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Acolyte, v. 1, issue 1, Fall 1942
Page 4
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LOVECRAFT EXCERPTS. (Cont.) ************************** unconvincing" -- and in the case of my mss, "too long". No, I certainly wouldn't give in the his demand for a flat, explained ending. I'd rather not place a story than twist it to his mould... ************************ April 16, 1935. ...I can generally recall an idea pretty well, once the essential outlines are down on paper. I also save press cuttings bearing on weird topics -- reports of monsters, lost races, excavated cities of antiquity, sunken islands, etc. -- for possible future use in fiction. As for "abstruseness" in stories -- all the pulp magazines seem to demand detailed and prosaic explanations for every unusual element. It ruins the story from a truly artistic standpoint, but editors don't care about that. They aim to please the very lowest grade of readers, probably because these constitute a large numerical majority. When you glance at the advertisements in these cheap magazines (and they wouldn't continue to be inserted if they weren't answered) you can see what a hopelessly vulgar and stupid rabble comprise the bulk of the clientele. These yaps and nitwits probably can't grasp anything even remotely approaching subtlety. Suggestion -- the most artistic way to present any marvellous event -- means absolutely nothing to them. One has to draw a full diagram and drive the idea into their heads with a hammer before they "get" it. Indeed -- many persons of far greater literacy are surprisingly slow in grasping the fine points of a story. I know a really brilliant chap who didn't grasp the meaning (a very subtly concealed meaning) of Machen's "White People" until I carefully and detailedly explained it to him. But it doesn't pay to cater too extensively to this taste for diagrams and hammers. Many a writer has been ruined by so doing. I can see where the reiteration of this demand has injured my own work -- in my more recent stories I undoubtedly explain too much. I don't mean to, for I despise the cheap ideal demanding it -- but the constant objection to obscure endings has doubtless crept somehow into my subconsciousness. ************************* November 12, 1935 ...Well -- luck is a queer thing. I was, as may well be imagined, highly elated over the acceptance of the "Mountains" (which I had let Schwartz, at his own insistence, handle as agent, though I thought it a forlorn hope) -- when lo look at the second pleasing jolt I have received! Astounding has also taken "The Shadow Out of Time" -- which Wandrei, unknown to me, had submitted to it! The career of the "Shadow" has certainly been one of surprises -- first Bobby Barlow flabbergasted me with the typed copy -- and now Wandrei has put one over on Grandpa by marketing the selfsame copy! Naturally, I realize that this dual acceptance is simply a coincidence-bred luck shot, and that I can't depend on "Astounding" to take things right along. However, the occurence is distinctly encouraging, and may start me on a new period of intensive writing. Indeed, it has done so already -- since last week I wrote a 26 page bit of horror whose typing I have just finished. (The Haunter of the Dark) Prompted by one of the letters in the Eyrie, I've dedicated this to young Bloch in exchange for his dedication of the "Shambler". He left me a splotch of ensanguined jelly -- and now I've left him as a glassy-eyed corpse whose expression of cosmic, unutterable fear turns the spectators sick! I doubt if this tale -5-
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LOVECRAFT EXCERPTS. (Cont.) ************************** unconvincing" -- and in the case of my mss, "too long". No, I certainly wouldn't give in the his demand for a flat, explained ending. I'd rather not place a story than twist it to his mould... ************************ April 16, 1935. ...I can generally recall an idea pretty well, once the essential outlines are down on paper. I also save press cuttings bearing on weird topics -- reports of monsters, lost races, excavated cities of antiquity, sunken islands, etc. -- for possible future use in fiction. As for "abstruseness" in stories -- all the pulp magazines seem to demand detailed and prosaic explanations for every unusual element. It ruins the story from a truly artistic standpoint, but editors don't care about that. They aim to please the very lowest grade of readers, probably because these constitute a large numerical majority. When you glance at the advertisements in these cheap magazines (and they wouldn't continue to be inserted if they weren't answered) you can see what a hopelessly vulgar and stupid rabble comprise the bulk of the clientele. These yaps and nitwits probably can't grasp anything even remotely approaching subtlety. Suggestion -- the most artistic way to present any marvellous event -- means absolutely nothing to them. One has to draw a full diagram and drive the idea into their heads with a hammer before they "get" it. Indeed -- many persons of far greater literacy are surprisingly slow in grasping the fine points of a story. I know a really brilliant chap who didn't grasp the meaning (a very subtly concealed meaning) of Machen's "White People" until I carefully and detailedly explained it to him. But it doesn't pay to cater too extensively to this taste for diagrams and hammers. Many a writer has been ruined by so doing. I can see where the reiteration of this demand has injured my own work -- in my more recent stories I undoubtedly explain too much. I don't mean to, for I despise the cheap ideal demanding it -- but the constant objection to obscure endings has doubtless crept somehow into my subconsciousness. ************************* November 12, 1935 ...Well -- luck is a queer thing. I was, as may well be imagined, highly elated over the acceptance of the "Mountains" (which I had let Schwartz, at his own insistence, handle as agent, though I thought it a forlorn hope) -- when lo look at the second pleasing jolt I have received! Astounding has also taken "The Shadow Out of Time" -- which Wandrei, unknown to me, had submitted to it! The career of the "Shadow" has certainly been one of surprises -- first Bobby Barlow flabbergasted me with the typed copy -- and now Wandrei has put one over on Grandpa by marketing the selfsame copy! Naturally, I realize that this dual acceptance is simply a coincidence-bred luck shot, and that I can't depend on "Astounding" to take things right along. However, the occurence is distinctly encouraging, and may start me on a new period of intensive writing. Indeed, it has done so already -- since last week I wrote a 26 page bit of horror whose typing I have just finished. (The Haunter of the Dark) Prompted by one of the letters in the Eyrie, I've dedicated this to young Bloch in exchange for his dedication of the "Shambler". He left me a splotch of ensanguined jelly -- and now I've left him as a glassy-eyed corpse whose expression of cosmic, unutterable fear turns the spectators sick! I doubt if this tale -5-
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