The Hound

 Happy 2025 to my followers (both of you). This is my reading (apologies for the rasping throat, recovering from a mild infection) of H P Lovecraft's florid tale of "The Hound" (1924). The book was a Yuletide gift from a close friend who knows my literary tastes.

The two central characters of this tale (St John and the unnamed narrator) put me in mind of the wealthy adolescent murderers Loeb and Leopold who abducted and killed a child to prove their own intellectual superiority in 1924. That said, this story was written a couple of years before the crime took place, so they were clearly not the inspiration for Lovecraft - though maybe he had met people very much like them within his social circles. When my throats recovers, I might record a few more of the shorter stories.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get my Meaning?

The meaning of life is a topic that has taxed the greatest (and the least able) minds since the dawn of human existence. It was brought to mind again recently in a discussion with a friend who suggested that having a meaning to one’s life was vital to good mental health. Numerous psychologists, philosophers and scholars agree both a sense of purpose, and the degree of spiritual reflection that precedes finding a purpose, are highly beneficial. It is better to have a sense of why you are here than to merely trudge from day to day in a largely pointless routine. In fact, many have argued that just having a purpose in itself is actually far more important than the exact nature of the purpose. One of the key questions in the matter of meaning is the source of that meaning and what is actually more than a linguistic nicety ~ do we discover the meaning of our lives, or create it? That is to say, is the meaning already determined (whether by a god, Wyrd, karma or anything  else) and ...
Read more

Jung's Dark Father

Image
 A few reflections on the archetype of the Dark Father for the monthly discussion of the Suffolk Jungian Circle. If you would like to join in the virtual discussion, let me know and I will send you the link (Wednesday 27th November at 7.30pm).
Read more

Adonais

Image
I was asked to conduct the funeral of a Wiccan lady, which took place this afternoon. The family had chosen a number of poems, including this excerpt from Percy Shelley's 'Adonais'. I've recorded it here because it is a beautiful piece and it might well be useful for anyone else who might be organising a funeral for a pagan or a pantheist at some point and need inspiration.
Read more