Hi

I've been reading these forums for a while, but thought I'd finally join in to share a link. CthulhuWho1's blog has had a fair few interesting audio & PDF files recently relating to Fritz Leiber, including one of him reading CAS's "A Night in Malneant":

[cthulhuwho1.com]

Thought this may be of interest!

Fascinating. I will listen to it!

Thank You Murray for getting the mention of this reading in here.

I've been trying to get my registration approved just to post this information, but you beat me to it.

As anyone visiting my CthulhuWho1 blog will find out, I made the recording of Fritz Leiber Reading Clark Ashton Smith’s “A Night in Malnéant” during the third World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles in 1977.

This recording is just a small part of the 4-1/2 hours of Fritz Leiber recordings I have posted to date.

I'm just terribly sorry it has taken me 33 years to get around to converting many of my tapes from that period into MP3 files!

And this recording is about the only true Clark Ashton Smith item I've posted so far on my blog, or in my Lovecraftian Flickr collections.

I will invite everyone though, with any interest in Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, and soon, several other Weird Tales authors, to at least stop by to take a look around at my blog for audio, document, and a few image files; and over on Flickr where I now have over 1688 related images too. And if you are a real glutton for punishment, try the YouTube channel I set up for Lovecraft "video;" which is more like a karaoke version of Lovecraft's "Fungi from Yuggoth" in my voice, using Lovecraft's hard-to-read handwriting for the text screens.

Please note: Everything I upload on the blog, Flickr, or YouTube, is there for the taking to do with it as you please.

Just drop me a note sometime to tell me what you enjoyed!

Will Hart
aka CthulhuWho1

Curator of:

The CthulhuWHo1 blog at: [cthulhuwho1.com]
The California Cthulhu Flickr Collections at: [www.flickr.com]
and The CthulhuWho1 YouTube Channel at: [www.youtube.com]

I truly appreciate it!

Brings back fond memories...as it was at
that World Fantsy Convention that I truly became
a friend of Fritz (of course it also helped that
I lived in San Francisco at the time :)
Fritz asked Donald Sydney-Fryer (then already
a friend)and I to join him in going to one
"of the best greasy spoon joints in LA".

Frederick J. Mayer

Don't leave me in suspense, Frederick...do you remember what you, Donald and Fritz ordered? I apologize in advance for the triviality of this question, but I find the subject of food choices fascinating.

I am eternally grateful to Jonquil Leiber for asking HPL about his daily meal plan (and to HPL for replying in such detail!) A Weird Tales cookbook would be wonderful...

I am not the only one, then, who finds Lovecraft's diet quite appealing.

There was a book called Cooking out of this World, collecting recipes by famous writers of the fantastic. Leiber had a recipe in it.

If Lovecraft had had a recipe in that book, it would have started with "Open a can of spaghetti . . ."

Quote:

it would have started with "Open a can of spaghetti . . ."

It also would have specified that the can be at least ten or twenty years old.

Maybe in his last year, out of necessity.

Quote:

Maybe in his last year, out of necessity.

During his last year, yes, but no "maybe" about it, at least according to Joshi.

I base my knowledge of Lovecraft's culinary preferences directly on his letters, not anything by Joshi. Also see here.

Absquatch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe in his last year, out of necessity.
>
> During his last year, yes, but no "maybe" about
> it, at least according to Joshi.

Even in his last year I'm quite certain that HPL would have preferred a fresh can, hence the qualifier.

Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I base my knowledge of Lovecraft's culinary
> preferences directly on his letters, not anything
> by Joshi. Also see here.

Of course Joshi doesn't claim that Lovecraft preferred old food.

What I mean is that I feel Lovecraft occasionally expresses an enthusiasm for canned foods that goes beyond simply having adjusted to circumstances. And to some extent I share this enthusiasm myself. I often use canned materials, such as squid in its own ink, as a basis for cooking. (Not that Lovecraft would have touched squid, of course---indeed, some of his greatest writing seems directly inspired by a revulsion for seafood.) I would also mention canned steak and kidney pie, but I imagine many of you are throwing up already.

I wonder if the recipes CAS gave in a newspaper interview were included?