Lovecraft on Twitter

by Pa Rock
Fan of Good Literature

H.P. Lovecraft is my second favorite American writer. Tim Macy of Kansas City is first, Michael Chabon is third, Mark Twain is fourth, and the top five is rounded out by Kurt Vonnegut.

Lovecraft published his stories in pulp magazines in the 1920's and 30's, sometimes for as little as a penny a word. He took the concept of horror fiction that had been practiced so well by Edgar Allen Poe, and took it places that Poe could never have contemplated - creating a world that is unmistakably Lovecraftian. From the dank halls of Miskatonic University where a fragile copy of the evil Necronomicon was housed in the school's library, to the ice fields of Antarctica, to the falling down houses of Providence, Rhode Island, in the early days of the twentieth century, Lovecraft created mysterious worlds that were truly gateways to terror.

The works of H.P. Lovecraft are an acquired taste, and once a mind has experienced his disquieting tales, it will forever know tremors of trepidation at every chance encounter, every coincidence, and every surprise that presents itself onto the quiet tranquility of day-to-day life.

I began using a tracking site on July 23rd of this year to get some sense of who was reading The Ramble and the types of things that drew people to the site. The runaway favorite post has been "Lovecraft Words," a piece that ran on June 14th, 2008, and examined the beautiful vocabulary that Lovecraft used in one of his short stories. That post has had 48 hits in less than two months, almost double the number of visitors to the second most popular piece - "The Lumley Vampire," which ran on May 31st, 2009, and has only recently outdistanced the third placeholder "The Sad Ballad of Randy Leach," a column on a Kansas mystery that was featured in The Ramble on April 16, 2008, and has been viewed 23 times since the tracking service went into effect in July.

I learned yesterday that there is a new twitter site dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft. I am hopeful that it proves to be an effective medium for reaching the fans of this prolific and amazing author. The site is LovecraftNews@Twitter.com. It is just getting up and running.

If you are on Twitter and have an interest in H.P. Lovecraft, check it out and become a follower.

My Car Book

by Pa Rock
Bookworm

Reading is one of the true enjoyments of my life. For as long as I can remember I have kept a book by the bed that I read from each night. It usually takes two to three weeks to complete an average size novel. Since moving to Arizona last fall, I have also gotten into the habit of going into work early and reading in the car before entering the din of the office. On days when the heat isn't too awful, I will drive to the local Sonic for lunch, put the top down under the big Sonic awning, and read a few more pages of the car book before dealing with my afternoon clients.

While my bed books change every few weeks, I have been reading the same car book since arriving in Arizona. Today I completed Lovecraft Tales, a compilation of the major works of H.P. Lovecraft, a pulp writer of the horror genre in the 1920s and 1930s. This edition, over eight hundred pages of very small print, was put together and edited by The Library of America.

I now feel that I know as much or more about the ancients than the average social worker. Although I have never read the dreaded Necronomicon, I have been exposed to some of its darker secrets, and I know that at least one copy is still in existence - in the ancient book section of the library at Miskatonic University. Lovecraft shared so many of life's horrific mysteries and secrets, and his writings point the way to answers of questions that have yet to be asked.

The highlight of reading Lovecraft, however, is not the strange places to which he transported his readers, it is the beautiful and arcane language that he employed while telling his tales. Those who collect elegant words and masterful phrases would do well to peruse the pages of any Lovecraft story or novel.