Gathered Dust and Others

I am thrice honored to have the opportunity to write an introduction for highly regarded weird literature author W. H. Pugmire, and so I realized I would be a bit challenged in regard to what I might say this time that I haven’t covered before. Not that I am ever at a loss in my enthusiasm for Pugmire’s fiction, and the collection you hold in your hands is to my mind of particular merit, displaying as it does the breadth of Pugmire’s skills. Herein you will find work set in his infamous Sesqua Valley in the Pacific Northwest, but the settings are by no means limited to that location. Furthermore, there are prose poems in addition to story. There are lengthy works but also the very brief (but no less powerful!) vignettes that were my first exposure to his writing. No, the challenge I would face when composing this introduction would be of another kind, the nature of which I could not have foreseen.

A few years ago at my blog I posted an interview with Pugmire that went over quite well, so my first thought was to invite the author to do a new and updated interview here as the real focus of this introduction. To that end, I sent an email to the author. And another. And another. I realized he might be preoccupied; to complete this book, which I also edited, he had immersed himself in a frenzy of creativity that had consequently required him to set aside other projects of his in the works. Surely he must be busy now with resuming those neglected projects. But as the days went by, and more emails and even an attempt to reach him by phone elicited no response, I admit that I grew a bit anxious (dare I admit, impatient?) about completing my introduction so that I might be free to return to projects of my own that I had been forced to set aside while editing this collection. And so, I thought, why not simply reuse the interview I’d posted at my blog, since it had never been in print? What follows then is the bulk of that interview…but what follows the interview is more of my confusion and anxiousness regarding the strange disappearance of Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire.

2: The February 26, 2009 Interview

W. H. Pugmire is an irony, a paradox, one of my very favorite writers. Why? Well, he plainly identifies himself as a Lovecraftian author, and writes stories that often link directly to the Cthulhu Mythos, and yet he is also one of the most unique fantasists I have ever read. His work, his voice, is distinctly his own. Where Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant dark stories creep one out for being so bleakly sterile, so lacking in a sense of humanity, Wilum’s work is quite the opposite – seething with tormented, but also exultant, emotion. His stories are often about outsiders finding either ghastly doom or cosmic communion (depending on how accepting they are of the fantastical events that are presented to them), with a recurring theme of transformation. His style is richly poetic. Here s an excerpt from his story THE MILLION-SHADOWED ONE (which, incidentally, Wilum wrote for my son Colin when he was discovered at age four to be autistic):

“The small creature hobbled close, and I took in the weird shape of its head, the cloudy and colorless eyes, and mutation of its ungodly form. It took my hand and brought it to its wide nostrils. Smiling, it shut its awful eyes, began to shudder, and I felt my blood grow cold as its fleshy form began to blur, to grow momentarily indistinct. And my hand, the hand it held, faded as well, and with that invisible hand I seemed to touch another realm, a place beyond the rim of time and space.”

This excerpt demonstrates so many of Wilum’s skills. Eerie imagery, striking imagination, poetic prose, a sense of the cosmic and a melancholy poignancy, all in one brief passage. That pretty much says it all about Pugmire. Or does it? I decided to let him do the telling, himself, in the following little interview:

* * *

JET: Wilum, most of your work takes place in your own milieu of Sesqua Valley, in the Pacific Northwest. How, why, and when did this setting occur to you?

WHP: It was around 1974, when I decided to become a famous Cthulhu Mythos writer just like my heroes Brian Lumley and August Derleth. When young Ramsey Campbell first began to write Mythos fiction, which he sent to Derleth, Ramsey set his tales in HPL’s Arkham, Dunwich, &c — and Derleth wisely told him to invent his own setting, based on a place he knew. I instantly wanted to base my milieu on North Bend and the Snoqualmie Valley. It had to have a “qua” sound to it, like so many towns here in the Northwest, so I came up with Sesqua. North Bend’s hypnotic Mount Si became my Mount Selta. Later, the area was used for TWIN PEAKS.

JET: The silver-eyed natives of Sesqua Valley are very attuned to the magic of their valley, as opposed to many Lovecraft characters who are only destroyed by their encounters with the fantastic. And your work contains a lot of supernatural elements, where Lovecraft’s did not. What else do you think differentiates your work from HPL’s, and where do you think your work aligns with his?

WHP: The reason I write weird fiction is to pay tribute to H. P. Lovecraft — that was how I began, and that need to pay tribute is still keen within me. I am an OBSESSED LOVECRAFTIAN and hope to remain so forever. When I began writing I was a clueless Cthulhu kid, indoctrinated by Derleth’s TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS and Lin Carter’s A LOOK BEHIND THE CTHULHU MYTHOS. From those gents I “learned” that the way to pay tribute to HPL was to invent your own Old One monster and your own Dark Book — all of the stupid clichés. As I matured, I sensed that I needed to “return to Lovecraft” and let his fiction alone inspire my Mythos work. But my imagination isn’t cosmic — it’s supernatural. Where my fiction aligns with HPL’s is in my obsession to write Literature, to create literary art, to write beautifully. In themes, we are very different. My fiction is emotional, his is intellectual. Most of his characters flee from the horrors; mine ARE the horrors, or long to be so. But this, too, I learned from Lovecraft, from the endings of “The Outsider” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” where the narrators embrace that which makes them Outsiders.

JET: In recent years I’ve noticed that you have used recurring characters in your Sesqua Valley stories, such as Nelson, the goat-faced sculptress Edith, the canine-faced poet Richard Lund, Adam Webster, the Whateley siblings, and most notably Sesqua’s “firstborn,” Simon Gregory Williams. What inspired you to do this?

WHP: In writing about the small town of Sesqua Valley, I had to portray its inhabitants. I love recurring characters like Randolph Carter and Titus Crow. So I just naturally had characters return from story to story. Once in a while I had to create a new one, to help move the series along. My most popular character, and my personal favorite, is Simon Gregory Williams. He’s such a bad-ass freak.

JET: You’ve also been expanding on and revising earlier work, and writing longer fiction than you once did. How did this come about, and how do you think it’s working out for you?

WHP: Stanley Sargent (
another talented writer of the Mythos – ed.
). He kept daring me to try and write a novelette. I never thought I could. I knew I wanted to grow and mature as a writer, and one way of maturing was to write longer tales. So I began to experiment. After coming home from my first Lovecraft Film Festival, I had to complete THE FUNGAL STAIN. I told myself, “Okay, I’m gonna write a story and it’s gonna be FIFTY PAGES!” Instead of writing that story in longhand, the only way I used to compose, I typed the rough on the typer, so that I knew it would come to fifty typed pages. And when I completed that polish of “Your Metamorphic Moan,” it was fifty pages exactly! And now it’s much easier to write stories of length. My finest story is the one I wrote for Joshi’s BLACK WINGS anthology, “Inhabitants of Wraithwood.” It is also my longest tale, over 13,000 words. Now, I approach story ideas in a different way, as a mature artist with new-honed skills. But my core inspiration remains the same — to pay fictive tribute to Lovecraft.

JET: Besides Lovecraft, who are some of your favorite authors?

WHP: I don’t read modern horror. My one modern book addiction is biographies of writers, painters, poets, bohemians — those I DEVOUR! My favorite authors are Oscar Wilde, Henry James, William Shakespeare, Thomas Ligotti, Franz Kafka. I have a passion for poetry. I recently got the Penguin collections of Maugham’s short stories, and I’m enjoying those. I need Literature with a capital L. I need works that nourish my mind and soul, that instill within me that burning ache to join the club and write, write, write!

JET: What is your work routine like? Do you write in the day, in the night? For long or short stretches? Do you listen to music while you write, and do you drink your favorite orange cappuccino during this time?

WHP: Oh my gawd! — orange cappuccino was such a drug, as you well recall. Now it’s too harsh, I cannot drink it! Real coffee gives me heartburn. When I returned to Mormonism, I tried to give up all forms of coffee, but that proved as impossible as giving up Dior lipstick. Now I drink General Foods decaf French Vanilla — it’s my fake coffee heaven. I have no routine because I lack all discipline, alas. Since going online I am now accessible to publishers and I’m getting more and more offers. So I need to write full-time. I moved in with my mom, who is crippled with age and can no longer live alone; and I have some friends who are supporting me as Patrons — so deliciously Victorian! I try to write whenever I can. If the weather is good and mom wants to do yard work, then my writing day is pretty much shot. I spend a lot of time sitting here before my keyboard TRYING to write. Or I’ll sit here and read Wilde, Poe and Lovecraft and make notes which bloom into inspiration for stories. I need absolute silence when I’m writing, can’t listen to Barbra or Boy George — although I’ve tried, but then two hours have gone by with me sitting here singing “People” and “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” but with nothing on my laptop screen. When it does begin to flow — and that is when I am the happiest girl on earth — then I write very very quickly. Zoom! I now write all roughs right on ye laptop, then I go and polish, restructure, rewrite entire pages. I’ll print out a page that seems okay and read it aloud, and then do some more polish on it. The important thing, for me, is to always be here, sitting at the keyboard, trying to write, or pretending that I’m trying to write. Sooner or later, it begins to flow.

JET: How did you become attracted to writing? And why weird literature?

WHP: I‘ve always written. As a gay boy I wrote my own Broadway musicals, book, lyrics and music. As a young Mormon I wrote skits and little plays for the church. When I discovered FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND I began to do my horror film fanzines, and for the one I did in college I had Robert Bloch write a tribute to Forry Ackerman. When the church sent me to Ireland as a Mormon Missionary, they wouldn’t let me watch horror films — too evil. I was corresponding with Bloch, so I began to buy his books, and also anthologies that had his stories in them. I got hooked on weird fiction, had to buy a wee suitcase just for all of the British horror paperbacks I was collecting. When I love something, I need to express that love with writing. So I began to write horror fiction. Came home and discovered Arkham House and became a Cthulhu nut. The more I studied Lovecraft’s fiction and read his letters, and the more I read S. T. Joshi’s LOVECRAFT STUDIES, the more I wanted to write mature, artistic Lovecraftian fiction. I’m now just beginning to do so.

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