SS Bonus15 Wandrei and Derleth

We take a first delve into the letters between Smith and Donald Wandrei, plus correspondence to August Derleth. We talk Margaret Brundage, lurid book covers, ice cream, the Book of Jade, Sandalwood, beta reading and present two of the gothiest poems ever.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Strange Shadows. The Clark Ashton Smith podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Greetings, friends, and thanks very much for joining us for this patron episode of Strange Shadows, the Clark Ashton Smith Podcast, where we're taking a delve into some letters between Mr. Smith and various other personages. I am one of your hosts, Rob Poynton.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

And I'm the other one, Tim Mendies. Yeah, we've both been on a little bit of a rummage through our various collections of Smith Smith. I do like a good rummage. Oh, you can't go wrong with a good rummage. Yes, through our various collections of Smith Epistoly Delights. And uh we've also dug out some poems as well, haven't we? Out of letters. So yeah, it should be an interesting little episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yes, yes. Uh there's a competition today, I think, for the gothiest poem of all time, isn't there? Between us.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

We've got a real cracker, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Indeed. Yeah. Indeed. But before we get to all that uh gothic goodness, we're gonna kick off with a something because I I I got to thinking the other day, you know, uh, where we are in the Smith stories on Strange Shadows, that era in Weird Tales is the era in the Eerie, which is dominated by a discussion about the merits or lack of of the the art of Mrs. Brundage and the covers. All the let all the letters in the eerie on the every time I've looked recently, it's all been about, oh no, too much filth, oh yeah, more filth, that kind of thing. So I got to thinking, what did Smith think about it? Um and also what did his correspondence think about this? Now, there's not as much as you might have thought, but there is some interesting little bits and some amusing little bits as well. So, first off, I'm gonna delve into Dornwood Spire Lonely Hill and find out what Messrs Smith and Lovecraft had to say about it. Now, I've got to read this return address, because this is a letter from HP Lovecraft. This first tiny, tiny little excerpt comes from, right? But the return address is it's yeah, it it's almost it's quite long. And it's a cracker, it may be one of the best. So this letter is dated the first of September 1933. From that dome in the floating ice mountain, Yiklith, where the white worm of Grim Shekoth weeps eternally from his eyeless orbits, those eye-like globules of blood-colored matter that form purple stalagmites as they form.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Laddy oh, yes, that's quite magnificent, isn't it? Yeah. That's not that's a story, that's not a return address, that's the story. See, that one.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

And I was actually wrong. I said it was from Lovecraft. It's not, that was Smith. That was Clark, that was actually Clark Ashen Smith. Yeah. So there we go. Yes. Splendid. And again, HP L. Coming after that, but yeah. It's oh dearie, dearie me. So we get to a passage, it's sort of quite it's quite a long letter, and we get to a paragraph here. Wright rejected the witchcraft of Ulla as being too much of a sex story. Ye gods, when you consider the current cover of the magazine. Looking at the date and everything like that. Clark Asher Smith is alluding to uh Margaret Brundage's cover for Weird Tales September 1933, and an illustration for The Slithering Shadow by Robert E.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Howard. All right. This is probably a most famous cover, actually. It is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, as soon as soon as I found that, I was like, oh yeah, yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

You know which one that is. I know which one that is. Yeah, it's got a bit of everything in that cover, doesn't it? I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Now, it's another letter from Smith with another great little return address here. Because it's it's funny, we often think of Lovecraft of having the ordering the market on the return addresses, but here's two back-to-back bangers from Clark Ash and Smith. From the black desert of Zor beneath the seven ultra-spectral suns. Yes. December, 4th of December 1933, dear HPL. So again, he's saying, speaking of covers, the current Weird Tales design, though pleasing enough in colour, is curiously suggestive of a Christmas card. I don't wish to be ungallant, but Mrs. Brundage, between you and me and the asymmetric icon from Crater Ridge, has about as much genuine feeling for the weird as a jersey cow is likely to possess. The best angles in this picture, the hands of the man, seem to have been swiped by unconscious celebration from Up to Ptel's drawing for the star spawn by Durleth and Shora.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Wow. That's uh that's uh quite a biting comment, isn't it? Followed by an almost incomprehensible comment.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, so looking in the notes, it says here that the cover for the March 1934 Weird Tales illustrated the black gargoyle. The illustration referred to below for the cover of the 1933 issue was not for any particular story, and Brundage's covers were particularly nudes. Right. It was also we get into uh one of the illusions he had made in that Up to Tell. I don't know how you pronounce the name, but we get onto that when we look now. We're gonna swap our books, we're jumping over to eccentric impractical devils, the letters of August Derleth and Clark Ashen Smith. So this is July the 10th, 1932. I too thought the current Weird Tales merely fair and agree with most of your estimates. The Lair of the Starspawn read pretty well in print, though I still found a slight lack of conviction in parts of it. The illustration by Ut Patel was by far the best in the issue. The cover was rather pleasing than otherwise, especially in the Macabre but rich colour scheme. So we could we skip down a bit further. I liked your Lu Gen Yarn in OS and hope that Wright will run a whole series of them. The cover of this magazine was by Margaret Brundage before she went to Weird Tales. Is good as usual, but I haven't yet sampled much of the contents. So if you see them two names together, autophatel, I think, is how I'm gonna s go with the pronunciation. If anybody knows how I am supposed to pronounce it, please tell me. Because I haven't a clue. But Smith keeps making comparisons to the two. Yeah. Almost in a kind of like, well, she ripped that off kind of thing. She's she's copied, yeah. As we'll get to in a moment. Now, this is an amusing one from November the 6th, 1933, from Clark Ashton Smith. As to the cover, well, I could stand that if it weren't for the outrageously exaggerated mammary glands. That sort of picture could be weird if Mrs. Brundage had a little imagination with which to reinforce her colour. So Smith seems to like the colour, if nothing else, of what Brundage does.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

It is quite biting about her ability though, isn't it? That's uh It is, it is indeed.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

And yeah, well it continues now on December the 3rd. So another letter from Clark Ashton Smith. Yes, Wright accepted the drawing for the weaver in the vault. I don't know how it will come out in reproduction. The original was done in a style of fine etching like lines, and Wright suggested that I make the lines further apart in my next, because they were otherwise likely to fill up with ink on the rough newspaper print. As to Wilcox, I failed to find anything weird or atmospheric in his drawings. The same applies to Mrs. Brundage's covers, which would be admirable for a non-weird magazine. The current one is pleasing in a way. The male figure reminds me of Fulan in Ut Patel's drawing for your starspawn. Alright, there we go, come back to that. Perhaps it is the posture of the hands more than anything else. Ut Patel's drawing, however, was genuinely weird, and the net effect of this cover is anything but still it's a vast improvement over the usual designs. I wish Wright would use the one by Ud Patel that you described. It sounds very effective and appropriate indeed. So that's really quite interesting, isn't it? Um we look here in the notes. It says that Brundage's cover showing a woman, candle, ornamental disc, and skull, not illustrating any particular story for the December issue of Weird Tales, is clearly based on Frank Ut Patel's illustration from the August 1932 Weird Tales for The Lair of the Starspawn.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Oh, right. So there is a sort of connection between the two then in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, Smith carries on on the 22nd of December, saying, Yes, when I came to look up Ut Patel's drawing, I perceived how closely Brundage had copied the entire idea and arrangement, turning the original weirdness and imaginative quality into something banal and almost ludicrous. HPL tells me that she imitated an unused end piece of Ut Patel's in her November cover. What a curious and pedalicious compliment. Pedelicious. Oh no, he can't help himself, can he? Bloody hell. Oh, dearie dearie me. Yeah, so I think from those little snippets, I think it's safe to say that Smith wasn't a big fan.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, yeah. He he seems not to be objecting so much to the um the the nature of the drawing, which you know, totally keep it in line with Smith, right? Exactly. You think if anyone Lovecraft would be saying, oh, smut, look at this damn smut. But uh, yeah, very critical and uh sorry, very cutting in his criticisms as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah, I think he seems to have more of a I mean he likes the colour of it and all the rest of it, and he thinks they're quite eye-catching, but I d he doesn't think they're weird enough for weird tales.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

That's a difficult concept, and and this is something he was up against from the other side, wasn't it? Because often Wright said your stories are too weird for weird tales. So where's this line of weirdness? What's that? What's what's normal for the spider is chaos for the fly kind of setup? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So I I th I found that whole little exchange quite interesting because it definitely gives insight into Smith's sort of feelings about what should be in Weird Tales and on Weird Tales, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because it's something that they it comes back. I've seen several mentions today while I've been going through of that of basically, especially Smith uh Smith and Derleth, because they bitch about Weird Tales a lot. Um saying it's there's not enough weird stuff in it. I mean, this is this isn't weird, this isn't this should be in an adventure story, that kind of thing. Yeah, but yeah, which is something we'll we'll cycle back to in in in a bit when I get on to my next bit. But yeah, I mean, I just thought I thought I was really interested because I was expecting it to be more as you know, memory glands aside, I was expecting more discussion about big breasts and all this kind of thing, but no, the it's all very uh professional, really.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yes, yeah, not weird enough. This is an interesting thing because well, we're we're back to almost that sort of Pikmin's model discussion, aren't we? Of how weird can a painting be, how scary can a drawing be? Yeah. It's two-dimensional for one thing, and it's more often the the the scene that is being depicted, the actions, it makes you go, or like if you saw something really gory, someone's doing something horrible to someone else, then you might go, Ugh, but that's not the painting, is it, if you know what I mean? No. Just just looking at a painting and the shapes and the colours makes you go mad or repulses you. I don't see where that happens.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

It's an interesting idea though. Yeah. But uh I see what he's getting at um when he when he says that he thinks they'd be better fitted for something else, because if you think of the detective certainly the detective magazines, the pulps of the time, yeah, their covers, because it it was it were the basically fetishized bondage images, weren't they? It was like even up into the 50s, 60s, 70s, okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

The style changes a little bit, but it's basically someone's tied up and all the rest of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Well genuinely a tight, tight sweater, you know, books and blonde in a tight sweater, outing while she's tied up while somebody lurks in the shadows with a gun.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

I suppose lurid is the word, isn't it, really, for a lot of those covers. Which, let's be honest, you know, would the Conan books have sold as well without the Frazetta covers? Well, that's they're lurid in a different way. I mean, there's lots of flesh on display, but most of it is Conan. And uh certainly very violent, most of them. So yeah, it's interesting. I I do think it's a bit of a lost art. I think for the most part, covers today are very dull.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I totally agree. We were discussing that recently with a publisher. We know we won't name them, but we were discussing that recently. That the all the the recent ones, they're basically just a solid cover, a solid colour with a bit of writing on it and an abstract image.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

I wonder, it is it a move that people don't want to use AI, which is fine. That's that's you know, fair enough, but also don't want to be accused of having used AI. Because something I've seen a lot of recently. Uh anyone who's into Tolkien might have heard of the brothers Hildebrand, who I think for a number of years did the Tolkien calendars, very high fantasy paintings of dragons and hobbits and all the rest of it. Uh and there's people online saying, Well, this is AI. It was drawn 30 years ago or painted 30 years ago, you know. Yeah. But this is part of the pernicious influence of AI in that it makes people doubt everything.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I had um myself and Zoe had that with our a collaborate collaborative thing. The the cover was drawn by Zoe, right? Because she's an artist, she did all the illustrations, and somebody online. I I actually got the before because obviously I took the design and put a background on it and things like that. I did the digital side of it, but even that that was a piece of silk I took a picture of and shined a light on it to get like ripples, and then manipulated that in Photoshop to give it a sort of star kind of thing. So I showed them all the preliminary preliminaries, like yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Yeah, uh right, yeah, that's it. It's yeah, I know, I know it is frustrating. I've had the same here with some of my stuff because obviously uh my wife is grave heart designs, and you know, yes. We uh I recently put out my set of war games skirmish rules, and she did all the artwork. And 99% of people said, Wow, this is really great artwork and all the rest of it. Uh and then well, the the the comment I got on that was uh what's the book out for? I think it's 15 quid. So it's an A4 size set of rules. Yeah. Bit expensive, isn't it? Well, yeah, because I paid my artist, you know. What do you want? Yeah. So what do you want? Do you want me to do you want me to go to mid-journey or whatever and uh knock a few quid off the price?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Exactly. It it always comes down to this, uh, as you know, fellow musician. It's always the fucking artist that has to work for free, isn't it? Oh yeah, always, always. You've got me on a hobby horse now, see? I want to put a cold flannel on my forehead and let it continue, sir. Retire to my couch. Get somebody to fan you. Fill me a grape. Oh, decadence. Now it's funny that we bring decadence up, actually, because um shall we talk about Mr. Borderlear? Indeed. Well, before we talk about Mr. Baudelaire, we're gonna be talking about Mr. Wondry, or one of the Mr. Wondry's, uh, because I've got a nice little series of letters here between Mr. Smith and Donald Wondry. Uh, this is taken from the book Two Worlds Unknown: The Letters of Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandryer, Howard Wondry, and R. H. Barlow, edited by David Schultz and S. T. Joshi by Hippocampus Press, of course. So they started corresponding in the mid-1920s. We've spoken about Donald Wondry on the Elizabeth Book Club because we covered one of his stories a little while back. But I'll just give you his brief bio here because I think when you find out about this guy, he's quite instrumental in developing the mythos and and everything else. And he's he's not really spoken about these days, is he? I don't think very much.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

No, no. I think we we said that at the time when we covered the tree men of Mabois, that it was like a real crime that more people A, don't know about him, or B, actually bring him up in conversations about that because he was very instrumental in keeping the Lovecraftian flame alive after HPL's death, you know?

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah, yeah, and he was quite a central figure in in the in the whole circle. So Donald Wondray was uh born 1908, passed away in 1987. Weird fiction writer, poet, and editor. He was the older brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wondry. And as we get into these letters, then Howard pops up as well. He had 14 stories published in Weird Tales, which is quite a few. Sixteen in Astounding Stories, plus a few in other magazines, including Esquire. And pointing to what you were just saying, Wondry was the co-founder of Arkham House, with Mr. Derlith, of course. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. His father was chief editor of the West Publishing Company, America's leading publisher of law books. So I suppose he had a sort of literary start in some ways. And in 1923 he began working part-time in the circulation room of the St. Paul Public Library, which expanded his access to a wide variety of literature. At the University of Minnesota, he was student editor and columnist on the student newspaper, uh associated with the Minnesota Quarterly magazine, as well as contributing pieces to the campus humour magazine Ski Uma, which was edited by classmate Carl Jacoby. Nice. That's cool, isn't it? Yeah, I didn't know that. That's brilliant. And uh Arthur Macon was a very early influence. As a young man, he started corresponding with Lovecraft. He was the first writer to take Lovecraft's cosmic ideas and apply them to his own towers, which was quite a surprise. At the age of 16, Wandre completed his short horror story, The Red Brain, in which a mysterious cosmic dust sweeps through the universe, obliterating the stars. This actually beat Call of Cthulhu into print by a few months, though uh Call of Cthulhu had been submitted earlier. But here we go. Farnsworth Riot was hesitant to publish the story. Wandry wrote to Riot and personally made the case. In fact, I think he might even have visited him to his office banging on the door. Can you imagine? Uh he made the case for Call of Cthulhu, telling Riot that if he failed to publish this seminal work, Lovecraft might look for other magazines to submit to. So that's why Riot published Call of Cthulhu. Now, speaking of travels, in late 1927, Wandre hitchhiked from Minnesota to Rhode Island to visit Lovecraft. Hitchhiked. I'm not sure why that is in miles, but it's got to be hundreds. Oh yeah, it's yeah. It's a fair distance, bloody hell. And uh Lovecraft gave in the grand tour of Providence, uh, Boston, Salem, and Marblehead. There was also an excursion to Warren, Rhode Island, later made famous by Wanderer's reminiscences in the Arkham House volume Marginalia, during which Wandry, Lovecraft, and James Ferdinand Morton each sampled 28 different flavours of ice cream at Maxfield's ice cream parlour. 28 each.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Just the image of HP Lovecraft in an ice cream parlour just amuses me for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

I know, and trying 28 flavours. Let's have the chocolate chip next. Looks like he'd go for a pen. Do you think he did that for everything?

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Underpants, HPL choosing undercrackers. That's like, ooh, well, I like the waistband on these ones.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

And I like the guts. It's on those. Yeah, exactly. So obviously, Wanderai was a central figure of the Lough Rough Circle, and as such, corresponded with the other members, Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. He was the first to write a series of sonnets for Weird Towers, Sonnets of the Midnight Hours, which, as we mentioned in our uh lengthy series on the fungi from Yogath, that's where Lovecraft got the idea for his own sonnet cycle from. Uh Robert E. Howard also prompted his own sonnets out of bedlam. So again, Wondry was a bit of a trailblazer there as well. 1932, Wondry and Robert E. Howard started corresponding. And it appears that Wondry urged Howard to make a trip east to meet up with him and probably Lovecraft. Alas, something that never happened. That would have been quite a thing. Outside of writing, Wondry served almost four years with the US Army in World War II and took part in the final drive across Germany into Austria. And in 1984, he was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. So he he did get some recognition in his lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

However, he refused to accept the award on the basis that the bust representing the award was a demeaning caricature of Lovecraft. So that's an interesting thing. I don't know if I've seen the picture of that bust anywhere. I'm gonna have to look that up actually.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Probably not, yeah. It's it's it's not great.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

It's that quite cart cartoony kind of yeah, it's the cartoony one.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah, yeah, which they it's now the August Derleth Award.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Ah, right, for other reasons as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, for other reasons, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

So that's a bit of background on Donald Wondry, and he has this quite extensive correspondence with Smith. Unfortunately, we've only got largely one half of the correspondence from Smith to Wandry, because I'm guessing Wondry would have kept all of these, and obviously, Smith there was a fire at the cabin and Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're gonna start on July the tenth, nineteen twenty-five, and this is Smith writing. Dear Mr Wondry, I'm greatly indebted to you for the loan of the Book of Jade, which I will return in a week or two. You are right about the mortuary poems being the best. Some of them, such as the sonnet of the instruments of death, sepulchral life, etc., are truly impressive, and it seems to me very original. There is a tremendous idea in the grotesques also in the second of the fragments. In the first section, the sonnet Ennui impressed me as being perhaps the best, or at least the most perfect. Ennui and sheer corruption are both extremely difficult subjects to handle. If I am ever in a position to edit an anthology, I will certainly include at least half a dozen of these poems. Now the Book of Jade was unfamiliar to me, but what it was was in early 1901, the Book of Jade, a little known masterpiece of decadent and nihilistic verse, was published at its author's insistence anonymously by San Francisco bookseller William Doxie, who had published many obscure macabre and often decadent authors. Later that year, newspapers were reporting the sudden death of a 23-year-old Harvard graduate, an Orientalist scholar, David Park Barnett. So he lived 1878 to 1901, who was, the obituary said, the anonymous author of a volume of poems which were spoken of as of unusual merit. That was the book of Jade. This is already sounding like a uh a chambers or a lovecraft story.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, I was gonna say it is very chambers, isn't it? The volume of poetry that drives one mad, you know.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah, well, this this was the uh the story because the newspapers are apparently reporting that Barnitzer died accidentally of an enlarged heart. But it was soon being whispered that he'd actually killed himself. So this all kind of ties in with that chambers vibe, as you say. It's like gloomy Sunday, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yes. You know, the whole gloomy Sunday thing, the piece of music that if you hear it, you end up it's almost like the ring, isn't it? If you hear it, you kill yourself like later.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah, yeah. So writing this book, well, we can leave that open to speculation, you know, and it's certainly uh I thought this might be something worth looking at in a future episode, perhaps, because I was totally unfamiliar with this, never heard of it. I've never heard of it, no. So one of the poems from the Book of Jade had been published in the Overland monthly in March 1901, under another title, but with Park Barnett's own name. So I thought I'd just read, because Smith mentions it here, the sonnet on the instruments of death, just to give you a little flavour of the Book of Jade, and I'm not responsible for any consequences that may uh that may result. So, sonnet on the instruments of death by David Park Barnett. Adorned daggers, ruby hilted swords, huge mortal serpents in gold volumes rolled, all holy poisons in wrought cups of gold, unfailing crucifixes of strong cords, mortal baptismal waters without fords, wherein lie death's communicants untold. So I think we can agree that's very much in Smith's wheelhouses.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah, very much so.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

I was getting proper affair of the poisons vibes from that, you know. Bloody hell. So basically, Wandry had sent Smith a copy of this book, uh, lent it to him, as of course all these guys did back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

We then get on to Sandalwood, which I'll talk about in uh in a moment. This is uh basically a collection put out by Smith with Wandry's help, and part of that collection were translations of Baudelaire, which we've spoken about before.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

And Smith talks about this there is no certainty that Sandalwood will be accepted by the publisher to whom I am sending it. Most of the poems are not in my best style, so maybe it will have a chance. Rev Parisienne, one of my Bordelier, is the best poem in the book. There are fourteen other attempts at Bordelier, but I'm not sure whether most of them are good or bad. As far as I know, I am the only translator who has done them in the original meters. It is far harder to write good Alexandrines in English than in French, and this is something of course we've spoken about before. Smith gets the flavour, the essence. Indeed. Yes, yeah. He mentions uh Lafcardio Hearn as well, which was a name I'd kind of heard of.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

From me, because uh last year I got the Lafcardio Hearn book Japanese Ghost Stories for Christmas. We discussed it when we did the roundup.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

And I wanted to do uh um because they're quite very short, so I wanted to select like four of them and do an episode on them.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Oh that's that's right, that's right. Yes, uh, we we must do that, yeah, yeah. So he was born Patrick Lafkardio Hearn, also known as Yukumo Koizumi. He was uh a Greek and Irish writer, translator and teacher whose work played a significant role in the introduction of the culture and literature of Japan to the West, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwidan Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Later in 1925, Wandre gave Clark Ashton Smith$50 so he could get sandalwood published. And this is the nature of the rest of this correspondence we're looking at today. And in this letter dated August the seventh, Smith talks about the issues of translating Baudelaire. Baudelaire is hard enough to read, let alone translate for a beginner in French. I like the Alexandrine, but dare say it's an acquired or unacquired taste for most people. A perfectly literal translation of Bordelaire in verse would be impossible, I'm afraid. Many individual lines and phrases, however, are as literal as I can make them. Here is my attempt at a little octosyllabic poem. That's not an easy word to say. And this is my choice for the gothist poem ever. It's called horror sympathetic. From this bizarre and livid sky, tormented like your doom and mine, on your void spirit passing by, what thoughts descend, O libertine? Insatiate of things unsung, of shadow and of lonesome eyes, I will not wind like Ovid flung out from Latin paradise. Skies torn like strands of ocean stream in you is mirrored all my pride. Your slow enormous clouds abide, the dolent hearses of my dreams, your glimmers mock with fluctuant lights, the hell wherein my heart delights.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

That's a bit goth, is that I like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

The hell wherein my heart delights. That's uh should put that on a t-shirt, I think. How's brilliant that is? But I understand you've got a contender, sir.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah, completely by accident. Because I'd chosen this. This is actually from the last letter in Dawnwood Spire Lonely Hill, uh, which was dated like just one month before HP Lovecraft died. Um the uh the return address is Pinnacle of Zith, Hour of the Upward Lightning. So 5th of February 1937. And Lovecraft has uh wrote of a a sonnet that just randomly wrote it, and it was dedicated to Mr. Finley upon his drawing for Mr. Block's Tale The Faceless God. So it's basically a poet a sonnet about the drawing. But at the end of it, which it that's goth as hell as well, it's actually really good, but says, Well, one thing leads to another, and before I knew it, I had this specimen on paper too. To Clark Ashton Smith Esquire, upon his fantastic tales, about verses, about pictures and sculptures. So it's a sonnet about Clark Ashton Smith's work. A time black tower against dim banks of cloud, around its base the pathless pressing wood, shadow and silence, moss and mould, and shroud, grey age-felled slabs that once as Cromlex stood. No fall of foot, no song of bird awakes, the lethal isles of septernal night, though oft with stir of wings the dense air shakes, as in the tower there glows a pallid light. For here apart dwells one whose hands have wrought strange idola that chill the world with fear, whose graven runes in tones of dread have taught what things beyond the star gulfs lurk and lear. Dark Lord of Avaroyne, whose windows stare on pits of dream no other gaze could bear.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Oh marvellous, marvellous. Yeah, again, pretty damn goth, right? Yeah, I think we should put that to the vote of listeners, which is the gothest out of those two. Or is there something even gothier? I mean, well, you know, we're talking Smith, of course, there isn't. Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Don't even don't even don't don't start that because we'll end up having to do full readings of the Raven or something. Which I do I do f I do intend to do at some point.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yes, we're we're gonna be working on some uh readings. Those of you who uh if you've heard uh last bonus episode on the IBC, I did a reading of Chambers Dem Oswald East. Uh and of course I chose the story with the most French words in it ever, which I of course you did. Which I no doubt mangled horribly, but uh you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

I I went down the other route on that. Mine hasn't mine hasn't been done yet, but I've got I've kind of carried on with my uh video game thing. So there we go.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Nice, nice. So September the twelfth, nineteen twenty-five, we get Smith writing again to Donald Wondre. It is princely of you to offer to assume even half the expense of printing sandalwood. I can't raise all of the remainder at present, but the printer, who is a good fellow, is to go ahead anyway, and you will be glad to know that the lino typing of the book has already begun. It will be bound in a heavy bluish green art paper, tied with cord, and will, I think, present a fairly attractive appearance. I am including forty-three new lyrics and sonnets, together with nineteen of my border layers. Many of the poems are so brief they can be printed two to a page. This was the fourth collection of poems by Smith, published 25th of October 1925 by the Auburn Journal Press, and that was limited to 250 copies. So, you know, this was quite a an undertaking, I guess. If he gave him fifty and that's half, it was a hundred dollars to print two hundred and fifty copies. Yeah. But it sounds like it was a a finely produced book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it wasn't a pamphlet, was it it was a a proper book sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

Yeah, it wasn't just like your your typical chat book or something like that, which was you know, typically like a a red. They look like school exercise books, didn't they, really? Yes. A lot of them.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Yes. And it's actually not that long after the 27th of September that Smith writes again, I received your money order a couple of days ago and hastened to acknowledge it with many thanks. The book will certainly owe its existence to you. I couldn't have raised anything like the necessary sum myself and did not want to strain my credit too much with the printer. I don't think he made anything on Ebony and Crystal, which obviously was the previous release. The volume ought to be ready by November. I'll send you an inscribed copy when it comes out. The price to the public will be one dollar. One dollar. Nice. But I'd rather you didn't pay for the book. I don't expect to become rich from the sale of it anyway. Well, he wasn't disappointed there, was he? In any of his writings. And then finally for now, we get on November the 15th, 1925, so the book has now been printed and sent to Wandryer. My dear Wandryer, your welcome letter and shadows and ideals are both at hand to use the terminology of commerce. I'm glad you were not disappointed in Sandalwood. I think myself that it contains much good work, though I hope to do something more purely imaginative presently. Sandalwood, as I meant the title to indicate, consists largely of incense at the shrine of Eros, at least it is in that one sense. And just as a little aside here, I enclose the abominations of Yondo, which you can read and return at leisure. It is possible that I may yet find lodgment for it in some magazine. My friend Sterling is on the staff of the Overland Monthly, and I'll ask him if they can run it. HP Lovecraft is still contributing to Weird Tales, but they have refused some of his best work as being too fantastic. The present editor, like nearly all other editors, seems to have more of an eye on the circulation than on the literary quality of the stuff he publishes. So I wonder if that's what prompted Wandry to go banging on Wright's door. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

It's funny because it looking through these letters with Derleth earlier today, I think I've read some of them out when we've done covered the stories, but there were there was times when Smith had gone to Wright, saying you should publish Shadow Over Innsmouth, and Derleth certainly did with Mountains. Right, right. Because he yeah, a Derleth threw a massive wobbler at him, apparently. Like apparently turned up and started effing and blinding at it, wasn't it? I get the impression August Dirlith had a bit of a temper, you know, because because he he always says, Oh, I lost my rag with the man, you know, it was kind of he has a bit of that look about it.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

He's quite a burly guy, wasn't he? He was, yes, he was. He was quite a bit handy. He was probably a bit handy, I reckon. Yeah. Bit tasty. Yeah. So I'm just going to finish the day with this. This is a poem from the main portion of Sandalwood that introduces the Borderlea poems. In Sandalwood itself, it's titled On Reading Borderlea, though for some reason it was later retitled On Rereading Borderlea. So this is Smith now. Forgetting still what holier lilies bloom secure within the garden of lost years, we water with the fitfulness of tears, Wan myrtles with an acrid sick perfume, Lethean lotus, laurels of our doom, dark amaranth with tall unswaying spears, await funereal autumn and its fears in this grey land that sullen suns illume. Ivy and rose and hellbore we twine, voluptuous as love or keen as grief. Some fleeing fragrance lures us in the gloom, to pathian delves or valves of prosperine. But all the flowers with dark or pallid leaf become at last a garland for the tomb.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Nice. Complete serendipity here, 'cause I just opened opened eccentric and practical devils at a bookmark, which isn't actually a bookmark for anything I'm supposed to be doing right now. And it's a letter dated 14th of August 1931 from August Derlith. Dear Clark Ashton, yes, the right rejections madden me, both my own and others' tales. I'm preparing about 15 manuscripts, most all restra rejected before by him, for his eyes when he comes back from his vacation, together with a fiery letter and that is carping about my stories. HP2 is gonna write him about his remarks about my stuff, especially the horror from the lake and and re-myth borrowing. I recently wrote him about which of my stories were being used, if any, in the next three issues, because my financial condition is such that I must guard every cent that comes in very carefully, and I wanted to know how much I could expect before January. He did not know, but very kindly quoted as much of the makeup of the three remaining nineteen thirty-one issues as he had. So yeah, there we go. Irelette from August Derlith. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

That should uh light a fire under his ass. Yeah, pretty much the phrase. And it's a double frustration because, again, as writers, as as any sort of creative, you want to get your work out there hot off the shovel, so to speak, let alone the pecuniary implications.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Of course, yeah, of course. Right, well, we're gonna move on now to we've discussed before, we've seen lots of instances of when Smith sent stories to Lovecraft and Derleth, and they would essentially beat a read for him. And they would come back with suggestions. I mean, Derleth especially did quite a lot of this for Smith, especially like most that I can remember the most was Maker of Gargoyles. That Dirleth had a whole idea about changing the ending.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

So I got to thinking again, let's have a look at it the other way around because I knew he did beta reading for August Derleth at Dirleth's request. It wasn't he wasn't just turning up and going, Oh, that shit changed that. It wasn't actually his idea. Because here we go. We're gonna we're gonna look at a story called The Menace from Under the Sea first. So we get a letter dated the 2nd of May 1932. It's from August Dirleth to Clark Ashen Smith. I'm sending along the carbon of two tales. One, the last oriental of fly from under the house of Ming, and the other the carbon of the menace from under the sea. A lousy attempt at a pseudo-scientific, about which I'm anxious to have your advice and suggestion on revision with intentions of placing it in weird tales. Thanks, Behort Forehand, for the suggestions. I'm lost in this genre and don't intend to do any more if I can place this one. Shoot them back to me as soon as you can, please. So we're just going to skip back to a letter dated October 1931, just to get some flavour of what August Dirlith thinks about scientific, shall we? As a rule, I don't read scientific stuff at all. I regard it as a sort of bastard growth on the true weird tale. Though I suppose that would be sort of blasphemy to HP and his stressing of the cosmic beyond. Of course there are countless expect uh there are countless exceptions. Anything dealing with the elder gods, largely HP stuff, is okay, since the link with Earth is very strong. Then there are individual stories like the Crystal Egg, a dream of Armageddon, when the Green Star Waned, the city of Singing Flame, the vote vaults of Yo Vombus, etcetera, etcetera, that stand out.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

Oh dear. Tell us what you really think.

SPEAKER_01 43:59

Oh I know. That's one of the reasons I like reading the August Dirlit letters, because he he wasn't backward about coming forward, I think is the phrase, you know. So, yes, dutifully Smith did. Um and he gets straight down to in the next letter. There's no preamble here. Dated May the 7th, dear August. I think the main trouble with the Menace from Under the Sea lies in the triteness of the plot, which of course you already know. I'm not sure that I can give you any advice worth having and can only tell you how I'd write the story if I was doing it myself. This would involve a rewriting of the first page to imply that the story is an historical record of calamitous happenings written by the narrator for a small remnant of humanity in some remote corner of the Earth. Perhaps the Arctic regions. Later in the tale, I'd be a little more explicit about the apparatus used by the Atlanteans, intimating that after long ages of research, they had found how to control and reverse the planetary forces that had caused the sinking of the ancient continents. Then, most radical of all, I'd let them have their place in the sun and let them sink all the goddamn modern nations. The narrator and his companion, of course, escape and survive. You could have them use the disintegrative rays or whatnot, as they do in their tale, except that these rays fail utterly to make any impression on the machinery that is to be used in the great upheaval. They get hold of some death suits and warn the world of the impending calamity, only in time to add the horrors of general apprehension and panic to those of the actual disaster. This eventuation would not be quite so overworked and banal as the one you have, and it would be vastly more credible. So make it more grim.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Yeah. It's an interesting use of language or choice of words in that as well, because on the one hand, if I sent you something and you said this is quite banal, I'd go a bit, huh? Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? That's a bit like, oh, fuck you.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Thing is, they're quite they're quite a far way along in their correspondence by this point, so I think they know each other's language, but they're both like that.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Maybe that language then was softer than it is now, if you know what I mean. It could just be that, yeah. Or it is that, well, this is what I think, and you know, uh, it'd be like, oh, I appreciate your honesty sort of thing. And maybe being diplomatic gets in the way of actually saying what you mean. What's the point in being overly diplomatic, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Yeah. Well, I get I get the impression as we've just seen with the like with Derleth, he is a very straight shooting guy. I think he he just that's crap, you know.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

I think he'd rather than pussyfoot around. My dude Lovecraft was you know no different in that sense, very biting. Oh god, yeah. I guess if it's done from a good place, that's the cider, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Absolutely. Well, yeah, we haven't got unfortunately we haven't got Derlith's response. It's one of the letters that's been missing, but we have Smith's response to the response. And um so he says on May the 15th, Dear August, I'm glad my suggestions about the menace were not too impossible. I have a notion you will make a good and also saleable story from it. There are vast possibilities in the science fiction tale, but most of the work published under that classification is too trite and ill-written. From a literary standpoint, amazing stories and wonder stories, taking them tale by tale, compare very wretchedly indeed with weird tales. So there we go, that's the the first that's the first kind of instance of a derleth actually saying to him, Can you give me a hand with this and get a beat to read it for me? So from that point on, Smith just did it.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

Oh, he he didn't wait to be asked kind of thing, he just No, he he would often do because because it was basically an understanding, and Derlith did the same for Smith.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Nine times out of ten, there wouldn't be any suggestions. Yeah, that's great, blah blah blah. And occasionally it'd be a bit like, yeah, that bit in the the middle where you've got a little bit doing that, then I would you know, maybe think about changing that.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

But yeah, but we get on to more meaty things with The Return of Haster, which is a great, great story. It's one of Dirless's best, in my opinion. It it's one of his most controversial because he essentially uses the Cthulhu mythos to do a kaiju battle. But I I like that, I like that kind of nonsense, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:44

So I can understand why some people don't, but well, one thing we have in the collection I'm going from, which we'll cover sometime, is that Cthulhu family tree. Quite an extensive letter from Smith. We'll look at that sometime. And having seen that, you can kind of see where Daileth is coming from, I think, really, to give him credit.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Oh yeah, because it wasn't that to Barlow.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

It was that was yeah, because I've got it in the Barlow book I've got. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, so uh this is a letter dated 10th of April 1937 from August Dirler to Clark Ashen Smith. Meanwhile, a rather curious thing has taken place at this end. Some years ago I started a tale called The Return of Haster, designed to be part of the mythology series more or less of a piece with the thing that walked on the wind and the snow thing, that was later renamed Ithoqua. I outlined it more or less to HPL, who expressed a desire to see it finished, and kept on referring to it, hoping to see it someday. I had at that time written almost four thousand words, and HPL believed it be one of my best tales. He liked the idea and plot, but somehow it got pushed aside, what with the upsurge of Judge Peck? The other day I came upon it and decided to finish it, but judged my astonishment to be suddenly seized with a dislike of that portion of the story thus far finished when I sat down to the typewriter. So I put it aside, typed out the title and began to write. And when I had finished, I found that I had written, despite hell and high water in the shape of mail, proof, etc., no less than eleven thousand words of a story I had no more planned than Moses. Moreover, if I have ever written a story in a style like this before, I'll eat the pages. I shall be curious to know what Wright has to say, certain he will reject. But if HPL wanders the ether, he might take some satisfaction in knowing that the story is finished at last, and so written that I shall doubtless be accused of having had HPL in collaboration. There's a bit of foreshadowing. Wow, that's interesting. Should Wright fail to take the story, I'll send you a carbon. Mmm. Mmm.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

So that's a bit of a bit of foreshadowing, right? Yeah. Well, because the the the big accusation against Derleth is that he did exactly that. He collaborated uh or he put his name to Lovecraft stuff posthumously and etc. etc. Indeed, indeed.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

So we get a reply from Smith. I am terribly curious to see the newly completed return of Hasta, and hope you will loan me the carbon if Wright rejects the tale. From what you say, it would seem that some remarkable inspiration, either subliminal or external, is involved. My theory, not favoured by scientists, is that some world or many worlds of pure mentation may exist. The individual mind may lapse in into this common reservoir at death, just as the atoms of the individual body lapse into grosser elements. Therefore no idea or image is ever lost from the universe. Living minds subconsciously may tap the reservoir according to their own degree and kind of receptivity. HPL would have argued that no mentation could survive the destruction of the physical brain, but against this, it might be maintained that energy and matter, brain and ideation can never be quite quite be destroyed no matter what changes they undergo. The sea of being persists through waves of individual entity rise and fall externally. The truth about life and death is perhaps simpler and more complex than we dream.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

Hmm. It's an interesting idea, isn't it? Because I think this is something we've spoken about before when we see in a Smith story the use of a particular idea or trope, and we've said, Oh, did he get that from Bob Howard? Because that's very similar to well, the Slithering Shadow or whatever. But we find out that they were written pretty much at the same time. Yeah. Strange, isn't it? Tapping the well. Yeah. Yeah, surfing the same wave. A friend of mine described it as.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

I found that really interesting here and Smith talking about that kind of thing. Because yeah, that was a credible, like completely opposed to Lovecraft the materialist kind of thing, isn't it? You know?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah, I I don't know if we've got anywhere. Obviously, we've got Lovecraft saying, yeah, it's all a load of nonsense. But that same topic between him and Smith might be an interesting one. See if we can dig that out. Because they were very much on the same wavelength, weren't they? Oh yeah, very much. Well, yeah, it's interesting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

So now we get into in April the twenty eighth, nineteen thirty-seven, we get into Smith has read it, and here we go. I have read The Return of Haster twice with deep interest. Indeed it is a remarkable production, and yet, as it stands, I do not find the tale very satisfactory. I believe for one thing that it suffers, small wonder under the circumstances, from too hasty writing, and this is all the more regrettable since it contains the material of a first rate weird tale. Since you asked me for suggestions, I'm going to give you my full reactions, which of course may not coincide with those of any other reader. One reaction, confirmed rather than diminished by the second reading, is that you have tried to work in too much of the Lovecraft mythology. Right. Yeah. And have not assimilated it into the natural body of the story. Which this is exactly what we've said, isn't it? It's the shopping list. It's the shopping list, yeah, totally. Yeah. For my taste, the tale would gain in unity and power if the interest was centred wholly about the mysterious and unspeakable Haster. Cthulhu and the sea things of Innsmouth, though designed to afford an element and interest of conflict, impress me rather of a source of confusion. I believe a tremendous effect, a vague menacing atmosphere and eerily growing tension could be developed around Haster, who has the advantage of being a virtually unknown demon. Also, this effect could be deepened by a more prolonged incredulity on the part of Paul Tuttle and Haddon, who should not accept the monstrous implications of the old books and the strange afterclause of Amos Tuttle's bond until the accumulation and linking of weird phenomena leaves them no possible alternative. One of the best things in the tale is the description of the interdimensional footsteps that resound beneath the menaced mansion. These could be related significantly to Hasta alone by having them seem to mount by degrees on the eastern side of the house, reverberate like strange thunder in the heavens above, and descend on the west in regular rotation to echo again in the subterrene depths. Eventually it would forced upon the hearers that this rotation was coincidental with the progress of Alderbaron and the Hyades through the heavens, thus heralding the encroachment of Haster from his ultrastellar lair. More can be made of the part about Amos Tuttle's corpse and its unearthly changes. The coffin should show evidence of having been violently disrupted from within, and the footprints in the field, though monstrous in size, could present a vaguely human confirmation, like those of some legendary giant. And Tuttle's corpse, when found, would have burst open in numberless places as if through some superhuman inflation of all its tissues. That's that's a bit grim, innit? Yeah. I talk about suffering from inflation. It's a different slot. Oh yeah. So much for my suggestions, which you may find worthless, impractical, and too foreign to your own conception. I suggest that you get the opinions of other readers as well. As it stands, the tale is certainly superior to many that Wright has published. And I agree that the wording is quite unusual for you and often recalls HPL. Hmm. So there we have it. I think that's a fair comment, aren't they, really? Oh, very much so. Very much so. And yeah, and Derlith tended to agree. So 3rd of May 1937, we get the response. Dear Clark, yes, I think all the points you make regarding the return of Haster are very well taken indeed. At the present time, it's going to be impossible for me to do any revision on it at all, but later I hope to get around to doing it. In fall, perhaps, or in a summer lull. So there you go. Um, unfortunately, it didn't look like he ever did get round to it. Yeah.

unknown 57:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

It kind of I think it got taken as it was.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

Yeah, whether he he didn't have time to go back through it or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Because I mean, at that point he was consumed with getting all of Lovecraft's stuff up and out and setting up Barkham House, and he was going through Lovecraft's letters and and all this stuff and the estate and and all the rest of it. He had barely had enough time to do any of his own writing.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

So that's kind of what happened there, I guess. And he's he's got to be making a living as well at the same time. Exactly. Of course, you know. Uh he wasn't independently wealthy. Well, none of them were, were they?

SPEAKER_01 58:20

So no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Yeah, and and and I think again, maybe uh that's something that'd be interesting to look at. The the amount of work that went into setting up Arkham House. Yeah. I know there are some other aspects to that as well, such as the way Barlow was treated, for example. Yes, yeah. That might make an interesting topic for uh for an episode at some point, how Arkham House came about.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Indeed. Yeah, it would. That'd be a good episode, actually. Yeah, so there we go. That's uh Smith as a beta reader, and that's what that's having used beta reader, i.e. my partner. There's no point in possefooting around.

SPEAKER_00 59:00

You need them to be brutal, don't you? You and me both, yes. Well, my wife is nothing if not direct. Yes, well, say same with same with Lindo, dude. It was just like in in all aspects of our relationship. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

So what did you think? Well, it doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 59:20

You know, what does that bit even mean? You know, I just remember having a great gig once, uh, and Lara was there and coming off stage. Oh, you know, what do you think? It says, You're really sweaty, you stink. I've just been giving it like Keith Emerson style stuff, you know. There we go. There we go. It's good, it keeps us grounded. I thought one of the interesting aspect of that as well was that idea of uh how quickly the characters come to uh a conclusion about something or a decision. This is something I'm just working through at the moment. I'm almost finally ready to release my Queen of the Fens book, which has taken me, I don't know, two, three years to write or something. Long story, anyway. It's nearly ready. But again, when you read back through the plot, you think, oh, he changes quickly quite a bit there. Why would a character swivel almost 180 at that point? You know, so do you then go back and put in more of a build-up to that? It's this difficulty you have when you know everything about the plot. Yes, yeah, you know, and you have complete control over the character.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

Yeah, I'm I'm with you on that. It's yeah, and because you can go too far the other way, like there's stuff I've read, and I'm going, oh come on, you must have figured it out by now, for Christ's sake.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Yes, yes. Well, I I I do think that's uh uh an issue with a lot of modern books. I just started reading a it was a very good book, uh Holmes, but the main characters are Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Watson. Oh right. Who sort of take up a case that Holmes has gone, oh piffle paffle, I'm not interested in that sort of stuff. Very nicely written, great idea, and everything felt right about it, but it was about 400 pages long, and it should have been 250. Right. I get a bit tired of at the end of every chapter they sort of look back on the previous chapter and oh well, the other day we were at yeah, I know, I just read that. Yeah, it's blatant padding, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

Blatant padding, yeah, yeah. Yeah, TV's one for that. You get these the Netflix series, right? They've got to get 15 episodes out of three episodes worth of stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

So you just get endless corridor shots and people discussing what they'd already done in the previous episode, and then you get the obligatory flashback, and I end up turning it off.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:53

It's almost like those series where you have the flashback episode to when he was a kid, there's the sort of spooky episode, there's the episode where someone goes missing. It's very cookie-cutter, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

You know, yeah, agreed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

There we go. I think some very interesting stuff there. And and as always, with this, there's all these little rabbit holes pop up that we could go down any any number of and spend a lot of time. And the the difficulty is speaking of Derleth situation, they're the time to do all this sort of research and stuff as well. But uh, but it's very enjoyable, very rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

There we go, then that's our offering for today. I hope you found that as interesting as we did. And uh, well, we've still got a lot of stuff to delve into here, haven't we? These are quite weighty tones. Oh god, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:46

The one with the derleth one, you could club seals with it. It's it's a it's a door stopper, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

You could batter a shogoth with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could. Oh yeah, god, I'd yeah. Don't want to drop it on my foot. Battered shogoth. That's a new Glaswegian late night culinary delight, I should think. Ah, the Scotsman goes to Innsmouth. I think it'd be that is an interesting idea. Hey, hey, my money's on the Glaswegians for that one. Yeah, god, yeah, yeah. See you, fish face. Nice, nice. All right, thanks again for joining us today, folks, and thanks as always for your continued support. It really does mean a lot to us, and it allows us to continue on our merry way, on our merry delvings.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

Merry Delvings.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:39

It was in the Shire, wasn't it? Merry Delvings. Merry Delvings? That sounds like a pawn parody. Oh no, halfling pawn. Oh no. It's gotta exist somewhere, it's gotta. On that note, we're gonna we're gonna leave you with that image. It's goodbye from me, Rob Finland. That is goodbye from me, Tim Andy's.