Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“ A true artist in the terrible can always invent ideas and plots a thousandfold more effective than any real tragedy or fright which ever darkened the earth, gilding then—or ebonising them—with a subtlety of atmosphere which is after all the most potent single factor in any imaginative tale. Come to think of it, I guess atmosphere and colour mean more any day than idea or plot—this being the reason we have so few effective phantasies in these days when plot and action are played up at the expense of the more leisurely attributes of writing. ”

“ Such, I repeat, is the inevitable condition regarding general fiction; the enormous bulk of fiction which sets the national standard and determines the type of technical training given all fictional students. But even this is not all! Added to this, as if by the perversity of a malign fate, is the demand of an overspeeding public for excessive quantity production. Baldly put, the American people demand more stories per year than the really artistic authors of America could possibly write. A real artist never works fast, and never turns out large quantities. ”

“ When a magazine covers a popular clientele and appeals to one particular interest, it is peculiarly apt to elicit literary—or more or less-literary—contributions from its readers; so that I suppose a very large proportion of those who have seen WEIRD TALES have flooded the office with unacceptable manuscripts. To them the whole subject of impossible contributions has become a live issue, so that the exploitation of some comically illiterate attempt carries a piquancy which they can feel and smile at even though others may find it somewhat tedious and inapropos. ”

“ Of course, atmosphere is the one thing which a skilful developer can give a real-life tragedy. He can colour it to his heart's content, and inject suspicions of more than mortal motives and agencies which bring it close to the effective fictional state. I certainly think your idea is worth trying, though as a lover of fictional art for its own sake I should hate to see the monthly quota of stories descend to the minimum record of two or three, exclusive of the novel. I don't think I really enjoy anything so much as a really good weird story. ”

“ I know the financial end of magazine publishing must be a tremendous and often discouraging responsibility, and I have a sincere respect for the pluck and determination of anybody who undertakes such a venture. Most certainly do I hope that some favourable turn will gradually transform your burdensome debt on the two magazines into an increasingly gratifying profit—and it seems to me that many facts warrant such optimism, for in the weird field you are practically alone and with a good start, whilst in the detective field there sees to be an insatiable demand for new material. ”

“ We have millions who lack the intellectual independence, courage, and flexibility to get an artistic thrill out of a bizarre situation, and who enter sympathetically into a story only when it ignores the colour and vividness of actual human emotions and conventionally presents a simple plot based on artificial, ethically sugar-coated values and leading to a flat denouement which shall vindicate every current platitude and leave no mystery unexplained by the shallow comprehension of the most mediocre reader. ”

“ That he could get hold of as many as five perfectly satisfactory yarns is an almost remarkable phenomenon in view of the lack of truly artistic and individual expression among professional fiction-writers. When I see a magazine tending toward the commonplace, the last people I blame are the editors and publishers; for even a cursory survey of the professional writing field shows that the trouble is something infinitely deeper and wider—something concerning no one publication, but the whole atmosphere and temperament of the American fiction business. ”

“ I honestly believe that one way to get good weird material is to tell the editor to sharpen his scent for the genuinely bizarre irrespective of technique, accept any powerful plot or atmospheric triumph irrespective of technique or even literacy—paying half the usual market price and telling the author why—and then have the raw material completely re-written "by some staff writer of competent training, who could add his name as collaborator or not, according to the amount of work he puts into it. ”

“ Such is our fictional situation—indiscriminate hordes of writers, mostly without genius, striving by erroneous methods toward a goal which is erroneous to start with! You see the thing at its zenith in papers like THE SATURDAY EVENING POST—where men of more or less real talent are weighted down with the freely-flung gold which forms the price of their originality and artistic conscience. ”

“ I don't believe there is enough first-rate weird fiction written in America to fill a monthly magazine the size of WEIRD TALES—and it could be developed only by catching the author young and making it possible for him to abstain from doing conventional fiction. The best you'll ever get is from men of liberal culture who do that sort of thing as an avocation—for the sheer thrill of it, and not with a professional frame of mind. ”

“ Half of the people wouldn't understand what the tales were about, and the other half would find the characters unsympathetic—because they would think and act like real people instead of like the dummies which the American middle classes have been taught and persuaded to consider and accept as people. ”

“ Nothing modern had any permanent power to fascinate me—and until my WEIRD TALES venture my only acquaintance with modern magazines was a spell of ALL-STORY and ARGOSY reading ten or fifteen years ago, undertaken for the purpose of capturing the occasional weird yarns in these periodicals—especially the former. ”

“ The young man comes, and finds his father alone in the house (or castle—I'm not sure whether I'll put it in New England or Old England or the German Black Forest) ... alone, yet not alone ... for he looks furtively about him ... and other forms flit through remote corridors, strangely attracting swarms of flies after them ... and vultures hover over the whole swamp ... and the young man sees things when he goes out on one occasion ... ”

“ So many pages per month or week have got to be filled, and if the artistic writers can't do it, the publishers must find the next-best thing—persons of mere talent, who can learn certain mechanical rules and technical twists, and put forth stuff of external smoothness, whose sole merit is conforming to patterns and rehashing the situations and reactions which have been found interesting to the people by previous experience. ”

“ Formerly I wrote only short stories, believing that this was the ideal form for weird fiction; but perusal of certain weird novels gradually changed my point of view, until after my Houtain experiments in greater length I began to map out certain of my more involved ideas as possible novels. ”

“ It isn't always the college man, or even the reasonably proficient writer, who has the mental slant that makes vivid ideas. Of course, there would hardly be an abundance of these notable but inadequate MSS., yet I think there would be enough to warrant their acceptance and re-writing. I know I've many a time doctored up something for another fellow which seemed very crude at first, but when after completion made me wish I were its full author. But at best it's hard work getting convincing horror material. ”

“ Glittering tinsel reputations are built up, and dumb driven hundreds of otherwise honest plumbers take correspondence courses and try to be like these scintillant "great ones" whose achievements are really no more than mere charlatanry. ”

“ The supreme principle of this sort of horror is any suggestion of the major violation of some, basic law of nature—the breaking down of the line betwixt life and death, man and the other animals, etc.—or the annihilation of the principle of time and space, bringing vastly remote age or localities into juxtaposition. ”

“ A new interest which has grown as my health has grown during the past three years, is that of Colonial architecture—the visual re-creation of the 18th century by study of its surviving landmarks—and most of my new-born strength has been utilised in the exploration of the antique towns which abound in my native New-England. ”

“ What you say about writing up and amplifying real horrors and ghastly tragedies is interesting and probably sensible from the standpoint of popular interest. It ought to attract readers because of its appeal to the strings of memory—nearly everyone will have heard each theme mentioned in Associated press items, hence will feel an added sense of shuddering reality. ”

“ The old-fashioned touch in my work is the result of my natural temperament and reading. I grew up with a large family library in a big house, and browsed at random because I was too ill to attend school or even follow a tutor's course with any regularity. ”

“ I think, though, that with the requisite capital, a magazine could train up a group of effective weird writers by offering them a free and lucrative field, and letting some expert give them recommendations as to reading—what authors to avoid, and what ones to emulate. ”

“ Another thing I noted—some of the best ideas—the ideas which showed the most original power and understanding of the essence of the terrible and grotesque—were handled by obvious novices or at least writers with no command of technique or sense of literary balance. I'm quite enthusiastic about "The Weaving Shadows", by W.H.Holmes in your very first issue. That thing is bungling and halting so far as form goes—but I'll be hanged if it hasn't got a thrill which no commonplace person, however highly trained, could ever duplicate. ”

“ Among even the most eminent the true touch of sublime and delirious fear is deucedly hard to find. Arthur Machen is the only living master—in the full sense of the word I could possibly name in this field ... ”

“ That is the kind of a public publishers confront, and only a fool or a rejection-venomed author could blame the publishers for a condition caused not by them but by the whole essence and historic tradition of our civilisation If publishers of general magazines sought and used artistically original types of fiction, they would lose their readers almost to a man. ”

“ Here in America we have a very conventional and half-educated public—a public trained under one phase or another of the Puritan tradition, and almost dulled to aesthetic sensitiveness because of the monotonous and omnipresent overstressing of the ethical element. ”

“ These people have all been represented by excellent work, and I believe it would almost be better to have more than one take by each in a single issue than to use less vivid material merely for the sake of non-repeating on the same table of contents. ”

“ He can't contract to deliver so many words in such and such a time, but must work slowly, gradually, and by mood; utilising favourable states of mind and refraining from putting down the stuff his brain turns out when it is tired or disinclined to such work. ”

“ The scene will probably be in a distant planet, and there may be no human characters in the accepted sense of the word. Other things than humans, you know, may go through very vivid adventures and embark on very picturesque quests. ”