Episode 469 - Deaf, Dumb, and Blind

Bit of a necropost here but I had the thought that maybe Lovecraft took some ideas from this story for The Haunter in the Dark... the Blake name thing obviously but also the long dead staring corpse is very reminiscent of Blake's demise. I may have to read them back to back .

How sad to end the Lovecraft stories with these stinkers. All the Poo pourri in the world isn’t going to help these.

Scott

For anyone teaching creative writing, there are three sentences together in this story that are each instructive in their own way: 1. The house shook like a Dweurgarian cinder in the sieves of Niflheim. Rule one of creative writing: you use a simile or metaphor to make something clearer to a reader, not less clear. What on earth (or beyond) is a Dweurgarian cinder? What are the sieves of Niflheim? 2. Every timber in the floor beneath my feet quivered like a suffering thing. Yes, “a suffering thing” really enlightens. Is there a word less specific than ‘thing’? Maybe ‘something’, but I digress... 3. My typewriter trembled till I could imagine that the keys were chattering of their fear. I rather like this, it does give the sense of jangling keys in a tense situation, making it even more frightening. Who said the Hppodcraft was not instructive!

When I see images of devils with the horns and little clip-clop goat feet, I think of the movie Legend, and Darkness. I mean, he's a pretty badass looking 'devil', but he's not Satan. That's his dad, and we never see Satan. That's what I think of most typical representations of 'devils' - they are monsters, maybe a bit stronger than a Dracula, but they're really more like sulky teens that are showing off their latest finds from Hot Topic, while the real deal and source of all malevolence is off screen and has a more banal and everyday look.

Anyone else hear "libidinous bees" and think of Shawn stealing ideas for the next generation of Bad Place bees on The Good Place? https://imgur.com/a/ucDSq1N

Christine M

And remain uninseminated...

My attitude to his work has really changed since listening to this podcast, and re-reading all of HPL's stories in order. For one, I finally realized just how much of the Mythos was not directly created by HPL, but rather by his posse of guys like R.E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, and so on. It was also really interesting to see how he developed ideas over time. He clearly did not have an over-arching idea of building a cohesive universe when he started. Instead he was plainly adding stuff and moving pieces around story by story. Like the whole relationship between Nyarlahotep and Azathoth. The entire thing has really been an eye-opener. It also gave me an entirely new appreciation for many of his early works, which I had not been as impressed with before. By going through his catalog in order, I was able to see how each story was like an individual brick being laid down to create the foundation for the truly magnificent tales that came later. Now I do not see them as individual stories to take or leave, but rather as part of a larger whole. A holistic view I suppose.

Now that you guys have completely exhausted Lovecraft’s revisions maybe y'all should do a Lovecraft Retrospective topic show. It's been almost a decade since your first run of his stories so why not think about if and how your attitude to his work has evolved now that you've comprehensively looked at what influenced him and how his work has been developed by others.

Well, it appears that the sound of libidinous bees is a bit like someone playing with bubblewrap. According to Wikipedia, the process of bee ejaculation is explosive - it literally blows the little fellow’s todger off, and “the process is sometimes audible to the human ear, akin to a "popping" sound.” Rumours that the breakfast cereal ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ was almost called ‘Libidinous Bees in a Bowl’ remain unsubstantiated.

Re the devil as a Halloween costume or a protagonist- this can be got around by saying it's *a* devil not *the* devil. They claim to be the Devil but they're just department store Satans.

There are some libidinous ads on the same page as the ending of this story in the original Weird Tales issue - for girlie postcards. Could they be related? There is a thesis there just waiting to be written...

I completely lost it when my giggles regarding Chris's "curiousgrandmothers.gov" turned into audible laughter at Chad's library reference landed. We all love to envision the sort of people who frequent library internet computers and the sort of sites they visit...

Broctober

There’s some heavy duty alliteration in there. Seems like he was showboating

Chris Pragman

Actually, alliteration is absolutely awesome and all of us are always in need of more. (I make no apologies.)

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

It felt like Eddy had learned about consonance and alliteration and wanted to make sure the teacher knew it.

"I couldn't leave the libidinous bees alone." That sounds like the premise of a much better Eddy story. I just found a reference in St. Augustine's "De bono coniugali" (Of the Good of Marriage, par. 2) to the idea that bees have offspring without sex, which totally complicates the whole "birds and the bees" thing.

Agreed that Libidinous Bees is the best band name coming out of this story, but I'll also add that just about any phrase from the section describing what the bee-like voices are whispering ("Ghoulish conceptions of devastating debaucheries") would work as the title of an album put out in the 1990s by Projekt Records.

I came here to make one myself, but I see you have it covered. Speaking of covers, though, there's something for Dr. Morehouse and the Investigators to perform live (joined on stage by members of Libidinous Bees).

It seems as though an episode's humor is inversely correlated to the quality of writing being covered.

Jeremey Guttilla

I couldn't leave the libidinous bees alone. I found a reference in the poetry of Oscar Hahn, a Chilean poet (who for a while taught at Iowa, go Hawkeyes!). In his poem Tractatus de sortilegiis (Treaty of Sorceries, 1992) , he writes: "Tell me, dying of laughter, where you are taking that honeycomb made by libidinous bees" And this lead me to Tractatus de hereticis et sortilegiis by Paulus Grillandus, a judge at papal witch trials whose Treatise on heretics and witches, 1536, is a successor to the more well-known Malleus Maleficarum (Kramer and Sprenger 1487) and has the first reference to mortuary masses, black masses in graveyards. So perhaps back to Eddy. But then I got into Dark Ages - The Tractatus De Hereticis Et Sortilegiis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf5TsBTmsT8) and lost the thread.

Steve

Ray-tober....Octobury....

...actually, now that I think about it, maybe Edcraft is doing EXACTLY the 'pervy modern' interpretation of the premise in their coy 1920s style, and the final paragraph is meant to imply that the narrator ends up dragged into an eternal demonic sex orgy

Jason Thompson

Just throwing it out there with zero evidence: a female friend theorized that Sonia Greene actually had an abortion and that's the explanation for the 'nervous breakdown' and hospital visit.

Jason Thompson

I really liked this story as a kid -- despite the clunky execution, the core concept is so interesting, and it's one of those stories you can only tell in prose, without visuals. But man, I didn't remember that the purple prose describing the demonic fingering was so sexed-up! I mean, I know sex is evil and all, but how tongue-in-cheek must they have been when they wrote this? Describing it as an Arthur Machen tribute is something I hadn't thought of and probably the most generous interpretation. (Honestly, since a deaf and blind person can still *feel*, this could have gotten *really* raunchy and horrible if a pervier, modern writer had handled the same plot.)

Jason Thompson

He's the antagonist to God, loses out to every fiddle player and then can't hang out with the other monsters. That is the Devil's pain.

Steve

"The Libidinous Bees" is the best band name, though.

Ethan Cordray

So this is the backstory on how the Tanners moved to San Francisco?

Alan Ricks

Is there any place these collaborations are available in digital form? I've struck out on my searches.

Not one Pinball Wizard reference. I am so disappointed.

Fun episode, guys! Just to shed a little more light on the letter to CM Eddy, Sonia was indeed sick in late October of 1924. Her illness seems to have been a mix of psychological stress and gastrointestinal issues, perhaps driven by the stress that neither Lovecraft or her had been able to secure regular employment (among other strains). According to Joshi’s biography, doctors wanted to operate to remove her gall bladder, but a second opinion, which they took instead, was for Sonia to convalesce at a New Jersey farm. It was on her return from the farm that the couple made the decision for her to take a job in Cincinnati and for him to move into smaller quarters (which happened in late December). This was a separation, but it appears to have been entirely motivated by financial concerns. But they remained married, as you all know, for a long time after. Also, what a stinker of a story! You can polish a turd....

Ben A

Thank you for proving my prescience with this episode. Halfway through, I randomly thought: One of these years they should do selections from The October Country for October. Further random thought: prescience looks like pre-science. As for the story, it had that all-too-familiar feeling when reading a so-so Lovecraftian anthology and coming upon that story that makes you think, "What a cool idea! Too bad a better writer didn't have this idea."

Honestly, "Death Fingers" is a better band name

Aren't all bees libidinous?

I think there's a reallllllllly subtle Final Destination thing going on here. He was supposed to die in the war. Not by enemy fire, mind, but by a series of unfortunate insect stings, bites, and so forth all about his privates to which (the stings, bits, and so forth) he was to be proven deathly allergic. I mean, that's how I read it.

This brilliant collaboration has inspired me to pen another haiku... -Swamp in the Rear- Though deaf, dumb, and blind I type out the horror of Libidinous bees

Jeff C. Carter

Nice episode guys!

But,but,but,next month is Bloctober!