Robert M. Price’s MOLDY MANUSCRIPTS vol. 02

I happen to have no interest whatever in sports (not that a Lovecraftian can’t be a football fan – look at that gridiron addict S.T. Joshi!), but I confess I do have a soft spot for the Baltimore Ravens. If they name themselves after Poe’s creation, they can’t be all bad.

And speaking of Edgar Allan Poe and his creations, they’re the permeating theme for this month’s Moldy Manuscripts.

Donald R. Burleson’s “Acrostic”

We open with one of Donald M. Burleson’s classic deconstructions, “Acrostic,” which examines Lovecraft’s poem about Poe, “In a Sequester’d Churchyard Where Once Poe Walk’d.”

This piece appeared originally in Crypt of Cthulhu #85, Hallowmass 1993.

I’m willing to bet you won’t have seen it. Heck, most of you probably weren’t even born then!

“Cormanghast: The Poe Films of Roger Corman”

Then there’s my own „Cormanghast: The Poe Films of Roger Corman“ from Parts #14 (November 1997).

I had written it originally for the fine magazine Scarlet Street. You see, they asked me to write a feature on Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations for an issue in which Corman himself was being interviewed.

The trouble was, I wrote what I thought.

I watched or rewatched all the relevant flicks and found I had to level some pretty damning criticisms if I wanted to maintain any integrity at all.

Needless to say, they turned down the article for fear of Corman reading it.

Eventually I patched things up with them, but I wound up using the article in the revived Parts once founder Friday Jones allowed me to add the mag to the Cryptic Publications stable.

“Lovecraft and Ligeia”

The third article this time is another from my prolix pen: „Lovecraft and ‚Ligeia'“ from Lovecraft Studies #31 (Fall 1994).

I was amazed when I reread this story after many years (in fact while I was researching the Corman piece) at how extensive an influence it had exerted upon Lovecraft’s imagination, as you will shortly see!

Three Works Derived from Poe

One of my favorite little jokes by Lin Carter occurred in one of his Hautley Quicksilver novellas, set in the far future.

Hautley boasts of his erudition by informing us that the ancient noun “poetry” was derived from the name of Edgar Allan Poe.

Of course it wasn’t, having been borrowed instead from the Greek poeisis, a work, as in a literary work.

But that’s not to say plenty of literary works haven’t been derived from Poe!

Here are three.

About This Recovered LORE Feature

MOLDY MANUSCRIPTS vol. 02 is particularly valuable to the reconstructed LORE archive because its original links reveal a complete editorial cluster.

The parent feature was numbered 65. Its three associated articles followed immediately as Features 66, 67 and 68.

This sequence gives us something more valuable than four isolated old URLs: it reveals how the editors of LORE originally intended the material to be read.

Continue Through the LORE Archives

LORE Archive Record

Part of the LORE Online Recovery Project — restoring criticism, interviews, reviews and weird-fiction history from earlier incarnations of LORE.