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Acolyte, v. 2, issue 4, whole no. 8, Fall 1944

know of this forbidden knowledge, they are somewhat more susceptible to cosmic terror than ordinary individuals.
Most weird authors have ocacionally fabricated occult books and authorities to quote from. But few if any have done it to the degree that Lovecraft did (so that mention of the Necronomicon became a kind of interior signature of his stories) and with such consistency that a definite alternate real-world is created. Arthur Machen, for example, though inventing, I believe, a few quotations from classical authors, did not postulate a set of closely-guarded books in the British Museum dealing with the history of "the little people".
This device goves Lovecraft's stories a potent kind of authenticity and --- paradoxically! --- puts them at a further remove from the real world. A detailed study of the growth of the Mythology and the back ground, and also an appraisal of the extent to which it helped or hampered Lovecraft's writings, would be very worth while.
Closely related to the Mythology and the background is Lovecraft's intensive use of the document-story. That is, the story that purports, a la Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle, to be a real document rather than a  mere tale. This device is common in weird literature, but again few if any authors have taken it quite as seriously as did Lovecraft. He set great store by the narrator having some vitally pressing motive for recounting his experiences, and was ingenious at devising such motives: justificatory confession in The Thing on the Doorstep and The Statement of Randolph Carter; warning, in The Whisperer in Darkness and At the Mountains of Madness; attempt by the narrator to clarify his own ideas and come to a decision, in The Shadow Over Innsmouth; scholarly summing up of a weird series of events, in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Haunter of the Dark, to name but a few.
Use of the document-story had a progressive effect on Lovecraft's style, favoring the employment of a matter-of-fact, uncolored prose and a dispassionate, scholarly viewpoint. Certainly there seems to be more witohery of words in an early tale like The Dunwich Horror than in a later one like The Shadow Out of Time, though the latter story has greater unity and technical perfection. There is much to be said both for an against the objective style of his later stories as contrasted with the more subjective style of his earlier ones.
Regarding Lovecraft's style --- that is, the way he told a story rather than the materials he used --- the most noteworthy feature is perhaps his dependence on confirmation rather than revelation. (I am indebted to Henry Kuttner for this neat phrase.) In other words, the story-ending--- The Outsider and a few others excepted ---does not come as a surprise but as a final, long-anticipated "convincer". The reader knows, and is supposed to know, what is coming, but this only prepares and adds to his shivers when the narrator supplies the last and incontrovertible piece of evidence. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward the reader knows from almost the first page that Ward has been supplanted by Joseph Curwen, yet the narrator does not state this unquivocally until the last sentence of the book.
So closely related to his use of confirmation as to be only another aspect of it, is Lovecreft's employment of the terminal climax --- that is, the story in which the high point and the final sentence coincide. Who can forget the supreme chill of: "But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life." or "It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did." or "They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting. "or"..... the face and hands of Henry Wentworth Akeley." Use of the terminal climax made it necessary for Lovecraft to develop a special type of story-telling, in which the explanatory and return-to-equilibrium material is all deftly inserted

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know of this forbidden knowledge, they are somewhat more susceptible to cosmic terror than ordinary individuals. Most weird authors have ocacionally fabricated occult books and authorities to quote from. But few if any have done it to the degree that Lovecraft did (so that mention of the Necronomicon became a kind of interior signature of his stories) and with such consistency that a definite alternate real-world is created. Arthur Machen, for example, though inventing, I believe, a few quotations from classical authors, did not postulate a set of closely-guarded books in the British Museum dealing with the history of "the little people". This device goves Lovecraft's stories a potent kind of authenticity and --- paradoxically! --- puts them at a further remove from the real world. A detailed study of the growth of the Mythology and the back ground, and also an appraisal of the extent to which it helped or hampered Lovecraft's writings, would be very worth while. Closely related to the Mythology and the background is Lovecraft's intensive use of the document-story. That is, the story that purports, a la Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle, to be a real document rather than a mere tale. This device is common in weird literature, but again few if any authors have taken it quite as seriously as did Lovecraft. He set great store by the narrator having some vitally pressing motive for recounting his experiences, and was ingenious at devising such motives: justificatory confession in The Thing on the Doorstep and The Statement of Randolph Carter; warning, in The Whisperer in Darkness and At the Mountains of Madness; attempt by the narrator to clarify his own ideas and come to a decision, in The Shadow Over Innsmouth; scholarly summing up of a weird series of events, in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Haunter of the Dark, to name but a few. Use of the document-story had a progressive effect on Lovecraft's style, favoring the employment of a matter-of-fact, uncolored prose and a dispassionate, scholarly viewpoint. Certainly there seems to be more witohery of words in an early tale like The Dunwich Horror than in a later one like The Shadow Out of Time, though the latter story has greater unity and technical perfection. There is much to be said both for an against the objective style of his later stories as contrasted with the more subjective style of his earlier ones. Regarding Lovecraft's style --- that is, the way he told a story rather than the materials he used --- the most noteworthy feature is perhaps his dependence on confirmation rather than revelation. (I am indebted to Henry Kuttner for this neat phrase.) In other words, the story-ending--- The Outsider and a few others excepted ---does not come as a surprise but as a final, long-anticipated "convincer". The reader knows, and is supposed to know, what is coming, but this only prepares and adds to his shivers when the narrator supplies the last and incontrovertible piece of evidence. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward the reader knows from almost the first page that Ward has been supplanted by Joseph Curwen, yet the narrator does not state this unquivocally until the last sentence of the book. So closely related to his use of confirmation as to be only another aspect of it, is Lovecreft's employment of the terminal climax --- that is, the story in which the high point and the final sentence coincide. Who can forget the supreme chill of: "But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life." or "It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did." or "They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting. "or"..... the face and hands of Henry Wentworth Akeley." Use of the terminal climax made it necessary for Lovecraft to develop a special type of story-telling, in which the explanatory and return-to-equilibrium material is all deftly inserted