The MR James Lovecraft connection

J-WO

Author of 'Pennyblade' and 'Feral Space'
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Yes, the title of this thread reads like the name of a 70's jazz fusion band but that's not my intent.

I just read M R James' Canon Alberic's Scrapbook and noticed this sentence-

One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture: 'It was drawn from life.'

The similarities to Pickman's Model is pretty clear. The beasts in both tales share many aspects, too- sub-human, animal behavior and qualities etc. Both stories use art, too, as a means of hinting the nature of the horror and to mainline our veins with ice.

I've got no real question here, just an observation really. I know HPL writes about James in his great essay, but I really think that Alberic is a strong influence on Pickman's, if only unconsciously. I'm really enjoying James' work, I have to say. And if not for Lovecraft, I might not have heard of him.
 
I may be forgetting something, but I don't recall any mention of a connection between these two from anyone before; and yet, when you bring it up, it does seem to fit. Certainly Lovecraft thought highly of James, considering him one of "the Big Four" (Blackwood, Dunsany, James, Machen), albeit "the earthiest" of the lot.

"Pickman's Model" owes its genesis, and much of its text, to a discussion Lovecraft had with others on the subject of the weird in art -- both literary and otherwise -- and what actually formed the most powerful depiction of the weird, which he came more and more to feel had to rely on a strong sense of realism, albeit transmuted into something few would recognize in the nominal sense as realist.

Nonetheless, I think you may have something there as regards at least certain incidents or touches in the James which are reflected in the Lovecraft; and certainly the dates of his reading of James (ca. December 1925) and the writing of the tale (late 1926) would fit the sort of time it usually took HPL at this time to assimilate things and have them show up in his own work in one way or another.....
 
Wow. I didn't realize the reading of Scrapbook and the writing of Pickman's were so close. Its rare my wild stabs in the dark are this accurate!

It's interesting to watch the development of supernatural horror through reading both writers. James (who, as I understand it, wrote the majority of his stuff before HPL), doesn't have anything as developed as the Cthulu mythos, but there's a distinct attempt to throw away the white sheet and chains of previous ghost tales for something more elusive, more inimical to human existence. I suppose there's a similar thing going on with Blackwood (especially The Willows) and Machen (The White People), too. I'm ashamed to say I've never read Dunsany.

I've just read James' Number 13 this morning, and there's a whiff of Non-Euclidean geometry to it. Only a smidgen, mind.
 
You may also be interested in looking up a copy of Richard Ward's essay, "In Search of the Dead Ancestor: M. R. James' 'Count Magnus' and Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," in Lovecraft Studies No. 36. (Should you be interested in finding it through the library system, this was the Spring 1997 issue, and the essay is on pp. 14-17.) It was also included -- oddly, in my view -- in the Chaosium volume, The Cthulhu Cycle. Nice to see James included in books which have as part of their focus the works which influenced HPL, but I'm not at all sure the connection made in this particular instance ("Count Magnus" and "The Call of Cthulhu") is all that strong....
 
No, I don't see a Magnus/ Cthulu link at all. Well, the fiend in Magnus has something vaguely like a tentacle but that's about as tenuous a link as you could have. You'd have a stronger link with 20,000 leagues under the Sea!

But thanks for bringing the Ward essay to my attention.
 
The parallel noted by J-Wo is a good one though. As to Count Magnus, I always found it one of the most outright creepy of James' tales and some of its more nightmarish implications do remind one of Lovecraft, although I would have drawn parallels with maybe The Thing On The Doorstep (very broadly) rather than Cthulhu.
 

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