Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 06 (1929-06).djvu/132

 heartily in favor of having the older stories (say of four and five years ago) returned to your pages in the form of weird story reprints. I have heard so much about The Wind that Tramps the World, Lovecraft's The White Ship, Donald Wandrei's The Red Brain, and many others, that I am awfully anxious to read them. I am very fond also of August W. Derleth's stories."

Jack Conroy, of Toledo, Ohio, writes to the Eyrie: "When I first read the announcements of, several years ago, I was interested; but I was sure that such a magazine—differing so widely from the 'confessions' and 'they-lived-happily-ever-after' type so popular with the Great American Reading Public—would never be successful. I am happy to see that there is a group of readers who appreciate literary excellence enough to support . Such stories as S. Fowler Wright's The Rat, which was far and away the best story in the March issue, will build an enviable reputation and set a literary standard as yet unapproached by other magazines publishing weird stories. I hope you will soon publish a book-length serial by Mr. Wright. Another story—a short one—The Chemical Brain in the January issue, by an author named Flagg (I have forgotten his first name), possessed a distinctive style which is not usually encountered in anything less than the fifty cent magazines, and not frequently in them. I hope you will publish other stories by Flagg. The best story in the current issue (April) is, of course, The Dunwich Horror. Lovecraft can not be surpassed. The World-Wrecker is good, and the rest of the material up to standard."

"I note with interest and some amusement," writes Bernard Austin Dwyer, of Kingston, New York, "the frequently expressed opinions as to who is ' best writer—as if there could be any question! Lovecraft is of course so far above the others that there can be no comparison. I will make exception in favor of Wandrei: he possesses real artistic feeling, and asense of color and audacity of imagination seldom equaled. Clark Ashton Smith is a genius, as impossible to duplicate as are the faery fantastical forests traced by the frosts on winter mornings. I wish I could see much more of Smith's work. But excepting these two there is nobody who deserves mention in the same breath with Lovecraft. Lovecraft never descends to anti-climax—never starts 'in a wild weird clime' and ends in one's own back yard—no; with every word the reader feels the horror more engulfing—the terror of abysmal outer spaces, and unguessed chasms of infinity. I regard him as the greatest weird writer living today. The Outsider—The Picture in the House—The Rats in the Walls—The White Ship—and last, but by no means least, The Dunwich Horror! I can not find words sufficiently to declare my admiration of his virginity of conception—the weird, outré, unhackneyed, fully satisfying depth of colorful imagery and fantasy—as strange, as terrible, and as alien to the land of our everyday experiences as a fever-dream. Lovecraft, I am sure, will in after days be noticed as one of the very greatest writers of the weird and the grotesque that ever lived. Indeed I consider him as equal to Bierce and Blackwood, and at times equal to Poe—The Outsider, for