The Importance of the Genre Book Collector

In 1862, John Burton pointed out the main traits of book collectors: ‘It is, as you will observe, the general ambition of the class to find value where there seems to be none, and this develops a certain skill and subtlety, enabling the operator, in the midst of a heap of rubbish, to put his finger on those things which have in them the latent capacity to become valuable and curious.’

He goes further to explain how this benefits society: ‘In such a manner is it that books are saved from annihilation, and that their preservers become the feeders of the great collections in which, after their value is established, they find refuge; and herein it is that the class to whom our attention is at present devoted to perform an inestimable service to literature.’

“The Loyalty of collectors draws them to each other; they are a fraternity joined by bonds stronger than their vows, the bonds of shared vanity and the ridicule of non-collectors. Collectors appear to non-collectors as selfish, rapacious, and half-mad, which is what collectors frequently are, but they may also be enlightened, generous and benefactors of society, which is the way they like to see themselves. Mad or sane, they salvage civilization.”

— Wilmarth Lewis—Lefty Lewis collector of eighteenth century writer Horace Walpole.

Small press horror collecting has evolved and changed over the last seventy-five years and will continue to do so over the next seventy-five. And we as collectors will be evolving right along with it.

The purpose of the book collector is a considerable one. Genre fiction written within the small press will one day be seen as treasures by many rather than few. And we, as collectors, are simply the caretakers of these treasures.

For example, society is just now starting to see the real influence that H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction has had on American literature, film and art nearly a half-century after his death. Only with August Derleth’s passion for Lovecraft’s work and the persistence of Lovecraft’s readers to support and collect his publications, is his work now so well respected and available to the public.

I believe the small press horror collector’s role in our world history will also prove to be a significant one. We line our walls from floor to ceiling with these dark works of fiction because they teach us about the significance of life, its frailty and the ease with which it can be taken away. It affords us the opportunity to look at life as something very precious and worthy of our reverence.

Without the small press collector’s library we would likely lose much, if not all of these worthy tomes to the minutia of media that bombards our daily lives and thereby losing its influence within our cultural mores, folkways and taboos that are now written within the pages of today’s small press horror literature. I believe that the importance of this genre will, in retrospect, prove to be a reflection of the dark side of our nature through no less than five wars, concentration camps, occult suicides and school yard rampages to mention only a few. Art reflects life and our genre explores that darkness by shining the light of promise and interpretation upon it. The genre collector is the savior of these tomes for posterity.

Larry L. Roberts

Oscar Wilde: Vampire?

We passed an open grave. / With yawning mouth the yellow hole / Gaped for a living thing; / The very mud cried out for blood … The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

Incredibly difficult to find, the research team at Miskatonic Books has tracked down the tabloid controversy that Oscar Wilde did not die and lived for many years after his burial. A clue by the fabulous researcher, David J. Skal, in his book Vampires: Encounters with the Undead greatly expedited research. He traced the rumor to the highly lauded poet, George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962) who seemed to single handedly give rebirth to the decadent and controversial voice of Wilde in his poems.

Imagine how Viereck’s 1907 poem (a portion reproduced here) Haunted House was received !

Before my vision in voluptuous quest,
The pageant of the lovers who possessed
Your soul and body even as I possess,
Who marked your passion in its nakedness
And all your love-sins when your love was new.

They saw as I your quivering breast, and drew
Nearer to the consuming flame that burns
Deep to the marrow of my bone, and turns
My heart to love even as theirs who knew
From head to girdle each sweet curve of you,
Each little way of loving. No caress,
But apes the part of former loves. Ah yes,

Back to Wilde, his nephew, Arthur Cravan. may have been either addled (he was a professional fighter) or looking for publicity, but when confronted as late as 1913 by a New York Times reporter, Cravan said he frequently saw Wilde.

So you can decide – did Wilde die? Is he still alive and wandering the earth? And if so, is he a … vampire?

[If you click, the image should expand to full size in a new window]

“Lifts”

No, not the kind on “Dancing with the Stars”.  Connoisseurs of paperback books have noticed over the years that artists copy one another, or publishers recycle artwork.  There is nothing particularly wrong with this, but horror aficionados play the game, “Where have I see that before?”

A keen-eyed collector and reader, “Jimster”, wrote to us and suggested the examples seen here.

How many have you seen?

“Misky” wants to thanks the thousands of readers and fans of this blog.  We notice and are more grateful than you can know for the time you take from your busy week to read for a few moments.  Please continue to patronize Miskatonic Books, and Bloodletting Books.  As Mayberry’s Andy Taylor might say, “We ‘Preciate it”.

Lafcadio Hearn

Patricio Lafcadio Tessimo Carlos Hearn (1850 – 1904) was named after the Greek isle of Lefkada on which he was born, and of course referencing St. Patrick.

His father was a Sergeant major from Ireland who married a Greek, Rosa. He moved to Ireland at age 2, and while there destroyed the eyesight in one eye through accident.

He then moved to Cincinnati at the age of 19. He was in poverty, but worked his way up to reporter enchanting readers with novel descriptions of murders and what not. In 1877 Hearn moved to New Orleans, and his appearance there described in the e-clipping below. (click to expand into a more readable size)

Hearn, who lost all sense of traditional religion at an early age, became fascinated by folk lore, and folk religion. Because of this Harper’s sent Hearn to visit and write about Martinique. During that time he created two books. In the late 19th century, Hearn went to Japan, then almost unknown to westerners.

Hearn’s fascination with the odd and dark side of culture gave him a macabre aura sometimes attracting and sometimes repulsing his contemporary readers. His personality, however, dissuaded much criticism.

It is only in the last few decades that schoalrs and fans have rediscovered Hearn who is now respected as laying down elements used in supernatural fiction. While not particularly writing in the weird tale mode, he wrote of ghosts, zombies, and all manner of folklorish monsters and their very human and degenerate colleagues.

Below a recording of some of Lafcadio’s prose.

MASTERS OF THE WEIRD TALE: Henry Kuttner (Limited Edition)

Another fine edition to the Masters of the Weird Tale series published by Centipede Press!

MASTERS OF THE WEIRD TALE: Henry Kuttner (Limited Edition)

A four-hundred-plus page collection of the horror stories of Henry Kuttner, including his classic “The Graveyard Rats” and a number of other stories that have not been reprinted since their original publication in the pulps over fifty years ago. This collection features a striking full-color cover by Erik Gist and a color frontispiece and endpapers by J.K. Potter. Each book is signed by Gist, Potter, and editor Stefan Dziemianowicz. Most of these works are not in print anywhere else, and are essential reading for pulp and Weird Tales fans. The introduction features photographs of Kuttner and full-color reproductions of all the pulp covers in which the stories were original reprinted. Each book is fully bound in cloth and comes in a handsome two-tone slipcase to match your other volumes in the Masters of the Weird Tale series. If you would like to see a table of contents in PDF format, just drop us a line! The retail on this book is $295. The book is currently on sale for $175.

Horror As Mystery: Shirley Jackson

Modern short story writers eventually discover the longer form.  It is inevitable if they are to make a living by writing.  In the days of Poe, and even H. P. Lovecraft, the short story form was in great demand and paid relatively well by major magazines.  There were novels, but they often sold poorly and paid small advances for a great deal of work by a writer.   Essentially for a year’s work on a novel, one had all eggs in one basket – feast or famine.  This began to change by the 1930′s, and suddenly a writer such as F. Scott Fitzgerald who dominated the novel form, but was paid poorly, succumbed to Hemingway (a protegé and friend of Fitzgerald) who began to get significant advances and nods from Hollywood and wrote sparsely but with impact and intensity.

Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury were two who made this transition.  In their early career, they churned volumes of short stories, and slowly as Hollywood beckoned and the century progressed they first did short story anthologies, and then full fledged novels to greater and greater acclaim.

One thing was sure, it was impossible to sustain horror over hundreds of pages.  The human psyche could probably not absorb it, even if a writer found a way to escalate the shocks and terrors after the turn of each page.  So exposition of mystery was  substituted.  An expanse of exposition is laid down, characterization expounded, and then as the protagonist rushed through horrific crisis after horrific cliffhanger like a bad-luck Indiana Jones,  the storyline pushed frward by slowly revealing the mystery toward the end game.

A master of this was Shirley Jackson.  Lovecraft disdained Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919), yet Jackson intuitively seemed to know this was the truth of 20th century horror:  Little lives in little places had the biggest potential for mystery and horror. A snippet of Anderson, and a short review of Jackson’s 1962 book can be found below.

Dorothy Parker and others were effusive over Jackson’s tour de force, and sadly, one of her very last works as she passed in 1965.  Parker said, “There is still sunshine for us. The miracle is wrought by Shirley Jackson, God bless her, as ever unparalleled, more than ever in her latest book.”

Below is Jackson’s work put to a bit of music by the Yale Repertory Group with a grim and stark minimalist set.

A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard

Click on any of the pictures below for ordering information.

A MEANS TO FREEDOM: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard

Edited by Rusty Burke, S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz

• Limited trade paper edition: $55.00 for two-volume set (individual volumes not sold separately)
• 1000 copy paperback print run
• Sewn signatures and french flaps, not print on demand

The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
Volume 1: 1930-1932

H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard are two of the titans of weird fiction of their era. Dominating the pages of Weird Tales in the 1920s and 1930s, they have gained worldwide followings for their compelling writings and also for the very different lives they led. The two writers came in touch in 1930, when Howard wrote to Lovecraft via Weird Tales. A rich and vibrant correspondence immediately ensued. Both writers were fascinated with the past, especially the history of Roman and Celtic Britain, and their letters are full of intriguing discussions of contemporary theories on this subject.

Gradually, a new discussion came to the fore-a complex dispute over the respective virtues of barbarism and civilisation, the frontier and settled life, and the physical and the mental. Lovecraft, a scion of centuries-old New England, and Howard, a product of recently settled Texas, were diametrically opposed on these and other issues, and each writes compellingly of his beliefs, attitudes, and theories. The result is a dramatic debate-livened by wit, learning, and personal revelation-that is as enthralling as the fiction they were writing at the time. All the letters have been exhaustively annotated by the editors.

The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
Volume 2: 1933-1936

In this second volume of the letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the two authors continue their wide-ranging discussion of such central issues as the relative value of barbarism and civilization, the virtues of the frontier and of settled city life, and other related issues. Lovecraft regales Howard with his extensive travels up and down the eastern seaboard, including trips to Quebec, Florida, and obscure corners of New England, while Howard writes engagingly of his own travels through the lonely stretches of Texas.

Each has great praise for the other’s writings in Weird Tales and elsewhere, and each conducts searching discussions of literature, philosophy, politics, and economics in the wake of the depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election. World affairs, including the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, also engage their attention. All letters are exhaustively edited by the editors, and the volume concludes with an extensive bibliography of both writers as well as the publication of a few letters to Lovecraft from Robert E. Howard’s father, Dr. I. M. Howard, in the wake of his son’s tragic and unexpected suicide.

The letters will be reissued by Hippocampus Press in 2011 in a limited edition two-volume PAPERBACK set, with Smythe-sewn signatures, and with each volume individually shrink-wrapped.

Horror by Exaggerated Scale

First, who knew “ants got hair”? These are dramatic images of ants as part of a massive image scanning of all species of ants on our planet (<click). It also feeds into the theory that alien life on Earth might be very similar to alien life on other planets, only different by slight degree.

Science Fiction or Horror?

From H. G. Wells to Steve Alten, exaggerated scale has been used to startle the imagination and create horrific emotions.

Friday the Thirteenth and the Curse of the Templars

Horror writers use folklore and superstitions to enhance their stories.

Umbrellas open inside, crossing fingers, making a wish on a turkey wishbone, knocking on wood, “666″ the numerological sign of Emperor Nero, breaking a mirror, bad things clustering in threes, rabbit’s foot (In the Midwest it is carrying a buckeye nut), black cats, walking under ladders, finding a penny, and many more superstitions are often used by horror writers to project a supernatural sensation to the reader.

Number One is “Friday the 13th”.

If you’re not scared of Friday the 13th, you should be scared of the word used to describe it: friggatriskaidekaphobics.

This seems to have stemmed from the death of Jacques* de Molay (c. 1245 –1314). A Templar, King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars, had Molay and many other French Templars arrested in 1307 (in a dawn raid on Friday, October 13, 1307) and tortured into making false confessions. When Molay later retracted his confession, Philip had him burned at the stake on an island in the Seine river in Paris, on March 1314.

The records stated; “That same day, by sunset, a pile was erected on a small island in the Seine, the Isle des Juifs, near the palace garden. There de Molay … slowly burned to death, refusing all offers of pardon for retraction.”

The Curse:

It is said that Jacques de Molay cursed King Philip IV of France and his descendants fas he burned. Folklorists and historians believe the story of the shouted curse appears to be a combination of words uttered by a different Templar, and those of Jacques de Molay. warning the pope that, within a year and a day, he and Philip IV would be obliged to answer for their crimes in God’s presence.[19]

Philip and Clement V (20 April 1314) both died within a year of Molay’s execution. Philip died in a hunting accident**. Then followed the rapid succession of the last Direct Capetian kings of France between 1314 and 1328, the three sons of Philip IV. Within 14 years from the death of Jacques de Molay, the 300-year-old House of Capet collapsed.

Lovecraft even hinted at the end of the Capetian French royal line with his early story Alchemist that seems very much a midrash (though jumbled up) on the Templar legend.

Then, slowly advancing to meet the Count, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that ever afterward haunted the house of C-.

‘May ne’er a noble of thy murd’rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!’

spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black woods, he drew from his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw into the face of his father’s slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the night.

* Jacques in French is the Biblical name “Jacob”, which in English is often transcribed as “James”. Thus the early English King James lived in the Jacobean era.
** Note in Lovecraft: “so that when Godfrey, innocent cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an arrow whilst hunting at the age of thirty-two”. The “house of C-” seems to be “Carpet”.

Hannes Bok: Ground-Breaking Artist

In the early days of horror, weird tales, and scientifiction fans across the country (U.S.A.) used the postal service like we do the internet or texting.  It was a seemingly smaller world then, but one still had to “network” and exhibit a passion to achieve success.  From that early world came a simple Midwesterner, Wayne Woodard (July 2, 1914–April 11, 1964).

He was not to be Wayne for long.  Maybe because his world was a rough and struggle, he began to explore new mental vistas, and even new names for himself.  He bounced around, gave up contacts with family members, but found a new family in the fan community.  Perhaps that is not so different than many of you reading this blog post today?

A typical vibrant illustration by Bok

Moving (1937) to the then small Los Angeles, he met folks like Ray Bradbury, Forest Ackerman, and Ray Harryhausen who had formed a loose group of fans wanting to either write for a living, or make a small splash in the motion picture industry.  They loved weird and horrific fantasy, and for a while Wayne hung out with them.  Then in 1938 he moved to Seattle and corresponded with folks like Max Parrish.  Not much was happening, so he dabbled in astrology, and being a fan of Bach, toyed with a pseudonym.  At first he liked “Hans Bok” after Johann Bach, and then fancied it to Hannes Bok.

Ray Bradbury seized a stash of Bok’s artwork, and in a typical bundle of bravado and coiled-up energy burst across the country to New York brandishing his pal’s work at the first World’s Science Fiction convention.  There, A-type personalities collided for the first time in person, and deals were made.  One was to get Bok noticed, and eventually got him illustrating jobs.

From a mid-20th century "pro-zine" Fanscient.

Some do not know that Bok was also a writer.  He submitted many essays, and perhaps one crowning achievement was to finish an A. Merritt story in illustrated book form- The Fox Woman/Blue Pagoda.

So, today, we celebrate another “hero of the faith”, the great illustrator, Hannes Bok.  If you liked his work, please post a comment and tell your friends.