still more Oddities 7: A comic strip from the pen of Rasmus Dromstrom, who may have been seeing his own future.
I have been absorbing Howard Phillips Lovecraft's The Mound (one of his collaborations, with some minimal inspiration provided by Zealia Bishop), for the first time in many moons. One noteworthy item is the way in which HPL powerfully describes a state he had never been to -- Oklahoma, the feeling of dread mounting as the narrator crosses the plains. In fact, HPL excelled at vicarious travel descriptions, as seen in At the Mountains of Madness(Antarctica), The Shadow out of Time(Australia), Under the Pyramids(Egypt), and many of his other writings. The pitfalls of second- hand descriptions became known to me when I wrote something referring to Oslo years ago, before I had been there. I visualized a sort of sempiternally icebound city -- having been there twice in June now, I realize that is not the case.
