Caverns of Dream: The Alchemist

“May ne’er a noble of thy murd’rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!”

In medieval France, a count wrongfully kills an elderly wizard for the kidnapping of his son. The wizard’s surviving son, Charles Le Sorcier, subsequently curses the count and his descendants for his action. Centuries later, twenty-one year-old Antoine, the last surviving descendant of the accursed count, discovers that he is doomed by the curse to die shortly after his thirty second birthday.

Determined to make the last eleven years of his life worthwhile, Antoine spends his days studying black magic and exploring the ruins of his family’s ancestral castle. One week before his predestined death, he comes upon an ancient tunnel in the foundations of the castle, where he discovers an elderly man who threatens to fulfill the curse by killing Antoine. Defending himself, Antoine throws his torch at the man, setting him aflame, and ending the curse once and for all.

Written in 1908, when Lovecraft was eighteen, this is his first extant work of supernatural horror. It’s rough in a number of respects, of course. Most notably, the showdown between Antoine and the alchemist is goofy, James Bond-style villainy, with the alchemist stopping to explain his oh-so-nasty plans to Antoine. I’m also left feeling that I’m supposed to be shocked, or at least surprised, by the final line, revealing the identity of the sinister alchemist. The problem is that the revelation was strongly signposted during the first encounter a page and a half earlier. Perhaps I am being a bit too harsh, though: I have the benefit of experience with a century’s worth of horror storytelling that makes this kind of surprise familiar to me. Even so, it’s not a hugely impressive denouement.

On a more positive note, this story definitely showcases Lovecraft’s emerging skill at establishing mood. The ancient, rotting castle is almost a character in its own right, and it’s described in almost loving detail. There’s a palpable sense of loneliness and isolation running throughout the narrative, as Antoine is at first prevented from seeking the company of others, and later chooses to fully isolate himself to ensure that the curse dies with him. If the plot itself isn’t much to talk about, the atmosphere certainly deserves a mention.

All in all, “The Alchemist” is clearly the work of a young Lovecraft, still trying to find his rhythm. But for a freshman effort, it’s an impressive work.

Out-bop the buzzard and the Oriole

My honorary hometown baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, have just announced that they’re changing their road jerseys to read “Baltimore” on the front for the first time since 1972. The jerseys previously read “Orioles,” since the franchise considered parts of southern Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Virginia their hometown market in addition to Baltimore and its Maryland environs. I’m pretty sure it’s no coincidence that the last time they dropped the “Baltimore” name from the jersey was in 1972, immediately after the second and final Washington Senators team relocated to Texas following the 1971 season. Now that the Washington Nationals are on the stage, I guess that competing for DC metro area fans is no longer as important as it once was to Orioles owner Peter Angelos.

There’s a bit of a history between Baltimore and Washington regarding the baseball team issue. Traditionally both cities have been considered to be part of the same baseball market, and since 1972 the Orioles had zealously guarded their exclusive rights to that market. This naturally annoyed many DC residents and old-timer Senators fans, who remembered that the owners of the original Washington Senators waived their exclusive rights to the region to allow the St. Louis Browns to relocate to Baltimore in 1954. During the various MLB expansions during the 1990s Washington was always at the top of the list of cities to receive a new team, and it was always scuttled by the Orioles office.

When it became clear that the Montreal Expos weren’t going to be able to stay in Montreal, Angelos announced his opposition to a proposed move to DC. MLB commissioner Bud Selig obligingly did everything in his power to prevent the move. First, there was lots of talk about how cruelly inappropriate it was to “steal” a team away from its hometown (not, of course, that this stopped St. Louis from losing the Browns, or Washington from losing two teams in ten years), even when it was clear that the hometown wasn’t actually interested enough to buy tickets. Then, there was talk about moving the Expos to Puerto Rico: during the teams last two seasons as the Expos, in fact, they were treated as a dual hometown team, playing half of their home games in Montreal at Olympic Stadium, and the other half in San Juan at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. It was clear, though, that San Juan was not as lucrative a market as Washington, and so the next idea was contraction: dissolve the Expos outright, along with one other team (either the Minnesota Twins or the Tampa Bay Devil Rays) thrown in so as not to be too blatantly obvious. Never mind that this new idea was in open contradiction of the League’s earlier horror at depriving a city of its hometown team, mind you. Anything to keep the Orioles front office happy, I guess.

Eventually, though, they ran out of excuses. The League gave up and bought off Angelos, and the Expos moved to Washington as the Nationals. The Orioles and the Nationals even have a joint broadcasting venture, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), which broadcasts all of the games of both the Orioles and the Nationals. MASN is, of course, majority-owned by the Orioles, and the network has a slight, but noticeable, bias towards the Baltimore team.

So I hope that this decision to redesign the away jerseys to emphasize the Orioles’ status as the home team of Baltimore is part of a broader effort to get over their sour grapes regarding the fact that they’re not the only player in town any more. New York gets along just fine with two teams, after all, and the combined Baltimore-Washington market is plenty big enough for both the Nats and the O’s. My father is still a proud season ticket holder for the Orioles, despite have fond memories of the old Senators teams from his childhood. I don’t hate the Orioles by any means, but I wish there was more of a “live and let live” attitude there.

Caverns of Dream: “The Mystery of the Grave-Yard” and “The Secret Cave”

Like “The Little Glass Bottle,” both “The Mystery of the Grave-Yard” and “The Secret Cave (or, John Lee’s Adventure)” were written by Lovecraft some time in 1898. Again, I don’t think it’d be right to offer scathing literary criticism of the work of an eight year old, so don’t think of this an actual review, so much as my brief thoughts and reflections.

One day a young man rushed in and exclaimed “The secret Is revealed!” and was gone.

“The Mystery of the Grave-Yard” is clearly inspired by Victorian-era detective fiction like Sherlock Holmes. The hero of the story, named King John, is a detective called in to investigate the disappearance of Mr. Dobson. Dobson disappeared during the funeral of a Joseph Burns while following the late Mr. Burns’s instructions to descend into the tomb before interrment and drop a ball onto a spot marked “A.” After a John Bell appears to demand ransom for the return of Dobson, King John arrests him and and his accomplice. At the trial, Dobson makes his dramatic reappearance, having escaped from his prison by making a wax impression of the key (and thereby doing a respectable McGuyver impersonation a good eighty years before anyone had even heard of McGuyver). Dobson reveals the mastermind of his kidnapping, Francis Burns, the brother of the late Joseph Burns, both of whom had plotted to do harm to Dobson for years for reasons unrevealed. The villains are punished, King John marries Dobson’s daughter, and the rest live happily ever after.

Truth be told, I had a hard time following this little tale, and I suspect few people actually managed to make sense of the above summary. But it’s definitely an ambitious little story, and shows how clever and imaginative Lovecraft was even at this young age. As I mentioned above, there’s a definite Sherlock Holmes vibe to the story, and it shows an affinity for the pulp fiction Lovecraft would later make his name writing. We still haven’t gotten any real horror fiction from him, but the appearance of the titular “grave-yard” is a good sign.

“Now be good children” Said Mrs. Lee “While I am away & dont get into mischief”

Next up is “The Secret Cave,” another pulpish adventure story from grade-school-age Lovecraft. Mr. and Mrs. Lee go out on the town and leave their two children, the ten year old John and the two year old Alice, to amuse themselves. John and Alice find a hidden passage in their cellar and decide to go exploring. In the passage, they find a mysterious sealed box, a boat, and an obstacle. Too curious for his own good, John removes the obstacle and unleashes a torrent of water that drowns his sister and almost drowns him. To show that the universe isn’t wholly without pity, however, John opens the sealed box after Alice’s funeral and finds a chunk of gold worth $10,000 “enough to pay for anything but the death of his sister.”

Well, “The Secret Cave” is certainly easier to follow than “The Mystery of the Grave-Yard,” but, wow, is that ending dark or what? The “box full of money” ending is essentially the same twist as we saw in “The Little Glass Bottle.” In both cases, the money is insufficient to fully offset the loss incurred obtaining it, even if it does take a bit of the edge off. It’s a bit morbid, but it’s not horror.

Incidentally (and apropos of nothing), I was curious enough at the $10,000 figure to go and do a calculation regarding the comparative purchasing power of $10,000 in 1898 and today. Apparently, $10,000 in 1898 money is equivalent to $257,888.06 in 2007 (which is the latest year available for the calculations at Measuring Worth).

Well, that concludes our brief look at Lovecraft’s “juvenilia.” It took me longer than it should have, and I suspect it wasn’t all that interesting to read my non-reviews. Next up I’ll be looking at “The Alchemist,” written in 1908, and the gloves are coming off. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope to have my review up by the end of the week.

I Baracked the Vote

Sorry, no Lovecraft review today: things have been a bit hectic. I spent most of my morning in line at my local elementary school to cast my vote. This was by far the longest time I’ve ever spent waiting to vote, but, then again, it’s the first time I’ve voted in Prince George’s County. Maybe people are just more politically motivated here.

Not much else to say, really. I expect most of you can tell from the post title who received my vote for president. Other than that, if you’re an American citizen, registered to vote, and you haven’t done so yet, what are you waiting for? Hurry up and get out there: you’ve only got a few hours left!

Caverns of Dream: The Little Glass Bottle

“Heave to, there’s something floating to the leeward!”

And so we begin our odyssey of all things Lovecraft with “The Little Glass Bottle,” a short and fairly inconsequential story written in 1897. A sea captain and his crew recover a message in a bottle that directs them to a shipwreck laden with treasure off the coast of Australia. The excited captain charters a ship to salvage the wreckage, but the only thing they find is an iron bottle and note written by the same hand, informing the crew that they’ve been the victim of a somewhat pointless practical joke.

It’s not fair for me to judge this little throwaway in the same way I would judge Lovecraft’s later work, and I’m not going to do so. Since Lovecraft was born in 1890, he was no older than seven when he wrote this. It’s a cute little joke, and it’s effective. And that’s more than enough, really. There’s not much there that would suggest the author’s future career as a horror writer, save for burgeoning, New England-style obsession with the sea. There’s not much point in analyzing it much more closely than that. That being said, I don’t think I wrote this well when I was seven.

Anyone interested in having a look for his or herself can find the text for this one online.

Next up are a handful of other short pieces from prepubescent Lovecraft. I plan on getting through that ephemera in the next day or two, which will hopefully allow me to some real meat by the end of the week. Stay tuned for that.