Thoughts by Chrispy

I had time to read a little this morning,and reflect. Most modern historical biographies indicate that much of a person's life is shaped by incidents in childhood. Not all incidents, but those that imprint. The ones remembered, rehearsed by the individual throughout their life, and thus colors their life.

Some of that is refelcted in Mr. deCamp's and Mr. Joshi's biographies, and in the biographical essays by many who have studied Lovecraft. Some of it, I believe, isn't yet.

Lovecraft had a number of mysterious maladies that have been somewhat low profiled - as many individuals in society experience even today. Chronic fatique syndromes, stress syndromes, depression, obesity, and numerous other maladies that are assumed by others to be "choices" and thus easily dismissed or marginalized control individula behavior, outlook, and writing - of those who write. More and more these things that are assumed to be "nature and nurture" or "heredity and environment" are influenced by the most amazing, and sub-microscopic parasites. We had no idea until recently! Prions, and so forth, can override and command our very DNA.

I'm not saying that HPL had these issues, but he had SOME issues.

As such, I've started a chronological survey of his 1923-1925 period of time, and tracking him day by day based on his letters and writings.

One pattern I see is that nearly simultaneoulsy with meeting Mr. Eddy he was quickly in association with Weird Tales and Harry Houdini. During this same period, he became entranced with discovering more about his Providence environment - walking to areas he'd never seen before, and reading ancient chronicles he'd never seen before. He was exposed to much folk lore - some of it ghostly and fortean. His displacement to New York also was significant. He was on input overload, and at the same time had many maladies, and outbursts of blatant racism, ethnicism, and Aryanism - much of it sheer nonsense and abstracted.

Chrispy has begun to sketch out some chronological data and I'm going to try to coordinate it with specific trends: outbursts in his letters, illnesses, weight gain or loss, bouts of restlessness and sleep jags, and other issues that seem notable in his letters.

I'll keep you posted as I get things in a readable format!

Happy New Year and thank YOU for reading. :)