The August Derleth thread

[Genus Unknown]

So I think I've identified what's really wrong with so much of Derleth's Cthulhu canon: the way he has to cram as much Lovecraftian name-dropping into every story as he can possibly manage. It's not enough for him to do a little pastiche, draw some influence from Lovecraft, maybe mention the Necronomicon in passing. No. There always comes a point where, having established his monster and the basics of the plot, he has to stop the story in its tracks and devote a couple of pages to saying:

 "Oh by the way, this is all connected somehow to those stories of Cthulhu, the Great Old Ones, the Elder Things, and Yog-Sothoth that are mentioned in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred and the Nameless Cults of Von Juntz, presented under the guise of fiction by pulp author H.P. Lovecraft, whose stories are all hideously true because he knew the truth about places like Dunwich and the secret police raids on the Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth which harbors a terrible cult that worships a race of undersea monsters that shall some day rise and overthrow humanity. Also, they're all a bunch of elemental spirits, they can be warded off by this symbol here, blah blah blah blah."

It's like a little Cthulhu Mythos According to Derleth 101 crammed awkwardly into every damned story. If he just wouldn't do that, about 80% of my distaste for his writing would evaporate.

[old book]

Totally. I was reading one of his stories where he drops the names of at least three Lovecraft stories in one paragraph, as part of the prose. But then, Derleth is the guy who turned Cthulhu into a Mythos. I mean he coined the phrase, I'm pretty sure. Before that it was nice and amorphous, undefined. One of Derleth's creatures is Lloigor (I think, going by memory here) and it isn't half bad.

[JulieH]

Aha - the mythos connection explains a lot.

[old book]

I believe (going by memory again) Robert Anton Wilson coopts Lliogor in Illuminatus! Trilogy as a beast imprisoned in the Pentagon. I think (going by memory again) there is a hint that it is actually Adolf Hitler, and that when Hitler IRL said he had just spoken to the Ubermensch and had become afraid, very afraid, Wilson is hinting Gurdjieff called him collect from Lhasa, Tibet. This is classified Cosmic/Amber, so you did not hear it from me.

[Yojimbo]

I'm slowly working my way through a Derleth collection myself, and I totally agree with Genus Unknown. There's something forced and narratively unnatural about all the name-dropping.

I also don't like the way Derleth uses New England. Even Lovecraft didn't confine himself to that part of the world, and he primarily used it because he was familiar with it. Derleth would have been better off using his native midwest for story locations.

[old book]

He doesn't seem to be very acquainted with New England at all, but then, that should make his New England even more mythical than Lovecraft's. Somehow it doesn't, in practice.

Derleth did do the whole Sac Prairie series about his own section of Wisconsin, doing the regional thing as Lovecraft did, as did the novel Winesburg, Ohio. I think Willum Pugmyre tried this with a semi-mythical location in Washington State as well.

[Genus Unknown]

Sesqua Valley, yeah. Immortalized in a Darkest of the Hillside Thickets song ("Sesqua Valley's singin' out my name / I'll pass on that if it's all the same / She's one of the Million Favoured Ones / She's the Black Goat with a Thousand Young").

[old book]

Kegger, dude! Sesqua, Friday, be there. The Melvins might even play a set!!!