The Articles of Dragon: "The Cthulhu Mythos Revisited" and "A Rebuttal to 'The Cthulhu Mythos Revisited'"

Having already broken the original intent of this series by highlighting Dragon magazine articles I never read during their initial publication simply because of their Lovecraftian content, I'm going to do so again, this time by discussing two articles in a single post. In this case, I think it can be more than justified for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the "articles" in question are actually letters to the editor and, therefore, comparatively short. Secondly, the two letters are in dialog with one another, as well as with the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column I discussed last week. Discussing both of them here thus makes a great deal of sense.

The first letter by self-proclaimed "High Priest of the Great Old Ones," Gerald Guinn, appears in issue #14 (July 1978). It's mostly a nitpicky – and inaccurate – criticism of the Kuntz and Holmes presentation of the Mythos in D&D terms. I say "inaccurate," because Mr Guinn, despite being "an avid fan of Lovecraft," seems to have imbibed more than a little of the Derlethian Kool-Aid when it comes to his understanding of HPL's creation (and I say this as someone who unironically appreciates Derleth's contributions). His complaints, by and large, boil down to deviating from Derleth's interpretations of Lovecraft.

For example, Guinn repeats the un-Lovecraftian idea that the Elder Gods "defeated" the Great Old Ones, as well as making dubious genealogical ("Cthulhu, first spawn of Yog-Sothoth") and elemental connections ("Hastur ... is the KING OF AIR !!!!!!!") that have no basis in HPL's own texts. In some cases, I'm not even certain I can pin these errors on Derleth, who, for all his faults, never seemed to have suggested that Nyarlathotep was a Great Old One or an offspring of Azathoth. Neither did Derleth make Ubbo-Sathla "the center of the universe." 

This is all very "inside baseball" stuff, but I find it very interesting. If nothing else, it's a reminder of just how obsessive nerds can be about getting the "facts" of fictional settings correct – and how much effort they'll put into demonstrating their superior knowledge of those facts. It's also a reminder of the extent to which not just Derleth but other post-Lovecraftian authors proved influential in fans' understanding of the Mythos. Much like Robert E. Howard's Conan, whose popular conception was largely colored by the pastiches of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, Lovecraft was similarly misunderstood well into the 1970s. Most of Guinn's objections stem, in my opinion, from such misunderstandings, including his taking issue with the D&D stats of Hastur, Cthugha, and so on.

Rather than dwell on how many hit points a shoggoth should have, I want to turn to the second letter, which appeared in issue #16 (July 1978). Written by J. Eric Holmes, it's intended as an answer to Gerlad Guinn's critique of the original article. Holmes starts, amusing enough, by stating that "When one gets into religious controversy the first thing one discovers is that the scriptures themselves are self-contradictory and subject to varying interpretations." It's a funny line, but also an apt one, as dissecting just what Lovecraft meant or intended is a kind of exegesis. I've often felt that, as the practice of traditional religion has declined, many people have turned to pop culture as a replacement. 

Whether my thesis is true or not, Holmes quickly gets to the heart of the issue: the "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column he and Rob Kuntz wrote "draws most heavily from Lovecraft's own works" rather than those of HPL's friends and imitators. This is a perfectly valid rebuttal and no more need be said on the matter. Even leaving aside the errors Guinn makes in his original critiques, which Holmes addresses individually, the larger point still stands, namely, that Kuntz and Holmes wrote their descriptions with Lovecraft in mind and no one else. To continue Holmes's earlier religious analogy, he prefers a textualist reading of the Mythos over any other.

One can, of course, agree or disagree with this approach, but I think it's a defensible one. In general, my own preferences when it comes to this specific question is fairly close to that of Holmes. At the same time, I think it's equally defensible to include a wider range of source material in conceiving of the Mythos. How wide a range is an equally important question. From its first edition, Call of Cthulhu, for example, has included a fairly broad range of sources – just look at the creatures in its bestiary – and that rarely raises any comment from gamers. On the other hand, I don't begrudge anyone who draws the line at one place or another, so long as he can articulate why and to what purpose.

These kinds of debates are fascinating to me. Lovecraft himself hoped his ideas and concepts, his monsters and alien gods would be picked up and used by other writers, each of whom would add his own wrinkles to the growing tapestry of what we now call the Mythos. He did not care that this would introduce contradictions and confusion, because that's the nature of a real mythology. The only thing I suspect he'd have objected to is the claim that there was one and only one "true" version that everyone else must accept. He wasn't founding a dogmatic religion but creating a smorgasbord of elements from which his fellow authors could pick and choose as they wished. In that respect, I think he'd probably be delighted at how broadly disseminated his ideas have since become, even if he might not like some of the specific uses to which they've been put.