Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

What's that I see in Cthulhu's eyes? Mercy? Now I've seen everything!

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

Bear in mind the concept of crocodile tears...

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

How strange! I (now) remember that illustration (and thanks for reproducing it here Des) but for some reason I thought it was it was going to be one of Lovecraft as a young boy. Memory plays tricks. Perhaps I'm remembering the cover of the Necronomicon Press Juvenalia.

Something disconcerting, in any case, about Cthulhu with human eyes...

Brrrrrr.

Mark S.

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

I've just awakened from a wee kip, and I'm so groggy that I've already lost my first attempt at commenting when I went to look up the meaning of "mestizo", which brought to mind what I seem to remember was a very strange film, "The Mestizo Waltz." I shall try to be coherent (fat chance), but this is going to be a time-consuming post cos I've already made a plethora of typos.

I was extremely impressed, Mark, with "A Gentleman from Mexico"; and I do indeed remember it from having read it in BNH, so I've got the flipping book here somewhere. Of course, I'm always looking for Lovecraft's influence in a tale of this type, and may see it where it was not intended; per example, the silent taxi driver at the beginning recalled to mind the silent Joe Sargent in "Innsmouth." Intended or not, this gave the story an immediate HPLish taint.

Armstrong is beautifully portrayed, and I love his transition. At first, he is like some nondescript narrator in the background, there merely to tell the tale. Slowly, he evolves, becomes tainted by the events, and by his knowledge of the Mythos literature. San Isidro is delightful, and plays the vital role of "source" of nameless incident, like unto Marco in Bloch's "The Skull of the Marques de Sade." One can well-believe that he is a "so-called" underground poet, for he never seems poetic in any way. Perhaps, like Rimbaud, those days are well behind him, debauched by drink, if ever they actually existed.

Felipe Lopez is the delight of the story, strange and beguiling. His entrance into the tale ushers forth the sense of the outre, that single note of arcane invasion that stalks into the realm of normalcy. He is the single weird incident that Lovecraft schools us to introduce into the average, everyday world. The thing from a different realm. He has numerous wonderful touches, such as when he orders the double-shot expresso (I can see the modern-day Lovecraft writing his postcards, not on a bench in Prospect Terrace, but at a table in Starbucks). His introduction into the story triggers the transition of Armstrong's viewpoint and personality: once so cool and in control, now inexorably tainted by this odd author of Lovecratian voice. The little touches thyat reveal who Lopez is are amusing and spot-on, such as the meeting at Cafe la Habana, where he is dressed in a cream-coloued suit and sporting a panama hat. It is these careful little touches that especially delight the knowledgable Lovecraftian.

I think I'm running out of room. I shall stagger to another box.:drunk:

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

This is a continuation of ye previous entry.

You have the Lovecraftian language down pat, to the point where I wanted to try and check if any of that which Lopez utters is directly from the letters. (In his amazing novel, The Lovecraft Chronicles, Peter Cannon has used Lovecraft's own words for every uttered line that flows from HPL's mouth in the dialogue of the book.) The wonderful twist comes when Armstrong becomes, subtly, the deluded believer that he imagines Lopez to be. (I cannot be too specific in case those reading this have not yet read your fantastic tale; in which case I chide them to stop reading this and procure the story in their copy of Best New Horror.)

My favorite line from the story: "There are a lot of sad crazies out there, thought Armstrong, who believe in nothing except the power of their own imaginations to create whatever they want to create from a supposedly malleable reality." This is a vital point in the story. Not only does it herald Armstrong's Lovecraftian doom, to become the thing he mocks, but it also suggests that one cannot trust any point of view inthe tale. What is reality, what imagination. Who is crazy, who sane? This is a device that Lovecraft uses, sometimes too blatantly and obviously.

Finally, the horror of the story is deliciously cosmic, authentically Lovecraftian. It is a chilling and incomprehensible doom that casts it dark infiltration upon the insects known as humanity. Bravo!:cool:

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

This is a continuation of ye previous post.
From a personal standpoint, the story stirred up a lot of ichor within my being. This whole critique of Armstrong's about those who ape Lovecraft's voice and personae in their own fiction -- this touches me deeply, personally. It is my goal -- crazy or no -- as an author to be buried in Lovecraft's titan shadow. I want, if I am to be remembered at all, to be remembered as an author of Lovecraftian horror. It is my firm belief that what begins as adolescent mimicry can, with time and effort, blossom into something rich and fine -- if one has the devotion and talant, and I certainly have the devotion. Too, I believe that if I stay true to my pursuit to write mature and original tales of Lovecraftian terror that I will find, in time, my core readership, the people who know and appreciate what I'm about. I write for Lovecraftians, for those who enjoy Mythos fiction. But my hope is that, by now, I am writing my own stories in my own voice. I remember being astounded when the hardcover of HAUNTS was reviewed in Fangoria 225, wherein the reviewer praised me thus: "W. G. (sic) Pugmire does one of the most accurate Lovecraft pastiches...that I have ever read. Each of these stories...could easily be mistaken for the work of the Master of Cosmic Horror. If the stories had been printed sans any reference to the author, I would be fooled, if it weren't for the odd reference to punk rock and homoerotic themes." I did not know whether to howl with diabolic laughter or weep with anguish'd rage.

Begging to remain,
Ever thy humble obt. srvt.
--hopfrog, esq.;)

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

Thank you very much indeed for that detailed analysis, Wilum. I'm touched that you've gone to such trouble over the tale, but am delighted, since it's my favourite from the batch I've most recently had published.

I suppose I have an "ear" for authorial voices. I once wrote an imaginary letter from Arthur Machen to H.P. Lovecraft (I believe it might be available somewhere online over at the Lost Club/Tartarus Press website). So, all the Lovecraft dialogue was drawn from my imagination. Felipe Lopez may, or may not, actually be Lovecraft in the tale, or he may be in the process of becoming Lovecraft, or even (horrible final revelation!) some kind of Old One. But as you say, the question becomes unanswerable when one recognises that the undermining of reality itself is the central process that is taking place. And all that remains is a form of decayed futurity.

I wish I had some of your fiction to read. My copies of Crypt of Cthulhu (though I only possess seven or eight) are back in England, along with one or two other Cryptic Publications, such as Tales of Lovecraftian Horror. But when I return to England in March, I'll make a point of ordering your revised Tales of the Sesqua Valley. I do so wish that many others who write Cthulhu Mythos fiction shared your devotion to producing authentic, rather than solely derivative, work in this field.

Again, thank you for the kind remarks!

Un abrazo muy fuerte,

Mark S.

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

Mark, I find that I have one extra copy of THE FUNGAL STAIN & OTHER DREAMS, which I placed among my Hippocampus titles rather than in ye milk crate that houses my own books. Email me your home address & I'll post it as soon as the surrounding snow, which affects both asthma and anemia, hath melted. (I've been trapped in this house for days, unable to poft parcels to Nicole and Berglund &c, and I'm going flipping bonkers.) I've just been inspir'd to write a new sequence, based on HPL's Commonplace Book -- a series of vignettes and prose-poems which I am going to call "Uncommon Places." If I'm silent for ye next few days 'tis because I am loft in scribbling, my favourite of realms.:D

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

Thanks Wilum. I'll email you pronto. It might be an idea to wait until I'm back in the U.K. before you post anything to me though. I'm here in Mexico until 3rd March 2009 and am travelling around quite a bit (the next couple of days, for example, I'm here in Tapalpa, high in the mountains not too far from Guadalajara). Right now I can hear fireworks and a street party going on outside ...

I'll then be back in Guadalajara briefly, then Guanajuato, then San Miguel de Allende, back to Mexico City for a bit, then Oaxaca (well, you get the idea).

Also, when I'm back in Blighty, I'll have access to my copies of Glyphotech (or Discotheque, as it was once described :D) and can send you one of those by way of reciprocating your kindness.

Mark S.

Re: Your Favorite Cthulhu Mythos Story
 

Centipede Press will publish, next year, a huge omnibus of the fiction of Frank Belknap Long. Long was one of Lovecraft's best buddies, and he is the author of what has long been acknowledged the first Mythos story written by someone other than Lovecraft, "The Space Eaters." This was one of my favorite Cthulhu Mythos stories for many years when I first got hooked on Lovecraftian fiction. This may also have been the first story in which a character was based on Lovecraft and named "Howard" therein. (Poppy Z. Brite named one of her characters in "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" Howard, but that was an acknowledgement {as if one was needed!} of the story's debt to Lovecraft and "The Hound," rather than a modern imagining of Lovecraft as character.) S. T. Joshi has often panned "The Space Eaters" as bad fiction -- and many seem to have a problem with the ending and the "heroic" appearance of a cosmic cross. The ending is indeed absurd, but one must remember that Lovecraft also used the holy cross as defense against daemons in "Dreams in the Witch House" (1932; Long's story was written first, in 1927 -- and who knows but that this use of the Christian symbol by Long "inspir'd" HPL?). I still really like "The Space Eaters," especially the first portion in which the thing falls from a tree and nests inside some bloke's noggin. The story is easily available in the Del Rey trade paperback edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. And it is scheduled to be reprinted in The Tindalos Cycle, edited by Robert M. Price and scheduled to be published by Hippocampus Press.

The Centipede Press omnibus will be the largest collection of Long's writing, and it will include the short novel, The Horror from the Hills, in which the central portion is written not by Long but by Lovecraft, being a transcription (from a letter that Lovecraft wrote to Long) of a dream. It is, therefore, more of an authentic collaboration than any of the fake posthumous works "by" HPL & Derleth. The omnibus will be beautifully illustrated and include, I believe, an introduction or afterword by John Pelan. It will be a huge book, and for lovers of the Cthulhu Mythos it will be a gem indeed.:D