Platypus of Truth

What's good in Lovecraft?  What good can their be in the writings of a thin-skinned, morbid, racist, hack whose every page screams with overly-articulate horror at the meaninglessness of the Neo-Darwinian universe?  H.P. Lovecraft intentionally situated himself as the continuator of Edgar Allan Poe; of whose writings we might ask similar questions.  However, in his deep love of Southern New England, he has just as much in common with Nathanael Hawthorne.  Like Lovecraft, the quality of Hawthorne's writing is inconsistent and has the peculiar flavor of the literary autodidact.  The power of Hawthorne's writing doesn't come from high literary style, or flawless creative art, but from his ability to give us a vision of New England and its inhabitants that rises above the mundane to resound with spiritual power.  The same can be said, on a lesser level, for H.P. Lovecraft. No matter where the far-flung action of the Lovecraftian imagination may take us, to...

Following my established routine, I've endeavored to expand my knowledge of Pulp this summer with a some selections from H.P. Lovecraft and Ridder Haggard.  Lovecraft will have to wait for his own post.  In the meantime, I'd like to take a look a truly seminal novel in the history of Pulp: Ridder Haggard's "She." This one thin volume seems to have exercised a greater influence on subsequent works in a way only surpassed by "The Lord of the Rings."  A quick surface read will reveal familiar elements and scenes from "The Magician's Nephew," "The Lord of the Rings," Robert Howard's Conan stories, "Congo (though that's more Haggard's other great work, "King Solomon's Mines")," "Dune," and the Indiana Jones trilogy.  This is a powerful and diverse influence for a novel that spans only a little more than a hundred pages. *very minimal spoiler ahead* One of the great pleasures of readin...

As promised, I'm continuing my review of Hellboy Vol. 10 with a discussion of "In The Chapel of Moloch." "In The Chapel of Moloch" is the first Hellboy comic that Mignola has both written and illustrated in some time. As such, it seems to represent Mignola's personal musings in a less guarded fashion. *Spoilers Ahead* "In The Chapel of Moloch" presents us with three characters: Hellboy, the Jerry's agent, and Jerry the Artist. Given the cast of characters, Mignola's general theme is quite obvious: this is a meditation on art. The story begins with Jerry's agent calling Hellboy out to Portugal to investigate his client's increasingly weird behavior. Jerry's career has apparently hit a dead end, with the artist only capable of producing copies of Goya. In an effort to save his reputation, Jerry rents a villa in an isolated part of Portugal and holes up in the adjoining chapel to reconnect with his muse. Jerry stops t...