Page:Lovecraft letter to Henneberger 1924-02-02.pdf/8

 But I see that I've rattled this letter out to unconscionable lengths—for which I trust you'll duly forgive me. I hope my various remarks may have buried in them some grains of sense which will answer for intelligent suggestions, though as a practical planner I never was very notable. I certainly wish you the very best of luck with WEIRD TALES, and hope every modification may develop in the right direction; though I realise very fully all the difficulties besetting any experiment of the sort. Is it ethical and possible to get in touch with writers in other magazines? In thinking over my old ALL-STORY reading, and newer specimens brought to my attention, I recall several people who did very fair work—and one case of actual excellence. This last is a writer signing himself A. Merritt, who some five years ago had a novelette in the ALL-STORY called "The Moon Pool". The power of dark and titanic suggestion in this unexplained mystery was enormous; and I was not surprised when the thing came out in book form, with two errors of astronomical nature removed. Later Merritt had two more things in the All-Story, both inferior, and showing the devitalising pressure of the cheap popular-magazine ideal. Given a free hand, I feel that this writer could snap back into his old mood and beat any other weird author in the current magazine field; and I wish there were a way of getting in touch with him. Another man with promise is Philip M. Fisher, Jr., who had a fine thing in a recent ALL-STORY, spoiled only by a tame ending obviously designed to suit the gentle Bob Davis. Told to let the human race go to hell, Fisher could accomplish wonders. His tale was called "Fungus Island". Then there were some old-timers whom I recall only dimly. Victor Rousseau was an ALL-STORY star of the first magnitude, who wrote at least one noxiously powerful thing called "The Sea-Demons". Street and Smith in 1919 published a magazine called THE THRILL BOOK, which, although I unfortunately never saw it, is spoken of very highly by those who did see it. Some of its writers must be useful hands to have around WEIRD TALES, and I think they would be worth looking up unless my informant greatly exaggerated. This some informant, by the way, is quite certain that the best story in the November WEIRD TALES is pilfered word for word from a story in that magazine—"The Crawling Death", by P.A. Connolly. I think he wrote Mr. Baird about it, and he is still uncertain whether it was an out-and-out steal, or a case of the same writer selling his work twice on the chance that THE THRILL BOOK was too short-lived to be remembered.

But I certainly have rambled enough! I shall be very glad to see the cheque when it comes, though well knowing that my own straits are shared more or less by everybody else all along the line! I hope the difficulty of payment doesn't deter any first-rate writers from contributing … I suggested to Mr. Baird that it might have exactly the opposite effect, scaring off the mercenaries, and leaving those artistic writers who draw horror for horror's sake!