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Study 055 - Black Man with a Horn - Part 3 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-08-24 12:59:01
Edited:
2023-10-06 09:04:34
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Listen in as we conclude our coverage of the T.E.D. Klein mythos novella Black Man with a Horn!

Special thanks to reader Erik Peabody of Viking Guitar Productions. You can hear Erik's FULL READING of T.E.D. Klein's amazing story The Events at Poroth Farm on the Horror Hill podcast! Listen on YouTube here!

And here's that article on the Tcho-Tcho from Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

Next up: The Creeper in Darkness 

Comments

Rob Valentine

Great coverage, guys! This is one I've been hoping you'd get around to for years. I love how oblique the details in this story are, but all the gruesome clues are there. In short, I get the impression that Shugoran's MO is to stick its 'horn' over your face and suck your lungs out through your mouth, which is why Mortimer says on the plane, "Don't do it to me here!".

Matthew Alderman

I have to say that I had assumed from the title this would be some sort of chilly Folk Horror New England story about the “Black Man” of Puritan witchcraft fears with a Poroth twist, with the horn being an animal horn of some sort. I could even imagine the crude but eerie folk art cover illustration. TED Klein knows how to surprise.

Eli Wennstrom

Thanks for covering this one, I definitely need to look further into TED Klein, both stories you’ve covered have been so eloquent and creepy in a sub-dermal way. I also really appreciate your discussion at the end about the pain that often comes with writing— as a fellow writer at the outset of my career, I often feel that strain when I sit down to actually do the damn thing. Unrelated, but I’d like to throw Rachel Ingalls into the hopper as a strange author to read in the future! Mrs. Caliban is her most well-known novella, but I think you guys would have a blast with Inheritance. Think somewhere between Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter.

Illegal_Structures

Great coverage, as always! I’m sure TED would approve. I agree that the horror of the story is mostly existential, but, as you guys suggest, I think there are also some silver-linings. The phrase “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to come” could be read as a statement about Lovecraft’s legacy and his eventual reappraisal, as well as the countless original creative works which he has inspired. Over time, many talented writers and commentators (including you, Chad and Chris) have enriched our understanding of horror, and fiction in general, by playing in the sandbox left to us by HPL. In this sense, with the accumulation of talent over time, things do keep getting better with age.

Jeremy Impson

FYI, since this post, my podcatcher has been reporting that the RSS feed image URL is corrupt. In my RSS feed it's listed as "//s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/patreon-media/p/campaign/1715477/04b7d7b70ccb4b9aa5084be20824268a/1" It seems to be missing the leading "https:"

Ada Terrill

I found a great reading of next week’s story on YouTube by HorrorBabble. I’ve never come across that channel before and I’m pretty delighted to have found it. Just search The Creeper in Darkness on YouTube

Jim Cannon

"Scuba gear," huh? Does that count as "nautical looking"?

It's a Ghost.

I suspect Lovecraft was a very big whoop to Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, and many others, which I think is the kind of thing that is most important. Because we all fade away with time. And even with the very few whose impact continues on and on (e.g. Shakespeare), people still wonder who the real person really was or what they were like. Which is to say Frank Belknap Long will always have known Howard more than we ever will.

Innsmouth Gold

Can't help but feel that Klein is riffing on Long's Horror from the Hills here. The idol of Chaugnar Faugn, the elephant god, is stolen from his Tcho-tcho like worshippers and brought to the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts. Hijinks ensue... It's an excellent story, one of FBL's best, and also spawned a great CofC scenario, though I can't remember which collection it was in! Elephant gods may never forget, but at 60 I have trouble even remembering where I put my glasses. Great show, as always.

Pagurus

Your insightful discussion of cosmic horror = realization of our total insignificance really got me thinking. I agree for the most part, but I think there is an element for consolation or even resentful wish fulfillment in there as well: So I am a failure despite my best efforts, but in the end, not even my failure matters. And what is more, all the accomplishments of Ozymandias, Shakespeare etc. matter just as little. I am totally justified in my mediocrity and in fact superior in my awareness. Bottom line: Cosmic horror appeals to our pettiness on so many levels...

Ravewolf

I was just a teen when I first read this story. Does it hit differently now that I'm a bit older? Maybe a little, but not entirely. I never really cared so much about being remembered per se or about cosmic significance. And, after all, I was hardly so lacking in imagination as a teen so as not to be able to be drawn into imagining the experience of the older person in the story. So, I had already been over these issues in my mind way back then. But it did get me to be thinking about these themes at an early age, which is part of the the usefulness of speculative fiction. Part of the problem of cosmic horror though is that it places an actually very subjective idea (significance itself as judged in human terms) over things, tries to codify it by some often pretty arbitrary standard (per Lovecraft we are insignificant because...the cosmos is bigger or the old ones are more ancient or something?) and then somehow also tries to rely on supposedly objective claims regarding materialist science as support for it. It's almost a contradiction - "Thing X is objectively bigger/more ancient etc. than us, therefore we are subjectively insignificant, because reasons. But don't get me wrong, my subjective value judgment is purely scientific and stuff though."

Jeffrey Kahrs

A few things I really love about this story 1. Like I said before the elegiac nature of the meditation about death

Pete Williams

The Irish phrase for the Devil is "An Fear Dubh" (pronounced something like "an far dove"), which literally translates as The Black Man.