on bad Lovecraft pastiche
Jun. 7th, 2005 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennySo I'm reading Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, which I picked up in the mad bookstore-trawling extravaganza that was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffee_and_ink's post WisCon visit. And in consequence, I'm finally reading stories written by August Derleth, Wisconsin homeboy and mad slavering HPL fan.
My capsule summary? Derleth couldn't write for shit.
He has two stories in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, "The Dweller in Darkness" and "Beyond the Threshold." They're not horrifying, to start with (and the genuine high-octane HPL is, even if only intermittently and sometimes in a rather sideways fashion. But "Pickman's Model" gives me the shivers every damn time). But they're also just badly written.
For one thing, he uses italics to show readers where the scary stuff is. Also exclamation points. This is cheap and sloppy manipulation, and it defeats its own purpose as far as I'm concerned, because I'm so contrary-minded that the moment the typography of the story starts signalling to me that I should be scared, my disbelief suffers catastrophic unsuspension. And even granted mores of the 30s pulps, yadda yadda, Derleth has no restraint. For example, here are the final paragraphs of both stories:
"The Dweller in Darkness"
"Beyond the Threshold"
This is a writer who has read HPL and wants desperately to do what HPL does, but has no real understanding of how it works. Polysyllabic words, ancient and mysterious artifacts: but he does that over-explaining thing (how can Dr. Rackham identify the plaque as coming from some place beyond the memory of man if the place he's identifying it as coming from is ... beyond the memory of man?) that is the bane of spec-fic writers. (heres_luck, Mirrorthaw, and I were actually just talking about this in the context of the new Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. BSG over-explains and makes a fool of itself; Firefly inclues, and understands that belief in a world comes from not having all the answers.) And Derleth's polysyllabic adjectives obfuscate rather than simply obscuring, veiling. For example, a paragraph from "The Dweller in Darkness":
This paragraph is trying to achieve something like the effect of the opening of "The Call of Cthulhu":
But Derleth just does not have the chops. HPL is purple like a thing that wallows in its purpleness, but he knows what he's doing. His vocabulary is baroque, but it's not out of control. "Merciful," "placid," "black seas of infinity," "straining" "disassociated," "terrifying vistas of reality," "frightful position," "deadly light, "peace and safety." He's got a kind of ring-composition going there, as we move from "merciful" and "placid" to terror, fright, madness, and back to "peace and safety."
But Derleth's vocabulary: "hidden life." What does that mean, exactly? What are we talking about? "Common man." Are we suggesting that UNcommon men can handle these secrets? "dark places of the earth"--as with "hidden life," the meaning here is unclear, especially when we go on to "horrible revenants" from a "stratum of the subconscious." For one thing, "revenants" in the familiar meaning of the word are ghosts, and have nothing to do with life, hidden or otherwise. But worse than that, he's conflating the interior world of the subconscious with the exterior world of the dark places of the earth, and while that can certainly work as a trope in horror, it doesn't work when you jumble the two together. Readers will extend authors a remarkably generous line of credit if it looks like they know what they're doing--but the corollary to that is, if you want to do this sort of thing, you have to have command at least of your own writing. And then there's "common man" again, and we still don't know if we're supposed to understand the protagonists of the story (and consequently ourselves) as common men or not. "Aspects of creation" throws another monkeywrench, because this is not a good moment to mingle your metaphors. Either we're talking Dr. Frankenstein here (and indeed aspects of his creation were "shuddersome" indeed), or Derleth is using "creation" to mean Earth, which evokes the whole Christian mythos at exactly the moment he needs not to remind his readers of it. Cthulhu Mythos stories depend on persuading readers to buy in, even temporarily, even with a list of caveats and restrictions as long as a squamous, ichor-dripping tentacle, even if only in the particular and peculiar category of belief in fiction. And that can't happen if the text throws out reminders of genuine religions at random moments. Cthulhu Mythos stories can grapple with actual religions successfully, but only if they do it deliberately.
And then we have the whole "blast the sanity of the beholder" idea. The persistent trope of HPL's fiction is the inadequacy of language to describe true horror, and the idea that confronted with true horror, the human mind will retreat into madness. HPL's narrators and protagonists go mad or die in ghastly circumstances. They tell us that they cannot tell us what they see. And Derleth knows this, but he doesn't understand how it works. Because here's a narrator telling us "there are aspects of creation so grostesquely shuddersome that the very sight of them would blast the sanity of the beholder. Fortunately, it is not possible even to bring back in anything but suggestion what we saw on the slab in the forest at Rick's Lake that night in October, for the thing was so unbelievable, transcending all known laws of science, that adequate words for its description have no existence in the language." But that narrator, having seen something that "would blast the sanity of the beholder," is clearly not mad. He's perfectly rational, doing the Wordsworthian thing of recollecting emotion in tranquility. But the givens of his own theorem tell us he shouldn't be. And because Derleth has forfeited our trust, we suspect that the reason he can't describe what the narrator saw is not that it was indescribable, but that he's not competent to describe it.
One of the things that makes HPL's best stories work is exactly the paradox of the hyper-articulate narrator faced with something he can't articulate. But it works because both narrator and author are hyper-articulate and know how to make the English language do what they want. Derleth doesn't have HPL's command of language, and he's simply not self-aware enough as a writer, leading him to write charmingly awful sentences like this one from "Beyond the Threshold":
I'm not even going to say anything. Just glory in the ghastliness.
Derleth is a fanboy. He cookies HPL with slavish adoration (both stories cite The Outsider and Others as a sacred text, along with the Necronomicon, the R'lyeh Text, and the Pnakotic Manuscript), and he trots out every convention of Lovecraftian fiction in each story, whether he understands them or not. He wants to be HPL so bad he's hurting himself. And, clearly, he caused me some pain as well, hence this post.
Lovecraft is hard to pastiche (I myself haven't done it, because every time I try it slides straight into parody); he's writing so close to the edge of camp that sometimes he falls over himself. And bad pastiche like Derleth's reveals exactly what it is that Lovecraft is doing and why it's so damn hard.
coffee_and_ink's post WisCon visit. And in consequence, I'm finally reading stories written by August Derleth, Wisconsin homeboy and mad slavering HPL fan.My capsule summary? Derleth couldn't write for shit.
He has two stories in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, "The Dweller in Darkness" and "Beyond the Threshold." They're not horrifying, to start with (and the genuine high-octane HPL is, even if only intermittently and sometimes in a rather sideways fashion. But "Pickman's Model" gives me the shivers every damn time). But they're also just badly written.
For one thing, he uses italics to show readers where the scary stuff is. Also exclamation points. This is cheap and sloppy manipulation, and it defeats its own purpose as far as I'm concerned, because I'm so contrary-minded that the moment the typography of the story starts signalling to me that I should be scared, my disbelief suffers catastrophic unsuspension. And even granted mores of the 30s pulps, yadda yadda, Derleth has no restraint. For example, here are the final paragraphs of both stories:
"The Dweller in Darkness"
If we had had any doubt, despite everything that had gone before, we could not forget that final, soul-searing discovery, the thing we saw when we shielded our eyes from the flames all around and looked away from those beings in the heavens, the line of footprints that led away from the lodge in the direction of that hellish slab deep in the black forest, the footprints that began in the soft soil beyond the verandah in the shape of a man's footprints, and changed with each step into a hideously suggestive imprint made by a creature of incredible shape and weight, with variations of outline and size so grotesque as to have been incomprehensible to anyone who had not seen the thing on the slab--and beside them, torn and rent as if by an expanding force, the clothing that once belonged to Professor Gardner, left piece by piece along the trail back into the woods, the trail taken by the hellish monstrosity that had come out of the night, the Dweller in Darkness who had visited us in the shape and guise of Professor Gardner!
"Beyond the Threshold"
And the evidence was undeniable that my grandfather had been alive for part of that incredible journey, for if we had had any doubt, the things found in his pockets, the mementos carried from strange hidden places where he had been, and sent to us, were final and damning testimony--the gold plaque, with its miniature presentation of a struggle between ancient beings, and bearin on its surface inscriptions in cabalistic designs, the plaque which Dr. Rackham of Miskatonic University identified as having come from some place beyond the memory of man; the loathsome book in Burmese that revealed ghastly legends of that shunned and hidden Plateau of Leng, the place of the dread Tcho-Tcho people; and finally, the revolting and bestial stone miniature of a hellish monstrosity walking on the winds above the earth!
This is a writer who has read HPL and wants desperately to do what HPL does, but has no real understanding of how it works. Polysyllabic words, ancient and mysterious artifacts: but he does that over-explaining thing (how can Dr. Rackham identify the plaque as coming from some place beyond the memory of man if the place he's identifying it as coming from is ... beyond the memory of man?) that is the bane of spec-fic writers. (
heres_luck, Mirrorthaw, and I were actually just talking about this in the context of the new Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. BSG over-explains and makes a fool of itself; Firefly inclues, and understands that belief in a world comes from not having all the answers.) And Derleth's polysyllabic adjectives obfuscate rather than simply obscuring, veiling. For example, a paragraph from "The Dweller in Darkness":There are aspects of hidden life, exterior as well as of the depths of the mind, that are better kept secret and away from the awareness of common man; for there lurk in dark places of the earth horrible revenants belonging to a stratum of the subconscious which is mercifully beyond the apprehension of common man--indeed, there are aspects of creation so grostesquely shuddersome that the very sight of them would blast the sanity of the beholder. Fortunately, it is not possible even to bring back in anything but suggestion what we saw on the slab in the forest at Rick's Lake that night in October, for the thing was so unbelievable, transcending all known laws of science, that adequate words for its description have no existence in the language.
This paragraph is trying to achieve something like the effect of the opening of "The Call of Cthulhu":
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
But Derleth just does not have the chops. HPL is purple like a thing that wallows in its purpleness, but he knows what he's doing. His vocabulary is baroque, but it's not out of control. "Merciful," "placid," "black seas of infinity," "straining" "disassociated," "terrifying vistas of reality," "frightful position," "deadly light, "peace and safety." He's got a kind of ring-composition going there, as we move from "merciful" and "placid" to terror, fright, madness, and back to "peace and safety."
But Derleth's vocabulary: "hidden life." What does that mean, exactly? What are we talking about? "Common man." Are we suggesting that UNcommon men can handle these secrets? "dark places of the earth"--as with "hidden life," the meaning here is unclear, especially when we go on to "horrible revenants" from a "stratum of the subconscious." For one thing, "revenants" in the familiar meaning of the word are ghosts, and have nothing to do with life, hidden or otherwise. But worse than that, he's conflating the interior world of the subconscious with the exterior world of the dark places of the earth, and while that can certainly work as a trope in horror, it doesn't work when you jumble the two together. Readers will extend authors a remarkably generous line of credit if it looks like they know what they're doing--but the corollary to that is, if you want to do this sort of thing, you have to have command at least of your own writing. And then there's "common man" again, and we still don't know if we're supposed to understand the protagonists of the story (and consequently ourselves) as common men or not. "Aspects of creation" throws another monkeywrench, because this is not a good moment to mingle your metaphors. Either we're talking Dr. Frankenstein here (and indeed aspects of his creation were "shuddersome" indeed), or Derleth is using "creation" to mean Earth, which evokes the whole Christian mythos at exactly the moment he needs not to remind his readers of it. Cthulhu Mythos stories depend on persuading readers to buy in, even temporarily, even with a list of caveats and restrictions as long as a squamous, ichor-dripping tentacle, even if only in the particular and peculiar category of belief in fiction. And that can't happen if the text throws out reminders of genuine religions at random moments. Cthulhu Mythos stories can grapple with actual religions successfully, but only if they do it deliberately.
And then we have the whole "blast the sanity of the beholder" idea. The persistent trope of HPL's fiction is the inadequacy of language to describe true horror, and the idea that confronted with true horror, the human mind will retreat into madness. HPL's narrators and protagonists go mad or die in ghastly circumstances. They tell us that they cannot tell us what they see. And Derleth knows this, but he doesn't understand how it works. Because here's a narrator telling us "there are aspects of creation so grostesquely shuddersome that the very sight of them would blast the sanity of the beholder. Fortunately, it is not possible even to bring back in anything but suggestion what we saw on the slab in the forest at Rick's Lake that night in October, for the thing was so unbelievable, transcending all known laws of science, that adequate words for its description have no existence in the language." But that narrator, having seen something that "would blast the sanity of the beholder," is clearly not mad. He's perfectly rational, doing the Wordsworthian thing of recollecting emotion in tranquility. But the givens of his own theorem tell us he shouldn't be. And because Derleth has forfeited our trust, we suspect that the reason he can't describe what the narrator saw is not that it was indescribable, but that he's not competent to describe it.
One of the things that makes HPL's best stories work is exactly the paradox of the hyper-articulate narrator faced with something he can't articulate. But it works because both narrator and author are hyper-articulate and know how to make the English language do what they want. Derleth doesn't have HPL's command of language, and he's simply not self-aware enough as a writer, leading him to write charmingly awful sentences like this one from "Beyond the Threshold":
Of the events of that catastrophic night, I find it difficult even at this late date to write, so vividly do they return to mind, despite the prosaic surroundings of Miskatonic University, where so many of those dread secrets are hidden in ancient and little-known texts.
I'm not even going to say anything. Just glory in the ghastliness.
Derleth is a fanboy. He cookies HPL with slavish adoration (both stories cite The Outsider and Others as a sacred text, along with the Necronomicon, the R'lyeh Text, and the Pnakotic Manuscript), and he trots out every convention of Lovecraftian fiction in each story, whether he understands them or not. He wants to be HPL so bad he's hurting himself. And, clearly, he caused me some pain as well, hence this post.
Lovecraft is hard to pastiche (I myself haven't done it, because every time I try it slides straight into parody); he's writing so close to the edge of camp that sometimes he falls over himself. And bad pastiche like Derleth's reveals exactly what it is that Lovecraft is doing and why it's so damn hard.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-07 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-07 11:24 pm (UTC)Horrible. Really and truly bad writing.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-07 11:35 pm (UTC)I know nothing of Derleth and now wish I knew less.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-07 11:55 pm (UTC)This is one of the reason's that I'm currently enjoying
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 06:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-14 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 03:05 am (UTC)Dark secrets! Random women! HORRIBLE TESTS!
::snerk::
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 03:17 am (UTC)Way to take one for the team. *g*
--hey, is there a narratological term for the thing with the first person narrator recounting the events of the story from a point outside/after the action? Is that the homodiagetic vs. autodiagetic distinction, or is homodiagetic vs. autodiagetic the one about separating narrator from protagonist? I ask because I was actually wanting better terminology to talk about the dysfunction of Derleth's narrator and didn't have it.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 03:26 am (UTC)That would be retrospective narration (as opposed to simultaneous narration, in which the story is narrated as it happens -- a relatively rare mode until fairly recently). It's entirely possible that there's a fancier term for it, but if so it's one that nobody uses (unlike the -diegesis neologisms, which we use with cheerful profligacy). Whether it's retrospective autodiegesis or retrospective homodiegesis depends -- as you guessed -- on whether the narrator is the protagonist or simply another character.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 09:08 am (UTC)I really groove on the bits in "The Whisperer in Darkness" before we find out that the monsters are semi-benevolent brain-collectors; really nothing more the neurological equivalent of enthusiastic home canners.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 08:51 am (UTC)Derleth actively encouraged new writers to try their hands at expanding Lovecraft's mythos, and while most of the results could be used to effectively fertilize farm fields, they helped encourage and broaden the popularity of the old gentleman's actual work. August Derleth was one of the original tentacle-wavers in the Cult of Howie Lovecraft, of which I am a blasphemous, squamous, forbidden-text-carrying member.
I understand Derleth also wrote travel guides... lots and lots of travel guides.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-14 04:30 pm (UTC)He founded Arkham House, after all.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 12:50 pm (UTC)Clark Ashton Smith, though, I think understood what Lovecraft was doing.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 12:58 pm (UTC)Excellent!
Date: 2005-06-08 02:56 pm (UTC)Re: Excellent!
Date: 2005-06-14 04:33 pm (UTC)I don't actually have an argument to make, though. All this post is, really, is "August Derleth didn't write as well as HPL, and here's some close readings to show you what I mean." I don't have anything in the way of a larger point to make.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 07:25 pm (UTC)FWIW
Date: 2005-06-10 11:10 am (UTC)If you want to see one (described by its owner as "the world's most gorgeously ugly statuette") then, just because it's you, here is a hotlink (http://www.chazbrenchley.co.uk/derleth.html).
no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 05:38 pm (UTC)Anyway. I found your journal via
no subject
Date: 2005-06-20 06:42 pm (UTC)I don't know where the term "truepenny" comes from. Hamlet uses it of his father's ghost in I, v (I've got the quote on my profile (http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=truepenny) page). I first encountered it in L. M. Boston's The Children of Green Knowe, where it is the name of a mole.
The OED says: a trusty person, an honest fellow (compared to a coin of genuine metal), first occurance 1589.