Pastiche.

[polymorphikos]

Irregardless of the fact he called it 'Yog Sothothonery' (which clearly hasn't caught-on), Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos has been a rampant success and spawned numerous participants. Since I'm going through one of my bi-annual Lovecraft phases (you should come round, we have t-shirts), I wonder if this might be the time to commence a discussion of the many pastiches of Derleth, Lumley and others. Unlike the originals, they'll always be more of these to mock.

To commence, I've only read The Burrowers Beneath, by Brian Lumley, and The Survivor and Others, by Derleth.

Lumley's novel has a certain something. It's not very scary, nor disturbing, but there are a number of episodes (the appearance of the dead man on the boat, the description of the mines, the attack on the car) that really stick in the mind. It was the first bit of anything Lovecraft-related I ever read, and it fed my imagination thoroughly. Lumley had a very different voice from Lovecraft, and used an epistolical style to tell a much faster-moving, more action-oriented story.

Derleth's reworkings of unfinished short-stories (or so says the dust-jacket, but can it be trusted?) are quite clear and entertaining, but they lack a certain something. I think this can be pinned on the fact that Lovecraft's voice was an important part of his stories, creating an atmosphere that would have been ridiculous in anything else. Derleth is trying to tell straight-up Lovecraft (unlike Lumley) in what is clearly an imitation of the original voice. It may just be me, but it comes-off as a little hollow.

That said, I really like the Gabled Window.

So, opinons? Thoughts? Recommendations?

[I, Brian]

I definitely agree that the following authors simply haven't been able to faithfully recreate that Lovecraft mood.

Quite possibly this is due to the manner of the man that Lovecraft was anyway - his stories seem so often focussed on the lonely brooding protagonist, facing out into depths of darkness that can only hide horror and sacrifice.

I believe that Lovecraft suffered a rare blood disorder that meant he was unable to properly regulate his own body temperature, and thus was housebound for a great deal of his life - which when you then juxtapose with stories such as "Haunter of the Dark" and "The Thing on the Doorstep", almost suggest a strong autobiographical exploration in his dark musings.

I don't seem to recall Lovecraft stories moving from location to location in a theatre of scenarios, as like Lumley tried to do - possibly because travelling by various modes and to various places was beyond Lovecraft's own experiences. Therefore when he writes of far-off places, he's doing so from the perspective of someone who can only read of these places, rather than experience some degree of travel towards them.

Burrowers Beneath I found to be a general okay romp, but it still somehow left the impression of someone trying to force the Cthulhu mythos into some kind of mainstream novel format for today, which means that perhaps some elements didn't work so great as others.

As for Derleth - perhaps I'm mistaken, but the impression I'm left with is one who, at best, tries to imitate Lovecraft, but fails because he simply lacks any degree of the same inward looking self-brooding lonely sense of horror that Lovecraft relished in.

I'm sure I've read an anthology of other works derivative of the Cthulhu Mythos, but it was some time ago - but, again, there seemed that key core ingredient missing.

2c, to stand to be corrected.

[knivesout]

Here's the thing with Derleth's pastiches - they're predictable and repetitive. They lack the hyper charged meoldrama of HPL's overblown, but effective style (although Derleth has a nice touch with scenery decsriptions). They're Mythos Lite, for the confirmed fan only. Much like with the many Conan pastiches over the years, the replicas may have a certain sizzle of their own, but the steak's still in the original.

[fungi from Yuggoth]

I've been none too keen on the various pastiches set in the Cthulhu mythos. Ironically, I've found the more accurate pastiches to reside in the spoof depratment, such as Pickman's Modem. There are also a number of authors not writing in the Mythos who have very accurately captured Lovecraft's style, Thomas Ligotti being one that springs to mind. Clark Ashton Smith wrote some excellent Lovecraftian fiction (at a time when that phrase wasn't even coined). Tales such as The Nameless Offspring and Return of the Sorceror could have been written by Lovecraft; indeed I would even go so far as to say that CAS was a major influence in honing HP's style.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by fungi from Yuggoth

I've been none too keen on the various pastiches set in the Cthulhu mythos. Ironically, I've found the more accurate pastiches to reside in the spoof depratment, such as Pickman's Modem. There are also a number of authors not writing in the Mythos who have very accurately captured Lovecraft's style, Thomas Ligotti being one that springs to mind. Clark Ashton Smith wrote some excellent Lovecraftian fiction (at a time when that phrase wasn't even coined). Tales such as The Nameless Offspring and Return of the Sorceror could have been written by Lovecraft; indeed I would even go so far as to say that CAS was a major influence in honing HP's style.

I'm not sure how much CAS had to do with honing HPL's style; by the time Smith started writing stories, Lovecraft was over half-way through his career. But he did influence him (CAS and Donald Wandrei, with the "Sonnets for the Midnight Hours") on poetry, making Lovecraft's last poetic attempts much less in the 18th-century mode, more contemporary and therefore more able to address a modern sensibility. Some influence was there, but I think it was more in incidentals rather than style.

As for Derleth's pastiches, especially the "posthumous collaborations", as they've been called, with the exception of The Lurker at the Threshold, which has some fragments (adding up to about 1200 words), and one other tale ("The Ancestor", I think; it's been a while since I looked into this), most of the writing is Derleth's. The only other exception is "The Lamp of Alhazred", which doesn't really fit with the Mythos, but is a rather poignant homage to HPL, and includes large sections of Lovecraft's letters to Derleth in the story.

Though I enjoy many of the mythos tales by other writers, for various reasons, I must be honest and say that the majority of them are simply fannish at best, and not particularly worthwhile unless you're a die-hard mythos fan. A few writers (Ligotti has been mentioned, and I concur) have captured that feel, but I think that's because they simply are able to tap into their own experience of nightmare combined with reality; and they don't try to force it into a Lovecraftian mode, it just happens that (at most) they're influenced by him (sometimes unconsciously).

For my money, the best pastiches would contain the following:

"Black Man with a Horn", "Children of the City", and The Ceremonies (more Machenian, but definitely Lovecraftian elements) and the original story from which that novel came, "The Events at Poroth Farm", all by T. E. D. Klein;

Dagon and "The Adder" by Fred Chappell;

"The Barrens", by F. Paul Wilson;

"Lord of the Land", by Gene Wolfe;

"24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai", by Roger Zelazny;

"The Terror from the Depths" and "A Bit of the Dark World", by Fritz Leiber;

and scattered pieces by Ramsey Campbell.

There are others that are worth looking into, but their titles escape me at the moment. I'll post any others that I think worth looking at. The problem with most mythos tales is that they either take Derleth's cosmology, which is totally alien to HPL's point of view, or concentrate on the stylistic peculiarities of Lovecraft, without capturing the feel of the thing; as Bloch once put it, they "strike the notes, but miss the music", or something to that effect. But now and again one still runs into a piece that is surprisingly good, and that HPL would have been proud to have inspired.

[j. d. worthington]

I also should mention the stories of W. H. Pugmire in Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts (Delirium Books) and an upcoming volume from Hippocampus Press, The Fungal Stain, due out this Fall. He is one Lovecraftian pastichist who has even earned some praise from S. T. Joshi, who is almost uniformly negative about such things.

[j. d. worthington]

Ah, yes, and the note on the Bram Stoker awards reminded me: Nick Mamatas' novel, which combines, if you believe it, the mythos with such beats as Kerouac, Cassady and William S. Burroughs. (Then again, given their somewhat nihilistic philosophy, it might go together rather well at that.) I've not read it, but I've run into some favorable comment from people; my copy came in the mail just a couple of days ago. If I can get to it, I'll let you know.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I also should mention the stories of W. H. Pugmire in Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts (Delirium Books) and an upcoming volume from Hippocampus Press, The Fungal Stain, due out this Fall. He is one Lovecraftian pastichist who has even earned some praise from S. T. Joshi, who is almost uniformly negative about such things.

HMMM..praise from Joshi you say, sounds like it might be worth checking out. As a rule I tend to avoid pastiche as nothing genrally equals or betters the original.

[Nesacat]

I first started reading pastiches after having devoured all that Lovecraft had done on his own and because I was curious about how widespread his influence was. Some are admittedly mediocre or even downright bad and yes, much of Derleth is predictable and repetitive. And I did not like that he had this need to somehow organise the Elder Gods, turning them into elementals and such like, since it did not always make sense. For instance Cthulhu became a water elemental although his prison is water. However Derleth wrote The Lurker on the Threshold which offers Ithaqua the Wind Walker and for that I appreciate him.

But some others have done good work within Lovecraft's world and added to it's richness. I personally like Brian Lumley's Titus Crow books probably because he didn't try to imitate Lovecraft's rather singular style.

Clark Ashton Smith has done some excellent work and his stories do feel as if they could have been written by Lovecraft. I also rather liked a book called Shadow's Bend by David Barbour. It's rather like Gahan Wilson's H.P.L only much, much darker and more sombre.

Others that have been particularly alluring and have the same 'creep factor' are The Barrens by F. Paul Wilson; The Adder by Fred Chappell; The Unthinkable by Bruce Sterling; The Last Feast of Harlequin by Thomas Ligotti; 24 Views of Mt. Fuji by Hokusai by Roger Zelazny; On the Slab by Harlan Ellison; H.P.L by Gahan Wilson and Love's Eldritch Ichor by Esther M Friesner.

Ted Klein's Black Man With A Horn is a wonderful tale but, for me at least, the geographical inaccuracies really killed the story. I'll be the first to jump up and down cheer if some small of Lovecraft's world was to be found where I lived but this was so wrong it became laughable and very much spoilt a really atmospheric story.

[Nesacat]

I'm sorry about the double post. Someday I'll manage to get all my thoughts in order and together before posting.

I don't know if any of these can rightly be called a pastiche. Each of them works with much that is factual in Lovectaft's, Robert E Howard's and Clark Ashton Smith's lives. They've just given different reasons for those facts.

First there's H.P.L. the short story by Gahan Wilson and I believe that Wilson has managed to sustain Lovecraft's antiquated and baroque style. There is the same love here for the old words that Lovecraft was fond of.

Here Lovecraft and an undead Clark Ashton Smith carry out sacrifices to the old ones in return for longevity. I liked his description of Lovecraft's home and life and the end of the story was a very touching tribute to a man who'd created an enduring mythology.

Wilson in this tale also put an amusing and playful spin on Lovecraft and his writings.

Then there is Shadow's Bend by David Barbour & Richard Raleigh. We know that Robert E Howard and Lovecraft corresponded avidly but never actually met. Howard, despondent over his mother's death, committed suicide in 1936, while Lovecraft died of cancer in 1937. In this book they do meet. It's 1935 and Lovecraft journeys from Providence to Cross Plains, Texas, for an unannounced visit to Howard.

Lovecraft has trekked to Texas out of desperation. He has come into possession of an ancient Native American artifact, a kachina doll. Carved on the kachina is the unmistakable visage of Cthulhu. But Cthulhu is just a creature Lovecraft made up, one of the pantheon of imaginary cosmic horrors that populate his stories. Or so he thought.

Cthulhu, it seems, is real, and his minions - the faceless, rubbery Night Gaunts that plagued Lovecraft's childhood nightmares - have entered the waking world to pursue Lovecraft, recover the kachina and unleash whatever eldritch horror Cthulhu has planned. Lovecraft convinces Howard to accompany him to California to visit Clark Ashton Smith, who has found what seems to be a fragmentary translation of the dreaded Necronomicon, which may hold the key to destroying the kachina and keeping the Night Gaunts at bay.

Though reluctant to leave his dying mother, Howard joins Lovecraft, and the two head west in Howard's beat-up '31 Chevy. Along the way they pick up a passenger, Glory McKenna, a winsome young lady with a scandal-tainted past. Neither Howard nor Lovecraft has been too successful with the ladies, and Glory's presence stirs almost as much unease as the pursuing Night Gaunts.

The book works very much with facts with regards to the lives of Lovecraft and Howard and what they wrote. The writers have just given the facts different reasons. Here we have the idea that the Elder Gods are real and are a threat to mankind. That Lovecraft in the end wrote because there was a need to keep the memory of these things alive so that somewhere, someone would understand and be ale to do something when the need arose.

It's not a book with a happy ending as it ends with the death of both Lovecraft and Howard. Lovecraft does dies of cancer but the novel blames the illness on malign emanations from the kachina. The book is sombre and sinister and in keeping with Lovecraft's own style of writing and it was a pleasure to see the interraction between Lovecraft and Howard. Men who were radically different but who were also good friends. I'd always wondered what it would have been like if they'd met and this book provides some answers.

The last one is the graphic novel entitled Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff and Keith Giffen. Again the writers work with facts from Lovecraft's life. The fact that his father died in an asylum, that his mother used to dress him in girl's clothes, the influence of his grandfather, his writing, his marriage to and subsequent divorce from Sonia, the death of his mother also in an asylum, his solitary life in Providence, even his love of ice cream and collaboration with Houdini.

All the facts are accurate but again different reasons are given for their existence. Winfield Lovecraft is driven insane by a book he has, the Necronomicon. The young Howard find the book and prevents his mother from destroying it. It is the horrors unleashed by the book, which kill his grandfather. The book leads Lovecraft to Arkham and gives him the impetus to write the stories he does.

And ultimately it is this knowledge of another world within ours that destroys his marriage. He chooses to remain alone in Providence with the knowledge of all these horrors, writing tales that will keep their memory alive in the minds of those who read them. It's a very surreal graphic novel filled with wonderful watercolour art that bleeds and blends from frame to frame.

In the end, I think Lovecraft would have smiled and perhaps even approved if he'd read any of these.

[j. d. worthington]

Hey, Nesa: I'd stayed away from Shadow's Bend for various reasons, but this definitely makes me want to take a look. Haven't yet read, though I've heard about, the graphic novel ... yet another voice I've learned to respect coming out in favor of it; after the various talks we've had on the subject, I'm inclined to more than trust your critical judgment on this sort of story... you have a somewhat different perspective than I think most would, but it's always valid and thoughtful.

Thanks for giving such a run-down on these, as it's likely to nudge me into actually looking up the latter two (I've read Wilson's story and agree wholeheartedly: a beautiful tribute it is, indeed).

For a variant history on HPL and company, you might also look up a copy of Richard A. Lupoff's Lovecraft's Book, which was published back in 1985. It was, as would have amused HPL, issued as a book dealing with a lost episode in his life, the facts of which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act... and it's quite a lively account. Some of the details are off, but it's a very entertaining book and, for a Lovecraft fan, very interesting.

Oh, and I agree... HPL would have been delighted. Bemused why so many people thought him worth the effort, but definitely delighted.

[Nesacat]

Finished Donald Tyson's Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred and I rather with I'd not read it at all; though some of the prose was lyrical and quite lovely.

The problem begins with Tyson being labelled as the author and not the translator of the Necronomicon and there's nothing to explain how this English language edition came into being either. This might have given the book some scholarly credibility.

Each of the short chapters covers an episode in the wanderings of Alhazred as he pieces together the lore of the Old Ones. It's all very detailed and worked out.

Tyson embeds paraphrases of Lovecraft's Necronomicon passages within his text, though not always seamlessly. In one place he has Alhazred ask (from 'The Dunwich Horror') what man knows Kadath, but in another chapter actually goes there and experiences it! If Randolph Carter knew how easy it was to get to Kadath, he would never have needed the Dream-Quest!

My biggest problem is this. In Lovecraft, the Necronomicon is not an explicit guide to the Old Ones, but instead contains 'terrible hints' which only the most adept can understand. Here, everything is made explicit.



Here's Lovecraft's description of the dread tome's references to Cthulhu and his cult: "No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose."



And Tyson:

Great Cthulhu is ever a warrior god, and of all the Old Ones he is the most terrible… It was he who together with his star spawn that defeated the Elder Things… He uses its power to send forth to men who are susceptible to his influence the command that they release the seals that bind his tomb… The color of his skin is green mingled with gray…


There follows a description of how and when Cthulhu will rise from his watery tomb. Other chapters do the same for the other Gods and places such as Leng and Irem and Kadath.



It lacks the sense of cosmic dread that animates Lovecraft's horror. In this work, there is never a sense of horror or the terrifying otherness of the Old Ones, only a bestiary of vaguely powerful beings conforming roughly to the frequently mentioned Hebraic and Christian mythologies. Tyson even obviously borrows from Hindu mythology, which was when I finally gave up on the book.



Having Shub Niggurath equated to Kali and the Thugee cult was the straw that broke the cat's back, especially since the references were so blatantly obvious.

[j. d. worthington]

Sorry you were disappointed with this one, Nesa... As I've said elsewhere, it tends to suffer from the same problem that nearly all occultish tomes do... overexplication, which leeches the thing of its emotional power and leaves it flaccid as a dead cuttlefish. Yes, the prose is quite lovely in places, but, as Bloch said about Derleth: "He played the notes, but he missed the music."

If you want to see something a bit more successful, try James Blish's "More Light"... he gives a rendition of the play The King in Yellow and, I think, hits just the right note; not only does he leave the final outcome unresolved, but he opens it on the sort of absurd note such a play would in actuality have, and gets progressively darker, but only with hints of the cosmic terrors represented by the symbols used by Chambers: Carcosa, the Pallid Mask, the Phantom of Truth, etc. Even though the story itself is done with a light tone, and can be taken as ironic, I find that it works both as that and on a truly eerily evocative level.

On the Necronomicon, as you've read Lovecraft's letters (if I remember correctly), you know that he was extremely dubious about anyone being able to pull off a full Necronomicon, knowing that it was indeed the shadowiness of the whole that made it work so well. Perhaps it could be done, but it would likely take a lifetime to do it properly, written in that sort of vague, allusive (and elusive) style, and would have to be done, and redone, and revised and re-revised in order to maintain that delicate touch of the passages quoted by HPL and Smith (who also managed to do a fairly good job of evoking that sense of dread in the few passages he quoted). So far, all we've had is, at best, dreary rehashes of older occultish gobbledygook, or things that occasionally hit the proper note, but were in the end overly explicative and became mundane.

[Nesacat]

The prose was well written in many places and I'd thought that Tyson, being himself a student of the occult, would have done a better job of penning this tale.

I think part of the problem for me at least is having grown up with a great love for myth from all over the world and I've always had a special fondness for writers who have created tomes around which their tales revolve. It makes the tales more 'true' somehow and The Necronomicon is one of those.

The hint and suggestions offered by Lovecraft about THE book and the Elder Gods only served to make them much, more alluring and the reader increasingly curious and desirous of reading more. Tyson's book was akin to having a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. He explained too much that should not have been explained. And he made mundane that which had been mysterious and far larger than any life imaginable.

[j. d. worthington]

Thought I'd note, for the members who may be in the area and are interested in writers of pastiche, that there's to be a reading by R. Nemo Hill of his poetic piece, The Strange Music of Erich Zann, in New York on the 30th of October (I'd have announced this sooner, but just found out about it myself):

The Strange Music of Erich Zann by R. Nemo Hill - Hippocampus Press

I've got the Hippocampus Press book and disc of this ... it's an interesting modern rendering of the Zann story, though there is nothing particularly new in the tale itself; the difference lies in the form and the expansion of the piece therefrom (and a change in emphasis of certain themes because of that). However, for anyone interested, the information can be accessed through the above link.

(If anyone does go, I'd like to hear how it went, if you don't mind....)