Episode 18 - Nyarlathotep and The Crawling Chaos
The Black Pharaoh is on the scene with a special guest host... KENNETH HITE! Who knew? Well... we did. He shares his thoughts on Nyarlathotep, books and good old fashion fun!
Our guest reader this week is none other than Michael Holmes of The Duck N Cover Show!
Winifred V. Jackson, Lovecraft's pen pal and collaborator. Ms. Jackson if you're nasty.
Next week: Ex Oblivione and The Nameless City
Our guest reader this week is none other than Michael Holmes of The Duck N Cover Show!
Winifred V. Jackson, Lovecraft's pen pal and collaborator. Ms. Jackson if you're nasty.
Next week: Ex Oblivione and The Nameless City
Download | Duration: 00:37:48
Posted by chrislackey at 11/4/2009 7:24 PM 
Categories: Podcast
Tags: hppodcast ken hite necronomicon lovecraft stories call of cthulhu azathoth lovecraft audio gothic horror yog sothoth hp lovecraft weird tales nyarlathotep ex oblivione metallica lovecraft horror crawling chaos cthulhu miskatonic lovecraftian kenneth hite chad fifer stephen king herbert west lovecraft books cthulhu mythos unfilmable lovecraft movies lovecraft lovecraft podcast lovecraft music andrew leman howard lovecraft hp podcraft hppodcraft randolph carter chris lackey hplhs arkham michael holmes howard phillips lovecraft hp podcast horror whisperer in darkness
Categories: Podcast
Tags: hppodcast ken hite necronomicon lovecraft stories call of cthulhu azathoth lovecraft audio gothic horror yog sothoth hp lovecraft weird tales nyarlathotep ex oblivione metallica lovecraft horror crawling chaos cthulhu miskatonic lovecraftian kenneth hite chad fifer stephen king herbert west lovecraft books cthulhu mythos unfilmable lovecraft movies lovecraft lovecraft podcast lovecraft music andrew leman howard lovecraft hp podcraft hppodcraft randolph carter chris lackey hplhs arkham michael holmes howard phillips lovecraft hp podcast horror whisperer in darkness
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g290/Father_Shandor/Nyarlathotep.jpg
I'm not political but this always puts me in mind of Nyarlathotep
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That is one great image, I would not mind at all if Obama was an Avatar of Nyarlarthotep, just one more reason for me to like him
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That's Akhenaten. He was pretty cool, anyway.
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Looking forwards to this. Kenneth Hites RPG material is fantastic. I particularly like his GURPS Horror sourcebook, which even if you don't play RPGs does a really nice job of breaking down why certain types of horror work, and I hear very good things about Trail of Cthulhu.
There's a fun discussion of the podcast, Lovecraft, racism and the recent lecture at Treadwells about Lovecraft and archeology here:
http://www.metafilter.com/86277/The-Lurking-Fear
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I think it's a mistake to think of Nyarlathotep as one consistent character. All this business of "avatars" and "manifestations" just seems like an attempt to reconcile all those different uses of the name with each other and codify the "mythos" a little more (which I think takes away from its effectiveness - the Cthulhu Mythos works best as a background of vague hints, not something with well-understood rules and pantheons). I'd be very surprised if the Nyarlathotep of "The Haunter of the Dark" is supposed to be the same as the guy in the eponymous prose-poem.
I think Lovecraft just liked the name Nyarlathotep and used it kind of willy-nilly without any serious attempt at building a cosmic character. When he is stumped for a name for a strange character or monster, he just calls it Nyarlathotep.
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Nyarlathotep says, in Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath; "...Pray to all space that you may never meet me in my thousand other forms." Which supports the theory of Nyarlathotep being a shape shifter
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Thanks for having me on the show, guys! It was great fun for all. One tiny correction, though -- the itinerant evangelist I mentioned is named "Moon," not "Moody." I had him confused with Dwight Moody for some reason. Oh, right, the similarity in name, message, and time period. But still....
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At least you didn't go on about 'Tall Beavers' for 15 minutes. Still getting e-mail on that one.
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I always liked ol' Nyarlathotep. When all the other fancy-pants gods were way too busy being lazy or listening to wacky flute music, he wasn't too haughty to come around and rub elbows with us insignificant insects down here in steerage... and I always pronounced it Nyarlat-hotep. Yet another excellent show guys!
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I've always viewed Nyarlathotep as the harbinger or "encourager" of the end. If you take his role as Messenger of the Old Ones into account, it makes a lot of sense that H.P. would deploy him (in whatever form) as a cosmic bad-influence...kind of like the neighborhood kid who was always daring you to do stupid things.
I may be over-generalizing, but the other Gods seem more passive; waiting and being summoned. Where as Nyarlathotep is running around encouraging brain theft and getting people to sign dubious documents.
As a side note... a quick wiki-search revealed that "hotep" means peace or rest.
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Actually, "-hotep" means "is content/satisfied/at peace" etc, so whoever Nyarlat is, we know they're happy
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I think this work has some of Lovecraft's best turns of phrase: "the crawling chaos", "I will tell the audient void", "out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents", "that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon", and practically all of the last paragraph. This is just fantastic stuff, and unlike some of Lovecraft's other work, although the prose is purple is seems (at least to me) less overwrought, perhaps because of the whole disjointed, confused sense of the entire piece.
Regular Frank said: "I think it's a mistake to think of Nyarlathotep as one consistent character. All this business of "avatars" and "manifestations" just seems like an attempt to reconcile all those different uses of the name with each other and codify the "mythos" a little more (which I think takes away from its effectiveness - the Cthulhu Mythos works best as a background of vague hints, not something with well-understood rules and pantheons)."
And I would agree. I don't think that Lovecraft is always consistent in his usage, but I have found that to make the Mythos all the more convincing -- it's not a neat systematic package, but allusive and inconsistent in precisely the way real mythologies are. The resulting effect (for me at least) is a strong sense that we puny humans can only partly and dimly see the horrifying truth, that our understanding is vastly imperfect, and our legends and myths and secret rites are attempts to record this imperfect understanding.
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Lovecraft dreamed Nyarlathotep - both the name and the story - and in the dream the oft-invoked Samuel Loveman (Harley Warren in the dream-tale STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER)was the guy who told him to go see the mysterious Mr. N. if he paid a call to Providence.
Of course, as you stated, Mr. N. is LITERALLY a shape-shifter in Lovecraft. I think Lovecraft really liked the name, but never really settled on what it should be applied to. Knowing the HPLHS is currently filming WHISPERER IN DARKNESS, I'm assuming that one version of N has been All Too Near your corporeal forms in recent weeks. You know, _whispering_ and all.
As far as "Crawling Chaos" goes - a superb prose poem, but not much as a STORY. Pure atmosphere, and effective. HPL and Miss Jackson made it to the concluding cosmic destruction many decades before Arthur C. Clarke did in CHILDHOOD's END...
(Alas, your Nyarlathotep/Armageddon analogy is neutralized by the continuation of that oft-misquoted verse, Matt.24:6: "And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be NOT TROUBLED: for all these things must come to pass, BUT THE END IS NOT YET(my emphasis)." Exactly the OPPOSITE of HPL's nyarlathotepic cataclysms, and also the opposite of what most of the Christian world believes was said there. But I digress.)
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Not to turn this into Bible discussion class, but Jesus says it after the disciples ask him what will be the signs of the End Times, brings up the "wars and rumors of wars," adds "famine, pestilence, and earthquakes," and continues further (Matt 24:8): "But all these are the beginning of sorrows." Which is to say, as bad as the opening guns are, the real Apocalypse is worse. To bring this around to Lovecraft, I don't think reading "Nyarlathotep" as Apocalypse is unwarranted, especially since the story is quite literally a revelation of the end of the world.
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To defend Clarke, though, I viewed CHILDHOOD's END as a good thing, whereas I can't be so sure about THE CRAWLING CHAOS.
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CHILDHOOD's END is a good thing, certainly. And, for whatever reason, at least a member of humanity is going on to greater things in TCC; an ascension to Teloe or an ascension into the Overmind, both warrant better things for the ascender than matter and energy can present.
I don't believe Arthur C. Clarke thought much of Lovecraft's style, yet there's very little difference between the psychology/character of Karellen and the Overlords and The Great Race of Yith. The MAIN difference is that Karellen wants to BE like humanity; the Great Race want simply to KNOW about humanity. The Overlords have not yet achieved their potential; The Great Race are secure in their achievement. But more about that much further on.
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Clarke has written at least one parody of Lovecraf - The Mountains of Murkiness, which you can read in the absolutely cracking Antarktos Cycle anthology (along with Who Goes There by Campbell, which is fantastic). I'd argue that if Clarke didn't like Lovecraft then he sure had read a lot of him to come to that conclusion.
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"Mtns. of Murkiness" is _why_ I stated that I suspected Clarke thought little of Lovecraft. Never read it, but I've heard of it. I read "Who Goes There" many years ago and was thoroughly irritated when John Carpenter got everything right except the CONCLUSION OF THE STORY....
Anyway, here's a picture I did of the Who Goes There who goes there. http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=14671423&albumID=334088&imageID=34760854
I've got much better art software now, and should probably do another. When I finish my latest Ixtl (from Van Vogt's "Discord in Scarlet") and Karellen pix, natch.
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You guys brought up Lovecraft's racism briefly in this in reference to his relationship with Elizabeth Berkley. And we've all seen his own writings that spell out his views that by today's standards would certainly be considered racist.
Do you think that the view of racism we tag onto Lovecraft is really just a side product of his extreme xenophobia? Cultures had not impacted each other as much at that time, and add to that this social fear of the outsider, couldn't that reflect an image of racism? In other words, do we tend to look at his racism as a feeling of superiority or outright fear?
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I was just read an e-mail from Andrew Leman about it and one of the things he said that resonates with me is that he feels 'sad' every time Lovecraft gets all racist. That such a cool, creative guy could be so foolish and misguided on something like this. But I do think it has a lot to do with his Xenophobia and own identity. But I think that overt-superiority comes out of fear. It's as if he's convincing himself that he, and his culture, are better and will endure, though he seems to be very afraid that it won't. And maybe shouldn't.
All culture changes. There is an natural social evolution that happens and Lovecraft was smart enough to see it happen, but afraid of change.
I have to recommend this lecture...
He has some interesting insight to Lovecraft's racism, as well as a bunch of other cool things to say.
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Lovecraft's abhorent racism is well-documented, but I have to agree with Houellebecq's view that, in a sense, that fear and disgust also powered a lot of his writing. I don't think we would have gotten "Shadow over Innsmouth", "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Doom that Came to Sarnath", and indeed much of the Cthulhu Mythos work were it not for his horror of the primitive, the atavistic, the unclean that threatens to overwhelm good moral progressive civilization.
Indeed, there is a passage from one of Lovecraft's letters that Houellebecq quote where H.P. is describing his experience of New York and its citizens, and his account of the non-Anglo-Saxon population as an almost undifferentiated seething mass of (something like) "Italo-Asiatic-Semitic throngs" comes across astoundingly shoggoth-like. It was as if Lovecraft literally could not distinguish the various ethnic backgrounds of those on the street, but saw them all as revolting conglomerate threat.
I am in no way defending his disgusting racism, just as I would not defend the deep character flaws of other artists. But, like many other artists, I think it is likely his art was shaped profoundly by his flaw. If Lovecraft has been more egalitarian, we would certainly like him more, but I think we might like his best art less.
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I to find that that is true as well, but I also see that what else is driving H.P.L is his feeling of be an outsider. His racism is also a form of classism as well. It's not just white people but people from England. To add a twist to all this think about who wrote his bio. (Lovecraft: A Life) If anything it shows that you can over look it at time and put it in it's place.
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Hey guys love this show. Been listening to this podcast since I got my iPod. Huge HPL fan and love the fact that this show is not just the story, but gives one info and insight on the man and the wrk. in regards to this podcast it was pretty scary. More scary than other HPL stories as these seemed to hit way too close to home. Being that nyalarthotep in particular is very eerie to what's going on today....(shivers). Keep up the good work. PS--greetings from Canada!! Cheers, guys.
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Hey Chad here are some web sights I thought you and Chris might like to see. One is on my old band in Denver the other is about Mat Howarth the guy does some fun stuff!
http://www.page27.com/
http://www.matthowarth.com/
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Very cool- Putting Gristle and Neubauten to shame!
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Excellent episode! Thank you!
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Thank YOU for listening!
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I just loved Kenneth's comment about Nyarlathotep, Al Gore and their slide shows...just cracked me up!
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Also I think it was the former Miss. Lovecraft who told Loveman about H.P.L's racism. Let me know if I am wrong....
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IN S.T Joshi's book H.P. Lovecraft: A Life, he on page 388 states that Loveman learned from Sonia in 1948, an perhaps from other sources earlier of his racism. I knew I had just read this. So I went back over it to see if I read it right.
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You sir, are correct! I got my ladies of Lovecraft mixed up a bit.
Please, keep posting corrections! Chad and I try to do the research, but sometimes we get stuff wrong or just plain make stuff up. CALL US OUT!
Thanks for the help D.V.
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I only got this because I just read it. Love this show I even when out and got 101 book! Really cool book.
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Neat. Did you guys know that my band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets has a song called "Nyarlathotep" which is written and sung in Middle Egyptian?
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX6HKwOdGZg
Toren
thickets@uniserve.com
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