An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

See Donald R.Burleson, “On Lovecraft’s ‘Nemesis,’” LSNo. 21 (Spring 1990): 40–42. “News Notes.”

Column in the United Amateur,customarily written by the Official Editor of the UAPA. HPL wrote the columns for July 1917; September 1918 (in part); September, November 1920; January, March, May, July, September, November 1921; January, March, May 1922; May 1924; July 1925. The articles deal with the activities of various amateurs; HPL makes sure to note several of his own colleagues, including W.Paul Cook, Maurice W.Moe, George Julian Houtain, Alfred Galpin, Winifred Virginia Jackson, Myrta Alice Little, Sonia H.Greene (discussed extensively in the columns for September 1921 and May 1924), Samuel Loveman, Clark Ashton Smith, and Frank Belknap Long. Ni, Hak.

In “Collapsing Cosmoses,” a military commander in the “intradimensional city of Kastor-Ya” who takes steps to combat the interstellar menace approaching the planet.

“Nietzscheism and Realism.”

Essay (1,680 words); probably written in the summer of 1921. First published in the Rainbow (October 1921; as “Nietscheism and Realism”); rpt. MW

The text is a series of excerpts from two letters written to Sonia H.Greene (HPL to the Gallomo, August 21, 1921; AHT). HPL offers cynical reflections on politics and society, many of them inspired (in spite of the title) not from Nietzsche but from Schopenhauer. In politics, HPL recommends an aristocracy “because I deem it the only agency for the creation of those refinements which make life endurable for the human animal of high organisation.” Democracy and ochlocracy (rule of the mob), on the other hand, merely squanders “the aesthetic and intellectual resources which aristocracy bequeathed them and which they could never have created for themselves.” HPL considerably refined these views in his later political philosophy but never wholly abandoned them.

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Page 189

“Night Ocean, The.”

Short story (9,840 words); written in collaboration with R.H.Barlow, summer 1936. First published in the Californian(Winter 1936); first collected in HM

The narrator, a painter, comes to a sea resort named Ellston Beach to rest from the grueling task of completing a painting for a competition. He rents a bungalow far from the town, facing directly onto the beach and the ocean. Initially, as he wanders the beach and swims in the ocean, he appears to derive benefit from the tranquil atmosphere; but gradually he begins to feel uneasy. He hears that a few tourists had drowned inexplicably. Then he comes upon an object on the beach that looks like a rotted hand that may have been gnawed upon by some sea creature. At length, as his loneliness and unease continue, he seems to see—in the course of a furious rainstorm—a strange figure (“a dog, a human being, or something more strange”) emerging from the water, carrying something across its shoulder. For a moment the narrator thinks this creature is approaching his bungalow, but it veers away at the last minute. The narrator is left pondering the mysteries of the night ocean. The manuscript of this story has recently been discovered (it had been micro-filmed by Barlow’s literary executor, George T.Smisor), and it shows that all the plotting and most of the prose is Barlow’s, with HPL revising the language throughout but contributing perhaps less than 10% to the overall story. HPL himself told Hyman Bradofsky (editor of the Californian) that he “ripped the text to pieces in spots” (HPL to Hyman Bradofsky, November 4, 1936; ms., JHL); but in letters to others he commends the story highly, something he is not likely to have done if he had had a great deal to do with it.

The story is a finely atmospheric weird tale. It comes very close—closer, perhaps, than any of HPL’s own works with the exception of ‘The Colour out of Space”—to capturing the essential spirit of the weird, as HPL wrote of some of Blackwood’s works in “Supernatural Horror in Literature”: “Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a single strained passage or a single false note…. Plot is everywhere negligible, and atmosphere reigns untrammelled.”

See Brian Humphreys, “‘The Night Ocean’ and the Subtleties of Cosmicism,” LSNo. 30 (Spring 1994): 14–21.

“Nightmare Lake, The.”

Poem (66 lines); probably written in the fall of 1919. First published in Vagrant(December 1919). In “distant Zan” there is an ominous lake filled with dreadful creatures—lizards, snakes, ravens, vampires, necrophagi—but the final horror comes when the narrator realizes that the lake covers over a sunken city that contains still greater monstrosities.

Nith.

In “The Cats of Ulthar,” a “lean” notary in Ulthar.