“There were, besides, great formless heaps of books on
the floor and in crude bins; and it was in one of these heaps that I found the
thing. I never learned its title, for the early pages were missing; but it fell
open toward the end and gave me a glimpse of something which sent my senses
reeling...”
-H. P. Lovecraft, “The Book” (c. 1934)
Why write a
blog about books in the Cthulhu Mythos? What point does it serve? After all,
there are already published bibliographies, on-line wiki sources, websites and
encyclopediae out there in the world which do more than commendable justice to
the subject. Why not be content with these?
From my
perspective this is, first of all, a labour of love. This is something which
I’ve always wanted to do so I figured, what the Hell? Why not? Further, I run
my own Call of Cthulhu games and I
thought that these essays would serve to put a bunch of things straight in
presenting material to my players. After all, there are a lot of discrepancies
in the Cthulhu universe: conflicting information, multiple histories,
contradicting sources. I wanted to ‘cherry pick’ the bits that I wanted to use
and streamline the canon lore into something that would make sense to my
players. The trouble is, there is so much stuff and putting it all in order is
a mammoth task.
My other issue
is that I’m a sucker for canon material: ‘what has been said, cannot be
unsaid’, and all that. I didn’t want to trample on any information which had
already been committed to print; I didn’t want to belittle or undermine the
work of others who had gone before. So it quickly became obvious that I had to
make everything work and get all of
the background into the mix. Fortunately, in a milieu where extra-dimensions occur, magic exists and realities
shift and change, this is not as hard as it seems. And there is plain, ordinary
reality to help out with things as well.
The
complexities of tracing a book’s history are often insurmountable. Dedicated
bibliographers spend years examining a single field, or area of publishing lore,
and battle incredible odds in pinning down definitive lists of tomes to
facilitate the efforts of dealers, collectors and researchers. Anyone who has
catalogued a book to enumerate its points of issue will know what I’m talking
about. Antiquarians examine books minutely, as even the lack of a single page
can dramatically affect the pricing of a rare work. However, even the most
accomplished cataloguer or bibliographer cannot account for things which never
make it into print about a work. Take the following example:
Sometimes, a
printer will execute the printing of a limited-edition run of a book and, just
because it’s good business, will knock off a few extra copies for the
publisher, the author, or their associates. Most often, these extra copies will
never be accounted for, and thus a limited run of 500 books is in fact a run of
503 (or so): while most publishers will do the right thing and note this fact,
oftentimes these ‘unnumbered copies’ will fall through the cracks and be
ignored – after all, a sale is a sale. This can result, years down the track,
in good copies being called ‘fakes’, or ‘later edition’ copies, and the
resulting arguments can become very fierce indeed - amongst academic circles,
at least.
As in so many
other areas of life, the more we attempt to pin down the issues on a certain
subject, the more slippery it tends to become. How often are you certain of
something only to find out that what you thought is wrong? How often have you
counted a series of things, only to count them again and discover that you were
out by one or two? Perfection, like reality and truth, is a matter of
refinement and consensus. With books, as in most things, everything boils down
to the lowest common denominator: if most copies of an edition of a work have
96 pages, then your copy with 95 or 97 pages is going to be considered faulty.
Try this
experiment for a particularly pertinent example. Gather together all the
different editions of Lovecraft’s collected short fiction that you can find;
turn to the last sentence in the “Haunter
of the Dark”. What you will see is:
“I
see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blue – black wings – Yog-Sothoth save
me – the three-lobed burning eye...”;
Or:
“I
see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blue–black wings – Yog-Sothoth save me
– the three-lobed burning eye...”;
Or:
“I
see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blur – black wings – Yog-Sothoth save
me – the three-lobed burning eye...”
So which is
it? Somewhere a typographical error has crept in and the ‘Powers That Be’ themselves
seem unable to reach a consensus. Is the Haunter a titanic blur? Is it “titan
blue” (whatever that is) with black wings? Or does it have titanic, blue-black
wings? I think that, with common sense, the answer is obvious, but it’s going
to take someone with access to original manuscripts and corrected proofs to
really sort it out.
*****
“You need to
tell those people at Harvard to be more careful. They really ought to burn the
damn thing, but I know that they won’t.” He shook his head dolefully. “Book people!
They’re more dangerous than you can imagine!”
-Alan Dean
Foster, “A Fatal Exception Has Occurred
At...”
Of course,
this kind of thing only means something to bibliophiles and other types who are
obsessed with the ‘book as object’. Other people couldn’t care less if their
copy is a first edition, or bound in cloth rather than calfskin, or missing the
front free endpaper: as long as the material is all present and accounted-for,
then the book has value to them. These are the sort of people who, eschewing
bookmarks, will fold down the corners of pages to mark their place; will
scribble in the margins; and will (shudder!) cover their books in adhesive
plastic. These are the people who make the lives of bookdealers very difficult
indeed.
Of course, the
damage accrued by books is part and parcel of their history as they travel into
and out of the world; their ‘lives’, if you will. The sheer weight of history
that can be discerned by holding an exceedingly old book is little short of
overwhelming; the heft of laid paper and a leather binding, the smell of
well-thumbed parchment and the accumulation of nicks, chips, stains and
scratches lend a true sense of ‘individuality’ to the tome, as if it too,
somehow, is truly alive in some sense.
Interestingly,
the majority of books and people in this catalogue do not exist and are not
‘real’, according to any meaning of the word. Regardless, they have as much history
attached to them - if not more in
some cases - than similar texts which do
exist. The Necronomicon is part of
our popular culture; facsimiles have been made of it; references have been made
to it, and its title (and associations) stolen, by people as varied as Stephen
King, H.R. Giger, Terry Pratchett and Tori Spelling. It’s arguably Lovecraft’s
greatest single contribution to Western culture, probably even moreso than the
works which he did write.
Mythos
stories, no matter what your feelings are on the subject, are about books; books are where the clues are
found; where the true meanings are pinned down; where the danger is discovered.
Without them there is no Mythos: those things which bubble up unbidden from our
sub/un/whatever-conscious, are found between the covers of moldy old tomes,
regardless of whether they are found in the most modern libraries or online
caches. To be a Mythos fan is to be a bibliophile, and, deep down, we all know
it to be true.
The other
thing about the Cthulhu Mythos, proven again and again by all of the stories
and gaming material out there, is that this is a personal journey: Cthulhu is
where you find him. There is a ‘looseness’ to the Mythos which allows for
personal interpretation (no matter how much Colin Wilson would like it to be
otherwise!) and I have tried to maintain this as much as possible. Some authors
resonate with me where others don’t; that’s as it should be: I haven’t
curtailed their efforts; I haven’t negated them. I hope that I have put them in
a context where they can speak authoritatively without undermining anyone
else’s contributions. In the end, I guess, this is my journey which I’m sharing
with you; I hope it spurs you on.
Cthulhu
f’tagh’n!
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