I just LOVED this guy’s stuff when I was a prepubescent nerd. I bought paperbacks, was given a few by a friend after he read them, borrowed them from the city library (St. Petersburg, FL). Between his work and Robert E. Howard (L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Michael Moorcock later) and a few other names I no longer remember, I read and read and read and then discovered Robert H. Heinlein when I was 15 and “horror” and “fantasy” took a distant second to Science Fiction. It wasn’t the “monster”/“other world” aliens that I found interesting so much as the creation of the genre itself; Lovecraft’s story “The Thing in the Cave” scared me SO much when I was twelve (HPL wrote it when he was younger than that, nine, IIRC) I only ever went into a cave TWICE in my life. I’m not claustrophobic, I’m “thing-o-phobic.” If you know the story, you know.
*shudder*
Oh, of course,I read Plato, Socrates, the major philosophers (I liked Camus and Sartre - a little less), Hesse’s Siddharta (and others, and later, Noch einmal auf Deutsch) and of course I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Iliad, Odyssey, many other classics.
It was a good time. I wrote a paper once on Robert E. Howard for a HS English class; Mrs Kogar gave me a B - grudgingly - as she accused me of making everything up because SHE had never HEARD of the guy. I brought in a stack of paperbacks and she make it a B+.
Mrs. Kogar, a middle-aged wannabe socialite with a heavily affected New England accent (this was Florida, I have no idea where she was from originally just that she didn’t sound like she was from THERE - neither did I, I learned English in Ohio and still have no accent to this day) had us reading twisted crap from Truman Capote and his ilk who she just RAVED about. I could barely stomach it.
But I did read a lot of Tom Wolfe a few years later (Hollyweird made a couple movies from his works, like “The Right Stuff,” Bonfire of the Vanities and I found the novel “Mauve Gloves Madmen Clutter and Vine” to be a real riot. Wolfe’s stuff about New York elitists and business world I found even stranger than the worlds of science fiction. To this day I hate cities with a passion. Cities are for termites, not humans.
Thanks for posting this link.
Pretty much agree, though I found Lovecraft too nihilistic for me. I never enjoyed his work. I too found the recommended HS English readings tedious and dreary. To me it wasn’t even what I would call great literature to much society and self flagelation. It inspired me to nothing!
I read Rise and Fall Of The Third Reich over forty years ago, with a dictionary by my side; don’t remember a word of it.
Here, you might find these fun.
This first one is a ten-minute clip of a way-out Christian who came out of Satanism and witchcraft and a bunch of other stuff. He talks about science fiction and references Clark, Asimov, and Heinlein, Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, etc.
“The Sons of God and the Antichrist by Bill Schnoebelen “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HaLSg1x3g
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And then there is this one:
“Vampires & Werewolves - Real or Fake - Bill Schnoebelen - The Prophecy Club
From about 2000 or so. The guy’s still around on YT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogr8hDVUoAg
“Bill Schnoebelen was a Voodoo Priest, Wiccan High Priest, 2nd degree member of the Church of Satan, New Age guru, occultist, channeler, 90th degree Mason, Knight Templar, Vampire initiate, and a member of the Illuminati. Due to the increase of media exposure of Vampires and Werewolves made to appear seductive, many people are becoming intrigued with evil. What is wrong needs to be exposed.
TOPICS: Are Vampires and Werewolves Real? What’s Wrong with Vampires and Werewolves? How Did Bill Get out of Satanism? What Does the Bible Say about This? Dangers for Children and Christians? What Role-Models Are Created?”
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Enjoy. N.