THE DEEP ONES: "The Shadow over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft

Discussion begins November 14.

First published in 1936 as a Visionary Press chapterbook.



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/soi.asp
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Over_Innsmouth

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57480

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Outsider and Others
H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales

MISCELLANY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJiSK3KW628
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Over_Innsmouth
http://tinyurl.com/aytn5zn

Also in Arkham House's The Dunwich Horror and Others.

I had no idea. I had assumed that Shadow was originally published in WT or another pulp.

>3 paradoxosalpha:

Same here. "Shadow" wasn't in WT until 1942. I'll have to go see what Joshi says about this in the bio.

I really like the Virgil Finlay cover for the 1939 Arkham House edition that included the story:



Wonder what that Visionary Press copy goes for these days...

>3 paradoxosalpha: & 4

From the Wikipedia article on "TSoI" (linked to in #1):

The story was rejected by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright when August Derleth surreptitiously submitted it for publication in 1933. "I have read Lovecraft's story...and must confess that it fascinates me," he wrote to Derleth. "But I don't know just what I can do with it. It is hard to break a story of this kind into two parts, and it is too long to run complete in one part."

It was eventually published as a slim book by William L. Crawford's Visionary Publishing Company with a run of 200 copies—the only book of Lovecraft's fiction distributed during his lifetime. After Lovecraft's death (and Wright's), it appeared in an unauthorized abridged version in the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales.

>4 gwendetenebre:

Wonder what that Visionary Press copy goes for these days...

Your immortal soul. >:D

I'm re-reading "The Shadow over Innsmouth" in


I have more portable copies, but learning the sketchy publication history history this week made me want to use Joshi's AH edition. But I'll also review Price's notes in The Innsmouth Cycle, because I remember them being quite good when I first encountered them in connection with a previous re-read.

This may be the single HPL story I have most re-read. I think this will be my fifth reading.

Let's rock the Metallica while we're discussing this one, shall we?

http://youtu.be/6XyEZEXjq6U

I had no car, but was traveling by train, trolley, and motor-coach, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I learned about Innsmouth.

This statement is very much in keeping with HPL’s real-life travels, as is the Olmstead's stay at the Newburyport YMCA.

The excellent Robert Price essay "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny" which heads off The Innsmouth Cycle examines "The Shadow over Innsmouth" entirely by means of anthropological concepts of cargo cult, revitalization movement, and ritual initiation. The last of these three is probably the most significant, and the reason that this story has always seemed so profound and moving to me.

Olmstead declares at the outset that the travel which brought him to Innsmouth was "celebrating my coming of age by a tour of New England." His visit to the town was his initiatory ordeal, with preliminary instruction from Zadok Allen. (The subsequent military and police actions show that Olmstead was a difficult candidate.) He received further instruction through his genealogical research and his dreams, so that by the end of his writing the account, he has become a genuine initiate, embracing his new status and condition, and aspiring to fulfill it.

>9 paradoxosalpha:

"Preliminary instruction from Zadok Allen" - now that's an interesting way to look at that sequence. The "ritual initiation" concept also helps to make more sense of the idea that Olmstead just happens onto Innsmouth. No - he was seduced!

Even so, Olmstead really hits the mother load by getting old Zadok Allen soused, doesn’t he? I enjoy this character’s long soliloquy. It really conjures up a mood of dread and hopelessness. And of course, Allen gets to spill the beans as to the Cthulhoid purpose of the batrachian strangeness of the villagers. He even boils the entire story down to a neat CliffsNotes encapsulation:

Haow’d ye like to be livin’ in a taown like this, with everything a-rottin’ an’ a-dyin’, an’ boarded-up monsters crawlin’ an’ bleatin’ an’ barkin’ an’ hoppin’ araoun’ black cellars an’ attics every way ye turn? Hey? Haow’d ye like to hear the haowlin’ night arter night from the churches an’ Order o’ Dagon Hall, an’ know what’s doin’ part o’ the haowlin’? Haow’d ye like to hear what comes from that awful reef every May-Eve an’ Hallowmass? Hey? Think the old man’s crazy, eh? Wal, Sir, let me tell ye that ain’t the wust!”

And I suppose that the naming of the "Gilman house" is a deliberate pun on Grandpa's part?

Zadok admits to having been formally initiated himself, by means of the first two of the three "Oaths of Dagon." Price seems to suggest that these could be responsible for the longevity of the nonegenarian toper. I'm not sure I buy that, since the EOD promise of corporeal immortality seems to go with the transformation to a deep one morphology that Zadok hasn't acquired. I do concur with Price's inference that the Third Oath (which Zadok refused) has a marital component. HPL obviously premised these on Freemasonic practice, but it's interesting that not much later Gerald Gardner would similarly derive his witchcraft initiations from the same model, since the EOD initiations look more like Gardnerian Wicca than American Masonry from where I sit.

> 10 And I suppose that the naming of the "Gilman house" is a deliberate pun on Grandpa's part?

Yeah, I figure the old Innsmouth family names Gilman, Marsh, Waite, and Eliot were chosen for allusive value: Gilman as gill-man, Marsh like the terrain, Waite* as a pun because of the effects of passing time, and perhaps even eel-iot.

Although it's tempting to connect the Innsmouth Gilmans to Walter Gilman of "The Dreams in the Witch-house," it doesn't seem that HPL or any sound reader has ever provided further support to do so.

*ETA: Possibly also an allusion to Arthur Edward Waite, a prominent occultist author of HPL's day.

This is the kind of fact-based narrative I appreciate. Lovecraft is right to stress the brightness of the moon: the full moon occurred on July 14, 1927 and Olmstead fled Innsmouth on the 16th.

About the early shower on the 16th: the Fitchburg Sentinel gives a forecast for the Boston area of mostly fair with a high of 70 to 75 Fahrenheit. That does not preclude rain early in the day.

Fitchburg is about 50 miles from Newburyport. Apparently the Innsmouth and Arkham newspaper archives are not yet searchable online.

I checked the principal names to see if there might be symbolic significance. Here are some possibilities, but the fit is not close:

Zadok (Hebrew: Tzadok, meaning "Righteous") was righteous to the extent that he refused to take the third oath of Dagon and he testified truthfully to Olmstead. In vino veritas.

Obed was a grandfather of David and thus an ancestor of Jesus. This is parodied here because he is progenitor of the Innsmouth immortals.

Barnabus was an apostle (Acts 14:14).

I suppose HPL just chose names that sounded right for the locale and period.

> 13 Apparently the Innsmouth and Arkham newspaper archives are not yet searchable online.

LOL. Give it time!

>12 paradoxosalpha:

Gilman and Marsh, I can see, but "eel-iot"? If so, then we now see HPL, Master Punster in action!

>13 bertilak:

Fact-checking is appreciated. Of course, I'd fully expect HPL, Amateur Astronomer nonpareil, to have his facts right.

Ah, the many hats of Grandpa.

The chase through the rooms at the boarding house is about as action-hero as HPL gets, and it works pretty well. The long sequence just after this, in which Olmstead runs through the streets of Innsmouth, is hindered quite a bit as HPL has our hero naming every single street taken during his wildly careening flight .

> 16

Yeah, I still find the attention to geographic detail a little overdone here, although I could probably now draw a map of Innsmouth if you put me under deep hypnosis.

>5 artturnerjr:

As to the Visionary Press edition, Joshi in I Am Providence Vol. 2 states that “Lovecraft claimed to have found 33 misprints in the book, but other readers found still more. He managed to persuade (the publisher) to print an errata sheet – whose first version was itself so misprinted as to be virtually worthless – and also found the time and effort to correct many copies of the book manually… erroneous or supernumerary words, letters or punctuation marks would be removed with a knife, and corrections written in with a sharp pencil.”

> 16

Yes, it is quite a treat to see an HPL-surrogate as an action hero -- and quite a resourceful one at that.

I am not fortunate enough to own a three-in-one device with a screwdriver, but I do have a faux-Swiss pocketknife with a screwdriver blade. In my other pocket is an LED flashlight. I feel quite ready for an antiquarian tour.

> 17 Apparently somebody already submitted to hypnosis: http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmap.htm

> 19

I have seen other, prettier maps too. The details are certainly there. I'm just saying that without my having studied those maps, HPL/Olmstead has infused my unconscious with the essential data of the Marsh (un-)Real Estate firm.

In our discussion of "The Silver Key," I quoted a dubious assertion from the relevant Wikipedia article: "Wright ... later told Lovecraft that the story was 'violently disliked' by readers. It is believed to have been disliked due to Lovecraft having renounced bigotry in the story, which at the time was wide spread." I couldn't even see the issue in that story.

The racism in "The Shadow over Innsmouth," on the other hand, is much more salient, and very interesting. As Price notes:

Joe Sargent and all those possessing the Innsmouth look bear marks, Olmstead first thinks, of inbreeding. He is wrong, and significantly wrong. ... In fact, the appearance of the Innsmouthers denoted interbreeding, a crossing of lines for reproductive purposes. Once Olmstead discovers this, he finds it even more repellent, thinking that no ritual can navigate one's passage across such an inviolable line.

Regardless of his own views, HPL was certainly looking to leverage the assumed bigotry of his readers. First he intimates the Innsmouth seafarers' taking Pacific islanders to wife as a sort of miscegenation that contributed to the community's decline. Then, having prepped the concept, he unveils the horror of inter-species breeding as the central dynamic of modern Innsmouth. Zadok would sooner die than join himself to a deep one in such a fashion.

And yet, Olmstead is a product of such unions, with additional "hybrid vigor" derived from the Arkham exogamy of his grandmother, as well as the (human) "Marsh eyes" that signify Obed's insightful genetic entrepreneurship. For the racist, Robert's failure to commit suicide may be the final horror. But it opens other possibilities for those who can identify with an awareness that crosses and transcends the boundaries of waking and dream, earth and sea, human and "monster."

> 10

It occurs to me that Zadok Allen's recounting of Innsmouth history could make an impressive audition piece for an actor.

>21 paradoxosalpha:

HPL also likens the Innsmouth villagers to the "white trash" of the southern U.S. I don't exactly see any renunciation of racism here, unless you want to call it a reconsidered equal-opportunity type of misanthropy on Grandpa's part.

>22 paradoxosalpha:

I absolutely agree. Forget Hamlet - go with Zadok! :-D

> 23 HPL also likens the Innsmouth villagers to the "white trash" of the southern U.S.

Interestingly, he does it with the scare quotes that you use, noting that the term is not the way a New Englander would put it. There's a cultural relativism in this story that is itching to get free. And no, I don't think racism is being renounced here at all, but it is being explored in potentially enlightening ways.

In addition to everything else he accomplishes in this story, good old Howard even manages to reduce the art world to a simple sentence:

All other art objects I had ever seen either belonged to some known racial or national stream, or else were consciously modernistic defiances of every recognised stream.

Here we can see the germ of the formula that HPL correspondent Fritz Leiber would explore much further later on:

Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression as houses multiply to form a city of stark desolation.

> 26

Click this link and scroll down to #6: Gary, Indiana. Having driven through there a couple of times in the last few years, I found myself thinking about it while reading the descriptions of Innsmouth this week.

Note: Gary's economy was not destroyed simply by a "steel industry downturn," but because it experienced catastrophic disinvestment and white flight, much of it in response to its groundbreaking election of black mayor Richard Hatcher.

Joshi in I Am Providence Vol. 2:

Lovecraft never achieved a greater atmosphere of insidious decay than in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”: one can almost smell the overwhelming stench of fish, see the physical anomalies of the inhabitants, and perceive the century-long dilapidation of an entire town in the story’s evocative prose. And once again he has produced a narrative that progresses from first word to the last without a false note to a cataclysmic conclusion – a conclusion, as noted before, that simultaneously focuses on the pitiable fate of a single human being and hints tantalizingly of the future destruction of the human race. The cosmic and the local, the past and the present, the internal and the external, and self and the other are all fused into an inextricable unity. It is something that Lovecraft had never achieved before and would never achieve again save – in a very different way – in his last major story, “The Shadow out of Time”.

23 > I think HPL's misanthropy was anything but equal-opportunity. To use very un-Lovecraftian language, all people may suck, but some suck harder than others.

Mattias Fyhr in Död men drömmande (not available in English, AFAIK) argued that HPL meant the reader to share in Olmstead's turn from horror to embrace of the Deep Ones. I find this difficult to accept, but does anyone know if HPL wrote anything clarifying his intent here?

Yes, this is a rich story, and probably, after "The Colour Out of Space", my favorite Lovecraft work.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon as a revitalization movement? Interesting. It does fit with the description of bringing back the fishing.

About a month ago, I attended the local dark fantasy convention, Arcana, and Lovecraft scholar Donovan Loucks had a slide show of New England locations that Lovecraft mentioned including a few from Newburyport and the Avery ledge Breakwater of Rockport, MA which may have inspired Devil Reef. (He also had slides of buildings that were decidedly not models for the architecture of the story including the Sargent-Murray-Gilman-Hough House of Gloucester, MA.) So I had some better mental images to go with the descriptions.

Yes, Olmstead and his escape is definately the most physical action any Lovecraft hero undertakes. And there is another thing that is striking about this story. Allen's story (which is also my favorite part of the tale) is dialogue exposition and almost -- with the exception of the genealogical bits at the end -- all the exposition here is by direct observation and dialogue. Lovecraft drops his usual literary exposition of old books and diaries and letters.

>13 bertilak: Thanks for researching the possible biblical allusions. There is a sort of parallelism between Zadok Allen and the narrator. Both are caught between worlds. Allen has taken the first and second Dagon oaths but not the third and is doomed to live his life in Innsmouth. The narrator is caught between the normal human world and his Deep One heritage. However, Allen is, as the verse from the Book of Daniel suggests, found wanting. The narrator isn’t. The whole set of Christian allusions end with the wonderful aqueaous heaven beckoning Olmstead to live "amidst wonder and glory forever". I also liked how the waking, rational mind of the narrator is repulsed by the changes he is undergoing. However, his dream self is not.

Finally, what's up with the Deep Ones, inhabitants of very old underwater cities, and their fascination with "stacks of glass beads and trinkets"?

> 29

I agree with you that it was probably not HPL's intention to have the reader sympathize with Olmstead's final "deep thoughts." But the possibility for the reader to do so is certainly a feature that enhances the story.

A crazy week and a longer-than-usual story conspired to keep me from finishing my re-read of this one, but I finally knocked it off.

>28 gwendetenebre:

And once again he has produced a narrative that progresses from first word to the last without a false note to a cataclysmic conclusion – a conclusion, as noted before, that simultaneously focuses on the pitiable fate of a single human being and hints tantalizingly of the future destruction of the human race.

Once again, Joshi nails it. My mini-epiphany from this re-read is that most of the great "late-period" HPL tales ("Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow over Innsmouth are the ones that come to mind) derive their particular frisson from the fact that they are essentially pre-apocalyptic narratives, ones in which Lovecraft is basically saying, "You think this is horrifying? This is only a taste of what is to come, my friend." Innsmouth, however, moves beyond his earlier masterpieces in both skill and daring in having a protagonist that not only sees the oncoming apocalypse but actually embraces it and, as Randy alluded to in #30 in quoting the story's final line, equates it with divine salvation:

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever

Psalms 23:6 (NIV)

...in lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.

The Shadow over Innsmouth

Staggering.

>32 artturnerjr: "Pre-apocalyptic". You nailed it.

"Lair of the Deep Ones" -- interesting phrasing since "lair" is a word usually associated with animals or the Devil. Lovecraft mixes it with Christian devotional language. A further example of the Christian being tainted and transformed by another faith, another god, just like Innsmouth's churchs are taken over. Some of the forms may be there -- churches, vestments, liturgies, oaths, and hymns -- but there's a new god in town now.

For that matter, HPL's "Haunter of the Dark" did something a bit similar.

Precisely. Yes. Lovecraft themed so often with twisting the ordinary and wholesome into some other shape. He depicted the slow slide into the effects of the Old Ones on anything/anyone they focus upon. I've also noticed his "contagion" idea. Once something is in contact with something or someone from the Mythos, it changes and starts slipping into the dark dimensions. So edifices and items may contain a secret dimensional influence which sickens the mind, twists the body, and fouls the soul. What has interested me for years is how in some of the stories the protagonist goes through this process and then comes out proclaiming victory and rapture as you note above. It is often commingled with fear, also. Makes the reader confused but wanting to reach for understanding of that state of mind/spirit. Yog-Sothoth, save us!

Check out this LW Curry description of the Visionary Press copy shown up in >1 gwendetenebre:. There are some photos if you follow the link.

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips.
THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH.

Everett, Pennsylvania: Visionary Publishing Co., 1936. Octavo, pp. 1-16: blank 1-12 13-158 159-176: blank note: first and last leaves are used as front and rear paste-downs, four full-page illustrations by Frank A. Utpatel, original black cloth, front and spine panels stamped in silver. First edition. A highly important presentation copy with a signed inscription by Lovecraft to August Derleth on the front free endpaper: "To Auguste-Guillaume, Comte d'Erlette, / whose encouraging opinion of this / tale is responsible for its present / appearance in (mis) print. / A reasonably corrected copy, with / the grateful compliments of the / perpetrator -- / H. P. Lovecraft / Christmas, MDCCCCXXXVI." Lovecraft's first published book, preceded by THE SHUNNED HOUSE (1928) that was printed, but not circulated beyond a tiny circle of Lovecraft's friends. Publisher William H. Crawford has stated that approximately 400 copies were printed, of which about 200 were bound, the remainder destroyed at a later date. Binding and typography were dreadful and a handful of the earliest copies had corrections in Lovecraft's hand. This copy has a dozen or so corrections by Lovecraft, including a line of missing text handwritten on page 72. In addition, there is an eight-line manuscript errata slip written in Lovecraft's hand which provides "additional errata discovered by Corwin Stickney..." tipped in on the second blank. According to Crawford, an errata leaf and a dust jacket were printed after publication and distribution of early copies. The jacket is present, but not the errata slip. Of two known bindings, this copy has title on front panel stamped in upper and lower case letters. The dust jacket is Currey's variant 2 (no priority established) with lettering in silver and yellow-green illustration. "A fine story of supernatural adventure and discovery, despite the unfortunate surprise ending which does much to spoil what went on before." - Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1039. Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 272. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature IV, pp. 1624-26. In 333. See Barron (ed), Horror Literature 3-132. See Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 4-160. Bleiler (1978), p. 127. Reginald 09259. Joshi I-A-11. Currey, p. 324. Spine panel a bit creased at spine ends, else a fine copy in very good pictorial dust jacket with shelf wear and slight loss at spine ends and corners, several short tears at upper edges of spine and front panels with internal tape mend, and general dust soiling to front, spine and rear panels. A superior copy of this book with distinguished provenance. (#114482).

Price: $25,000.00

http://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/114482/lovecraft/the-shadow-over-innsmouth

Robert M. Price said "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was Lovecraft's best story on his podcast, so I read that yesterday.

I cannot agree. I think it's inferior to "The Call of Cthulu."

Lovecraft was a master at building suspense. It's the denoument that is often a let down. His set up for "Innsmouth" is brilliant -- dark, strange, creepy. I genuinely wanted to know what would happen to the protagonist.

But then he ruins the story by having Zadok Allen speak in backwoods New England pidgin English for FORTY STRAIGHT PARAGRAPHS! Forty paragraphs of "curse ye, dun't set thar a-starin' ... even ef I hain't told nobody nothin' yet, I'm a-goin' to naow." Please, Lord, make it stop!

That was the most painful extended "dialect" I've ever read in ANY story. It should have occurred to HPL that dialect can be effective in small doses, but for 1/4 of the book, it's simply torturing the reader. The character would have been completely alright speaking standard English.

Then after the protagonist escapes the Gilman Hotel, HPL tells us the names of every street he walks down, as if Innsmouth is our home town and we know all the streets ourselves. "I went down Washington Street ... then South Street ... a car went by Federal Street ... then I went west on Lafayette." HPL wrote this in 1931. There were no Dell Mapbacks in those days. This simply confuses the reader. We don't need to know the names of every freaking street in downtown Innsmouth.

> 36

Of course, there is no Innsmouth any more than there is an Arkham, so the Dell Mapback would have been to no avail. Confusing the reader may have been the author's aim.

> Lovecraft was a master at building suspense. It's the denoument that is often a let down.

So what do you think about the "coda" in which Olmstead embraces his ichthyoid origins and destiny?

> 36

I thought Barry Lynch's turn as Zadok Allen in the H P Lovecraft Historical Society's audio adaptation of "The Shadow over Innsmouth" was something of a tour de force - that the script stuck pretty close to Lovecraft's original text, as far as I can remember.

Of course, when reading a piece of fiction, it's always a problem when you can't figure out the dialect that the author has transcribed - for example I can't read James Kelman because I'm not familiar enough with Glaswegian. Even as canonical a writer as D L Lawrence suffers, I understand, because the Nottinghamshire dialect he gave his working-class characters has all but disappeared in the last century.

It would be a mistake, in my opinion, to always interpret such difficulties as faults on the part of the author.

>36 GiltEdge: I've got to say it's mostly Zadok Allen's interlude that makes "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" my second favorite Lovecraft after "The Colour Out of Space".

I agree, though, the travelogue descriptions of Innsmouth streets get to be a bit much.

I went to a con about a year ago where Donovan K. Loucks, curator of hplovecraft.com, gave a slideshow of his tours to the New England locations that Lovecraft visited and sometimes used for stories. The model for Innsmouth looked little as I imagined it. I don't know if Loucks has those pictures at his site or not.

And, speaking of Innsmouth, I'm currently reading Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth.

"So what do you think about the "coda" in which Olmstead embraces his ichthyoid origins and destiny?"

I think HPL forced that ending when he couldn't think of anything else after Olmstead passes out. It certainly doesn't add anything to the story. I think HPL must have realized this, and didn't submit the story for publication for that reason. It needs a better ending than what he could give it.

"I've got to say it's mostly Zadok Allen's interlude that makes "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" my second favorite Lovecraft after "The Colour Out of Space"."

Well, we all have different tastes. I'm guessing that the "superstitious, semi-literate rustic whom no one believes, but is really telling the truth (which they discover, too late, to their horror)" was a cliche before Lovecraft was born, so he really should have tried to reverse the stereotype every now and then and had them speak proper English. And I can take dialect in small doses, but 40 paragraphs in a row is Chinese water torture to me.

>40 GiltEdge: I think the embracing, after initial revulsion, of what once revolted him -- his genetic destiny -- is the other thing I really liked.

>42 RandyStafford: Well, you may be right, at the time I read this, I hadn't encountered that cliché much. And, being from the Midwest, rotting Innsmouth and Zadok seemed really exotic on my first reading.

You certainly wouldn't be the first modern reader to not like phonetic dialect. I guess, outside of Kipling, I haven't come across much of it. (Unless, you count Chaucer in the original -- which I don't.)

Oddly, in his bio of HPL, Joshi cited the criticism that the sequence starting with the break-in to the narrator's room and his flight goes on too long.

> 40, 42

I agree with Randy. I think the ending is really strong and it justifies the various weaknesses in the story.

I have no problem with translating Zadok Allen's phonetically-spelled dialect. It helps to more sharply delineate the character during his important monologue. I'm reminded of the old (I hesitate to say ancient) mariner who befriends Madame Mina during her cliffside rambles in Stoker's Dracula, although that character makes Zadok sound like a Harvard grad!

Thirding Randy and PA. I actually think the ending may be the most utterly chilling thing HPL ever wrote (which is saying something).

Yeah, Zadok really goes on and on and on...

It happens though. These eccentrics unleash their unending story on some topic or other and you feel like you can't get away. Tedious but at the same time it creates this sense of paralysis, of Olmstead having to endure this (while the ocean grows more and more turbulent and the tide rises) that makes the chase seem all the more desperate and exciting.

Surely a favorite at Innsmouth's many blues clubs:

http://youtu.be/HrJSMCMFp4c

Lyrics:

http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107859165999/

I could certainly believe Van Vliet read and admired HPL, but I'd never have made the connection. Any idea whether it's a pleasant coincidence, or at all deliberate?

I have no idea, but I strongly suspect that if the Captain, the ultimate outsider, had encounter HPL's work, he would have found in him a kindred spirit. 8)

Cover art, Weird Tales (Canadian version), May 1942. Art by Edmond Good.



Image source: http://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/edmond-good-weird-tales-canadian-ver...
More info:
http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/periodicals/weirdta/wt194...
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1501705

Saw the image before I read the caption and thought it was the ETs coming for David Bowie, having failed to distinguish him from Major Tom...

>51 Crypto-Willobie:

Perhaps he'd placate them with a performance of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in its entirety; they're big fans of that one (His Eno-era stuff? Not so much.).