Like, I suspect, most HPL fans, I
consider that “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
represents one of the quintessential masterpieces of his oeuvre. The story is tightly-paced and the action gripping; the
menace is palpable and the characters doom-laden and desperate. It speaks
directly to the investigative nature of the horror genre, the peeling back of
layers of mystery before the final, mind-numbing revelation. To my mind it has
defined the form that the Call of Cthulhu
roleplaying game uses for its narrative tales: the slow unspooling of
information towards uncovering the hidden mystery. Further, the story ties
itself up neatly, in and of itself, but there are enough points of interest
raised to generate further tales; enough unsaid material, allusive references
and throwaway lines to string out many more stories and plumb many more terrors.
This has been the source of such publications as Chaosium’s “Return to Innsmouth” and Pagan
Publishing’s Delta Green game.
I fully understand why fans of
Lovecraft, and of the roleplaying that descends from his works, would want to
explore Innsmouth and all that it represents; I’ve done it myself. However,
there is one niggling little point that bothers me:
It’s “Devil Reef”. Not “Devil’s
Reef”. Seriously people: go check the source material.
I suspect that this is a symptom
of proof-reading gone mad, much as it has with the final sentence of “The Haunter of the Dark”: a draft
prepared for publishing has been ‘amended’ by an earnest editor who feels that
they know what was intended by the author and has ‘set things aright’.
(Seriously though, anyone who claims to know what HPL intended should probably
have a quiet lie down somewhere...) In that particular instance, the error has
been perpetrated even to the silver screen: an HPL-based episode of the TV show
Supernatural re-enacts the final
moments of “Haunter” and the text that
they display is also incorrect. But back to Devil Reef...
As most serious fans of Lovecraft
should know, he was a man born out of his time. He was a Twentieth Century
writer that should have lived in the Nineteenth. His style of writing clearly
derives from an earlier age and he’s not alone in this regard. Most of the
writers to whom Lovecraft owed a debt for stylistic tendencies, were somewhat
contemporaneous, or men of the previous century, who also felt that the earlier
writing styles were more conducive to the tales that they wished to tell.
Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, Sheridan
leFanu – they directly inspired HPL in matters literary and he - unconsciously
or otherwise – adopted their styles. In particular, M.R. James the British
writer of ghost stories, reflects Lovecraft’s point of view: it was well-known
of him that he could pen a story, accurate in terms of setting, voice, tone and
style, of any time period offered at a moment’s notice. And he could do it well
enough to fool the expert eye. And so could Lovecraft.
What I’m wending my tortuous way
towards is the fact that HPL deliberately chose to write in the way that he
did; the fact that he didn’t make more money in his lifetime than he did from
his stylistic leanings shows that he was an artist of high idealistic
stringency, if not much pecuniary nous. So why are we so eager to alter what he
took such pains to create? It smacks a little of arrogance, I think. There are
other issues too.
The stories that Lovecraft wrote
are part of a writing tradition that is woefully out of favour at present.
Writers generally dismiss horror writing as part of a category referred to as ‘Genre
Fiction’. The current taste is to regard any form of narrative that uses
standard tropes and mechanics as unworthy of the name ‘literature’. Genre fiction
includes science fiction and romance writing, period drama, detective stories
and thrillers. Dismissing any one of these categories is sure to offend every
reader on the planet but nevertheless the literati
would have it so. To an extent I see their point: ‘paranormal romance’ is
another form of genre fiction and, on balance, I would get behind any movement
that wants to deride Laurel K. Hamilton, Stephenie Meyers, Maggie Stiefvater or
any of the other promoters of bestiality or necrophilia who seem intent on
flooding the market with their crapulence. But I digress.
Despite the current literary
fashion, there was some great writing going on in the horror field at the turn
of last century. Nowadays, much of that material is unavailable except at
venues like Project Gutenberg, or released by the big publishing houses in
omnibus editions which make good monetary sense because ownership of this
material has by and large passed into the public domain and it’s therefore
cheap to produce. In these instances, we readers are at the mercy of editors
who pick and choose what to include and what to leave out; fortunately, enough
of these collections appear that a wide selection is available for those who
want to shop around.
Chief among these kinds of omnibus re-printings is the company Dover Publications, Inc. Theirs are cheap and cheerful productions, often seen in academic remainders stores, and, let it be said right here and now, I applaud their dedication to seeing older works of literature re-issued for later generations of readers. The downside to their product though, is technology; specifically Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
Obviously, this process allows
printed text to be turned into a digital format far more quickly than by hand,
and it’s obvious why a company like Dover would choose to use it in recovering
works of literature that have languished for too long away from any audience.
Sadly though, a computer program is unable to differentiate between an ‘!' and an
‘l’, or a ‘1’, or between an ‘m’ or ‘nn’; occasionally, a ‘b’ is even
transcribed as ‘lo’, amongst myriad other permutations. That these errors
make it into print is part of a publishing throughput that focuses on lowering
the price point by waiving textual integrity (and the integrity of the text
didn’t exactly put any brakes on the Fifty
Shades of Grey juggernaut!).
Not that I’m damning Dover (or
Wordsworth, or any other low price publisher). Three cheers for keeping
literature alive and ensuring a breadth of material in the publishing world!
The upside of OCR publishing – and I’m citing the benefit of the doubt here –
is that a looseness in the textual transcription forces us to become better
readers, to practise discernment as we peruse the text, and to question that
which is before us, in order to seek out, correct, and to better understand.
It’s easy and perfectly
acceptable to jump on Project Gutenberg and edit a text so, if you spot a
transcription error in a published work, why not fix it? After all, perpetuation
of a textual error is the equivalent of gagging a beloved author by stifling
their intent and, in the case of HPL, anyone who feels his texts aren’t
extremely carefully considered and should be minutely preserved, should think
again. I’m sure no-one would be so cavalier about Jane Austen’s writing.
I’ll leave it there for now; if
you want me I’ll be out torpedoing Devil’s Reef...
*****
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