Banning Lovecraft: An article on damage done by slack librarians
Dear Mom,
We Have ALway a LAived in the Xastle. So beholded in us:
shke hresr vthule shksas ans mthtrod!!!!!
I AMM Joseph Curwen?
HYEs. So beholden upon us and aud ke!!!
This is proof of the damaging qualities of H.P. Lovecraft on young minds, and is one of over a hundred such examples. This letter, dated 12/12/94,was written by eleven year old Scotty Walker, born and raised in Philbrook, Pennsylvania, and a student in nearby McCarthy Elementary School.
According to Emma Sacher, one of the two school librarians, Scotty had checked out The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, earlier during the school year. He then proceeded to read with great avarice such short stories as "The Call of Cthulu," "Winged Death," "The Thing on the Doorstep," and "The Nameless City."
His mother, former Trekkie Debra Walker, was quite enthusiastic at the time. "I thought the subject matter odd, but felt that as long as he was reading something it was a good thing. And I know what it's like to be a tremendous fan of one particular subject. I was certain he'd pass through it."
But Lovecraft proved to have a far more powerful hold on young Scotty than Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise had ever had on his mother. By mid-October, a distinct change had come over the impressionable boy.
"I found him lurking down in the cellars a coupla times," said school curate, Wyndham Ford. "Freaked me right out, he did. Should have been out with the other kids, as I rightly remember it was recess. Sent him up with a flea in his ear, that I did. T'ain't natural, being in basements on good days."
Even then, Scotty did not return to the other children, but spent recess in the library. Ms. Sachar saw him everyday, but he was well-known for being studious, so she thought little of it.
"To be honest, I liked the company. Sometimes I'd stop and chat with him. He was mostly quite friendly, though he never let me see what he was working on. Every now and again though, he would get awfully moody, cross with me for interrupting him. And sometimes I couldn't get his attention for the world. He'd stare into space rather than answer. That's when I decided to get Dr. Rumstead."
Rumstead, McCarthy Elementary's child psycaiatrist, prescribed an extended vacation longer than the usual Christmas break. Scotty obstinately refused to talk to him. But he did confide in his mother. Debra heard a great deal about Scotty's beliefs during the four weeks he spent home from school.
"He told me how afraid he was. That there are things in the world older than man, infinitely deadly elder gods of a sort. He claimed they seek to enslave us, and lurk in dark foul places... like crypts...
"I remember he mentioned a book. It was called the..the Necromonican, or something similar. He expressed frustration over being unable to get it through Friends of the Library. He called Lovecraft "my mentor," and said the man had actually been transcribing true accounts. A professor of the supernatural. And he insisted the Necro book was key to understanding, and taught how to summon and banish these elder gods. I was very worried about him."
Then on December 10th, Scotty vanished from his home, sometime between 11:00 and 4:00 at night.
"I turned in at ten-thirty," Debra recalls. "And when I went to the bathroom at four-ten, the door to his room was open. So was his window. I was so scared, and phoned the cops right away."
By noon the next morning, Scotty had been found, in the shrubbery by the banks of the Susquehanna River. Not one legible word was got out of him after that.
Until he wrote the note which opens this article, in a style so unlike him, Debra was amazed. "He was always exceptional at spelling and letters."
He then fled the house for a second time.
And Scotty Walker was never found.
As I said, this is one of too many cases where young people whose minds have not yet fully developed stumble upon the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and become obsessed. Adults do not seem to have this trouble, and certainly most pre-teens would find his archaic style off-putting. But there is always one exception, and it is to protect these impressionable girls and boys that there is now a great, country-wide movement to try and ban Lovecraft's work from elementary schools.
Says Lara Tall of Detroit "It's the saddest story I've ever heard."
Marian Henry of Bluefield, West Virginia claimed "we've got to protect the young until they're old enough to see sense. I never let my kids look sideways at a fantasy novel until they were in High School. 'Cause you never know when they could go investigate haunted houses looking for weird old ladies; stuff themselves in the back of old wardrobes, dig in sand on beaches in a fruitless search for little creatures, run into brick walls when at train stations. The list is endless..."
Ezekial Fielding of Aitken, Minnesota said "If my son came home spewing Scotty Walker's garbage, I'd beat the crap out of him. And when he was thirty, with a steady job, three kids, a house and a car with no down payments, he would thank me."
FINIS
There it all is, my light-hearted mockery of Lovecraft, Trekkies, and those who want to ban fantasy. I got the idea from an article I read on The Onion, about a teacher who went mad from the writings of that great cult author. I took the idea and ran with it.
I only ever read two Lovecraft stories, the novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. I preferred the former, as its setting was more interesting to me. Personally, I'd say Lovecraft was a terrible writer with a superb imagination. It seems to me that his sense of pacing was non-existent - I was left slogging through chapters of dry facts, with nothing but a slow menace to keep me reading. Luckily, with Lovecraft, there always was a payoff. He's a flawed gem of an author.
So, do you think I've a future writing for The Onion and other schlocky rags? Or perhaps I should turn my thoughts to crass advertising instead? (Drumroll...)
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I scarcely thought about what I was writing when I threw those two paragraphs together. I was rather surprised at the utter baseness of the above concoction, but I still feel it makes for an interesting curio, so there you have it. (The link isn't supposed to go anywhere, by the way. It just adds colour)
So should I spare you all in future, and focus on the plain old dignity of the short story? I probably will stick to that format, as I'm more comfortable with it, but I don't think that's a reason to box myself in...
By the way, I don't know what went wrong with the bloody font settings for this post... My apologies.
