Episode 29 / Reading 7 -- The Hound

[Bob Lovecraft]

Just remember, dead girls don't say "no".

Bob

I was just reading The Empire of the Necromancers by CAS. .... >_<

Then yuo're on board with me?

Bob

[old book]

A cold, stiff board, no doubt.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I've always loved this story, but not for the story itself, but for the atmosphere.  The idea of the two isolated characters with their necromantic lair was always something of an inspiration to me.  THIS was actually the story that caused me to start collecting occult "stuff" and eventually Lovecraftiana. 

I haven't yet dug up HPL himself and placed him in my museum - I'm going to make that retirement project. 

[Genus Unknown]

Heh. You assume he's still there to be dug up...

One disgusting canvas seemed to depict a vast cross-section of Federal Hill, with ant-like armies of the mephitic monsters squeezing themselves through burrows that honeycombed the ground. Dances in the modern cemeteries were freely pictured, and another conception somehow shocked me more than all the rest—a scene in an unknown vault, where scores of the beasts crowded about one who held a well-known Providence guide-book and was evidently reading aloud. All were pointing to a certain passage, and every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and reverberant laughter that I almost thought I heard the fiendish echoes. The title of the picture was, "H.P. Lovecraft Lies Buried in Swan Point Cemetery."

Wrong story, right sentiment.  

[Bob Lovecraft]

The title of the picture was, "H.P. Lovecraft Lies Buried in Swan Point Cemetery."

Hmmmm.... I think you may have misquoted Pickman, but I don't know where...

Bob

[Genus Unknown]

Actually, I misquoted Thurber.

[Bob Lovecraft]

Actually, I misquoted Thurber.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH! The insanity of it all!!

Bob

[CthulhuWho1]

There is an alternative reading of this tale, done by myself, William Hart, in 2010, using an older, more frightened voice; which doesn't include a musical or sound effects background, but might be entertaining to those whom like collecting all the different audio versions of this tale.

See:
http://hppodcraft.com/forums/index.php?topic=652.msg4047#msg4047
for the links.

If you like this reading, search out my versions of At the Mountains of Madness and Fungi from Yuggoth too!

              Will

[Chris Hutson]

Hey, I'm kinda late to the hound party, but here's this, since I don't think it was brought up (it's been a while since the episode):

I'm pretty sure, since the author's name is mentioned in The Hound, that this story was influenced by "A rebours", an 1884 French novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans, variously translated as "Against the Grain" or "Against Nature."

It's a great, weird book, and a novel in which pretty much nothing happens.

It's all about this guy, a sort of Roderick Usher type degenerate last scion of an ancient noble family, who has more money than God through no fault of his own, who goes impotent and shuts himself up in a mansion to dedicate himself to doing all kinds of weird shit, and being generally transgressive and Decadent in a fin-de-siècle sort of way.

Notable episodes include his failed cultivation of poisonous tropical plants, his bejeweling of a turtle, a planned trip to London which turns into him riding around Paris in the rain and pretending to be in London, and especially his construction of a smell-organ which pipes in perfumes linked to different keys on a keyboard.

Anyway, it's worth reading if you liked the weird atmosphere in The Hound. I thought it was pretty funny, too, but I'm not sure it was supposed to be.