interlude

Today: Not about Lovecraft, but still funny ...

“Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” Attributed to Jack Benny.

Taking back the blog!

Sort of. Mr. Lovecraft has had this blog for many years now. But he and I must make a new deal - from time to time, Chrispy will hold center court.

News: Status of my proposed books. I am 2/3 of the way through the tentatively titled "Lovecraft's Grandfather: The Business Life of Whipple Van Buren Phillips". It is not peer reviewed, but I have showed it to one or two people. Their feedback, believe it or not, was that it was worthy of publication (I have a publisher if I finish by the way) and if I proceed to make it scholarly, I had flubbed the footnote formats badly. It has been many years (decades) since college term papers, so I admit I am very rusty. I am a scientist, but I am not an historian, nor a biographer, so I am learning new skills in order to attempt this. Wish Chrispy luck.

I am completed with "Young Lovecraft" to mid 1892. It is not to my satisfaction, but it certainly shows that what has been said about Lovecraft's first 2 years has much more to be stated. I can never praise Mr Faig enough, but by others these critical first two years have been given short shrift especially in light of new primary documents that have come to light on Miss Guiney, the Auburndale, MA. speculative real estate development between 1888 and 1893, and Winfield's expansive sales trips per his hotel announcements.

Don't hold your breath. Things could go south on these books. I am currently 55 years old, and this is very much a part time development that has to fit my very limited time. I have determined that if I do publish, it will most certainly not be for financial gain - unlike other Lovecraft endeavors. The sheer lack of interest in these subjects (perhaps 2,000 people out of 7 billion?) means that this is a labor of personal interest and for scholarship, though I hope some money might eventually be made and given to some charity or other. It is payment to Mr Lovecraft for the hours of entertainment he has given me since 2002.

What else is Chrispy doing?

If you don't see me on Facebook, or playing some Zynga game (curse you psychologist-demons of Zynga) that meas I am at work, church, or blogging over at Miskatonic books. I am rapidly losing touch with my old T-12 gang and old Horror Mall friends who are deeply into their own endeavors in and out of horror. I wish them good luck!

I am not writing horror as much as I used to, and I already see that my skills are rusting. So I may start up again. I have dozens of unfinished projects that would take me into my old age if I choose.

I feel toward our US government much as I do toward the governors of Kentucky. Each election I say, "How can we get worse candidates than these? How can any governor be this bad?" Yet I have watched wacky governors and presidents (of both parties) enrich themselves and their friends, while doing nothing to stop inevitable disaster. All I can say is I suppose we are getting what we deserve, and I will continue to complain, but expect no better.

This leads me to my next diatribe. I am no fan of Richard Dawkins. Today, I saw that he had his own pontificating windbaggish lambast of America, Texas, Republicans, and specifically governor Perry. Perry was clearly baiting political targets, and Dawkins fell for the bait, though one wonders why? He seems not to "have a dog in the hunt" in American politics, but loses little opportunity to sell his books. Or should I say one panderer should recognize another?

Ivory towerists never see the real populist reasons for things. It has been a while since I took biology, thank you, and I did major in chemistry, but if I recall Darwin's ideas, they were specifically stated in a way that I might paraphrase: When natural environments change they cause biological organisms to rapidly adapt to them.

I know almost no creationist, scientist, molecular biologist, or even CSISCOP's to object to this. We see it every day in every way, particularly with new dog breeds and Franken-crops. However, there is much to object to the catch-all term 'evolution', particularly as usurped and practiced by the British elites, Nazis, American medical staffs, and others who proposed social-Darwinism for political and elitist gain. Why one must denigrate people of faith - Buddhist, Muslim, or Christian for the sake of selling books on a THEORY I don't understand.

There are millions of scientists and engineers who are people of faith and practitioners of hope, love, and charity. They seem not to have an issue with living their lives peacefully, and do not get in the face of their brothers and sisters, grind axes, or descend to calling names. If only ivory towerists would do the same. And this should apply to name-callers on either side of this issue.

Lastly, what is wrong with horror?

I can sort of summarize my feelings a few ways. First, high expectations. We might think a return to the Stephen King/Anne Rice days is normal. THAT was the aberration. We are in a very normal sales volume for horror based on 20th century norms.

We insist of horror being in novel form. Horror is best practiced as short story. So what happened? Corporations pay by the word for some insane reason, so today's writers pad their works to get maximum gain for the least effort. They must type a minimum of three novels a year to maintain their B-list rankings, and be able to pay bills. Or they must hire assistants to type their books form outlines they provide and hope the imitations are sufficient to maintain their minimal fan base.

Please, bring back short story horror and pay a living wage to writers for it.

Alas, I fear that the days of Poe and Lovecraft writing a few short stories of quality each year, or even Charles Schultz doing every word, every line, every drawing, and every ink is as passe as, well, playing defense or the two-point shot in basketball.

Horror is corporate, and corporations - this may come as a big surprise - maximize profits at the expense of the least amount of outlay to employees. Karl Marx had the wrong solution, but he stated the problem correctly. Profit is good, but greed is bad, and absolute greed corrupts absolutely and is what we have today.

This is precisely the battle between E Hoffman Price and H P Lovecraft. Price stated that only in writing was the amateur held up as better than the professional. Lovecraft countered that selling stories for only money will always end up in mediocre work and hack work. They talked past one another, and neither made very much money. The middle ground ends up one of two ways. Very lucky talented writers write what they want and the audience finds them and supports them. Very unlucky talented writers end up poor and their stories in the garbage after they die.

I will guarantee there are wonderful, talented, horror writers you have never read because they did not attract a corporate backer, were unable to advance through the hurdles placed before them, and gave up. Or they chose to write something else to pay bills - say like Max Brand writing westerns, or Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes. I guess that is back to natural selection.

Horror is a two-way street. You must meet it half-way. We have the worst economy in our lives, and the real unemployment is closer to 20%, and we have no confidence in anyone. We have to stop the merry-go-round and break the cycle of mistrust. If you are lucky enough to have a job, and inspired enough to enjoy horror, find a wayward writer and support that person. Take a chance on someone new. Buy their book, or support a trustworthy publisher (there are a few left) who is trying to help new talent. Do your homework, and while you may purchase a few duds, you will find a writer who resonates with you in the independent press.

OK, Mr Lovecraft, thank you for letting me have these few minutes on the HPL blog.

Science Fiction

Here is an image (click to expand) of Google Insight's tracking of the term science fiction. There is a notable decline in interest in the term. Astonishingly, Northwest Africa seems to rate high in searches for the term.

Chrispy is back !

2,795 blog posts.

I had to take a break, my dear readers. Not that I rested, oh no. But I have recently been flooded with new items from many good people, and it is time to start setting them down for each of you to review.

I am continuing to write on a Whipple V. Phillips biography, and a lengthy (multi-year?) new biography of Young Lovecraft (pre-1914). There has been so much new material I've found, I feel that it is worthy of an endeavor. Oh, if I only live long enough to finish it!

OK, starting tomorrow and following, I will begin to give you new information on items that have been forwarded to me. If you are one of those, I will get it up as soon as I am physically able to do so.

Onward ...

Borders: Not Quite R.I.P.

I have to say I frequented Borders a lot. It took me a long while to forgive them for eviscerating our local honored bookstore, Hawley Cooke, but I finally did.

For nearly 2 years I would carry my 30% off coupon and shop - finding almost nothing to buy. Their horror section was weak on Lovecraft, and their shelvers often could not tell Romance from Horror from Harry Potter from Science Fiction. The saving grace was that they carried Dorcester's (R.I.P. !) books of my favorite B-listers*, but usually it was shelves crammed with Kalems - King, Koontz, Lumley, Matheson.

Well, Saturday (I am typing this Saturday afternoon) it was wall-to-wall people at the 20-40% off sale.

I had already staked out my claim having absolutely no fear that anyone would even go to my cob-webbed sections. I grabbed a Zombie book with a Brian Keene story in it. That one copy of that book had sat unmolested by anyone for about 6 weeks. Then I went over and got a 2008 paperback by Steve Alten - again untouched for weeks.

I picked up a slightly handled $25 !!! book on worn-out vampire stories. There was one by Manly Wellman I didn't recall, but not for $25, thank you. I may actually have it somewhere, anyway. The rest are very familiar to anyone with a small antiquarian vampire selection.

It annoyed me that H. P. Lovecraft was plastered on the cover as a "features and benefits" point-of-sale lure. It was, of course, The Hound.

Instead, I took advantage of the 40% off magazine sale, and grabbed Famous Monsters, and Movie Monsters - issues which I usually don't collect - but if I ever needed one, I'm sure pal Jeff Barnes could read one over the phone from his collection. Still, 40% off ignited me to buy them this time.

Asimov and Analog seemed to have weak selections this time, not even an Allen Steele story. I passed. I did get Astronomy, as it discussed the Nashville astronomer of the late 19th century, and I thought I could reference it in my blog, and later in my Young Lovecraft book. HPL could have been an astronomer, but when he was crushed by fate in 1908, he just couldn't rebound enough.

Well karma. The big box mega-stores killed the little guys, and now e-books and bigger box stores (like Sam's Club) are killing Borders and BN. Me? More and more I am throwing in the towel, and embracing small Indie horror. For once, HPL may have been right. I really, really enjoy good amateur and entry-level-author horror.

Well, good luck Borders. I hope you make it.
____

Who are my very favorite Dorcester B-listers? Ed Lee, Gary Braunbeck, Brian Keene, Al Sarantonio, and Ray Garton. No offense to anyone else, as I read a lot - read the blog and you will see many, many names listed. I used to do lots of reviews at Horror Mall's forum before it was pulled.

Lovecraft's Legacy

This is a blog, and not a book, so it is hard to do a coherent narrative.

Overall, I hope the last 2700+ posts show that Lovecraft's life had a pattern. In about 1911, after a near-death disease, he gave up any efforts at a career in science. He hung out with a few friends growing more politically morose. In 1914, he happened across amateur journalism, and he took to it - as we say in Kentucky - like a hog to slop.

Along the way, he created in a master-stroke with Dagon, thus creating the "weird tale". He spent the rest of his life perfecting it, and advocating to his small clutch of followers how it might be best done.

However, by as early as 1933, a young guard was forming and the new wave in fantasy fiction was going to be scientifiction. At first it dredged up some mix of Burroughs, Verne, and Wells pandering to "ray guns and babes" readers. Between 1933 and 1937, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith took it on the chin as they were the older of the writers (Robert Howard died in 1936) of Weird Tales, and while Smith wavered trying to fit into the new mold, Lovecraft waded in with verve defending the genre he essentially created. Still, one by one, his followers deserted to be published (or they would have perished) in the new style pulp magazines.

His death in 1937 should have been the end of his legacy. Eventually someone would have found a few of his old works, much like they did Melville in the 1920's, and brought them back.

However, the old gent of Providence was a kind man and his friends loved him. They rallied, and Barlow, Wandrei, and Derleth managed to salvage virtually all of his work from the dust bin.

First, Barlow thought he was "in", but with the influence of Smith and Long, Derleth and Wandrei circled the wagons and took most of the efforts to preserve Lovecraft. Then, Derleth's personality took hold, and it became a one man show.

Historians debate whether Lovecraft would have survived without Derleth. It will never be settled, but Chrispy will weigh in with a simple - No. There was absolutely no one with incentive enough, desire enough, or will power enough (and God, did Derleth have will power) to fixate on Lovecraft and push him into the history books. As Paul was to Jesus, Derleth was to Lovecraft.

Even so, and even with a panoply of paperback books in the 1960's, Lovecraft might have been a mere marginal cult figure. Cthulhu might be cool, but he was no Conan. Howard had a gift of story telling, and it made it easy for the Sword and Sorcery guys - de Camp, Carter, etc. Lovecraft purposely separated story from protagonist.

Derleth tried to repair that in his bullish way when he added to the Mythos, much as Paul pushed the Cross and less the Prophet. It didn't seem to work. Much as Peter to Paul, purists rejected the Derleth duality and pantheon by wanting to scalp him, and everyone outside wondered what all the fuss was about. Yawn.

When Derleth died in 1971, it might again have been the end of Lovecraft. Several reminisce that even in school or college, they rarely came across anyone else who knew what a Lovecraft was. Chrispy certainly didn't (undergrad - 1974-1979). This was despite hundreds of thousands of Lovecraft and Lovecraft-included paperbacks in circulation.

A young man, Mr. S T Joshi and his friends, decided to do something about that, and the second wave of Lovecraft exploded. Instead of spending all the energy to preserve Lovecraft, as Derleth had, they moved to solidifying the historic and literary-critical position of HPL. This was certainly not easy to do for a man who was essentially a pulp writer with no significant popular characters.

In the late 20th century, the public fixated on strong heroic characters. Fleming's James Bond was iconic. Sherlock Holmes and Dracula were constantly reinvented. The West, and especially America, became video-centric, and as atention-focused as a moth to a flame.

After all these posts, I think Chrispy can finally figure out how the "golden age" of Lovecraft became main-stream. Vincent Starett said it long ago, HPL was his greatest, strangest creation. Virtually the entire efforts of Lovecraft fans has been to promote the work by promoting the man - Lovecraft as character.

Now it is the 21st century. Right before our eyes, the entire world is changing as radically as it did in the 1960's, and few are alive now that remember what it was like then. (I do, though I was a child). We are fast moving from a 20th century video-centric world to a socialized-network world. What does that even mean? I don't know, but ask Egypt and the Middle East. It is a new world.

Lovecraft is poised to either go global, or become marginalized. He may also become morphed into an unrecognizable icon as HPLoitation is set to occur. Already it has become difficult to tell Fortean from Lovecraftian, and occultists have reengineered through reinterpretation much of HPL's New York years.

Chrispy has spent several years now dredging up images and elements from the period between Whipple van Buren's rise in the 1850's through the early 21st century. That's 150 years we've slogged through together. It has been a helluva ride, folks.

Along the way, I've tried to use the new tools available to trace the Lovecraft trajectory, and bring out as many of the noble researcher-fans that impacted that trajectory by their own egos and their own agendas. Yet, in the scheme of things, perhaps no more than 1,000 "names" and 10,000 lesser-known or unnamed collectors were involved. We actually can categorize and index virtually everyone involved in this thing. It would be a simple computer program to model. Maybe I am a single datum, too.

Remember, the world was literally a much smaller - less populated - place previously. With pushing 7 BILLION people, 90% who have been alive less than 20 years, it is a world we have never seen before.

In those mouldy oldy days, a handful of people frequently made a huge impact on societal sub-cultures, Lovecraft's legacy included. It happeened frequently.

Not to take anything away from the energy of Derleth, but it was far easier for Derleth to seize Lovecraft's work and promote it nationally and internationally through a small number of editors and colleagues, than say, someone to do the same thing today for a Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994).

Thus we summarize what has went on before in the hundreds of small essays and blog posts I've done.

Now, onward to December !

2,750 !!

Moving our way to 3,000 !
Stay tuned for more Lovecraft fun.

State of Lovecraft Studies

OK, finally Chrispy gets controversial.

What is the state of Lovecraft studies?

Not where you think it is.

It has always been fueled by amateur hobbyists, and that has not changed.

In generation 0, HPL's friends carried his life's work and story onwards from 1937 through the advent and evolution of the scientifiction age. However, those first-hand disciples (apostles?) only knew mostly what HPL knew and what he told them. And wow, was HPL ever cagey. He was classic Victorian (even though he was more of an Edwardian): He preserved the dignity of the Phillips clan - which meant no dirt, no juicy gossip, avoid newspapers like a plague. Some stuff was hid from him, and others was filtered through what I cann "the Phillips family mythology". So those heroes of the faith, Long, Wandrei, Bloch, Barlow, Smith, Derleth, and so forth built their literary career and preserved the weird tales and legend of Lovecraft.

In generations 1 and 2 through the late 1960's, Lovecraft became a cultish figure and a cottage industry. Collectors preserved lots of godies at ever increasing price tags. Indie presses sprang up and made a few dollars, al least enough to keep the doors open. In a few cases, as with Arkham Books and maybe Necronomicon and Hippocampus, the owners were able to have a minimal salary and were full time. Otherwise, hobbyists came and went trying to preserve the weird tale, print cutting edge horror, and existed mostly in magazine and chapbook formats. They were small press runs and pretty hard to find once they wnet out of print. Finding these became easier with Ebay, but it is kind of pricey to get them. Be prepared to shell out a few thousand dollars just to collect a solid, but minimal collection. (Take it from Chrispy who has tried.)

There are still lots of small press avenues to get Lovecraft stories, but fewer places to get historical information. Name authors, whom I certainly respect, publish maybe a hundred or so articles a year - usually in Hippocampus sponsored venues. A lot of these were referreed in the Esoteric Order of Dagon circulars. Of that total, maybe a dozen are historically revelatory and will eventually end up digetsed in a new mass paperback of Lovecraft stories as footnotes, or a decade or two from now in some new updated biography.

Chrispy has done his best to accellerate that process with the HPL blog.

Not only have I taken full advantage of new rapid search algorithms to do archaeology on Lovecraft and his era, but I post it. I suppose if I counted, among the 2700 posts todate at least 500 posts have absolutely new, previosuly unknown, and startling items about HPL and his family.

• Lovecraft's school mates and neighbors were far more influential than expected.
• Whipple Phillips business career was very robust from timber, coal, zinc, gold, granite, and iron, to gas interests, inventions, electric mail systems, irrigation, banking, real estate, and even Cuban land speculation.
• Some names of acquaintances, birthdates and at least one marriage date was wrong in popular circulated references.
• Expanded backgounds and biographies of many Lovecraft acquaintances.
  
  In addition, I receive emails that speak of other research that will soon bring new revelations.
  
• New information about the lost years of Lovecraft.
• New information on the life of Chester Munroe.
• The location and exploration of the Great Swamp of Chepatchet.
• Scandals involving members of the amateur journalism movement.
• New information on John Dunn.
• New letters from Lovecraft in 1905 and 1906.
• New exegesis on Lovecraft's stories.
  
  Sadly, there is almost no means for this information to get to other fans, since there is no easy medium to disseminate it.



I hope that soon there will be more electronic media that will adapt to getting historical research out to Lovecraft fans. A flood of new resources is coming at scholars, and they need to take advantage of it.

If I had my dream, it would be a collaborative encyclopeia with thousnads of researched articles on every year, and even every week of Lovecraft's life, and on every individual he ever met.

Maybe one day!

Social Media: Broken?

Chrispy thinks so.

I've been working an 8 year experiment of my own.

In the ancient days of the 1990's, Internet 0.0 was essentially text forums on specific topics. Alt Cthulhu dot com I stumbled on just as it began to slow down. It was a treasure trove of information to someone like me, a lurker, who barely knew what a Lovecraft was.

Then Internet 1.0 hit with lots of forums with visuals and avatars and flame wars. Mostly tech savvy A personalities mixed it up with seemingly more heat than light.

Internet 1.5 hit with a storm. MySpace, essentially a means to promote music groups, quickly became besieged with spam and noise. I hear it will die by June this year. Few people will notice if it does. It killed itself.

My greatest excitement was experimenting with the T-12, and learning how to write and garner reads by building whuffie. (IF you don't know what that is, sorry. Maybe later I can explain.) The end of the T-12 was painful for me and others, but you can't contain that many A personalities in one corral. Since then, most everyone has went on to capture awards, fame, and almost no fortune. That certainly applies to moi, sans an award. I don't think I shall ever win a Lovecraft award, but then I could care less about such things.

Then came Horror Mall, and Shane Staley's grand experiment. It seemed it was almost going to work. I met dozens, or maybe hundreds of people interested in horror. People were promoting themselves like crazy, and it seemed it was working - but not for Shane, sadly. He pulled the plug after he - I assume - hemorrhaged hundreds of dollars and thousands of programming hours. R.I.P.

It was killed by a little something called Internet 2.0 and Facebook. And Twitter. What's the verdict?

Twitter spawned a TV show. And it has become another techie thing. If anyone has figured out a way to make money, I don't know. I love Ray Garton's dry sense of humor in his tweets, and follow a few people, but I can't live 24/7 on tweets. It takes a special kind of person, and if that is you, then great! Many are calling for the death of Twitter by the end of the decade.

Facebook looked to have promise. It made a movie! Zynga, the their credit, figured out a way to take addictive psychology and make gaming a means of siphoning off money. By sheer will power they have not got a penny out of me. I think I am the rare person, though. Mrs. Chris has spent hundreds of hours locked up on Farmville. I've tinkered with Treasure Island, killed fish in Fishville (sorry Madame Scorpion!), and will probably get to level 2000 in Mafia Wars. Though I have no idea why I want to keep playing Mafia Wars, but ask Zynga's psychotherapy experts.

Facebook is user unfriendly. I have a page I set up, with no idea how I did it, and can't remove it. I want to set up the blog to autofeed, and after 30 or 40 tries I've essentially given up. There is almost no reason to post a real item because it is gone in 60 seconds buried by game feeds, and other traffic. No way to narrowcast that I can find.

Besides all that, Internet 2.5 is already here, and I can't fathom it. Since I don't use a $500 i-phone-droid-portatext-pad I am out of the loop. I don't have a YouTube TV channel. I don't have the time or equipment to do a podcast. How many of you do?

So, until someone invents a means for the common person to connect with people of like interests on a consistent and reliable consistency, social media remains broken.

And speaking of broken, if you are reading this (and I hope you are) I am not 100% sure that blogger isn't broken at this moment. I have set feeds on several levels that seemed to be working until recently. As soon as I noticed, I set a few new ways you can stay in touch in the margins. RSS feed me if you are interested.

I am still contemplating a move to a new platform. Don't worry, HPL and Blogger will always be here - if google allows. I also plan on going to 3000 posts which will take until at least December. That gives me plenty of time to decide something.

To Wordpress or not to Wordpress?

I think a web log is supposed to be a stream of conscious thing, at least in its original conception. So I'm just going to turn loose today.

Chrispy is thinking of finishing off his 3000th post this year, and in 2010 moving to Wordpress. Pros and Cons!

First, Blogger is speedy and easy. Wordpress is css, and I barely know html.

However, I am easily bored. A new challenge may be what I need.

On the other hand, I hate to slow down on the blogger established crew. You guys have come to depend on this.

But, I could simultaneously post on both for a while. Fran Friel did this for a long time.

Yet, the times are a changin'. Things need to be facebooked easier. Blogger is a little slow about this. Probably because Google competes with Facebook.

So, here's what I'm probably goin' to do. As you can see, above, I'm working a little with Larry and Esteban on their sites. I did some with Dark Recesses and learned quite a bit doing that gig with pals Bailey Hunter and Boyd Harris.

In mid-2010, I thought the world was going to explode with cutting edge Lovecraft sites like mine. However, it turns out, no one is as rusty and musty as Chrispy, and so onward I go blogging about Antiquarian Lovecraft stuff. Others are doing comics, movies, videos, and radio shows, but not on HPL's history. So I guess I is unique.

I do want to revive the fun of the Antiquarian Thread, and with the demise of the Horror Mall vast forum enterprise, I miss it. So, I'm talking with folks, and emailing friends, and I hope that HPLblog 1.0 will morph into HPLblog 2.0 with a vaster scope of antiquarian horror.

Most people don't know about my other interests, so I have added back the connectives at the top of the page. I actually have a Houdini blog but it does not post publicly yet. It focuses on what Houdini did between 1922 and his death in 1926, specifically timed to the interactions of Houdini, CM Eddy, Jr, and HPL. I did this because it was another planned book I never wrote.

I don't feel too bad being behind on writing books. The amount of work I do in articles and blog work probably equals three or four novels a year, and I get much more instant happiness doing the blogs and articles than I would trying to find a publisher, and sweating that I could not promote a book like I should, since I really don't travel much. Just too tied down.

The Best Card Trick Ever

Absolutely nothing to do with Lovecraft - but too good not to post.

Happy New Year

Hmm, well maybe it isn't 1891. (HPL was barely 4-1/2 months old)

Happy 2011 !

On the first 2 days you will read about a Phillips family influence rarely spoken of. My thoughts are to bring new articles of history that impacted young Lovecraft (and sometimes of older Lovecraft), and mix that with Chrispy notes. While the theme is still Mr. Lovecraft, after 2700 posts, its time that Chrispy has a few words in edgewise from time to time. After all this is a web log, and theoretically it's supposed to be about the person writing it. Heh.

If you get a little too much of my poetry, my stories, or my blah-blah-blah, and yearn for Lovecraft then use the metatags to search your favorite topic on Lovecraft.

Have a great New Year !

The New Year Draweth Nigh!

Well, Lovecraftians and followers of the blog, the days grow short.

It has been a good year, and one of many discoveries for me - and in the name of Lovecraft scholarship. I'm encouraged by the work being done - that I know of - and hope more people will email me when they can.

To those who emailed this year, THANK YOU for sharing, and allowing me to share with you.

The days of the digitally available Lovecraft is coming, so those of you who are strapped for cash and can't afford a $5,000 original Lovecraft letter keep the faith. One day it will be available on the Internet or as e-documents for scholarly pursuit.

Have a nice, and safe New Year, dear readers !

The Ghosts of Phillipses Past

I'm back from a few days of rest. It was a very quiet Christmas, just what Chrispy needed.

I also took a little time to do HPL research, and as usual uncovered some unbelievable items. I've been stunned so much, that I'm getting almost shock proof. Almost.

I uncovered a stirring memorial to Robie* Phillips that just about made me weep. I can't go into all the details right now, but suffice it to say it was a detailed eyewitness report of Robie's decline between Thanksgiving 1896 and January 1897.

It is hard for me to believe that hundreds of Lovecraft researchers missed these items, but they obviously were much more focused on Lovecraft and not his family. Those few who did care about the Phillips family, just didn't have the time and resources of instant information at one's fingertips as I have. As I stated before, I can do in one night on Google's archives what someone in the 1970's would take two weeks of vacation to do.

Google's search algorithms do not work well on the newspaper archives, unfortunately. I have to use the current reference dates made available by generous sources, and then slog through a mound of newspapers for those dates and several others on either side.

However, the theme of today's blog is "ghosts". About 8 years ago I stumbled over the name of H P Lovecraft. Who was he? Like many fans, I became obsessed with the details of his stories and life. Then something very bizarre began to happen.

Lovecraft took over my life.

At first it was a lark. People began to read. That was pretty exciting, and went well with my horror writing at the time. (I still think I turned out some very good stories and held my own with Stoker and other nominees). Then, it turned dark.

This year Lovecraft was not an obsession, I was possessed. The Phillips family, one after another, crawled inside my head and began to tell their life stories to me.

First the patriarch, Whipple Phillips laid out his business career to me in intimate and bloody detail.

Annie and Edward Gamwell were next, telling me about their beautiful wedding at 454 Angell Street, and how Gamwell slowly built up his publishing career from an obscure Brown University periodical to a Cambridge newspaper, and then collapsed into alcoholism.

Theodore Phillips senior and junior both chimed in to tell me about their life, though TWP II remains elusive and coy about how, when, and where he died. Through a kind genealogist of the Manton-Mitchell family, we compared notes and learned more about 612 Angell Street than any people have a right to know. Wow.

Lovecraft told me about his boyhood friends, their lives, their tragedies, and his own meteoric rise in astronomy - despite major illnesses - and then his collapse when he realized it would never come true. Then he had to tell me all about the Pykes and Metcalfs near 598 Angell. And how the city nearly wrecked Angell Street by widening of it. He has been quite yakkity about that kind of stuff.

And on it went even to this weekend with the intimate details of Robie Phillips death, and their subsequent trip to Moosup Valley and meeting Mrs Nancy Wood at Job D Place's home (who had just received a Tillinghast as a visitor).

Like a bizarre Dickensian drama, I have been commandeered by the ghosts of the Phillips clan, and honestly they and me have to have a sit down. I have quite a bit more of my life yet to live, and they need to chill out for a while. I can barely digest it all, much less tell you dear readers about all of it.

2011 will be about how I disseminate the massive details that I have uncovered, and blend it into what you kind correspondents have shared with me, as the Phillips and Lovecrafts and others of old Providence shared with you. It is a daunting task.

Edmund Morris just came out with the third - and last? - installment of Theodore Roosevelt's life. I can imagine what his life has been, and the sacrifices his family made for him to be rode on the Rough Rider's saddle.

Chrispy has a veritable mountain of obligations that live people are waiting upon, so sweet Phillipses, please !! you have waited a century and a half or more, can you just relax and let Chrispy work through all of this!

And you, kind blog readers, also be patient as I find the right time and conduits for this information. It is a story of drama and tears and Gilded Age drama, and Lovecraft's youth is that of a gifted boy in the Edwardian era that will cheer your heart as you root for him - despite knowing that it will all work out in the end, albeit very much differently than anyone (even he, HPL) foresaw.

Reflections on 2010

Finally, a chance to take a breath.

Chrispy has been inundated by the day job, and I had to cut back a little on the blog.

This year brought some of the current technology to the Lovecraft realm, but for the most part Lovecraft remains very soundly in the early 21 st century. A few brave souls have plunged into audio and YouTube, but it seems that MySpace and Twitter are going to begin to fade away. Email and Forums will continue to hang on, but the advent of texting, Facebook, and the ubiquitous appearance of mobile combination internet-computer-phone-multimedia devices has yet to make a dent into Lovecraft research. That is the future, however.

The new revelation that is also the biggest kept secret, it seems, is the explosion of free and instantly accessible archives of primary data on Google. Ancestry is still a paid format, but it is primarily a genealogical resource, and Mr. Faig has pretty definitively traced the Phillips family, and the Lovecraft family is pretty delineated as well. Google has tens of thousands of pages of newspapers now online, and millions of pages of 19th and early 20th century civic documents. It has been a treasure-trove of Lovecraftiana. Go forth and read !

What the cutting edge will now be is to use primary documents (newspapers for instance) to relate what Lovecraft was doing with what his friends, colleagues, and neighbors were doing. In essence to place Lovecraft in context with his society. I've spent virtually every day of 2010 doing this very thing, and have been quite excited - and astonished - how much HPL was a creature of his environment. When HPL declared "I am Providence", he really wasn't even close. Providence had moved far away from HPL, but it didn't seem like it to him at the time. He had immersed himself in nostalgia, and he didn't see the aging, rusting, swollen behemoth of industrialism that was becoming more democratically controlled, and crime-ridden. If he had looked, large sections of the 1920's Providence were very much like the New York he hated. Just not on his corner of Angell Street.

I should not have been taken aback by all of this, but so many writers have made Lovecraft so larger than life that he seems a caricature out of time and space. He clearly wasn't. He was a brilliant man intellectually coping with his world the best he could, and the fantasy he left us is a treasure and pleasure.

About 60% of my research time has been on Young Lovecraft (pre-1912) with some progress of dating specific incidents in his life, and creating logical arguments to show that the Phillips family mythology was sometimes true, sometimes false, and sometimes as yet unknown. I have made a great deal of progress.

For instance, when HPL was about 7 or 8, his neighborhood played a powerful influence on him. From thence came all his nostalgic recollections, and enjoyment. Neighbors introduced him to plays, friends came to the house and exposed him to adult conversations, introduced him to writing, printing, science, literature, and many other issues - some dark like racism and irreligion. These are the formative years of every child, so be not surprised that these were the key years for HPL.

About 40% of my research time has been spent on Whipple Van Buren Phillips. Due to primary documents now available, his business career can be more fully established and explained. In context he was not as powerful as a Vanderbilt, Carnegie, or Rockefeller, and even in Providence men such as Aldrich, Manton or Banigan were far wealthier, but WVP cut a wide swath. His genius was two-fold. He understood the power of the velocity of money, and he was able to quickly gauge who would be useful to him as business associates. His judgement was not infallible, and he made serious mistakes, but he always recovered and built a new fortune. He also associated with a conclave of - for lack of a better term - the Foster gang. From powerful Senator Aldrich to the future RI supreme court justice Clarke Johnson, his best friend, WVP used and manipulated western Rhode Island contacts (as early as 1855) to get inside information on business deals, and used the legislature to secure prominent business ventures. Every few years he and his colleagues placed into the acts of the legislature many new businesses, a process not available to just any Providence man.

For instance, we now know that after a bankruptcy, WVP associated with an old Foster RI fellow and began to peddle sewing machines. Through that activity, he uncovered and seized rights to a special machine that became as hot as pet rocks, and in that burst of glory became fantabulously rich again. This was on the eve of his triumphant building of his home on Angell Street. We also know that early on, he was involved in intra-state business trasactions. New York, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Idaho were all places of interest. WVP was quick to litigate, and his lawsuits are legion in law literature. It was a trait of all the Phillips family, most likely extending from their proto-Republican and Federal-Period belief systems. And so much more to discuss!

Next year may see the death of blogging on the internet, so I'd like to make it more personal and worthwhile. In the close to 3000 posts I have done, no facet of Lovecraft has been left out. It is an archive that is useful for me, and available to anyone who reads this to learn more about HPL and his legacy. My greatest challenge is to write all this information up into a well argued set of historical treatises. I'm no longer a young person, and it is a lot of hard work. I already feel I'm faltering. Wish me luck.

This will be an intensive and time consuming process, and as that activity grows, the blog will have to fade into the background. I considered reposting old posts, but the only thing that gives is a continual feed to services who pick up and distribute. The blog isn't a visual media, and that is the future, and one I'm not capable of committing time and work to. Not when I can create books that will one day be available in electronic format.

I won't say that 2011 is the last year of the blog, that's up to the fast moving change of technology, but as I finalize commitments I have given to the blog, it will have to change somewhat in frequency.

Don't fear, though, I still have months and months of things I have to put up on the blog, so stay tuned for January !

Interlude

I took the advice of Madame Scorpion from the other day, and I am slowing down here on the blog. It is busy season at the day job, I am researching for at least two non-fiction books, and I have a mountain of reading, correspondence, and obligations. I also have articles I am trying to write up. I've even stepped away from Dark Recesses - but don't stop supporting Bailey over there!

There is plenty of startling new things I could post on the blog, but some of it I am trying to judge whether to publish on the blog, or publish in other formats. Thanks to Mr. Faig and others for releasing some of it through the EOD or other avenues.

For those of you who actually read and enjoy my horror fiction, I have an archive of dozens of stories, and I have numerous unfinished stories. One of these days I'll restart a serial for you. From time to time, since a blog is supposed to be a "personal web log", I'll ask Mr. Lovecraft to step aside and put up a poem or two of mine.

I also have promised a Chester Munroe week, as much new information has appeared recently on his life.

I could almost do a Manton Campbell Mitchell month, I have recently discovered so much material, and a possible and exciting new connection of MCM and his family to Lovecraft.

I suppose from your perspective this is a bit of a tease, but it is intended as an explanation. I think a few people were addicted to a daily post on Lovecraft. I'm nto saying I won't get back to that next year, either. Yet, I only have so much time.

There are right now a few dozen Lovecraft blogs on blogger, facebook, and other places. Will Hart has done a service to the community by continuing to post old records, and new artistic works of his own. Please support him, and the rest of the Lovecraft community.

As the world has changed in a brief 3 years - the death of MySpace, the coming of Twitter and Facebook, the collapse of horror as a genre - so too this blog needs to change.

Chrispy has done thousands of posts, all accessible and searchable, on every aspect of Lovecraft and his Legacy. Go forth and read it!

I am turning more and more to historical research, which is very time consuming, and which it seems few others are doing these days. (Kudos to Dave G, Vance, and others.) I have a little time, the inclination, and if you permit the immodesty, the ability to do this and explain it.

We are in a period of western history that media insists upon controversy to survive. There is plenty in the Lovecraft world to be controversial about should I wish to have "ratings", and it is tempting to indulge, but esentially that's not where I am right now. I do notice that major Lovecraft authors have started to do this in their afterwards and forwards. Be careful those who throw stones in glass houses.

It is a shame that major biographies have about 150 pages or less on Lovecraft's first 20 years, and the reason is so little was previously known. Lovecraft did not spring up, as Athena from Zeus' brow, a weird tale writer. No more that Teddy Roosevelt was born a bull moose. Those first 20 years are tantalizing, and the hidden years are not so hidden as one first suspects. The digital age of information is rapidly falling upon us, and much good stuff is appearing.

Don't try to get rich on this digital wave. Do what you enjoy, and the money will come - someday.

It is annoying for a dedicated and obsessed fan of Lovecraft to have to spend literally thousands (like Chrispy has) of dollars to learn about HPL in depth. Not everyone can. I am fortunate and blessed, that I can. Some people in this world make dimes a day, and thus this avenue is closed to them. I hope the blog helps those who can't afford, or have some limited ability to access rare items on Lovecraft.

It's all very exciting, and our understanding of Lovecraft and his family is about to be upgraded. Hmm. Lovecraft 2.0?

Stay tuned, as this year closes, another dawns.

Thanks to all the readers of the blog! You make this a daily pleasure for Chrispy.

Interlude

Chrispy took a little time off from the blog while time traveling. I hope to tell you some of my discoveries from ancient Lovecraftian days soon.

It gets a little troubling when I am more familiar with Professor's Upton's retirement from Brown University administration, or Edward Gamwell's wedding, or Addison Munroe's battle to get the US Senate seat, than I am with Louisville in 2010.

I am living more in Lovecraft's Providence than I am here and now. The other day I got spitting mad when they decided to widen Angell Street from 90 feet to 100 feet and threaten the foundation of First baptist Church. I wanted to run out and join the protesters. Then I realized that it all happened in 1911 - a hundred years ago! Lovecraft had already fought and lost that battle to City Hall.

I have a lot more posts for the rest of the year coming up and some of them are pretty neat.

In the real world, Lovecraftians are working hard. Will Hart is recording more data for us to enjoy, Joe Pulver is writing books, and I could go on and on. I want to have a Chester Munroe week very soon with information from Vance Pollock.

I am convinced more and more that there is Lovecraft information that we have not yet tapped into. It is either wrapped up in an obscure piece of paper in some one's attic waiting to be sold on Ebay, or in one of the dozens of Providence newspapers now online in Google news archive. Collectors still have a lot of items in their safe hands, but I find that they have so few people to share with, they just keep it and treasure it. Hopefully Facebook will begin to change that and people will start talking and sharing more on Lovecraft.

See you tomorrow !

10/10/10

Happy 10-10-10 !!

Interlude: It's hot.

WASHINGTON -- After eight months, 2010 is running neck and neck with 1998 for the record as the hottest year.

It's hot.

In my city of Louisville, we just broke another temperature record. In two days or so, we'll break the most 90 plus degrees ever and surpass 1895.

It's hot.

In 1895. Lovecraft turned 5 years old. He'd be just past 120 today.

It's hot.

It's 6:30 PM right now, and it's 96 degrees.

It's hot.

I'm going off somewhere and melt.

Happy 120-th, Mr. Lovecraft!

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lovecraft.