Am sorry to hear that Wilum. Have to agree with Knygatin, Platypus does not seem like a troll to me either. He has made some harsh criticism of Joshi, but he has also asked some very legitimate questions regarding the criticisms of this Oxford text. I've yet to see anyone give an adequate answer as to why they find this text so defective. Based on many of your postings here I would assume you have a good deal of knowledge of Lovecraft's writings ( much more than myself, I must confess) and so would be able to address Playtpus' questions.
I hope you reconsider your decision to bow out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 1 May 14 | 05:54PM by Ahab.

Okay, one more post. I haven't owned ye Oxford edition since it first came out, giving my copy to S. T. as I refus'd to have the book in my house. So I cannot comment on the texts, I can only quote what S. T. wrote in his review of the book:

"How does Luckhurst defend this return to corrupt texts? Well, in reality he doesn't. He states: 'The texts have been checked against the first publication of the stories, nearly all in pulp magazines, with obvious mistakes silently corrected.' There is a considerable ambiguity in this utterance. Let us consider the text of 'The Call of Cthulhu.' Luckhurst has in fact not followed the Weird Tales (February 1928) text in certain particulars, especially as regards Lovecraft's British spellings, which appear in his text but do not appear in the Weird Tales text. Surely he cannot claim that the (proper) restoration of the British spellings constitutes a 'correction' of 'obvious mistakes'; what is more, not ALL of Lovecraft's British spellings have been restored, as Luckhurst has not printed 'connexion' (found in Lovecraft's typescript) where Weird Tales (and all previous texts prior to mine) print the American 'connection.' Luckhurst does follow Weird Tales in (erroneously) printing 'Eskimos' where Lovecraft wrote 'Esquimaux.' He follows Weird Tales in some paragraphing errors as well. The he prints 'This data.' whereas Weird Tales and earlier Arkham House editions printed 'These data.' The fact is that 'This data' is a grammatical error found in Lovecraft's typescript, and I printed it in my text. Weird Tales was actually correct in printing 'These data.' But I need not go on. The end result is a textual mishmash more worthy of some fly-by-night print-on-demand publisher rather than one of the world's great academic presses.

"The most unfortunate decision was to use the Astounding Stories appearances of AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS and 'The Shadow out of Time.' Even Luckhurst appears dimly aware that the former, in its butchered appearance in Astounding, is so corrupt as to be unusable; so he has essentially used the version that August Derleth prepared in 1939 (reprinted, with further errors, in 1964), based on Lovecraft's corrected copies of Astounding, where at least the paragraphing has been repairedand the omissions of text (especially toward the end) mostly filled in. But the result is still a text that contains about 1500 divergences from the typescript. In the case of 'The Shadow outof Time,' the decision is also regrettavle. Consider this passage in Astounding:

"'I was born and raised in Haverhill [...] and did not go to Arkham till I entered Miskatonic University as instructor of political economy in 1895.'

"The actual text reads:

"'I was born i=and reared in Haverhill [...] and did not go to Arkham till I entered Miskatonic University at the age of eighteen. That was in 1889. After my graduation I studied economics at Harvard, and came back to Miskatonic as Instructor of Political Economy in 1895.'

Luckhurst actually supplies the above passage in a footnote; but the degree of his ignorance of Lovecraft textual scholarship is betrayed by his comment: 'Astounding simplified this sentence from HPL's original...' What actually happened, in all probability, was that R. H. Barlow, in preparing the typescript of the story for Lovecraft, skipped a line or two of text (probably because his eye saw 'Miskatonic' twice and largely skipped from the first usage to the second, causing the omission."

I call Whelan an anti-Joshi troll because of the slanderous lies he continually posts about S. T., his accusations of Joshi's intention in preparing Lovecraft's texts, &c. At another site, Whelan accuses Joshi of disliking Lovecraft (his evidence being what Whelan called the "horrendous" annotations in the Penguin Classics editions) and that S. T. is interested only in owning and guarding his text via copyright so that, in Whelan's phrase, S. T. can get his "cut." Such behavior is grotesque and unjust, and I have used this behavior in responding to Whelan, using his own method and thus judging him a "mentally ill troll." Some of Whelan's protests concerning Lovecraft's texts and Lovecraft's intentions are so pathetically stupid that I can only surmise they are a product of lunacy. I cannot abide such a moron attacking my friend and his life-long work on Lovecraft, and so I retaliate in kind, which makes me look bad and petty perhaps. My emotions run deep, because H. P. Lovecraft has given me my professional writing life by bewitching me utterly with his writing and his personality. S. T. has given us the finest texts of Lovecraft's works, an effort to which he has dedicated himself and returned to again and again so as to perfect it. It is because of S. T.'s work that I can return to Lovecraft constantly, his fiction or poetry, his essays or letters, and find new depths of wonder that in turn inspire my own creative work. I want to be remembered as a Lovecraftian writer--I want that to be my complete and total identity. Thanks to S. T.'s work on Lovecraft's texts, assisted by David Schultz and Martin Andersson, and the criticism of Lovecraft's stories that has thus come forth as a result of S. T.'s labor from Faig, Schultz, Worthington, Waugh, Ligotti, Mariconda, &c &c &c, Lovecraft Lives Eternal.

S. T. hath just pofted a new blog at (let's see if I can get this right)
[www.stjoshi.org]

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 1 May 14 | 07:09PM by wilum pugmire.

Ok, I was jesting when I said "dinner" and "guards". It was my reaction to a certain childishness I sense in the debate. But I am otherwise serious about this issue and about looking at Lovecraft's texts in an un-affected objective manner. Free from personal prestige and investment.

Platypus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the case of MOUNTAINS and SHADOW, it is very
> simple. HPL's final say is his hand-corrected
> copies of the ASTOUNDING texts. However, that
> text was published by Derleth in 1939, and has
> already entered public domain as a result of the
> failure of heirs to renew the copyright. Hence,
> that text is, from the perspective of the
> "Newly-copyrighted definitive Joshi texts
> Project", completely unusuable.

No, it really isn't "very simple" -- particularly when you're dealing with as complicated a textual history as here. Just to aid in clarifying, let's have a brief run-down of that:

A) The original A.Ms., with initial revisions, written in 1931.

B) The original T.Ms., with some further revisions, shortly thereafter.

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.

C) Publication, in three installments, in Astounding Stories, featuring numerous excisions, misprints, rewordings (including non-words) and broken-up paragraphing.

D) Lovecraft's correction of these issues, 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.

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. 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: "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; yet, as Joshi clearly shows (Discovering H. P. Lovecraft, pp. 105-6, n. 26) even here you had a notable chunk of text which was omitted. 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,. [Our own first sight of the actual buried entities formed a horrible moment, and sent the imaginations of Pabodie and myself back to some of the shocking primal myths we had read and heard. We all agreed that the mere sight and continued presence of the things must have cooperated with the oppressive polar solitude and daemon mountain wind in driving Lake's party mad.]

"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...."

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."

Would Lovecraft have intentionally omitted this passage? In and of itself, possible, but unlikely. Why? Because it runs completely counter to his entire aesthetic dicta concerning the organic nature of a manuscript; to wit: "But be sure that all references throughout the story are thoroughly reconciled with the final design. 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", in Collected Essays Volume 2: Literary Criticism, p.177; emphasis mine)

This is an important point, because it is a dictum Lovecraft wrote by throughout his career, and one which he continued to emphasize in his correspondence to other writers until his death. The passage above, without the portion in brackets, would simply grossly violate that dictum by introducing a superfluous and confusing element, as noted, in the wording. In cases such as this, a conscientious editor who is doing his best to determine the definitive text must take into account not only the latest text bearing the hand of the author, but also ancillary materials, such as essays setting out such guidelines, letters discussing them, and the prevailing usage of the writer, if any conflict appears.

So here, because such conflicts arise several times, all these points must be carefully sifted and decisions made which appear, in the seasoned judgment of the editor or textual scholar (and Joshi is certainly both) the one which closest approaches what the writer has expressed as their intentions both particularly and in general.

Which brings us to the following:

> You DID refer to the typescript. However, there
> is (according to Joshi) no surviving typescript
> that adequately reflects HPL's wishes for
> "...Mountains". Joshi's solution is "reconstruct"
> HPL's wishes using a combination of the written
> manuscript, the (non-final) typescript and the
> ASTOUNDING text, which Joshi believes butchers a
> different typescript (non-extant) which DOES
> (Joshi presumes) reflect HPL's final wishes, but
> unfortunately does not survive. Please see his
> essay "Textual Problems in Lovecraft".
>
> Joshi nonetheless regrets that "In the end there
> shall always remain doubt as to what Lovecraft's
> final wishes were for the novel were ...."
>
> Joshi faces this dilemma, of course, because he
> has chosen to ignore HPL's final wishes, as
> reflected in his hand-corrected copy of the
> ASTOUNDING text. Because that would result in a
> text no different from Derleth's, which may
> already be public domain. AND WE CAN'T HAVE THAT!

First, my apologies. Again, I was very tired, and misspoke there. Lovecraft used his A.Ms. in making the corrections, though in either case, the corrected magazine version(s) still, as seen above, show divergences which do not fit. Second, you rather misrepresent what Joshi had to say there. 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:

"It lay in manuscript for five years, until [...] it was accepted by Astounding Stories[...]. 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)

This very instance, upon which you have so strongly insisted as an example of Joshi's ego getting in the way of following Lovecraft's preferences, is actually an instance of precisely the opposite, as he here supports the Astounding text!

On the subject of even recent AH editions prior to Joshi's: To cite another example which Donald Burleson mentions (H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study [1983], p. 194, n. 7), "On p. 34 of that edition, line 34, at the end of the paragraph (ending '... say') 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"; two pages later comes the passage cited by Joshi. In each case, Lovecraft refers to these here and there throughout the novel, thus they are required if one is to follow Lovecraft's own rules on composition. The edition mentioned by Burleson here is not one of the earlier editions, but that of the 1960s onward.

> HPL eliminated a grand total of one (1) paragraph
> break on his hand-corrected copy of the ASTOUNDING
> STORIES text of "Shadow". I interpret this as an
> instruction to rejoin only that paragraph. Is
> this paragraph not rejoined in Luckhurst's text?

And on the butchered paragraphing of "The Shadow Out of Time"... once again, Burleson, before the emergence of Joshi's texts, noted how alien these "paragraphs" were to Lovecraft's entire classical approach to writing, especially his awareness of composition. Along the way, he includes corroboration from yet another party as to Lovecraft's disgust with this one:

"The Arkham House text follows the text as printed in Astounding Stories, where editor F. Orlin Tremaine and his colleagues butchered it by senselessly and arbitrarily chopping Lovecraft's paragraphs up into shorter 'paragraphs' to produce more 'white space' for a more attractive appearance on the page. Lovecraft's friend Donald Wandrei mentioned to me (telephone conversation, 22 March 1981) that when he took the manuscript of 'The Shadow out of Time' to Tremaine, the latter, not having time to read it, published it solely on Wandrei's recommendation; Wandrei mentioned that the misparagraphing was not personally Tremaine's fault, but was due to certain printers' conventions of the day. Wandrei also told me, however (telephone conversation, 22 February 1981) that Lovecraft was so disgusted a the misprinting both of At the Mountains of Madness and 'The Shadow out of Time' that he considered them both to be unpublished works! Unfortunately, the manuscript of 'The Shadow out of Time,' though it was supposed to reside with Robert Barlow (who gave his Lovecraft papers to the John Hay Library at Brown University), is missing. Only a small scrap of typescript survives, and its paragraphing, compared with the printed text, strongly suggests that the entire text is indeed thus mutilated -- but to any discerning reader, no such proof is required. A good example is the idiotic 'paragraph' on p. 382 of the Arkham House text beginning 'Flowers....'" (H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study, p. 211, n. 1)

What he is referring to here is 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 -- even for a grade-school level composition paper, and Lovecraft was much too good a writer not to know it. However, taken in context of the paragraph as he wrote it, it is perfectly acceptable:

"The omnipresent gardens were almost terrifying in their strangeness, with bizarre and unfamiliar forms of vegetation nodding over broad paths lined with curiously carven monoliths. Abnormally vast fern-like growths predominated, some green, and some of a ghastly fungoid pallor. Among them rose great spectral things resembling calamites, whose bamboo-like trunks towered to fabulous heights. Then there were tufted forms like fabulous cycads, and grotesque dark-green shrubs and trees of coniferous aspect. Flowers were small, colourless, and unrecognisable, blooming in geometrical beds and at large among the greenery. In a few of the terrace and roof-top gardens were larger and more vivid blossoms of almost offensive contours and seeming to suggest artificial breeding. Fungi of inconceivable size, outlines, and colours speckled the scene in patterns bespeaking some unknown but well-established horticultural tradition. In the larger gardens on the ground there seemed to be some attempt to preserve the irregularities of Nature, but on the roofs there was more selectiveness, and more evidences of the topiary art."

Now, that does read like Lovecraft... and like someone who knows something about proper composition of a paragraph using, for instance, contrast (among many other techniques). 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.

To return to the accusations about Joshi and his "project" -- you claim the following:

"Joshi nonetheless regrets that 'In the end there shall always remain doubt as to what Lovecraft's final wishes were for the novel were ....'

Joshi faces this dilemma, of course, because he has chosen to ignore HPL's final wishes, as reflected in his hand-corrected copy of the ASTOUNDING text. Because that would result in a text no different from Derleth's, which may already be public domain. AND WE CAN'T HAVE THAT!"

No, he faces this dilemma because this is the sort of dilemma all textual scholars face when confronted with a set of differing texts, particularly when the history surrounding them is so convoluted and filled with often contradictory indications. Under such circumstances, one does the best one can to reconcile the differences and get as close as possible to what would appear the author's final choices within that context, considering all the various factors mentioned above. Unfortunately, short of raising the dead, absolute certainty is an impossibility; but one can be relatively certain that, given the set of circumstances, even Lovecraft's "restored" texts are not an entirely accurate representation of his intentions. Mistakes certainly can be made, and may have been made here; but Joshi lays out the reasons for his various decisions (certainly not all of them, as this would take up a sizeable volume or two, but most of the major decisions and by implication his reasoning behind others), and as far as textual scholarship goes, they definitely stand up.

You keep going on about his recently copyrighted texts -- a grievance which I find repeatedly from certain sources, and which almost always carries this bitterness about the idea of the texts costing something, or not being freely available. This may be an inconvenience, but not much of one, given that numerous editions contain these texts, and therefore they are readily available from a number of inexpensive sources... or free, via the library systems. Add to this the fact that Joshi has gone on record as saying that, as long as someone contacts him and asks permission, the fee will either be quite nominal, or even waived... which makes such bitterness sound (whether or not this is genuinely the case) a great deal more like sour grapes than a genuine grievance.

And again, on the paragraphing problem, and the reliability of Luckhurst's texts as a result of relying on the "corrected" Astounding texts so heavily, without giving other factors due consideration:

All right... he is initially speaking of Mountains, but what he says also applies here in the more general sense (and is something he commented on at various points in letters): "All my paragraphs cut up into little chunks like the juvenile stuff all the other pulp hacks write. Rhythm, emotional modulations, & minor climactic effects thereby destroyed. If anybody writes in little chunks to start with -- as Belknap does -- well & good. But if anyone writes in full paragraphs, then units have an organic structure which can't bear division. Tremaine has tried to make "snappy action" stuff out of old-fashioned leisurely prose" (O, Fortunate Floridian, p. 335; again, emphasis mine).

Ultimately, Lovecraft himself cast doubt on the authoritativeness of these corrected texts when he said, in the same letter to Barlow: "I had to go just a bit from memory, since the typed version wasn't exactly like the rough draught. I made certain revisions which I didn't bother to insert in the original scrawl", 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). Obviously, he never got around to doing so; but, equally obviously, neither was he entirely satisfied with the corrected versions here, either.

Again, when faced with the contradictory indications in the various texts, as well as an admission of relying on what he admitted at various times was a faulty memory regarding works completed some time before, as well as the other points mentioned earlier, it behooves an editor who is concerned with assembling as close to a definitive text as possible, to consult all texts and related matter, and then follow that which is most consistent with the writer's predominating practices and expressed views on the technical points involved. This is what Joshi has done, while Luckhurst has, apparently, not taken all these into account, but relied on Lovecraft's corrected Astounding texts. That being the case, Joshi's texts remain the more reliable of the two.

*applauds jd* Well spoken!

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.

I am finding this debate quite interesting. I thank all involved.

It seems that most of the textual debate centers around At the Mountains of Madness and "The Shadow out of Time". Allow me to ask about Lovecraft's own two favorites of his stories: Are there significant textual issues with "The Colour out of Space" or with "The Music of Erich Zann"?

Geoffrey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Allow me to ask about Lovecraft's
> own two favorites of his stories: Are there
> significant textual issues with "The Colour out of
> Space" or with "The Music of Erich Zann"?

I'm not sure what you'd consider significant, but there are a few interesting variants. I'll take a look at my notes and get back to you.

Platypus Wrote:
> You do not quote the omitted portion which
> Joshi "restores".

My apologies. Actually you do, but it does not appear when I click "Quote This Message."
Does that always happen when one puts things in [brackets]?

Edit: Strange - it does't happen when I do it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 5 May 14 | 04:58PM by Platypus.

I wasn't aware of that problem; I've not seen it before. Handy to know about, as it might help clarify certain situations.

I'd like to get back to you with a suitable reply but, as with last week (which ended up being an 82-hour work week!), this week looks very long (at least 70 hours, probably more); so it will likely be the weekend before I can do so.

However, I would like to respond to something you've brought up several times, which I think requires an answer on my own part. I've not had a copy of Luckhurst's edition available to me for consultation for quite a long time, so have not been able to give any specific citations such as you ask for. This should be rectified soon, as I've ordered a used copy for permanent use. (The one I had access to before was through the library system, and has not been available lately.)

I would also like to make a request: A lot of your comments do not simply take Joshi to task for his editorial choices, but either insinuate or state flat out a particular set of motivations which, given the circumstances, are indeed rather grave charges to be issuing about an editor. Do you have any evidence to support these claims? If so, I for one would very much like to hear what this evidence is. If not, I would suggest that this is speculation on your part, and as such serves no purpose save to create bad blood, something which cannot but interfere with any attempt at a fruitful debate on the validity of the texts themselves.

In return, I will go so far as to give Luckhurst the benefit of the doubt and give him full credit for honestly seeking to present the author's final wishes where these two stories, at least, are concerned. I disagree that such is the case, obviously, and think his choices unwise; but I do not think, for instance, that he is simply seeking to "cash in" on Lovecraft.

Does this proposal strike you as a fair exchange? To focus not on personalities (unless, as noted, there is evidence to present to support such claims), but rather on the merits of the case for each choice?

jdworth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would also like to make a request: A lot of your
> comments do not simply take Joshi to task for his
> editorial choices, but either insinuate or state
> flat out a particular set of motivations which,
> given the circumstances, are indeed rather grave
> charges to be issuing about an editor. Do you have
> any evidence to support these claims? If so, I for
> one would very much like to hear what this
> evidence is.

I'm not sure what you are asking me to prove, since you do not specify. But I sense mixed messages. Are you challenging me to focus on facts, or are you challenging me to get personal? Or is this merely a polite-sounding accusation that I am guilty of crossing some line?

> In return, I will go so far as to give Luckhurst
> the benefit of the doubt and give him full credit
> for honestly seeking to present the author's final
> wishes where these two stories, at least, are
> concerned.

That sounds like it might be an excellent deal ... for Joshi and Luckhurst. But what in God's name is in it for me? Or for the public generally?

Joshi is a salesman selling a product. Luckhurst is also a salesman selling a product. The public has a right to be skeptical of both of them.

This needs to be said. Because the attitude I have most frequently encountered from Joshi's defenders is that Joshi is lord high Pontifex Maximus, that we are mere lowly peasants, and we have no rights except to swallow uncritically his infallible judgments.

Joshi & his defenders need to come of their high horse and accept that the public does indeed have a right to be skeptical of his claims. If a salesman rings my door, it is not MY burden to prove that he is dishonest. If I have any doubts of any kind whatsoever, I don't have to buy. "Caveat emptor" is not merely a right ... it is almost a duty.

Once Joshi's defenders accept the buyer's right to beware, and stop accusing us of being mean because we dare to doubt, they are of course free to try to convince us that Joshi is an honest and honorable salesman selling an extremely excellent product that really is "new and improved". It might even be true. Such things are not entirely unheard of.

> I disagree that such is the case,
> obviously, and think his choices unwise; but I do
> not think, for instance, that he is simply seeking
> to "cash in" on Lovecraft.

I never suggested the word "simply" applied in either case.

Briefly: In the main, I take no exception to most of what is said here. I agree that it is good to be sceptical of both (or, for that matter, any other edition) and look at the evidence and draw one's own conclusions. Obviously we have both done so, and reached differing conclusions.

What I am getting at in the passage you cite is that you have gone farther than this (whether or not by intent, or realizing it) and have at least insinuated a much more shady set of motivations and actions on Joshi's part. At least, this is the impression it is leaving with quite a few here, if the posts are anything to go by. What I am requesting is that you "dial it back a bit" on that score, and that, yes, we focus on a debate about the merits of the texts and possible reasons for the validity of this or that one. I think this would be more fruitful for the discussion in general, though I frankly doubt that either of us is likely to convince the other of our position. (For my part, this is at least to some degree because I was initially sceptical of Joshi's revised texts and the reasons for them; but, following a lengthy study of the various materials involved -- at least as far as I was able, not having access to, say, copies of the original manuscripts, etc., but only published materials -- I came to the conclusion that what he was doing was fully merited, and very closely reasoned, with a great deal of weighing of all the factors, etc. As all I've seen in the 20+ years since has tended to confirm that impression, it is unlikely anything here will change it... but not impossible. It all depends on how strong the evidence on the opposing side is, in my view.)

In any event, it should present a considerable amount of material of interest for others who may be interested in this issue, allowing them to draw their own conclusions from a more informed position than otherwise.

Leslie Klinger has an interesting point in one of his descriptions of his forthcoming THE NEW ANNOTATED H. P. LOVECRAFT.

"Unlike the previous annotated editions of some of Lovecraft's stories, edited by the estimable S. T. Joshi, I've attempted to show the range of Lovecraftian scholarship and focus on explanatory material rather than biographical details. With his assistance, I've used Joshi's carefully edited texts, rather than other slipshod sources."

S. T. picks me up early to-morrow to drive us to Portland for the World Horror Convention, and Leslie will be in attendance there. He may there give both S. T. and I galley copies of this new Lovecraft collection. I wonder if the "slipshod" reference is to ye Oxford edition. I was disappointed to see that Leslie isn't to be on the Lovecraft panel with S. T. and I at the con, but hopefully he will be in the audience and I can get him to discuss in brief his new Lovecraft edition.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

Oh my! Am sorry to hear that Leslie Klinger will be doing the annotations. I think he is one of the worst annotators I've ever had the displeasure of reading. He likes playing this game where he pretends that the stories he is annotating actually took place. Consequently a lot of his annotations deal with trying to explain away contradictions in the text. It is very distracting and adds nothing to one's understanding of the annotated text. I made the mistake of purchasing his Sherlock Holmes editions. I've avoided all of his other books since. I doubt I'll pick up his Lovecraft edition.

Wish it were someone like Michael Patrick Hearn instead. Check out his annotated editions of Wizard of Oz and Huckleberry Finn to see some nice examples of a well annotated book:

[www.amazon.com]

[www.amazon.com]

jdworth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Briefly: In the main, I take no exception to most
> of what is said here. I agree that it is good to
> be sceptical of both (or, for that matter, any
> other edition) and look at the evidence and draw
> one's own conclusions. Obviously we have both done
> so, and reached differing conclusions.
>
> What I am getting at in the passage you cite is
> that you have gone farther than this (whether or
> not by intent, or realizing it) and have at least
> insinuated a much more shady set of motivations
> and actions on Joshi's part. At least, this is the
> impression it is leaving with quite a few here, if
> the posts are anything to go by. What I am
> requesting is that you "dial it back a bit" on
> that score, and that, yes, we focus on a debate
> about the merits of the texts and possible reasons
> for the validity of this or that one. I think this
> would be more fruitful for the discussion in
> general, though I frankly doubt that either of us
> is likely to convince the other of our position.
> (For my part, this is at least to some degree
> because I was initially sceptical of Joshi's
> revised texts and the reasons for them; but,
> following a lengthy study of the various materials
> involved -- at least as far as I was able, not
> having access to, say, copies of the original
> manuscripts, etc., but only published materials --
> I came to the conclusion that what he was doing
> was fully merited, and very closely reasoned, with
> a great deal of weighing of all the factors, etc.
> As all I've seen in the 20+ years since has tended
> to confirm that impression, it is unlikely
> anything here will change it... but not
> impossible. It all depends on how strong the
> evidence on the opposing side is, in my view.)

Couldn't agree more. Hope this discussion can continue in that spirit. It has been a very enlightening read so far. My thanks to you and Platypus.