I agree that 'The Alchemist' clearly is a juvenile story (i.e. the narrative technique isn't fleshed out yet and contains numeral 'mistakes') and also that at least the first paragraph consists of nice evocative sentences. I was curious what S.T. Joshi had to say about this tale, so I looked it up in his 'The Weird Tale'. He's actually quiet positive about this story because of how Lovecraft handles the supernatural in a (according to him) innovative way: first the 'typical' supernatural explanation seems to be a familiy curse (so, sorcery), but then the typical HPL-way of wanting to use a natural explanation causes the solution of a living human being, killing the aristocratic scions. Then, Joshi explains, Lovecraft puts the supernatural back in by having this alchemist to prolong his life unnaturally. I myself think that this latter was way to obvious in the tale (but yes, Lovecraft still had to learn better story telling techniques). On the other hand Joshi's take on it in itself (as a new way of approaching the supernatural) is interesting.
He also points at the typical Lovecraftian archetype of 'the very old man' which has its starting point in this tale (and indeed he has given one of his tales the name 'The Terrible Old Man'). I think this is something to go back to when discussing other HPL tales, like 'The Picture in the House' or 'Cool Air'.
@thomasiota I think I'm one of the few who discovered Lovecraft through a book and not through an RPG or metal, this book being a collection of stories from August Derleth (gathering dust in my mother's bookshelf). But I played AD&D (and D&D 3rd ed.) a lot myself some 25 years ago. I always was a dwarf, so I had to crawl dungeons 😉
Both The Nameless City (being a sort of overture to The Mountains of Madness) and He are among my top favorite Lovecraft stories. The second sentence of He is one of the most Lovecraftian sentences of his oeuvre I think:
'My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyse, and annihilate me.'
I published a collection of my own weird horror/magical realist stories (in Dutch: Gepelde aarde) and I've had three of them translated. This week I started to get them published in ezines. (But as I understand it, that could take a long time.) Look at the Claytemple Fiction forum for some help I got on this topic: https://www.claytemplemedia.com/forum/claytemple-fiction/publishing-my-translated-weird-tales.
I see now that Wattpad can also be used for Dutch texts, but I don't know if that will work as well as for English texts. In any case I'm going to look into it - and certainly see what else you've written!
@thomasiota It took a while, but today at last I read your story 'I commenced my descent'. I really liked it, especially with the original next to it to see what changes you made (that is: at the beginning, most of the second half was completely new). I think it's a really good 'aemulatio' of Lovecrafts' story - it was well fixed and far more suspenseful, especially the 'dungeon crawling' part. Lovecraft himself wrote this dungeon crawling parts of course in an unforgettable way in his later stories, in particular in 'Mountains of Madness'.
Like Glenn I think your story is very publishable, but I know myself which bumps are to overcome when you want to do that. However, I hope we can read more of your writing in the future!
I was unaware of this show, so thank you for that!
I feel your pain about figuring out how to publish. It's the part of writing that isn't fun and the marketplace is just getting worse and worse.
Thanks very much for reading it, I'm glad there was some fun to be had! As far as publishing goes, I'm sadly a newbie. I've checked out the Writer's Market guides, but haven't yet broken any ground there. I'm intrigued by the fanzine idea, but unsure about process (submission, reply times, multiple submission, etc.). I've looked into self-publishing a bit (because it seems to have fewer variables) and was tempted by Draft2Digital as well as the Kindle marketplace, but haven't bitten that bullet yet either. ...Hmm, maybe I ought to just get off my duff? I won't lie... I really enjoyed reworking this story and it did make me think I'd like to try more, but I hadn't considered attempting an entire book. I'd definitely think twice about tackling the masterpieces, but there are some stories that I always wished were better ("Medusa's Coil" comes to mind... started off strong, ended up blatantly, stupidly racist with a copious side-dish of misogyny). That one isn't quite in the public domain yet (as far as I know), but there are some low-hanging fruits that are. (There is an IMO-excellent ranking of most of HPLs solos and collabs here: https://freelanceflaneur.blogspot.com/2017/01/ranking-h-p-lovecraft-stories.html) You guys and your writing challenges!! ;) Thanks again! Y'all stay safe and be well! P. S. as far as reworks go, have you checked out "The Lovecraft Investigations" from BBC Radio 4? They're making no attempt to mimic Lovecraft's style (instead, capturing only major characters and settings, and filling in alternative action, similar to the treatment of Doyle's work in the recent Sherlock BBC TV miniseries), but the result is still some pretty-darn-good Lovecraftian podcasting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06spb8w
This is really wonderful and thank you for taking us up on the challenge! I bet you could get this published in one of the numerous HPL fanzines if you're so inclined. In fact -- and this is a serious-business challenge -- I would definitely pick up an entire book of Lovecraftian rewrites like this, even of the masterpieces.
Hi, Fellows, I know it has been a while since this episode on "The Alchemist" debuted, but I have to say that I really enjoyed it. You asked questions that, for some reason, never even occurred to me. Where is Antoine's agency? Where is his arc? Why is Pierre, our one supporting character, so unsupportive? Also, you caught a number of more minor annoyances: Why is the framing narrator so old? Why are these nobles ignoring their tenants? Why did Antoine's father (having, himself, known of the curse for more than a decade) wait so long before starting a family? Why was Charles cursing in English? How does a peasant kid learn to read Latin and distill chemicals? All of this added up to a challenge that stuck with me, perhaps because I have always just read this story as-is. It seemed like the above issues would not be too hard to fix, so, encouraged by your detailed discussion, I decided to give it a try. In retrospect, they were hard to fix, especially if the fixes should remain consistent both among themselves and also with the rest of the story (oh, and turns out my Latin is more debased even than Charles's and my French is... worse). Still, if you happen to find yourselves with both the time and patience for a read, here is my attempt, published on Wattpad:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/249448511-i-commenced-my-descent Just clicking "Read" on that page should display the story. This version retains as much of the original text as I could manage, but is also clearly longer than the original. Also, I have to apologize for the minor formatting issues. I centered the section headers, byline, attribution, and Charles' curse, but Wattpad insists on left-justifying everything. Still, if you get a chance to check it out, I hope it proves enjoyable.
Yes, Lovecraft had something of an obsession with old men that I never really thought about before! And I'm looking forward to getting to all of these stories.
Joshi makes a good point here, too, that we can see Lovecraft's scientism very early on. Even his new supernatural element is scientific in that it's just a matter of chemistry not actual magic. This is something we should be paying more attention to as we cover HPL.