More Babbling!

I really need to stop going on blogs and saying rude things about ye clueless yobs who claim that Lovecraft was a bad writer.  I tell myself I will stop--but I just did it again.  I realise full well that Lovecraft doesn't need my defense--the superiority of his excellent fiction is his best defense, and is far more eloquent than anything I could utter.  There are, of course, more and more books by intelligent literary folk who understand the qualities of Lovecraft's fiction that make his work so outstanding.  The book I am moft excited about is the new collection of all of S. T.'s essays on Lovecraft--and I am so impatient to read it that, to placate my appetite, I have started rereading PRIMAL SOURCES (shewn above).

My favourite modern Lovecraft scholar is, I think, Robert H. Waugh.  He has two excellent studies of H. P. Lovecraft from Hippocampus Press, The Monster in the Mirror and A Monster of Voices.  I was mesmerized with those of his essays that were publish'd in Lovecraft Studies, and delighted to see them 

collected in book form.  Mr. Waugh is professor of English at State University of New York at New Paltz, and his understanding of Literature is solid and well-express'd.  I am especially captivated by his essays on "The Outsider," to which I return again & again

Another outstanding book on H. P. Lovecraft is Art, Artifact, and Reality, by Steven J. Mariconda.  This author, again, understands that which constitutes good writing, and he is excellent at explaining why Lovecraft's fiction is excellent in every way.  My favourite essays by him include ""H. P. Lovecraft: Consummate Prose Stylist," "Lovecraft's Concept of 'Background'," and "H. P. Lovecraft: Reluctant American Modernist."  

Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. has written much about Lovecraft's ancestral history, the writer's roots; yet he is also quite excellent when discussing Lovecraft's superb fiction.  His book, The Unknown Lovecraft, contains such fine studies as "Lovecraft: Artist or Poseur?." "Lovecraft's 'He'," "'The Silver Key' and Lovecraft's Childhood," and many others.  

A book that is a superb if at times eccentric study of Lovecraft's fiction is the forthcoming The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, edited and annotated by Leslie S. Klinger.  I have an advance reading copy of the book, and it enthralls me.  Klinger's foreword goes on for many pages and is keenly informed and fascinating.  His Notes are very different from those found in editions of Lovecraft edited by S. T. Joshi, and his approach, of treating the stories as texts of actual events, is often edifying.  The book, to be publish'd in October, will be beautifully and profusely illustrated.

But I think that the book that will soon find itself on my doorstep, S. T.'s Lovecraft and a World In Transition, will become the study of Lovecraft's life and work that I admire moft, next to S. T.'s fabulous two-volume biography of the writer.  At 645 pages, it publishes all of S. T.'s essays and reviews of Lovecraft.  I shou'd be getting my copy any day nigh, & when I do I will shew it ye on a YouTube vlog.  Oh, babies, my hot palms itch to hold it, my liquid eyes burn to drink it.