Weird Tales
At times, surrealism came close to being unanalyzable—that was certainly the case with some of Lamantia’s poems. The point was the experience, not whether the poem could be run through the usual English 101 formulas—symbolism, allusion, etc. Thus, the poem stood outside of any explanatory framework, could not be reduced to physical equations or chemical symbols. Fort was important to that—an important to an even more radical proposal: that experience, itself, not just experienced processed through poetry, could be indescribable, and thus a space beyond science and scientific explanation. This lineament of Forteanism was advanced by the so-called weird writers. Weird writers were most easily identified with the pulp magazine Weird Tales, but they could trace the tradition of their literature back into the nineteenth century, through Ambrose Bierce (about whom Fort wrote), Algernon Blackwood, Rider Haggard (one of Henry Miller’s influences) to Edward Bulwer-Lytton (a fiction writer who seems to have inspired Helena Balavatsky’s Theosophy). In the late 1940s, the names most associated with weird tales (and Weird Tales) were probably Clark Ashton Smith, who lived in Auburn and inspired Lamantia as well as a number of Fortean pulp writers, and H. P. Lovecraft, whose stories had come to the attention of the surrealists. Weird tales, in their best moments, were characterized by their ability to evoke difficult to articulate emotions of fear and horror and, especially, uncanniness. Lovecraft, for example, was known for his cosmic vision, in which humanity was but a small and irrelevant part of a vaster and more wild universe than could possibly be imagined. (Fort, in turn, influenced to certain degree both Smith and Lovecraft.)
Probably the best example of the phenomenon of the weird in San Francisco comes from visits that Robert Barbour Johnson and George Hass made to the Monterey area, near where Henry Miller lived. The glen had what Johnson described as “a strangely unpleasant atmosphere.” Haas felt felt “oppressed there” and a friend “magnetized,” her legs made to “tingle.” This was an phenomena that could only be experienced. Words were inadequate, and explanation useless. It was a quality of the glen that could not be otherwise described that existing—in the manner of the stories of Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft. Indeed, Johnson based one of his early stories on his visiting the glen, “They” (1936). Tame by today’s standards, “They” tells the story of a visitor who meets someone whose job it is to guard a horrible secret; this narrator tells the story of how he came to be in the position to the visitor, who hardly says a word. Very little action occurs in the course of the story. The whole point seems to be the creation of a feeling of foreboding.
This interest in the odd, the indescribable seems fringe—and it was. But among aficionados of the emotion, it was important, and the Bay Area Forteans had a good sense of how to create it. In “Far Below,” published by Weird Tales in 1939, Johnson followed a similar pattern as in “They.” A man visits the New York subway—although Johnson notes he based it on “Forest Hill Tunnel” in San Francisco—where he meets what amounts to an occult police: a former zoologist who has been tasked to guard a stretch of subway tunnel that is constantly attacked by some bizarre creatures, part ape, part mole. These Johnson borrowed from Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model,” although the idea of an occult police may have come from Fort, who wrote about such a force in Book of the Damned. At the end of the story, the visitor notes that the former zoologist is himself turning into one of the creatures. The story was well-received, and continues to be. It was chosen as the best story ever to appear in Weird Tales, received encomiums from critic S. T. Joshi, and was widely reprinted. Again, though, the story is tame by modern standards, lacks action—opting instead to create mood—and distances the reader through Johnson’s narrative device. Nonetheless, it does manage to make subways feel weird—uncanny.
At times, surrealism came close to being unanalyzable—that was certainly the case with some of Lamantia’s poems. The point was the experience, not whether the poem could be run through the usual English 101 formulas—symbolism, allusion, etc. Thus, the poem stood outside of any explanatory framework, could not be reduced to physical equations or chemical symbols. Fort was important to that—an important to an even more radical proposal: that experience, itself, not just experienced processed through poetry, could be indescribable, and thus a space beyond science and scientific explanation. This lineament of Forteanism was advanced by the so-called weird writers. Weird writers were most easily identified with the pulp magazine Weird Tales, but they could trace the tradition of their literature back into the nineteenth century, through Ambrose Bierce (about whom Fort wrote), Algernon Blackwood, Rider Haggard (one of Henry Miller’s influences) to Edward Bulwer-Lytton (a fiction writer who seems to have inspired Helena Balavatsky’s Theosophy). In the late 1940s, the names most associated with weird tales (and Weird Tales) were probably Clark Ashton Smith, who lived in Auburn and inspired Lamantia as well as a number of Fortean pulp writers, and H. P. Lovecraft, whose stories had come to the attention of the surrealists. Weird tales, in their best moments, were characterized by their ability to evoke difficult to articulate emotions of fear and horror and, especially, uncanniness. Lovecraft, for example, was known for his cosmic vision, in which humanity was but a small and irrelevant part of a vaster and more wild universe than could possibly be imagined. (Fort, in turn, influenced to certain degree both Smith and Lovecraft.)
Probably the best example of the phenomenon of the weird in San Francisco comes from visits that Robert Barbour Johnson and George Hass made to the Monterey area, near where Henry Miller lived. The glen had what Johnson described as “a strangely unpleasant atmosphere.” Haas felt felt “oppressed there” and a friend “magnetized,” her legs made to “tingle.” This was an phenomena that could only be experienced. Words were inadequate, and explanation useless. It was a quality of the glen that could not be otherwise described that existing—in the manner of the stories of Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft. Indeed, Johnson based one of his early stories on his visiting the glen, “They” (1936). Tame by today’s standards, “They” tells the story of a visitor who meets someone whose job it is to guard a horrible secret; this narrator tells the story of how he came to be in the position to the visitor, who hardly says a word. Very little action occurs in the course of the story. The whole point seems to be the creation of a feeling of foreboding.
This interest in the odd, the indescribable seems fringe—and it was. But among aficionados of the emotion, it was important, and the Bay Area Forteans had a good sense of how to create it. In “Far Below,” published by Weird Tales in 1939, Johnson followed a similar pattern as in “They.” A man visits the New York subway—although Johnson notes he based it on “Forest Hill Tunnel” in San Francisco—where he meets what amounts to an occult police: a former zoologist who has been tasked to guard a stretch of subway tunnel that is constantly attacked by some bizarre creatures, part ape, part mole. These Johnson borrowed from Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model,” although the idea of an occult police may have come from Fort, who wrote about such a force in Book of the Damned. At the end of the story, the visitor notes that the former zoologist is himself turning into one of the creatures. The story was well-received, and continues to be. It was chosen as the best story ever to appear in Weird Tales, received encomiums from critic S. T. Joshi, and was widely reprinted. Again, though, the story is tame by modern standards, lacks action—opting instead to create mood—and distances the reader through Johnson’s narrative device. Nonetheless, it does manage to make subways feel weird—uncanny.
