Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein

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Pulp scholar specializing in H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Author of SEX AND THE CTHULHU MYTHOS and WEIRD TALERS. Reader of dead people's letters. He/him. Blue checks happen to other people. https://deepcuts.blog

Book catalogue project, entry 721: The Complete "People of the Dark": Two Drafts, a Letter, and the 1932 Published Version (2024, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, John Bullard. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. A bare-chested, dark-haired warrior with sword in hand shields two people from a hoard of misshapen beings in a cave full of skulls.
My English teacher was an old lady named Mrs. Blake, who had a pleasant though slightly cynical disposition. She annoyed me with a certain doubt of the originality of my composition. One day she called me to her desk & asked me if a certain essay of mine . . . were not copied from a magazine article; to which I replied, that I had taken it verbatim from a rural paper! Upon her waxing wroth, I produced the clipping--with the prominently printed heading "By H. P. Lovecraft"!!!
A bare-chested Conan with axe raised, shield in his off-hand, weapons girt about his waist, surrounded by bats, serpents, and tentacled critters.
Conan #9, where a roided-out Conan has veins popping over every exposed inch of skin.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian, sword over his head as he goes through his katas.
Cover to COnan #115, showing Conan with a sword and distinctive Buscema-style boots. In the background, shadows of COnan fighting Red Sonja, a demon, and the floating, half-masked head of the wizard Zukula.
Uncolored cover for COnan #8, showing the bare-chested barbarian accosted by two armored undead fiends as a woman gathers treasure.
Selection of Frank Frazetta Conan paperback covers.
Cover for THE RETURN OF CONAN, showing a barechested Conan, in fur loincloth and sword in hand, engaged in combat.
First page of "The Phoenix on the Sword," showing a mostly-clothed conan with Ax raised against a demonic figure.
The room was large and ornate, with rich tapestries on the polished-panelled walls, deep rugs on the ivory floor, and with the lofty ceiling adorned with intricate carvings and silver scrollwork. Behind an ivory, gold-inlaid writing-table sat a man whose broad shoulders and sun-browned skin seemed out of place among those luxuriant surroundings. He seemed more a part of the sun and winds and high places of the outlands. His slightest movement spoke of steel-spring muscles knit to a keen brain with the co-ordination of a born fighting-man. There was nothing deliberate or measured about his actions. Either he was perfectly at rest—still as a bronze statue—or else he was in motion, not with the jerky quickness of over-tense nerves, but with a cat-like speed that blurred the sight which tried to follow him. His garments were of rich fabric, but simply made. He wore no ring or ornaments, and his square-cut black mane was confined merely by a cloth-of-silver band about his head.
Book catalogue project, entry 720: Drafted: Unsent Letters to H. P. Lovecraft (2013, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, Rob Roehm (Ed.). Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: a typed draft letter to H. P. Lovecraft
108: “Educated mulatto seeks to displace personality of white man & occupy his body” 109: “Ancient negro voodoo wizard in cabin in swamp—possesses white man.” Collected Essays 5.225
Example of a letterhead illustrated with tiny black kittens by Lovecraft.
That night, after dinner, he took me down into a graveyard near where Edgar Allan Poe had lived, or was he buried there? I can’t remember. It was dark, and he began to tell me strange, weird stories in a sepulchral tone and, despite the fact that I am a very matter-of-fact person, something about his manner, the darkness, and a sort of eery light that seemed to hover over the gravestones got me so wrought up that I began running out of the cemetery with him close at my heels, with the one thought that I must get up to the street before he, or whatever it was, grabbed me. I reached a street lamp, trembling, panting, and almost in tears, and he had the strangest look on his face, almost of triumph. Nothing was said.
On that sunny afternoon, H. P. Lovecraft told us the strange story he wrote about a hotel on Benefit Street, a building which stands there no longer. Lovecraft had written a story about a true incident. At one time there was a young woman, a chambermaid in the hotel on Benefit Street, who left and married into wealth. Sometime afterward, she returned to visit the hotel as a guest. When she found herself discourteously treated and snubbed, she departed but put a “curse” on the hotel, on all those who had humiliated her, and on everything concerned with the hotel. In short order, ill luck apparently befell all and the hotel itself burned down. Furthermore, it had never been possible, somehow, for anyone to rebuild on the site. Even on the day H. P. Lovecraft told us the story, the place where the hotel had stood was still a vacant lot. Lovecraft had finished the story and, without making his usual carbon copy, made only one draft, which he then mailed to the publisher. His story never appeared in print. It was lost in the mails. Lewis Shaw, “The Day He Met Lovecraft” in Brown Alumni Monthly 72, No. 7 (Apr 1972)
Reproduction of "Butcher's Shop of the Anziques Anno 1598"
Clark Ashton Smith's odd vegetation for THE LURKING FEAR in HOME BREW.
"If something more had been made of the kind of harm done by the release of atomic energy, there might be great possibilities for original & unusual development. How about it? What could you imagine as a sufficiently hellish consequence of the conquest of energy? The opening up of another dimension & the submergence of our familiar physical universe by some influence from 'outside'? The explosion of all the matter in the immediate space-time continuum? The total or partial suspension of physico-chemical laws, or the disastrous ability of users to effect such a suspension locally or universally? Any of these lines—& many others—would be promising. But at any cost get away from the beaten track!" —H. P. Lovecraft to Richard F. Searight, 31 Aug 1933, LRS 10
Book catalogue project, entry 719: Cimmeria (2016, n.p. (Bill Cavalier)) by Robert E. Howard, Patrice Louinet (trans.), Dierk Guenther (trans.), Chie Guenther (trans.), Barbara Baum (trans), Ed Chaczyk (trans). Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: An outline of the front of the Howard House, through which can be seen the wind-swept hills and a man walking them.
Book catalogue project, entry 718: Spears of Clontarf (1986, Dark Carneval Press) by Robert E. Howard, Thomas Kovacs. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. 7/20. Plain clover, just the title and author.
Cover of WHAT IF...? JESSICA JONES. Jessica Jones is being bitten by a spider and becoming a Spider-Woman; a nerdy Peter Parker is in the background.
Cover of WHAT IF...? SECRET WARS (2026) showing the two Spider-Men (Miles Morales and Peter Parker) in ripped costumes fighting each other.
Cover of WHAT IF? THOR (2026). Showing Thor being possessed by a symbiote.
WHAT IF...? THE UNCANNY X-MEN showing Cyclops and Madeline Pryor.
Book catalogue project, entry 717: The Complete Marchers of Valhalla Drafts (2015, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, Patrice Louinet. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: A bearded viking in full armor, with sword, shield, and winged helmet, stares off into the distance.
"Horror, at least in its artistic presentations, can be a comfort. And, like any agent of enlightenment, it may even confer - if briefly - a sense of power, wisdom, and transcendence, especially if the conferee is a willing one with a true feeling for ancient mysteries and a true fear of the skulduggery which a willing heart usually senses in the unknown." - Thomas Ligotti, "The Consolations of Horror," Crypt of Cthulhu #68
Book catalogue project, entry 716: Spears of Clontarf Typescript: Early Draft (2014, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, Rusty Burke. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: Two sword-wielding warriors clash.
Hannibal Lecter in a dress shirt, waistcoat, and bow tie. Looking hungry.
Jasper from Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth. Purple suit, bowtie, green hair, greasepaint makeup, going "Cool. Cool. Ha ha. Very cool. Ha. Cool."
Closeup on the Joker's face as he watches television in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, saying the two words: "Batman. Darling."
Book catalogue project, entry 715: The Man-Eaters of Zamboula Early Draft (2017, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, Bill Cavalier. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: A sketch of the house REH made for writing the story.
Scene from Un Chien Andalou (1929); a woman is held, eye forced open, a razor blade held before her face.
How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal except negroes." When the Know-nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty,--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Beyond This Madness Into what strange world shall we emerge Beyond this madness! From the tomb of faith What creed shall rise above the future's verge, And will it be a gospel or a wraith? Whose hand shall catch the falling torch of light, What conqueror end the reign of fang and claw; What Moses from the cloud veiled mountain height, Will read the tablets of Tomorrow's law? What star will guide our ship through boiling seas, On what imperiled shore shall we be tossed, Or can we reach at last the hills of peace, A stranded ship with chart and compass lost? We cannot see the shape of things to come, And yet, somehow, we sense millenium. -- Lilith Lorraine
Fragment of a 16th century copy of the Clavicula Solomonis, showing a magic circle, and a ship steered by demons.
Book catalogue project, entry 714: The Horror from the Mound (typescript facsimile) (n.d. (2008), n.p. (Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard. Unbound sheets in black folder. Clean pages, minimal wear. Plain black folder with white label.
Page from SILVER SURFER: REQUIEM. The Silver Surfer is dying. Galactus has come to Zenn La. He does not know if he can save the Surfer, but he is willing to try. The SIlver Surfer prefers to die; he feels his time has come.
Bluesky post, name redacted, please don't bother them. Lovecraft doesn't have anyone, that's why his characters don't have anyone. All they have is status, position in society, privilege, and part of the horror is losing those things and the "natural order" they cling to, and then realizing that they never meant anything.
Book catalogue project, entry 713: The Miscast Barbarian (1975, Gerry de la Ree) by L. Sprague de Camp. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. 591/900. On the cover: a sketch of Robert E. Howard.
“But he wouldn’t listen to reason. They were six awful experiences, and between the fifth and the last we came to Abu Simbul. You may think that I had got into pretty low company, travelling with a suspected ivory-poacher, and twelve Arabs who were evidently his accomplices, and I may have had the same sort of feeling at first myself; but when I saw Abu Simbul I felt that whatever brought me there fulfilled some higher purpose than poaching ivory, for to have seen Abu Simbul is an event not only in a lifetime, but one that is worth waiting for through three or four lifetimes, if the guess that the Hindus make at what none of us knows should turn out to be right. It is a temple in the dark of a hill, carved out of the very heart of the hill itself, with four gods cut out of the hillside at its doors, and four gods at its altar in the deeps of the rock. You entered, if you were an Egyptian four thousand years ago, in the dark before dawn, and walked into the blackness till the stars disappeared from you, and went on in the cold and dark far into the hill. And there no doubt the priests talked or chanted to you, though I haven’t any idea what they said or sang, but I know that after a while a most astounding thing happened, for I have seen it myself, and it takes your breath away: a greyness came to the darkness under the hill, and before you could either expect it or believe it, the sun, the bright African sun, shone on the altar, and you saw four gods that sat there as at a table, looking at you and blushing. When I saw that, I said, ‘Wudd has his uses. Fate sent him to show me this.’ ”
Book catalogue project, entry 712: Robert E. Howard at the Black Dog (2006, n.p.) by Robert E. Howard, Bill Cavalier. Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: b/w drawing of Robert E. Howard, after a famous photo.
H. P. was inarticulate in expressions of love except to his mother and to his aunts, to whom he expressed himself quite vigorously; to all other it was expressed by deep appreciation only. One way of expression of H. P.’s sentiment was to wrap his ‘pinkey’ finger around mine and say ‘Umph!’ —The Arkham Collector (Winter 1969) 117
Book catalogue project, entry 711: Fantome No. 1 (1978, Great Bhang Theory Press) edited by Dafydd. Fanzine. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: Silver on black. A robed figure sits before an open tome that reads ARS MORTIS EST, one hand on the pages, the other raised to show the bleeding hole through the palm. Behind him: a giant eye, a framed picture of a topless woman, a bleeding heart on a pedestal, a monster with a large tongue, and a row of curiously-named books.
RECEIPT FOR CURRENT FICTION Oh, give me a juicy murder, A gun affray or two; Give me attacks With a hammer or axe, And a slaughterhouse filled with goo. Oh, give me a nasty killing, Where a husband carves his wife— With oodles of gore All over the floor, And bood dripping from a knife, Oh, give me a poison inquest, Where the prisoner squirms and pales; Give me anything gory, And I'll write a story For Wierd Detective Tales.
Book catalogue project, entry 710: The Garden of Fear (1945, Crawford Publishing House) by Robert E. Howard, L. A. Eshbach, H. P. Lovecraft, Miles B. Breuer, David H. Keller. Chapbook. Tanned pages, some wear. Green cover. On the cover: A dark, winged humanoid descends against a warrior with an axe and a topless woman.
Newspaper article on Plotto, a device for generating stories, from 1928.
Book catalogue project, entry 709:The Challenge from Beyond Drafts (2029, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long, Rob Roehm (Ed.), John Bullard (Ed.). Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. On the cover: A multi-eyed alien worm rears up on its coiled tail. In one limb it holds a sword.
Newspaper excerpt The Writer Mar 1923 Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States Edwin Baird, editor of Detective Tales and Weird Tales (Chicago), is still looking for material for both publications, and is particularly in need of novelettes, of from 20,000 to 30,000 words. He finds no scarcity of short stories, but he has great difficulty in obtaining good novelette material.
Book catalogue project, entry 708: Black Canaan: Early Version (2019, Robert E. Howard Foundation Press) by Robert E. Howard, Rob Roehm (Ed.). Chapbook. Clean pages, minimal wear. Plain cover.
Dear Mr. Howard: My blessing! I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed “Sword-Woman.” It seemed such a pity to leave her just at the threshold of higher adventures. Your favorite trick of slamming the door on a burst of bugles! And leaving one to wonder what happened next and wanting so badly to know. Aren’t there any more stories about Agnes? —C. L. Moore to Robert E. Howard, 29 Jan 1935, The Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard 24
Book catalogue project, entry 707: Map of the City of Cross Plains Downtown Business District (incomplete) (2010, n.p.) by Donnel Clark. 4 pages stapled. Clean pages, minimal wear.
The red lips of the octopus Are more than myriad stars of night. The great beast writhes in fiercer form than thirsty stallions amorous I would they clung to me and stung. I would they quenched me with delight. The red lips of the octopus. They reek with poison of the sea Scarlet and hot and languorous My skin drinks in their slaver warm, my sweats his wrapt embrace excite The heavy sea rolls languishly o'er the ensanguined kiss of us. We strain and strive, we die for love. We linger in the lusty fight We agonize; our club becomes more cruel and more murderous. My passion splashes out at last. Ah! with what ecstasy I bite The red lips of the octopus.
Introduction Robert E. Howard wrote for the pulp magazines from the small town of Cross Plains, Texas, far away from major publishing centers such as Chicago and New York. Except for two brief visits from pulpster E. Hoffmann Price,
Book catalogue project, entry 706: 2018 Investigations of the Robert E, Howard House Cellar (2023, Southeast Archaeological Foundation) by Jeffrey Shanks, Andrew McFeaters, Thadra Stanton. Spiral-bound. Clean pages, minimal wear. Signed by authors. On the cover: a photo of the excavated cellar.
It seems to me that at this late stage of social evolution, when social and economic factors are better understood than formerly, it would be wiser to study means for the reduction of general misery through the controlled allocation of labouring opportunities, the granting of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, and the gradual undermining of the excess-profit motive in favour of a supply-and-coördination motive, instead of condoning the woes of the helpless and giving them poison to make them forget about it. However—time will tell.
“. . . . At one time he [Matai, God of Wind & Storm] was so wrathful that a great part of Mother Earth was submerged, & much of the dry land disappeared forever. These are the names of those who submerged so much of the earth: Terrible-Rain, Long-Continued-Rain, Fierce-Hail-Storms, Mist, Heavy-Dew, & Light-Dew, & these together left projecting only small parts of the Earth above the sea.”