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The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions
by HP Lovecraft
(Arkham House, $27.95, 450 pages, 1989, ISBN: 0-87054-040-8.)
Review by William P Simmons
 HP
Lovecraft brought fantasy to an unsurpassed level of maturity, particularly
by his insistance on employing the devices of modern scientific thought
and mechanicalism as means to help achieve horrid effects -- using them,
in fact, as components of his dark aesthetic -- rather than depending
on the supernatural to refute materialistic culture and thought. Whereas
much dark and fantastic fiction of his (and our) time did little other
than shock with effect while reaffirming conservative moral constructs,
Lovecraft stared beyond such man-made behavior controlling tools and
into the infinite. He suggests in his seriously approached, intricately
plotted if less than meaningful characters awesome alien powers, unknown
vistas of space, and broken scientific myths. He was a pioneer, exploring
the very ambiguity and cold reason of a bleak, black existence.
The belated if growing recognition of the importance of Lovecraft's
work has resulted in various byways of learning from various disciplines.
Aside from a belated acceptance by some branches of academia and publishing,
a tireless cycle of research and literary dissection is also blossoming
among scholars devoted to his personal life, philosophical outlook,
and, more to our interest, his ghostwriting. HP Lovecraft remains
a pivotal force in weird fiction as a result of his unique creations
(Ancient Ones, Dagon, Cthulhu, etc), his purposely antiquated style,
the freshness of his themes (alien/human sexual breeding, science and
mathematics as magic), and, most importantly, for the learned, reflective
philosophy of life that sings deep in the subtext of his work. These
facets add authenticity and intellectual depth to his mythos and psuedo-science
pieces. Regrettably, he was largely ignored in his life, and found that
he had to depend on the literary failures of others to keep spirit and
body attached. Charging a small amount of cash for revision and ghost-writing
work, a majority of his literary output was for other writers.
A follow up to ST Joshi's three volume collection of Arkham's revised,
corrected texts of Lovecraft's fiction, the editor presents in this
complementing collection all the known collaborations and revisions
that Lovecraft did for clients and friends. Rescued from archival manuscripts,
typescripts, and original appearances in such magazines as Weird
Tales, this collection includes appendices of sorts to the Cthulhu
Mythos, including "The Electric Executioner," "Out of the Aeons," and
"The Diary of Alonzo Typer." From the more traditional supernatural
horrors of curses and regional deities to examples of the comic terrors
of alien species and encounters with the unknown which Lovecraft is
justly revered for, this collection restores texts to their original
form and attempts to consider the amount of the author's involvement.
The structure includes "Primary Revsions," which were wholly or primarily
composed by Lovecraft (ex: "The Curse of Yig," The Mound," & "Medusa's
Coil") while "Secondary Revisions" (ex: "The Green Meadow" & "The Crawling
Chaos") are thought to constitute works which he had less involvement
in. In still other cases, Joshi has collected stories which, not being
fragments or wholly written by Lovecraft, once existed as manuscripts
in their own right before Lovecraft revised or rewrote them. Of these
perhaps CM Eddy's infamous "The Beloved Dead" is the best (if not most
rewarding) example. While not containing quite ALL of Lovecraft's revisions
or ghost-writing, the quality of this Arkham House edition, the research
which went into the collecting of the material, and the uneven quality
of the stories makes up for the exclusions. Some pieces missing are
"Under the Pyramids" ("Imprisoned with the Pharaohs"), ghosted for Harry
Houdini; "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", the collaboration with
E Hoffmann Price; some minor work with RH Barlow; and, of course, "The
Challenge from Beyond," an early round-robbin experiment written with,
among others, A Merritt and Frank Belknap Long.
Often taking only a plot germ or line or two of original prose from
a client, Lovecraft would plot and write many of these stories completely
on his own, allowing him to join several of them thematically with the
dropping of place names/settings/characters of his own developing mythological
cycle. Now scholar/editor ST Joshi offers us an entire collection of
Lovecraft's revisions, collaborations, and re-writes, treated rightfully
as inclusions in his own cannon. An omnibus collection that gathers
"weird" revisions, this includes Weird Tales staples, fan
favorites, and obscure pieces alike. This gift of nightmares and cosmic
awe is both an entertainment and a scholarly tool, allowing readers
to note thematic, subject, and stylistic similarities between these
pieces with Lovecraft's other work. While few of these stories compare
with the cosmic imaginative vision or sureness of his late work, and
often lack the visionary essence found in his Dunsnion fantasies or
Dreamland fables, some are admirable additions to the Cthulhu pieces
for which he is mostly remembered by fans of the weird tale, including
"The Crawling Chaos" and "The Green Meadow" (Elizabeth Berkeley and
Lewis Theobald), brimming full with the sense of creeping menace so
prevalent in his mythos. More common are stories whose horrors more
closely resemble Lovecraft's earlier supernatural attempts in honor
of Poe and the supernatural story, including vengeful deities, the angry
dead, and such sensational material as necrophilia, alien traps, and
pulp-style violence. In these pieces a more traditional Lovecraft is
at work. "Winged Death," the story of a mad scientist's attempt to kill
a colleague for discrediting him, is amusingly similar to the pulpy
pleasures of 1950's science fiction movies, while "The Horror in the
Museum," another piece written for/with Heald, is closer to the mythos
in both atmosphere and plot, involving an artist who whilst in a supposedly
haunted museum, invokes a creature from the very Yuggoth featured in
Lovercraft's cosmos.
Containing the good, the bad, and the indifferent, these dreams and
nightmares are for the most part worth reading for pleasure and study.
While few pieces reach the impressive heights of terror and self reflection
of Lovecraft's mature work, relatively few leave a bland taste in the
mouth. "The Diary of Alonzo Typer," while fitting within the mythos,
mentioning Shub-Niggurath, isn't dramatic or well envisioned enough
to satisfy. Similarly, Wilfred Blanch Talman's "Two Black Bottles" is
uncharacteristically formulaic although bringing to mind Lovecraft's
interest in corrupting ancestral heritages and the malignant past capable
of invading the present. Of particular enjoyment are the revisions of
Zelia Bishop's material, which mark for Lovecraft a departure from his
preferred New England setting. In "The Curse of Yig," anchored in Mexico
and the Oklahoma plains, we find a unique intermingling of oral folk
belief and the cosmic. A disturbing ménage of psychological fear
and unnamable fear evoked by all-too-human paranoia and vulnerability,
"The Curse of Yig" features a man who invokes a snake-devil of Indian
legend by killing his children (snakes). The roots of superstition and
an almost palpable sense of fear is summoned in this story, which reaches
its climax on a wonderfully described Halloween night. In "The Mound"
an ancient mound guarded by Indian spirits is thought to be behind the
disappearance of men who defile its sacred limits. Into this thrilling
concept is injected a materialistic, doubtful scientist who discovers
(in a premise similar to At The Mountains of Madness and The
Shadow Out of Time) an ancient account of a man who claims to have
journeyed into an alien world underneath the mound, where some familiar
Lovecraft gods/beings are revered. These tales focus on the dens of
ancient alien deities beneath the ground and the terrors faced by humans
unwary enough to cross their paths, enticingly re-envisioning Lovecraft's
cosmic visions of fear by interweaving wit with folklore from the Spanish
tradition. "Medusa's Coil" rounds out the Meade material, and, while
not as inventive as the first two, clearly shows Lovecraft's hand.
While there is more than a little of the first person narrative hysterics
and outlandish coincidences, many of the stories are enjoyable precisely
because, even in their more awkward moments they take themselves seriously.
Therefore, so can we. A necessity for the Lovecraft collector, the stories
work as both artifacts of another age and as modernly enjoyable
extensions of older themes, showing us again that true terror, and true
aesthetic impulse, never goes out of style
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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