THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whence Lovecraft?

Mythos Tomes: My earliest forays into the works of HP Lovecraft

I've been reading HP Lovecraft since I was a teenager. I recall writing about him in my English Literature A Level exam, which given I was supposed to be critiquing Dickens' Great Expectations probably explains my poor grade.

My memory of how I actually came upon the works of Lovecraft is rather hazy, but I'm sure I was already aware - and a fan - of his oeuvre before I invested in my first edition box set of Chaosium's seminal Call Of Cthulhu game.

This was published in 1981, with the second edition coming out in 1983, which suggests I picked up the game sometime between those dates.

I suspect my introduction to Lovecraft could well have been TSR's Deities & Demigods (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement, published in 1980, that - only for its first edition - included the Cthulhu Mythos as well as Michael Moorcock's Elric mythology, as well as various pantheons or gods and heroes from ancient religions around our world).

This almost certainly led me to invest in the paperbacks you see above, several of which are stamped as coming from the P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells (which is where I also came across my first collection of Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans comics that got me hooked on the medium and turned me into a 'proper' comic book collector).

Those paperbacks have seen better days. particularly The Haunter In The Dark And Other Tales Of Terror (a 1963 edition from Panther Books, priced at three shillings and six pence!) which is falling apart because it was read so much.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Education, Education, Education

It should come as a surprise to no one that I wasn't a great student at school, always being way more interested in my own "stuff" (that was, primarily, escapist movies and TV shows, comics, roleplaying games... and, of course, girls).

That's why the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon above (recently stumbled across on Facebook) struck a chord with me as it particularly reminded me of my English A-Level exam, back in 1985.

I was supposed to be writing essays on Charles Dickens's Great Expectations… only I hadn’t read Great Expectations and so, instead, wrote about the works of HP Lovecraft which I was much more conversant with.

I think I'd read, maybe, the first two or three chapters of Great Expectations, got bored and distracted, and picked up a Cliffs Notes on the book (or some study aid like that), scanning that instead, just before my exam.

As my old school chum Nick pointed out though I still passed (I got an E, which I'm pretty sure was lowest pass rank). He suggested that the examiners were "followers of Cthulhu".

Part of my problem with school was simply that I found subjects I really should have been interested in, such as English Language and English Literature, were taught in such a dry, rote manner. We were told that Dickens and Shakespeare were great and we should worship at their feet, but it was never explained why.

Thus, I found the books and plays we were forced to study to be dull and, largely, uninspiring (although the Dungeons & Dragons player in me loved Milton's Paradise Lost, but I don't recall that being part of my A-Level exam).

I was also a bit of a sucker for the works of The Metaphysical Poets, but, again, I don't remember these being part of the final exam.

It seems to have boiled down to anything that I studied for exams left no lasting impression at the time, while literary works I was allowed to explore "for fun" had a much deeper effect on me in those formative times.

It would be many years after school before I actually came to appreciate the works of Shakespeare and Dickens on my own terms (for instance, I now try to read/listen to A Christmas Carol every December).

By the time I went to university, having been in the workforce for a decade, my attitude to education had turned round completely.

I feel that I thrived much better in the university environment... possibly because, on my scriptwriting course, much of my years of accumulated geeky knowledge stood me in good stead. 

It also helped that coming from a very deadline-orientated career (ie journalism) I was easily able to prioritise my assignments and ensure they were done on time, allowing myself the maximum amount of time for fun and enjoyment.

My well-thumbed Penguin book of The Metaphysical Poets.
Guess I really should see if my old school wants it back after 40 years?