jdworth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A) The original A.Ms., with initial revisions,
> written in 1931.
>
> B) The original T.Ms., with some further
> revisions, shortly thereafter.
This "run-down" below evidently refers to AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. "A.Ms." here refers HPL's handwritten manuscript; "T.Ms" here refers the surviving typescript. Just trying to help folks follow the discussion.
> B1) Conjectured carbon (see Discovering H. P.
> Lovecraft, pp. 100-01) It is here, apparently,
> that the revisions concerning Lovecraft's original
> hypothesis of two continents were introduced.
That revision, at least, must have come from HPL. But since this draft does not survive, we cannot know that he did not make OTHER revisions as well.
> C) Publication, in three installments, in
> Astounding Stories, featuring numerous excisions,
> misprints, rewordings (including non-words) and
> broken-up paragraphing.
Since the draft HPL submitted does not survive, we cannot know WHICH of these excisions, rewordings and re-paragraphing come from HPL, and WHICH were made by ASTOUNDING. Thankfully, we do not need to solve this unsolvable problem ourselves BECAUSE we have...
> D) Lovecraft's correction of these issues,
PHEW!! Problem solved! If we do what the author tells us, we have no need to rely on the mystical and mysterious scholarly powers of Joshi, that allow him to miraculously discern the content of documents that no longer exist.
> relying
> on his original A.Ms. (see O, Fortunate Floridian,
> pp. 329, 335-36), rather than the T.Ms. or
> (possible) carbon with their
> revisions/alterations, at least some of which
> appeared in the magazine versions.
It is, of course, is his business, and not ours, what he chooses to rely on in correcting his text.
But as we shall see below, his (alleged) lack of access to any typescript ("T.Ms.") may be a non-issue. It seems, at least, to have no relevance to the examples you are about to give below. The handwritten manuscript ("A.Ms."), which he relied on, would have sufficed to catch the excisions you discuss, if indeed Tremaine (rather than HPL) had made them.
> Now, if you have such corrections from an author
> and they make it crystal clear that they've gone
> over it all with a fine-toothed comb and this is
> their final version (at that point), then well and
> good.
You are stacking the deck against he author!
If a person honestly wants to follow the author's wishes, "crystal clarity" is not required. Reasonable clarity should suffice. He who uses remote theoretical possibilities as an excuse for ignoring the author's instructions was never interested in the author's wishes to begin with.
Nor is the author required to swear that he reviewed all earlier drafts with a "fine tooth comb", before his last instructions are obeyed. He is not required to review earlier drafts at all.
Nor need he make any formal declaration of absolute finality. For our purposes, it suffices that he clearly intends his latest draft to supercede any prior draft.
> Here, however, we run into serious problems,
> for Lovecraft himself, in his letters, makes it
> clear that he didn't take such care with the first
> installment:
Even if this were true, it would be a poor excuse for disrespecting the author's instructions. But it is NOT true. HPL does NOT say he took no care with the first installment. He says something ELSE ... something you refuse to believe and accept.
> "My 'Mountains of Madness' running in
> Astounding -- Feb.-Mar.-Apr. Some misprints, but
> cou'd be worse" (Letters to James F. Morton, p.
> 372). He continued to take this view of that
> initial segment;
Yup. Even after checking against the manuscript, and even after hand-correcting his copy of ASTOUNDING, and directing the elimination of 30 paragraph breaks in chapter 4 alone (where both major excisions occur), he failed to notice anything more serious than misprints and extra paragraph breaks.
You claim this proves HPL was careless. I, who would rather respect and trust what the author tells me, think it proves that ASTOUNDING did not make any major excisions in the first installment. Hence, the excisions you are about to complain about below, must have come from HPL himself. Which makes sense, given that both these passages in Chapter 4 are redundant, superfluous, and interrupt the flow of the narrative.
> Quoting from Joshi's note, here is
> the portion in question:
>
> "The whole general formation, it must be made
> clear, seemed abominably suggestive of the
> starfish-head of the archaean entities; and we
> agreed that the suggestion must have worked
> potently upon the sensitised minds of Lake's
> overwrought party.
>
> "For madness -- centering in Gedney as the only
> possible surviving agent -- was the explanation
> spontaneously adopted by everybody as far as
> spoken utterance was concerned...."
The above quotes the passage as it appears in Derleth's text (derived from HPL's hand-corrected copy). You do not quote the omitted portion which Joshi "restores".
The 2 excised sentences to which you are refer run from "Our own first sight..." to "...driving Lake's party mad." The entire passage can be found here, on the forum licensed to use Joshi-derived texts:
[
www.hplovecraft.com]
> Joshi goes on to note: "The word for beginning the
> new paragraph must obviously refer to a previous
> mention of madness -- a mention which we find
> precisely in the omitted section."
Joshi is talking nonsense. The sentence "For madness...[etc.]" does not require a previous explicit mention of madness. It merely requires that there be some logical connection between "madness" and the preceding words. Which there is! To paraphrase: We thought some suggestion worked potently on overwrought sensitive minds; Hence, madness is the theory we adopted. It is a perfect transition.
The "madness hence madness" formula that Joshi claims is required is in fact redundant. A piece of early-draft redundancy hat HPL fixed.
> Would Lovecraft have intentionally omitted this
> passage?
The one you quoted above? No, because he did not omit it. It is in the Derleth text, and was presumably in ASTOUNDING STORIES as well.
The 2 extra useless, redundant (but newly-copyrighted) sentences that Joshi inserts at this point? (See link). Yes, absolutely. Those sentences are EXACTLY the short of thing that HPL would, should, and apparently DID remove.
The first sentence ("Our own first sight ...") interrupts the flow of the narrative by jumping back in time to discuss their initial reaction to the buried monsters, only to repeat what was adequately expressed before. This ground was already covered when Lake encountered the monsters in Ch. 2 ("... reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things of Necronomicon..." "...uncanny resemblance to certain creatures of primal myth..." "Dyer and Pabodie have read Necronomicon ... and will understand..." "...make Lake whimiscally recall the primal myths about Great Old Ones..."). As to Dyer's own reaction, he referred to the organisms as "hellish Achaean organisms", "nightmare specimens", and "primal monstrosity" only a few paragraphs earlier. We already know his feelings.
The second sentence ("We all agreed that ...") is redundant with what what he is about to say again in the next sentence, and what is said earlier in the chapter. The next sentence is "For madness - centering in Gedney as the only possible surviving agent - was the explanation spontaneously adopted by everybody ...". Earlier in the chapter we had "... it was so much simpler ... to lay everything to an outbreak of madness on the part of some of Lake's party ... that demon mountain wind must have been enough to drive any man mad ...".
The only non-redundant element here is the suggestion that the sight of the Star-Heads could have contributed to driving Gedney mad (but only in combination with other more-horrible things). But this suggestion ends up as a dead end. Gedney was not driven mad, but killed outright. Danforth was driven mad - but not by the Star-Heads. The Star-Heads end up being largely demystified, and almost humanized, by the end of the novel, whereas the demon wind, and other things, remain as creepy as ever. And its a bit late in the narrative to start suggesting that the sight of Star-Head corpses (as distinct from their living forms) might be enough to induce madness. If this were so, some stronger hint of it should have been given earlier.
> [Quote from HPL]: "[...]Remove all
> possible superfluities -- words, sentences,
> paragraphs, or whole episodes or elements --
> observing the usual precautions about the
> reconciling of all references" ("Notes on Writing
> Weird Fiction"[...])
Haha! Thanks for that quote. I especially like the part about REMOVING ALL POSSIBLE SUPERFLUITIES. That certainly applies here. Now I am more certain than ever that he removed these words himself.
> The passage above, without the portion in
> brackets, would simply grossly violate that dictum
> by introducing a superfluous and confusing
> element ....
Not at all. Without the omissions, the passage is not even remotely confusing. Eliminating them REMOVES elements that are not only superfluous, but largely redundant.
> Lovecraft used his A.Ms. in making
> the corrections [...]
Which ought to have permitted him to catch this excision, IF that excision was made by ASTOUNDING. I think, rather, that he DID catch the excision, and immediately remembered that he made it himself. Alternatively, he may have approved the excision regardless of who made it.
> He does not posit a non-extant typescript,
> but rather says that certain alterations (which
> are in the Astounding text) must have come from a
> carbon of the typescript, if such existed, as they
> are not in the typescript itself:
I'm not interested in debating the semantics of the word "typescript". It is a different (and later) DRAFT. It may have been a mere copy once, but that changed once he started making separate changes to it.
If he used the "typed carbon" (or whatever it was) to make the changes Joshi concedes must have come from HPL, he could have just as easily (or more easily) used it to make other changes as well. For instance, HPL could have (and apparently did, if we trust HPL) cross out the pair of sentences we have just been discussing; as well as the other pair of sentences you will discuss below
> In the
> interim, however, had occurred Admiral Byrd's
> expedition to the Antarctic (1933-35); and among
> its results was the confirmation that a hypothesis
> made by Lovecraft in his novel [...] was
> incorrect. Lovecraft was apparently concerned with
> correcting this error [...] but he must have made
> the correction on the carbon copy of the novel
> (assuming one was made), for no such revisions are
> found either on the existing T.Ms. or the A.Ms.,
> although the revisions (clearly the work of
> Lovecraft) appear in the printed text."
> (Discovering H. P. Lovecraft, pp. 100-01)
Of course, the news that it was about to be published might have inspired him to go through his carbon copy (or whatever draft he had at the time) to look for SUPERFLUOUS elements, and remove them. Apparently, he did just that.
> you have so
> strongly insisted as an example of Joshi's ego
> getting in the way of following Lovecraft's
> preferences,
??? No. I believe that the creation of this text was driven by copyright motives, originally at the behest of Arkham House. It was probably originally just a work for hire, in an attempt to buttress Arkham House's shaky copyright claims. The texts were originally published under Arkham House's copyright. I call these texts the "Joshi texts" because that is how they are currently promoted and marketed.
> ...another example[...]should be the following:
> 'Those
> specimens, of course, had been covered with a
> tent-cloth; yet the low Antarctic sun had beat
> steadily upon that cloth, and Lake had mentioned
> that solar heat tended to make the strangely sound
> and tough tissues of the things relax and expand.
> Perhaps the wind had whipped this cloth from over
> them, and jostled them about in such a way that
> their more pungent olfactory qualities became
> manifest despite their unbelievable antiquity";
Again, since (per HPL) this was evidently not excised by Tremaine, it must have been excised by HPL. And again, it is easy to see why HPL would do so.
The first sentence merely repeats stuff HPL already told us at the end of Chapter 2 ("...the ceaseless antarctic sun had begun to limber up their tissues a trifle..." "...he did throw a spare tent over them..." "... had to weight down the corners of the tent-cloth...").
The second sentence clumsily speculates on things the narrator cannot possibly know; except to the extent that it is redundant with the narrators more-modest speculations only two sentences earlier. Those more modest speculations (where he admits he cannot know the things he is speculating about) were: "...whether from the wind itself, or from some subtle, increasing odor emitted by the nightmare specimens, one could not say."
The two sentence as a unit interrupt the flow of the narrative by jumping backwards in time, rather than remaining in the present.
> In each case, Lovecraft refers to these here and
> there throughout the novel, thus they are required
I think you mis-spelled "redundant".
> the following,
> which is actually, compositionally speaking, a
> non-paragraph:
>
> "Flowers were small, colorless, and
> unrecognizable, blooming in geometrical beds and
> at large among the greenery."
>
> This is, taken as a
> paragraph, simply bad writing
Don't "take it as a paragraph" then. You are playing silly semantic games. Call it a "non-paragraph" if you want. There is still no rule against "non-paragraphs". HPL left it that way, and it does not bother me.
But you know, if Joshi, or some other editor, wants to reparagraph THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME based on HPL's handwritten manuscript, I might not object too hard. It is at least a plausible theory that he always meant to eliminate more paragraphing breaks, but never got around to it (IIRC, he only removes one paragraph break in SHADOW, whereas I think he removes 100s of them in MOUNTAINS). Joshi does other, worse, things to SHADOW, that are more clearly and directly at odds with the author's final wishes.
Personally, however, I would prefer it if editors exercise a bit more textual conservatism, and reserve their theories about how the texts would or should have been improved for the essay and commentary sections. So, personally I would just follow the hand-corrected copy of SHADOW OUT OF TIME (which essentially means following Derleth), and leave its paragraphing alone.
It is possible that HPL may have decided to keep the "choppy" paragraphing of SHADOW for artistic reasons. The narrator is, after all, an amnesia victim trying, throughout the story, to reconstruct his choppy and disconnected memories. But that's just theory, and it might be best to admit I don't know. What I do know, at the very least, is that fixing the paragraphs in SHADOW was not a priority for him. Here I agree. It's not that important.
Joshi, however, has no excuse for changing the paragraphing in AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. Here, HPL *did* extensively reparagraph, using his original handwritten manuscript for reference. Where he left the paragraphing as it was, it was because he wanted to keep it that way.
> This goes
> to what Lovecraft said about the "organic" nature
> of paragraphs (see below), and once again strongly
> indicates his utter distaste for the "choppy"
> paragraphs so rightly associated with pulp
> hackwork.
Apparently it did not bother him in this case. Nor (if you check what you quote him saying) does he feel that short paragraphs are inherently wrong.
> All right... he is initially speaking of
> Mountains, but what he says also applies here in
> the more general sense
I prefer to leave it up to HPL to decide where it applies, and to follow his instructions.
> Ultimately, Lovecraft himself cast doubt on the
> authoritativeness of these corrected texts when he
> said, in the same letter to Barlow:
He does not say that at all. It remains clear that these drafts, at the very least, supercede all prior drafts. He puts his authority right behind them, at least to the extent of giving them more authority than any other text. But you are looking for any excuse to deprive HPL of the right to control his own texts.
> "I had to go
> just a bit from memory, since the typed version
> wasn't exactly like the rough draught."
HPL has the right to do this. He can go a little from memory or alot from memory. He is the author, and he can base his authorial decisions on anything he wants, including his memory.
> "I made
> certain revisions which I didn't bother to insert
> in the original scrawl"
But, the revisions made in the typescript have NO RELEVANCE to the excision examples you posted above. Those were not cuts by Tremaine that HPL overooked because they were present ONLY in the typescript. They were in the manuscript.
This is, I think, all a big fat distraction and red herring. Joshi has not found in the typescript any excisions that HPL missed from failure to check the typescript. That's why he and you are forced to accuse HPL (without basis) of carelessness in checking against the manuscript.
> as well as: "Some day
> maybe I'll try to sort out & assemble that
> shuffled-up & possibly incomplete close typescript
> you gave me in '34. It ought -- when fixed up --
> to be better than one of these messed-up magazine
> extracts!" (O, Fortunate Floridian, p. 336).
It HPL's his right, as author, to make such plans. It does not change the fact that the corrected copy is, at the very least, his current working copy with more authority than ANY prior draft, including the typescript.
Please note: He is planning to do such checking himself. HE IS NOT GIVING ANYONE ELSE AUTHORITY TO DO IT. He reserves to himself the right to make changes to his own text.
Note the materials he wants to check for (additions he may have made to the typescript, but which Tremaine may have removed, but which he may not remember) apparently do not exist. Otherwise you would be citing these as examples, instead of accusing HPL of carelessness in checking the handwritten manuscript.
> Obviously, he never got around to doing so;
It's not obvious in anything you have said. Did you leave out part of your argument? Where is your proof that he never got around to checking the typescript?.
And what difference would it make if he didn't check it? What excisions has Joshi identified that are based solely on the surviving typescript, as distinct from the manuscript? Certainly not the examples you give above!
> but,
> equally obviously, neither was he entirely
> satisfied with the corrected versions here,
> either.
I don't think HPL was ever entirely satisfied with anything he wrote. But such lack of satisfaction does not translate into permission for other people to make changes to his texts for him. Whatever vague plans of further improvement he may have had, I am sure he wanted to make those improvements HIMSELF. There is, here, NO SUGGESTION WHATSOEVER of any intent to delegate that task to another person as posthumous editor. HPL is the ONLY person in a position to know whether he wants to restore a variant found in an older, superceded draft. Absent such a grant of posthumous authority to another person, his hand-corrected copy was indeed his last draft.
And again, you have identified no Joshi corrections to MOUNTAINS that are based on the typescript that he allegedly failed to check.
> Joshi's texts remain the more reliable of the two.
I don't agree. But so far, I have only challenged Joshiites to come up with a list of errors in Luckhurst, to justify their claim of "butchery". I have yet to provide a list of errors in the corresponding Joshi texts. When I do provide it, we can debate which text is more "reliable". In the meantime, you still have not justified your charge of "butchery".
(Note that I do not think Luchkurst's text is perfect - I believe there ARE errors to be found, though I find it curious that Joshiites, despite their charges, do not seem to know what they are).
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 4 May 14 | 03:02PM by Platypus.