Review: The Dream World of H.P. Lovecraft

TYSON, Donald, The Dream World of H.P. Lovecraft – His Life, His Demons, His Universe, Llewellyn Publications/ Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd., Woodbury, MN, USA, 2010.

Octavo; paperback; 313pp. (with 8pp. of adverts) with a monochrome portrait frontispiece. Very minor wear. Near fine.

Lovecraft’s popularity derives from many different sources and we live in a world where each of these facets is abundantly catered for. Those who admire his writings have a wealth of material to troll through; for those who take an interest in his life and other biographical details, there are works which focus on his personal life; his works, and those of his peers and later imitators, are always in print; and for those who want to believe that Cthulhu is actually out there somewhere, dreaming under the Pacific, there is Donald Tyson.

From what I can gather, Tyson would have us think that the Old Ones are actually a manifest part of the universe, and that HPL tapped into their presence by being a “lucid dreamer”. In this work he grinds away at this thesis providing biographical details to support the notion that HPL was in fact dispensing some kind of half-glimpsed truth disguised as “weird fiction”.

Now, having grown up, myself, looking for some kind of reality behind the supernatural/paranormal/magical legendry that suffuses the planet, I feel I know where Tyson is coming from: it would be nice to know that there was something extraordinary and wondrous out there in the cosmos; however, reality is as HPL repeatedly painted it: soulless, indifferent, and uncaring. Wanting Cthulhu and Co. to be real does not, in fact, make it so; this hasn’t stopped Tyson from earning a buck out of the Mythos.

It breaks down like this: HPL was a lucid dreamer – i.e. an individual who is able to take control of the elements of his subconscious narratives and alter them to suit. Such dreamers are frequently known to experience flying sensations within their dreamscapes and are able to vividly recall the visions they receive. So far, so good: textual evidence shows that HPL dreamt at an extraordinary level of comprehension and has left behind fragments of his detailed dreams which he passed on to others to incorporate in their own tales (see Belknap Long’s Horror from the Hills, for example). It is known that he also suffered from night terrors – this is a condition where the normal neurological functions which disconnect muscles from fight or flight responses during REM sleep fail to cut in, and the subject thrashes and otherwise moves violently about whilst dreaming. It’s not a stretch to think that lucid dreaming and night terrors might be somehow associated with each other, but I’m prepared to leave sleep researchers to work on that one.

Tyson uses this premise to imply that the Necronomicon actually exists on some extradimensional level, and is able to be contacted by subconscious individuals capable of manipulating their dreams. He pulls this notion from the fact that HPL couldn’t definitively pin down from where he coined the book’s title and was never completely satisfied with the various attempts to translate the word into English. Having created this “origin story”, Tyson then goes on to lay out his notion that HPL’s writings were all attempts to warn humanity of Things Better Left Alone. To this end, he petulantly disposes of such terms as “Cthulhu Mythos”, and even HPL’s own preferred term “Yog-Sothery”, and champions his own invention, “Necronomicon Mythos”, thereby accurately – to his way of thinking – identifying the source of the malevolence.

To me, this reads as something akin to those early Egyptological researchers who looked at the Pyramids and said ‘no human being could have moved those blocks, let alone put them all in place’. These days, we know that human beings are creative and ingenious when forced to come up with a solution to a problem. The ‘von Däniken Assumption’ (if we can call it that) leads to all kinds of wacky theories about ‘Aliens’ and ‘forgotten magic’ and relegates humanity to a herd-like status; further, it’s a patronising position which holds that all of our forebears were clueless idiots incapable of discovery or innovation. Our species is no smarter because we have iPads and Facebook; arguably, we are more stupid as a result.

Tyson, in effect, is saying that HPL was simply a rather dull recluse with a yen to scratch out some fiction in his spare time: without the Cosmic Revelation from Beyond the Wall of Sleep that is the NECRONOMICON(!), he wouldn’t have amounted to much. Personally, I find this position untenable and insulting. Mr Tyson probably didn’t intend for it to be; I’m assuming that he just didn’t think it through. HPL was a gifted writer with a tremendous imaginative force which he brought to bear on his creations. He was also a troubled individual with a whole bunch of unfortunate and debilitating quirks, but to take away his creative power is to rob him, I think, of his legacy.

I have read Tyson’s Necronomicon – The Wanderings of Alhazred and I found it diverting: as a riff upon a book that doesn’t exist (despite the author’s eager contention that it does) it was amusing enough. Was it the real Necronomicon? Not at all. Let me reiterate: the Necronomicon does not exist outside the writings of HPL and his circle. Taking any other position is just wishful thinking, and earns you the right to attend UFO Festivals and Cryptozoology Conventions with impunity.

Tyson falls into the camp of desperate believers who feel that a “system of magical working” can be built out of any coherent body of symbols with an integrated process of manipulation. This is, essentially, taking the standard concepts of “Magick” and dressing-them up with new faces. You can do it with vegetables; you can do it with comic book characters; you can – obviously – do it with the Great Old Ones. We’ve been doing it since at least the Renaissance with the Commedia del’Arte characters and – of course – as early as people have been able and inclined to daub splotches on cave walls. Those of you who are Mythos orientated will recall that August Derleth tried something similar when he tried to codify HPL’s “Yog-Sothery” into a system of Good and Evil entities bound by the Ancient Greek concept of the four elements. Tyson hasn’t forgotten this and he denigrates Derleth for taking this route; however, I notice that he has developed his own “Necronomicon Tarot”, so it looks like he enjoys having his cake and eating it too.

The Mythos is out there for anyone who cares to, to turn their hand to it creatively – it’s like open source horror material. I don’t begrudge Tyson for making a buck; but don’t take this stuff seriously, folks. At its fundamental level, it’s antithetical to everything that HPL was writing about, so that’s got to give you pause; but it’s also based on a whole bunch of tenuous and unsupportable fairy-floss. Tyson gives a solid reportage of HPL’s life and peculiarities and – it has to be said – he deals out this stuff with skill and a measured hand. He establishes a format whereby he provides a chapter of biographical detail followed by a chapter of wishful-thinking along the lines outlined above. In this way he serves those fans who are fascinated by The Man as well as those who crave The Mystical Possibilities – like I said, you can’t fault him for wanting to make a quid. But HPL’s life and peccadilloes aren’t hard to find – many authors have provided biographies, from L. Sprague de Camp, to S.T. Joshi, to Michel Houllebecq – and arguably, those other authors aren’t as enamoured of the ‘cut-and-paste’ function on their computers as is Mr Tyson.

Still, if you’re convinced that the Great Old Ones are only a dream away, and that by using magic you can get them to reveal the Lotto numbers to you, then this book is probably for you. And also the Tarot deck; and the Grimoire of the Necronomicon; and the 13 Gates of the Necronomicon magical workbook; all at reasonable prices!

Two tentacled horrors.