I realize this is now pushing hard on fifty years, but in my young adolescence I discovered H. P. Lovecraft. No doubt his dark universe that spanned the course of much, maybe all of his writings, which if I recall had an evil race locked in mortal combat with an even more evil race, and that we humans were bred from apes as convenient labor and, in a pinch, for food, seemed just the thing for a boy noticing the world was not in fact constructed of peaches and cream. (At least this is how I carry my memory of Lovecraft. A perusal of the Wikipedia article which is linked to above, gives a somewhat different view…)
As I recall he wasn’t the best of writers. But he certainly was evocative enough for me. And his hanging horrors implied have to be more insidious to the psyche, and delicious, than the splatter that we mostly encounter in the film versions of his beloved genre.
Last year or so, my friend James Austin was in town and suggested lunch. I countered with the idea of going out to Swan Point cemetery and trying to find Lovecraft’s grave. While apparently never having heard of Lovecraft, he was game. And we ended up stomping around on a wet afternoon. Never did find the grave.
Well, now, it’s the old boy’s one hundred and twenty-first birthday!
Rather than wait for the dark and whatever goings on true believers might want to do in that dark near his grave, Jan & I oped for the Rhode Island Historical Society’s walking tour of College Hill sites associated with his life and writings.
A treat and a half.
Beverly, our tour guide, was of short stature, but she has the heart of a lion. And while we also encountered rain, as well as considerable thunder, she pushed us through the elements and gave us a lovely experience of some spots in his life as well as sites in his writings.
All in all, a lovely time was had by all.
I’m sure Lovecraft would forgive us.
Well, I think he would…
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