GAME? Reorganized words.

[JulieH]

I was doing this in the wrong forum - the "looking for audio" one, since we wandered a bit off topic.

I had so much fun reorganizing some purple prose from Derleth over there, Decided to do something like that to a topic no one will argue needs help - The Mound.

The idea is to take a paragraph and use as many of the words from it (and NO additional words at all) to write a new paragraph - something more interesting, perhaps more evocative.  Or tell a story.
Punctuation - use whatever fits

Why? Because ti's a fun challenge.

Here's the first paragraph of The Mound:

It is only within the last few years that most people have stopped thinking of the West as a new land. I suppose the idea gained ground because our own especial civilisation happens to be new there; but nowadays explorers are digging beneath the surface and bringing up whole chapters of life that rose and fell among these plains and mountains before recorded history began. We think nothing of a Pueblo village 2500 years old, and it hardly jolts us when archaeologists put the sub-pedregal culture of Mexico back to 17,000 or 18,000 B. C. We hear rumours of still older things, too—of primitive man contemporaneous with extinct animals and known today only through a few fragmentary bones and artifacts—so that the idea of newness is fading out pretty rapidly. Europeans usually catch the sense of immemorial ancientness and deep deposits from successive life-streams better than we do. Only a couple of years ago a British author spoke of Arizona as a “moon-dim region, very lovely in its way, and stark and old—an ancient, lonely land”.

I'll see what I can come up with and post tonight.
Anyone else want to try?

[JulieH]

Lonely Arizona - rumours of civilisation stopped years ago; a culture fading out pretty rapidly as animals spoke of immemorial sub-Europeans, of life before 17,000 or 18,000 B.C.  Pedregal, lovely and fragmentary, rose and fell 2500 years among these plains because the extinct archaeologists gained successive moon-dim mountains when the ground within the Pueblo put a stark idea of ... older things ... thinking of a British author as new artifacts, bones few and ancient, bringing newness to a couple of explorers.  Digging is contemporaneous, still; the especial idea of history beneath Mexico that most people have happens in very deep streams of primitive sense, of an ancientness.  Better jolts than catch our own chapters; old, too - old and only surface life.  Up the west village, deposits from man nowadays are usually from back of the only region recorded, and hardly hear the nothing that began with today and last through years.  Few whole and known life land there, land with only a new "us", but we suppose, we think it is its way to be; so that I and we do it.

[old book]

Beneath the surface of the Pueblo moon-dim British archaeologists of immemorial ancientness and deep life-streams suppose the fragmentary ground the culture and civilisation of the West, as whole chapters of extinct people back to 17,000 or 18,000 BC. Only a couple of years ago,  before recorded history began, among these plains and mountains of Mexico—an ancient, lonely land—animals known today only through a few bones and artifacts have stopped thinking that most explorers are fading out to nothing pretty rapidly. Rumours be of a new land from successive Europeans, very lovely in its way, and stark and old, usually catch the sense better than we do. I spoke of a primitive village contemporaneous with sub-pedregal deposits and bringing up still older things, so that the idea of newness is only new there; we think digging happens when we hear it. A life that rose and fell within it hardly jolts us, and man, too, 2500 years old, gained few years. But nowadays last-put idea of author is as a region, because our own especial Arizona.

[JulieH]

Nice one!  Wanna keep going?  Paragraph two:

Yet I believe I have a deeper sense of the stupefying—almost horrible—ancientness of the West than any European. It all comes from an incident that happened in 1928; an incident which I’d greatly like to dismiss as three-quarters hallucination, but which has left such a frightfully firm impression on my memory that I can’t put it off very easily. It was in Oklahoma, where my work as an American Indian ethnologist constantly takes me and where I had come upon some devilishly strange and disconcerting matters before. Make no mistake—Oklahoma is a lot more than a mere pioneers’ and promoters’ frontier. There are old, old tribes with old, old memories there; and when the tom-toms beat ceaselessly over brooding plains in the autumn the spirits of men are brought dangerously close to primal, whispered things. I am white and Eastern enough myself, but anybody is welcome to know that the rites of Yig, Father of Snakes, can get a real shudder out of me any day. I have heard and seen too much to be “sophisticated” in such matters. And so it is with this incident of 1928. I’d like to laugh it off—but I can’t.

[old book]

West Oklahoma, I believe, matters in a deeper sense than... The stupefying father of snakes ceaselessly whispered “I am white and Eastern,” but I can’t; I had heard and seen too much to be “sophisticated” where I have come upon some devilishly strange and disconcerting matters, and so it is with brooding plains in the autumn the spirits of men are brought dangerously close to primal things before. I’d like to laugh it off, I’d greatly like to dismiss it as three-quarters hallucination, my work as an American Indian ethnologist. Old, old—almost horrible—memories of an incident that has happened in 1928 left such a frightfully firm impression on my memory that I can’t put it off very easily, but the tom-toms beat yet, and it all comes from this incident of 1928, an incident when European  pioneers and promoters get a real shudder out of me in old, old Oklahoma. I have a lot more than a mere frontier: make no mistake where, there are tribes with ancientness there, over which the rites constantly welcome me. It takes anybody to know that, but enough of myself, Yig... such was. Any can, any which is, was and is, of the day.

[Bob Lovecraft]

WOW. You guys are something else. But you realize that by doing what you are doing, you my very well summon up the shade of August Derleth. Always remember "never call up that which you cannot put down".

Bob

[JulieH]

I put down August Derleth all the time.

But this is from The Mound - that Lovecraft collaboration no one liked a few episodes back...

I will get back on this tonight or tomorrow morning - finishing new episode, and got called into work...
busy busy busy

[old book]

There's lots to like about old Derleth, the person and the writer, but he's dead, and so that's kind of a barrier to getting to know him better. Since this word game--I can't really grasp the point of it, btw--came up in regards to Derleth continuing Lovecraft themes, I would like to say he also has some stories that are sort of derivative from Dreams in the Witch. One was mentioned in the other thread, and the other might be The Survivor, but I've got all the names of his stories mixed up. It involves an ancient wizard ancestor sacrificing local children, and there's a gruesome scene where the descendent rips out a false wall and comes across many small bones. I can see why people don't like his stories, they're much more subdued in a way, not as "cosmic" or startling, but I think they're not bad, and I've even enjoyed a few of them.

[JulieH]

Point? no point but entertaining ourselves...

My problems with Derleth tend to involve (a) he used vocabulary he didn't quite understand, just because the words were in Lovecraft's stories; (b) he did those "collaborations" where after Lovecraft's death he would take some single line idea from HPL's notebook and write a story and then claim it was a collaboration; (c) growing and shrinking fish-frogs is an unbearable stupid idea - mainly because he was trying to tie it to an existing story, while not paying any attention to whether it actually "worked" with the story - sort of like the way Nightmare on Elm Street 2 completely changed the character and behavior of Freddy Krueger.

[old book]

Heheh. Pointless games are the best ones.

(a) I do that, but only very rarely does someone ask me what I mean, at which point I 'fess up, but still feel embarrassed.
(b) Many worse things have been done with small bits of Lovecraft serving as the basis. I think. Anyway, I like some of his so-called collaborations.
(c) I didn't quite get that either. If they were growing, OK, fine, but they were shrinking back after that, too, weren't they? I guess that might be an adaptive advantage, say if they worked as longshoremen, and sometimes needed to duck out in a hurry. They could just turn small and swim away unseen.

[JulieH]

But they couldn't grow and shrink by choice, or on command, but entirely dependent on what they'd eaten.  When the thing was shut up for a long time, and starved, it didn't die - it shrank!

And then when it ate a bunch of cows or something, suddenly it was huge.
:P

[Genus Unknown]

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: August Derleth wasn't a bad writer as long as he wasn't playing in Lovecraft's sandbox. I don't know what it was about Cthulhu that turned Derleth into such a drooling hack, but I know I've enjoyed the handful of non-Mythos stories I've read of his.

Derleth is like the George Lucas of Lovecraftian fiction, in that he gave such a great gift to nerds the world over, and then spent the rest of his life trying to ruin it.

[JulieH]

touche, apt-man.

[Bob Lovecraft]

Derleth is like the George Lucas of Lovecraftian fiction, in that he gave such a great gift to nerds the world over, and then spent the rest of his life trying to ruin it.

Wow, that is uncanny. I had that exact same thought yesterday when I was talking to my wife about Derleth and the conversation segued into the new and "improved" blu-rays that the hack is putting out now. He has officially screwed that series up beyond the point of repair after making Vader shout out his pathetic little "NOOOooooooooooo!" at the end of "Jedi". Now the climactic scene of Vader's redemption sounds like something out of an old 80's cop show. Fucking George Lucas. Maybe he is Derleth's reincarnated soul?

Bob

[old book]

Didn't Lucas basically come out of nowhere and appear on the scene only because he filmed the murder at the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, California?

I'll probably never read Derleth's Sac Prairie cycle, but some of his stuff in Weird Tales was fairly good imho. What I like about him hacking around the Lovecraft mythos is he sort of gives everything a subdued feel, everything's really laid-back, which is a surreal experience  if you've read the Lovecraft it's based on. It's not exactly Top 40 Easy Listening or Muzak, but not entirely foreign to the genre category of Adult Contemporary. That Seal of R'lyeh story I can totally picture as a 70s flick with a muscle car/penis-mobile driven by the main character wearing slightly "hip" New England preppy fashion, lava lamps and ceiling mirrors in his bachelor's pad, a round bed, the whole nine yards.