Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/120

504 you publish stories of the extraordinary, but, God, it is too extraordinary to stomach having right win continually. It isn't life. You may say that you are not writing about life, that I can get my sordid realism in the contemporary fiction of the Hemingway school, bur I think you can get my point. The point is that you have the makings of an excellent magazine, above the class of the usual pulp, yet you usually and deliberately tie yourself down with this one flaw. I suppose you are a success financially and have a large reading public, but don't you think you could widen your appeal and increase your circulation by adopting the above suggestion? No doubt I am wrong, for it is your business to know the psychology of your reading public; and yet I'm nor so sure I'm wrong. I think there's something in all of us that delights in the exaltation of evil. I am no publicity hound, but I think if you were to publish this letter and ask for comments you would find that many of your readers would agree with me. In any event, if you could answer me personally and state your reasons for the exclusion of all stories in which the hero doesn't triumph, I should be grateful. Frankly, I am curious."

Elaine McIntire, of Maiden, Massachusetts, writes: "Madam Brundage certainly can draw, but she doesn't make her 'femmes' look scared. They are too beautiful. I liked Virgil Finlay's cover last month; hope he does more soon. That reminds me—is Mr. Ball going to give us more of Rald, prince of thieves? I sincerely wish he would. [Yes; you shall have more Rald stories.—.] But! what in tarnation is The Terrible Parchment? Is our friend Wellman trying to put my pet book Necronomicon on the spot? Well, he'd better not try! I'm up in arms! I like to think that there is such a thing. It gives me something to think about coming home alone late at night along dark streets. What about it, readers? Are we going to let that pass? ... For myself, I like nice, gray, werewolf stories. And the more murky, gory, and slinky a story is the better I like it."

Lawrence Miller, of Norfolk, Virginia, writes: "The stories in your magazine are all good. You have no kicks coming. But I have several suggestions that would tend to make the magazine perfect. The first: Why such a strict policy in your reprint department? As matters stand, readers are given only the shorter stories from your back issues. Weren't there some praiseworthy longer ones? Of course there is the old cry against long reprints—Authors must eat!—but you could easily circumvent that. When you plan to reprint a novelette, merely skip a reprint for one month and make up for it the second month. Or use smaller type. After all, the type in the Eyrie has not harmed my eyes. The second idea concerns those two great writers who died recently—Lovecraft and Howard. For a long time they carried the burden of writing  largely between them, and the great majority of your readers has probably never seen either of them. How about pictures? A photograph of each carried inside your cover. Make good likenesses of them (they deserve it) and have no writing on the picture! If necessary, charge extra for that particular issue. Or skip the other illustrations. Or even skip the stories. But give us those photographs. I will close with an appreciation of Henry Kuttner. He is the most versatile artist to ever appear in. The Jest of Droom Avista is every bit as good as The Eater of Souls, which up to last month was the best ever printed. He is one of the two really worthwhile weird poets. The other is—or was—Edgar Allan Poe. Let's have another as good as Ragnarok."

Gertrude Hemken, of Chicago, writes: "Comes my monthly gab-letter to aggervate and p'raps delight you. Fustest of all, I must express my complete and wholly satisfactory pleasure at The Abyss Under the World. Gracious me, I still feel as though I had been awakened from a strange and charming dream—particularly that tour along the spur with the chasm below—soundless and depthless—now I want to go back to sleep and continue that dream, only I know I must wait. Still there is a satisfaction that the story will be completed, whereas a real dream from which one awakens, seldomly is finished if an attempt is made to try that, (Gosh, that sounds garbled—but I trust you know what my object is.) Anyhow, I feel