation of the beefcake Barbarian conan. Howard became part
48:02
Speaker 3: of the Lovecraft Circle. These are the authors who collaborated
48:05
Speaker 3: with one another, sharing stories and concepts in an effort
48:08
Speaker 3: to weave together a rich tapestry of mythology. Two Gun Bob,
48:12
Speaker 3: as he was known within the circle, made a major
48:15
Speaker 3: contribution to the Lovecraftian mythology the Necronomicon. While Lovecraft had
48:20
Speaker 3: invented the name Abdullah has read many years before the
48:23
Speaker 3: two corresponded.
48:25
Speaker 1: It was Robert E.
48:26
Speaker 3: Howard who first incorporated what later storytellers would call the
48:30
Speaker 3: Book of the Dead into a sword and sorcery tale
48:33
Speaker 3: titled The Tomb of the Witch. The necronomicon is only
48:38
Speaker 3: mentioned in the story and holds no significance for the plot,
48:41
Speaker 3: but Lovecraft liked the sound of the title, and, with
48:44
Speaker 3: Robert E. Howard's permission, used it in his own works.
48:48
Speaker 3: You can really argue the necronomicon didn't really hit the
48:51
Speaker 3: big time until far after Lovecraft's death, and that's why
48:55
Speaker 3: I say groovy scenario number three. Before becoming a famous
49:02
Speaker 3: crime novelist, Robert Albert Bloch was a young member of
49:06
Speaker 3: the Lovecraft Circle, contributing to publications like Weird Tales and
49:09
Speaker 3: such and participating in the group Mythology created by Lovecraft,
49:13
Speaker 3: Roberty Howard, August Durleis, Jay Vernon, Shay Clark, Ashton Smith,
49:18
Speaker 3: and many many others. Bloch's first published piece in Weird
49:23
Speaker 3: Tales wasn't a short story, but rather a critique of
49:27
Speaker 3: Conan's stories, showing that not all authors within the Lovecraft
49:31
Speaker 3: circle fell over themselves to praise one another's work. Block
49:34
Speaker 3: himself served as an inspiration for a character named Robert
49:38
Speaker 3: Blake and Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark. Lovecraft killed
49:43
Speaker 3: off Blake in that story as a playful response to
49:46
Speaker 3: Block having previously invented a character based on Lovecraft, only
49:50
Speaker 3: to have him killed off in a tale titled The
49:53
Speaker 3: Shambler from the Stars. Oh and Lovecraft also doxed Block
49:57
Speaker 3: by including his real life address in the story. Block
50:01
Speaker 3: eventually shifted away from weird fiction and became better known
50:04
Speaker 3: for the crime stories he wrote, including the novel Psycho.
50:08
Speaker 1: Begin Okay, okay, So I am going to run over
50:11
Speaker 1: to this grandfather clock that we paid way too much
50:14
Speaker 1: money for again. Uh, and then we're going to start
50:17
Speaker 1: the timer. And then we're going to start the timer
50:21
Speaker 1: right now, all right.
50:26
Speaker 5: I don't even remember what we're supposed to be doing.
50:28
Speaker 5: Is we're find one that's fake or one that's real.
50:30
Speaker 1: The one that's fake to a real one is made up.
50:33
Speaker 1: We have a ticking clock of two minutes fifty seconds,
50:36
Speaker 1: and we can ask this is our time for you
50:39
Speaker 1: and I to work together to determine what we think
50:43
Speaker 1: is most likely. We can also ask the quister a
50:46
Speaker 1: question as long as we begin it like this, I
50:50
Speaker 1: Cthulhu Fagan.
50:51
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you're just you're just needling me on purpose.
50:55
Speaker 3: Go ahead, mister mister bowl.
50:58
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, that I did mispronounce it, so quister. Uh,
51:04
Speaker 1: just for a quick recap, the idea is that Edgar
51:06
Speaker 1: Allan Poe mythbusted the mechanical Turk. Scenario one, HP Lovecraft
51:13
Speaker 1: got the idea and the name of the Necronomicon not
51:17
Speaker 1: from his own head but from another author. Scenario two
51:22
Speaker 1: and scenario three, that members of the mythos weren't above
51:27
Speaker 1: dunking on each other's works or even playfully, uh, setting
51:32
Speaker 1: up fictional characters based on.
51:34
Speaker 3: Each other, right, and and then killing them off playfully,
51:37
Speaker 3: and then.
51:38
Speaker 1: Killing them off with whatever passes for playfulness that in
51:42
Speaker 1: that circle. Okay, I'm going to say it this way, Max,
51:45
Speaker 1: I think it's number two.
51:47
Speaker 4: You think it's number two. I was between one or two?
51:49
Speaker 5: Hold on second maybe, uh yeah, yeah, to fill a
51:52
Speaker 5: fulopen Ah, yes, Max, I mean this is.
51:57
Speaker 4: Just pretty stiple question.
51:58
Speaker 5: John, there, are you well aware that this seconment is
52:00
Speaker 5: one hundred percent a very transparent ripoff of where Wait,
52:04
Speaker 5: don't tell me he's bluffed the listener. Uh where where
52:07
Speaker 5: where people tell a story?
52:09
Speaker 2: And three?
52:09
Speaker 1: There's three?
52:10
Speaker 4: There's three stories and only one of them is real?
52:12
Speaker 3: Sorry, I don't, I don't. I'm not familiar with this.
52:15
Speaker 3: Is this a new a new program? Perhaps?
52:18
Speaker 2: Uh?
52:20
Speaker 3: Well, what what? Where could I hear such an idea?
52:23
Speaker 3: I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean
52:26
Speaker 3: to think I like to think of it as podcasters
52:28
Speaker 3: are just part of a large collaborative effort, and no
52:31
Speaker 3: one's ideas are all their own.
52:33
Speaker 5: I mean it's we've been having a running series on
52:36
Speaker 5: intellectual property, So I don't know. I think it's something
52:39
Speaker 5: we all share in the world of art. Ben, this
52:41
Speaker 5: is one hundred percent out of my spectrum. So I
52:44
Speaker 5: was thinking one or two, and you if you think
52:46
Speaker 5: it's two, I say.
52:47
Speaker 1: Two, let's lock it in, Okay, three? Two? One boom,
52:54
Speaker 1: locked in? All right, Christ, we're going with number two
52:56
Speaker 1: as the fake story.
52:58
Speaker 3: Well, gentlemen, you're right. I told you this was going
53:03
Speaker 3: to be a relatively easy one. Yes, no, so, in fact,
53:08
Speaker 3: Robert Block, not Robert Block. I'm sorry, Robert E. Howard.
53:11
Speaker 3: There are so many Roberts.
53:13
Speaker 1: Robert E.
53:13
Speaker 3: Howard did contribute some titles of books that would find
53:18
Speaker 3: their ways into Lovecraft's work, but Necronomicon was in fact
53:23
Speaker 3: something Lovecraft himself came up with independently. It does find
53:27
Speaker 3: itself in it mentioned in other author's works, often as
53:32
Speaker 3: just one of those books that litters an arcane occultist's
53:36
Speaker 3: bookshelf sort of thing. But yes, number two is a fiction.
53:41
Speaker 3: There was no story called the Tomb of the Witch.
53:44
Speaker 3: I completely invented that. That no such stories. It's similar
53:47
Speaker 3: to titles that Robert E. Robert E. Howard did, right,
53:54
Speaker 3: but not that one. That's a fabrication. So congratulations, We
54:00
Speaker 3: all follow up.
54:01
Speaker 4: Was Robert E. Robert E. Howard or whatever was he
54:04
Speaker 4: named after? Robert E.
54:05
Speaker 2: Lee?
54:07
Speaker 3: I do not believe.
54:07
Speaker 1: So.
54:08
Speaker 3: He had a rather unfortunate and tragic story of his own.
54:12
Speaker 3: His his his life was was cut short. Yeah. I
54:15
Speaker 3: think he was only something like thirty six when he
54:19
Speaker 3: shuffled off the mortal coil by his own hand, if
54:22
Speaker 3: I were calling correctly.
54:24
Speaker 1: Even even younger I think he was.
54:26
Speaker 3: I have only been thirty. He was only thirty, Yeah,
54:29
Speaker 3: he was quite young.
54:30
Speaker 1: Well, with this, we gratefully accept the laurels of victory,
54:37
Speaker 1: knowing that there will be yet another conflict on the
54:41
Speaker 1: horizon and are continuing cosmic horror of a trick quiz
54:46
Speaker 1: show that happens at the end of every not every episode,
54:50
Speaker 1: but just enough for us to not be able to
54:52
Speaker 1: predict it. With that quister aka Johnson Strickland. We can't
54:58
Speaker 1: thank you enough for for hanging out with us on
55:01
Speaker 1: the show Man and I hope you had a good time.
55:03
Speaker 1: Maybe we can do some more of these in the future.
55:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a pleasure dropping the quister for this
55:08
Speaker 3: because tired. No, it was great because, as you know,
55:14
Speaker 3: I hung up the podcasting headphones not that long ago,
55:19
Speaker 3: and so occasionally I do miss it and it's fun
55:22
Speaker 3: to get on the microphone and wrap about stuff with
55:25
Speaker 3: y'all and to explore these topics and to really kind of,
55:30
Speaker 3: you know, have fun indulgent curiosity.
55:34
Speaker 1: Just so you know, we we cut the part where
55:36
Speaker 1: you were wrapping because it was bad, not because it
55:40
Speaker 1: was bad. You had a tight sixteen I expect it.
55:42
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, because it starts with a hip hop hippie
55:45
Speaker 3: to the hippi, I don't stop rocking. All right, that's
55:49
Speaker 3: our show.
55:49
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
55:59
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
56:02
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.