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To produce an Encyclopedia is essentially a political act : to strike a spark
into the tinder-dry edifice of the ancien régime (in the case of Diderot
and his contemporaries) ; to assert the sum of learning with the elegantly phrase,
patriarchal arrogance of empire (here I'm thinking of the eleventh edition
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica ) ; or, in more recent memory, to throw open
the doors of the labyrinth
and propose a complex new way of approaching the literature of the fantastic
(in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy ). The consequences of these acts are not to
be disputed ; what differs is chiefly a matter of scale or scope. It is not
unreasonable
to look to these three instances as benchmarks for examining different aspects
of another encyclopedia. Other criteria will also suggest themselves.
The appearance of An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia with the imprint of a noted
scholarly publisher is an event that might still have seemed impossible a decade
ago. It is cause for celebration in Lovecrafty circles, no doubt, but this
must not preclude a clear-headed assessment of how well the book achieves its
stated
aims and how useful an encyclopedia it is.
In their introduction, Joshi and Schultz note the “ marked rise
in Lovecraft’s
literary recognition as a writer, thinker, and man of letters ” as
a result of the scholarship of the past decades : “ it is
in the hope that a gathering of widely dispersed information on Lovecraft will
engender even more penetrating
scholarship and also provide Lovecraft’s many devotees with the tools
for a more informed appreciation of his work that the present volume has been
assembled. ”
The Encyclopedia provides main entries on Lovecraft’s literary
works and brief biographical sketches of persons who figured in his private
and literary
life (also a handful of writers whose work influenced Lovecraft : Bierce,
Dunsany, Machen, Poe, Blackwood). “ Lovecraft is best known for
his tales of horror and the supernatural ; accordingly, the compilers
have provided detailed plot synopses of every fictional work — stories,
sketches, collaborative works, ‘ revisions ’ or
ghostwritten tales — written by Lovecraft from the age of seven until his
death.” Entries
also include story length, dates of composition and publication, and citation
to the corrected text. When a manuscript exists, its institutional location
is cited. Poetry, essays, and letters are given more selective coverage. In
each
entry, discussion of critical articles follows the synopsis.
The book shows its strengths in representative entries on stories and persons
familiar and less well known : tales such as “ The Music of Erich
Zann ”, The
Case of Charles Dexter Ward , “ The Shunned House ”, “ Polaris ”, or
the decidedly minor “ Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson ”. Ranging
in length from a third of a page to more than three pages, these entries outline
the events and imagery of the tale, record observations on Lovecraft’s
literary and biographical sources or his own opinion of the work, and then
include citations of critical writings. A similar wealth of information is
found in biographical
entries for such figures as Mrs. Lovecraft (Sonia H. Davis in later years),
Frank Belknap Long, Harry Houdini, Lord Dunsany, childhood friend H. B. Munroe,
or
James Blish, who as a teenager fan corresponded briefly with Lovecraft. Again,
these vary in depth with the substance of the relationship. Citations are given
for memoirs of Lovecraft and biographical studies of the individual. The biographical
entries are authoritative for the Lovecraft circle but somewhat thin for other
figures.
There are main entries for selected subjects from Amateur Journalism to Poetry
to World War I. There is a very good index of names, essential to the proper
function of a work like this.
Joshi and Schultz note, “ Only brief critical commentary is supplied, since
we feel it is not our place to enforce our own judgments or evaluations upon
readers .” This is more than somewhat disingenuous, since the decision of
what to include in a synopsis, and how it is phrased, necessarily reveals the
compilers’ views and predilections.
An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia is an invaluable introductory work, a succinct
ready reference to the stories and many of the persons who figured in Lovecraft’s
life. This is coupled with an extremely useful thematic grouping of citations
to critical literature — the most useful feature of the book. The Encyclopedia
should be in every college library and in high school libraries, too, where
it may serve to unleash a whole new generation of Lovecraftians upon the world
—
as future scholars instead of mere scribblers of pastiches and slavish imitations.
(As an impartial arbiter, too, it will become a standard part of the bartender’s
kit in every lodge of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, etc., etc.)
Returning, however, to the benchmarks described earlier — Revolutionary,
Imperial, and Opening the Labyrinth — a careful reading shows the that
this Encyclopedia falls somewhat short of the line in each case : the
colorless writing style (and its prim cousin, the ostensibly high-minded evasion
of controversy) is
sharply
at odds with its subject matter. Joshi and Schultz chart no new terrain for
scholarship and offer only the briefest recapitulations of earlier critical
insights, while
the plot summaries occupy a substantial portion of each entry and the thematic
elements are sometimes repeated in separate entries on principal characters
in the stories. Far more problematic are the curious imbalances in the type
of information
the work contains. What, for example, is gained by the inclusion of a two-line
entry on “ Jack ”, the narrator of a ghostwritten story
(“ The
Man of Stone ”), when the editorial omission of entries for “ real
persons ” reduces
Cotton Mather to four largely redundant passing citations ? Similar examples
of such a skewed measure of relevance abound.
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Turning now to Lovecraft’s Library,
the library catalogue has an entirely different history as a genre and
demands a different set of measures.
To attempt
to understand
the mind of the writer through the books on the shelves is as old as Montaigne’s
marginalia and no doubt much older ; it is also, instinctively and spontaneously,
one of the first things anyone does in entering a room of books. There are lists
of books compiled by living authors, the auction catalogues when their libraries
are sold (before or after death), and variations on these forms. Swift’s
own lists and library catalogue have fascinated scholars for decades and are
the subject of a new massive four-volume compendium ; in more recent times, the
Peter Hopkirk sale (Sotheby’s, 1998) of central Asian travel literature
was the reference library that the author of Quest for Kim , The
Great Game ,
etc., had collected when no one else was interested in such books. The list
is nearly
infinite Johnson, Dickens, Moskowitz . . . .
Lovecraft’s Library is a expanded revision of the 1980 compilation by Joshi
and Marc Michaud. Michaud was founder of the Necronomicon Press where the first
seeds of Lovecraft studies were sown ; the press seems to have fallen dormant
after a last, excellent crop : Joshi’s exhaustive Life (1996)
and the collection Mosig at Last , gathering the pioneering
and still compelling essays of Dirk W.
Mosig (1997).
Even though the mainstreaming of Lovecraft proceeds apace, the grassroots activity
is greener than you know. Hippocampus Press publisher Derrick Hussey seems
to have stepped in to fill the small void created by Michaud's inactivity.
The improved
production values and general legibility of the new edition of Lovecraft’s
Library (hereafter LL) reflect a different, post-mimeograph aesthetic
as well as advances in publishing technology.
The first edition of LL (including the fugitive Addendum #2) listed about
930 items, mainly from a handwritten inventory of books prepared after Lovecraft’s
death, with the briefest of annotations (principally citations to the Letters or collections of stories. The new edition has added more than 50 new titles
and the annotations are more substantial, identifying the basis for inclusion
(the Mary Spink inventory list and those prepared by Lovecraft and his literary
executor Robert Barlow, a few booksellers’ catalogues). For inscribed copies
or books bearing Lovecraft’s ownership marks, Joshi indicates when
the book survives and has been examined by him.
LL is of interest for a variety of reasons and in different ways. What reader
could fail to be moved by LL 443, A Magician Among the Spirits (1924), inscribed
by the author : “ To my friend Howard Lovecraft, Best Wishes, Houdini, ‘ My
brain is the key that sets me free. ’ ”
To leaf through the book is to find that Lovecraft’s fascination with the
eighteenth century was indeed rooted in family copies of books from that period,
both major and minor. There are turgid volumes of miscellaneous verse and books
of rhetoric at every turn. So, too, there are enough astonomy books to see how
the youthful Lovecraft turned his gaze to the stars. From an antiquarian perspective,
the single most valuable book in his library was certainly LL 598, a first edition
of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana ; or, The Ecclesiastical History
of New-England . . . (London, 1702), “ the most famous American book of
colonial times and the indispensable source for colonial social history ” (Streeter
658).
But Lovecraft read all manner of literature, from Walter Scott to Frederick
Rolfe to LL 954, the Modern Library Fairy Tales and Poems in Prose of Oscar
Wilde (1918).
Joshi notes that Colin Wilson considered “ The Birthday of the Infanta ” to
be an influence of “ The Outsider ” (composed in the summer
of 1921). From his satire of T. S. Eliot, “ Waste Paper : A
Poem of Profound Insignificance ”, it
is evident that Lovecraft read “ The Waste Land ” in The
Dial for
November 1922, which figures as LL 238. (Lord Alfred Douglas, on the other
hand, despised “ that
impudent jackass ” sufficiently to scrawl his verdict in a copy
of Eliot’s
Collected Poems.) The range of Lovecraft’s reading of contemporary
and near contemporary anthologies and short story collections is impressive
and
fully documented here.
Lovecraft’s library was his gateway to the infinite universe. In terms
of usefulness, importance of content, and concision of relevant detail, LL
is a successful reference book, genuinely improved in this new edition.
— — — —
Of all the millions of words Joshi has published about Lovecraft, the single
most interesting passage for this reader remains the annotation of LL 400,
The Lock and Key Library : Classic Mystery and Detective Stories (1909), a ten-volume
anthology edited by Julian Hawthorne (son of that Hawthorne). The books are
small
drab things, easily overlooked on the shelves of a used book store or library
book sale (where they are usually encountered lacking one or more volumes),
but the contents are not to be dismissed.
Joshi’s annotation to The Lock and Key Library cites the specific stories
in these books that figure in Lovecraft’s essay Supernatural Horror
in Literature , first published in LL 723, The Recluse (1927). In essence a roadmap
of the essay, LL 400 sheds light on the essay’s strengths and clarifies
its sometimes curious omissions. It is no exaggeration to say that Lovecraft
essentially defined a new genre and a new way of looking at literature through
his careful selection from these volumes. Until that act, the stories were
viewed as a subset of the mystery field ; but to paraphrase Borges in “ Kafka
and His Predecessors ”, it is no longer possible to do so. Lovecraft
was not the first nor the only critic to point to supernatural aspects of literature,
but the impact of Dorothy Scarborough’s The Supernatural in Modern
English Fiction (1917) is miniscule — within the genre or without — in comparison
to that of Lovecraft’s book. LL 400 is where it started.
Joshi also cites the relevant portions of Lovecraft’s correspondence to
demonstrate that Charles Brockden Brown’s American Gothic, Wieland ; or
the Transformation (1798), was known only from the excerpt “ Wieland’s
Madness ” in this anthology. Sometimes the Recluse of Providence just
couldn't be bothered to track down the original or complete text.
So, two reference works on Lovecraft, the Encyclopedia nearly essential, if
flawed ; and Lovecraft’s Library indispensable and of even greater
interest. And today, in the ealiest days of 2004, the milestones of canonical
acceptance
—
The Norton Critical Edition of H. P. Lovecraft ! The Cambridge Lovecraft !
— to which I alluded in jest in these pages (in a review of the Joyce Carol
Oates
Lovecraft in 1997) no longer seem so distant.
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