Abstract

On Lovecraft on the telephone, and the trip to New York; inviting Zealia to Providence; on Samuel Loveman (mentioning "The Hermaphrodite"); offering to write to James Reed; on Lovecraft's "grandchildren" and his advice (mentioning Fran Belknap Long and Weird Tales); Lovecraft as a cynic and conservative (citing Santayana); on commercial writing; on his theological views (and absence thereof, citing the Truth-Seeker and Haldeman-Julius Weekly) seguing into a discussion of civilization ancient and contemporary (with mention of Oswald Spengler); on finding beauty in the strange; on his love for architecture; on Lovecraft's theory of aesthetics; on alcohol (Lovecraft himself a teetotal) and Prohibition; on being an impersonal revisionist, and writing drinking songs - giving an example ("Come hither, my Lads, with your Tankards of Ale"); on those who drink (mentioning Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman, Lord Dunsany, and Arthur Machen); promising to write James soon, and sharing the young man's penchant for bicycling, fairy tales (mentioning the origin of Abdul Alhazred and the Arabian Nights in an aside), and seguing into a history of his reading as a boy (mentioning Abner Alden's The Reader, "The Rover Boys", Henry Everett McNeil, and Lovecraft's first poem "The Adventures of Ulysses; or, the New Odyssey" - quoting a sample); apologizes for rambling, and asking Zealia what she thinks of his revision of "Red Blood."

Note: The Spirit of Revision notes the Arkham House Transcripts for this letter are incomplete; two stray leafs have been identified as part of this letter; one is the conclusion, another a response to her synopsis for "The Curse of Yig," which includes mention of Ambrose Bierce's "The Boarded Window" in In the Midst of Life, and a promise to try and get her a copy of "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (which had been printed in W. Paul Cook's The Recluse), and amateur journalist organizations The United & National Amateur Press Associations; on Uzzell's advice; again apologizing for his voice on the telephone and inviting her to take a side-trip to Providence when next in New York.

Cited By

Articles

• A Lovecraftian Nightmare
• Landscapes, Selves, and Others in Lovecraft
• Lovecraft's Alien Civilizations: A Political Interpretation
• Lovecraft's Cosmic Imagery

Books

• Lovecraft A Study in the Fantastic

Included In

• Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (abridged)
• The Spirit of Revision (unabridged)