Drunken Pumpkin

…but they’ve never had a client lose a case.

Okay, almost all of this is flimsy and poorly researched, but what did you expect.

Nearly all of Lovecraft’s work takes place in New England. Everybody that knows anything about Lovecraft knows that. But sometimes he makes his way a bit westward. Most notably in the Shadow Over Innsmouth. Near the end, after the main character has fled his roots in Innsmouth he ends up at a little college in Ohio: Oberlin. It is from Oberlin that he is called back to his ancestral home to hang with the fish people. And then it goes back to New England. But he was in the Midwest, albeit briefly.

Now the interesting thing about Cthulhu and the Midwest isn’t so much what Lovecraft wrote, but what’s been written about him.

For those of you interested in Lovecraft research there are really just two names to concern yourself with: S.T. Joshi and Robert M. Price. And they both have connections, not only to the midwest, but to a specific University.

Joshi has spent most of his life doing Literary Criticism on Speculative Fiction, and has written what is considered a definitive biography of Lovecraft titled, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. Joshi spent a fair amount of his youth in Muncie, IN where his parents taught Math and Economics for Ball State University. And Joshi attended Burris, a laboratory school for Ball State. And then he left.

I can’t say that Robert Price ever attended Ball State. I’m not even certain that he has ever seen the campus. However, I know that his family has. A portion of his family lives just a few miles away in Anderson. And his nephew, a classmate of mine, got a degree in Philosophy, just like uncle Bob, from Ball State. I have to say, it was a little peculiar being in class with someone whose relative controls the estate of H.P. Lovecraft. I was also amused to hear that Dr. Price uses comics in some of his teachings on Mythology. Mainly, because my Master’s thesis was on using comics to teach composition. But that’s a story for another day.

There you have it. Lovecraft and Ball State tenuously related through two scholars. Coincidence? Almost certainly. But it’s the kind of thread that I think Lovecraft would have liked the most.

Tune in tomorrow there’s animation a comin. I hope.

Wherefore do ye toil; is it not that ye may live and be happy? And if ye toil only that ye may toil more, when shall happiness find you? Ye toil to live, but is not life made of beauty and song? … Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end. Were not death more pleasing?

“The Quest of Iranon”

I found this podcast from the Onion while sifting through my feeds the other day, and thought it appropriate to post here.

And no, they’re not talking about this Jeff