Lovecraft at Last: The Master of Horror in his own Words

Lately I finally absorbed Lovecraft at Last (Cooper Square Press: 2002), by Willis Conover, decades after reading the other two Lovecraft-related books, also released in 1975 (Lovecraft: A Biography, by L. Sprague De Camp, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside, by Frank Belknap Long; as mentioned by S.T. Joshi, in his introduction). Conover's work, which he constructed brilliantly with letter excerpts, photos, and other visual material, and his own reflections, is a touching account of his friendship-from-afar, with H.P. Lovecraft.  Conover conveyed the tragic nature of the closing of their fleeting correspondence, in admirably understated ways, mostly letting the letters provide their own testimony. The book is a stellar achievement.
H.P. Lovecraft's friend and correspondent, Robert H. Barlow, famously had a link, as his teacher at Mexico City College, to novelist William S. Burroughs. Willis Conover's life -- he became a prominent broadcaster, for the Voice of America, also had some unexpected outcomes.

"400 People and 400,000 Trout" : Doc: Then And Now with a Montana Physician

The description of a book as "high-spirited" is typically a good reason for me to read something else. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly unsettled after reading a few pages of Dr. R.E. Losee's Doc: Then and Now with a Montana Physician (1994). I am still reading the book now, after having first learned of it many years ago. Rather than some heartwarming chicken soup for the soul, the doctor delivered hardboiled, dry, earthy, unflinching prose, such as:

  

My first ambulance case was that of a man who committed suicide in his garage. The man had killed himself by directing the muzzle of a twelve-gauge shotgun against his umbilicus and then pulling the trigger. The crumpled, warm corpse lay supine, with escaping intestinal gas forming bubbles of blood and stool that exuded from his blown-apart shirt front.

And besides that, the doctor set his memoir in Ennis, Montana, a place with many links to my maternal ancestral line. Dr. Losee depicted several of my relatives, including my great-uncle Oscar Clark. He referenced Oscar's saloon, as well.  The book is an excellent read.

Now ol' Doc Losee could smell death... Quien es?

 

My Sister and the Hornets

Out of the amniotic past seeped spring summer wind, inchoate in the breath of a comet. As if from outside machinery I observe myself in the late 1960s in our backyard, blurred lawn at my feet. My sister bore a stick, approaching the hive of hornets, in memory in a tree, honeycomb sibilant, bugs rattling in crawlspaces, compound eyes with bad vision, venom darning all. A swollen limb, scoriac and teeming, held the nest of the insects, a root skinned to the teeth, white paper like britches.

Once Dad came home when I was in a nap – he offered me a red hand in a toy globe, a hypnagogic trinket.

“Don’t hit the tree.  We’re not supposed to hit the tree,” my mandible working. As sure as the seasons fly through space, my sister marched on the nest and whacked.  Sting marks reddening as the beasts erupted, we screamed toward the sliding door.

JF 12-7-2014

I took the above photograph in August 1975 in Yellowstone Park, one of the first photos I ever took.  The scene looks a little bit like ancient Mars painted by John Martin.

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