Re: editorial overreach
Posted by:
Kipling (IP Logged)
Date: 28 December, 2020 05:50PM
Platypus Wrote:
>
> "I don't believe that HPL typed up his typescripts to say "show" only because
he was bullied by evil editors. The pattern I have noticed is that "show"
>usually looks like "shew" when HPL
>writes in script (because that's his habitual way of writing), but when he
>prepares typescripts, it is generally
> typed up as "show", unless HPL is aiming for some particular archaic effect. Joshi glorifies HPL's natural idiosyncrasies of hand-writing, and effectively deprives him of his
> right to control how he wants his final draft to be presented. His hand-scribbled drafts were never what he submitted or authorized for publication."
A fine and irrefutable summation of Joshi's pretentious malfeasance. As proof, I append these passages from a letter of HPL's to Kenneth Sterling:
"The point is that I couldn't get all my MSS. & letters written if I had to pay attention to any set of rules or stop to form my individual letters. With me, perforce,, the word or even phrase or sentence is the primary unit which makes its bid for recognition--not the letter." ...to which he adds: "One doesn't have to stop & ponder whether the t, h, & e are perfectly defined as separate units...it's perfectly clear according to the rules of common sense that any symbol of the given approximate shape in the given location must, barring a miracle, be "the" & nothing else" (Letters to Robert Bloch and Others, p.248). It's ridiculous. Back in the 1980's Joshi and Don Burleson even used "shew" in their own articles, slavishly aping Lovecraft's epistolary form. "Regardless of context," Joshi said, defending the indefensible systematizing of the verb.
jkh