Monday, May 10, 2010

Dept. of Monday

Re-reading the Necronomicon while YouTubing the Phos Hilaron.

5 comments:

Nada Gordon: 2 ludic 4 U said...

The priests look like Williamsburg hipsters with those beards.

Why didn't I know about that extraordinary book? Whoa.

rodney k said...

You mean you haven't explored the eldritch horrors of H ... P ... Lovecraft?!?

Glad to learn the beards aren't just a Portland bohemia thing. They go better with those robes than with skinny jeans, don't you think?

Nada Gordon: 2 ludic 4 U said...

I haven't read Lovecraft. Isn't that weird? I just have read about him. There was a book I loved as a teenager, "The Philosopher's Stone," by Colin Wilson... do you know it? Wilson was obsessed with Lovecraft, though very critical of him...

When you first asked the question, I thought I had read Lovecraft. Instead, I was thinking of another book. Years ago, 32 years ago to be exact, Vale (of Research Magazine) gave me three books, in part to help corrupt me. (This was successful, I think.) They were:

1) a little Aleister Crowley pamphlet called "Energized Enthusiasm." This is what I thought was Lovecraft until I googled it.

2) Maldoror

3) J.G. Ballard's Crash, which I didn't like then and still don't until this day.

But I guess the simple answer is, no! I haven't read Lovecraft! WTF!

As to the beards, I prefer a gay little goatee to a full chin of hair... part of my warlock fetish... all the more reason to READ LOVECRAFT!

rodney k said...

When I was a teenager, just coming into Lovecraft, B. Dalton carried a mass-market paperback of the Necronomicon. I kind of knew it was fake, but wasn't totally sure (pre-internet). It credit Abdul Alhazred--the "mad" Arab mentioned in the stories--as the author I think, which I now read as a joke: "All Has Read."

I thought the aliens were watching us,too.

Lovecraft has his fans, I know, but a little for me goes a long way--the soup tastes the same through the whole tureen. A friend once told me his letters are great, where he spells out his feelings about modernity a little more nakedly. World enough and time ...

rodney k said...

P.S. Haven't read Colin Wilson, but Crowley's "Energized Enthusiasm" ought to be re-purposed as the name of a poetry book. Any takers?