Fun_People Archive
12 Mar
Lovecraft and Wodehouse, together again

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 97 16:48:05 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Lovecraft and Wodehouse, together again

Forwarded-by: Dan Franklin <dan@copernicus.bbn.com>

[This is from Dave Langford's _Ansible_, which appears to be an e-fanzine.
 This issue can be found at
 http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Ansible/a101x.html:]

I thought I was joking when I invented a Wodehouse/Lovecraft novel opening
for Dave Wood's silly collaborations competition. _The Inimitable Cthulhu_,
of course:

`In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove.'

`So I have been informed, sir.'

`Right ho! Then bring me my whangee, my yellowest shoes, and the old green
Homburg. I'm going into the Park to do nameless, blasphemous rites
descended from a shuddering and unhallowed tradition, amid shrieking,
slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another
through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky ... forests
of monstrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking
unnameable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils
.... insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon arcades choked
with fungous vegetation ... and then a snifter at the Drones, what?'

`I fancy not, sir. The Dark Priestess of the Esoteric Order of Dagon is in
the sitting-room and desires to speak to you.'

`Ia! Ia! Aunt Agatha!'

"... but little did I know that an erudite American, Peter Cannon, was
busily writing _Scream for Jeeves_ (New York, Wodecraft Press, 1994), a
slim collection which really does re-run Lovecraft staples like `The Rats
in the Walls' and `Cool Air' as Jeeves/Wooster larks -- the latter story
acquiring the well-judged Wodehousian title `Something Foetid'. (By the
way, my own favourite entry for that collaboration game began `He was one
hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead. He fought for survival
with the passion of a beast in a trap. He was delirious and rotting, coming
downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind
Christopher Robin.' -- yes, it's the Bester/Milne _Tigger! Tigger!_) [4/95]"

© 1997 Peter Langston