Gathered Dust and Others

by W.H. Pugmire, M. Wayne Miller (Illustrator)

With his first collection from Dark Regions Press, W. H. Pugmire continues his radical and obsessive reinterpretations of H. P. Lovecraft's brilliant fiction. Among the book's original pieces is the title story, "Gathered Dust," a sequel to J. Vernon Shea's "The Haunter of the Graveyard." Set in Arkham, this tale of utter strangeness concerns the legacy of Randolph Carter and a monstrous burying ground where the phantoms of the past linger so as to feed upon the living. In "Depths of Dreams and Madness" we journey to Pugmire's Sesqua Valley, wherein we find Lovecraft's artist, Richard Upton Pickman and Robert E. Howard's mad poet, Justin Geoffrey, tainted by the valley's supernatural lunacy. With "These Deities of Rarest Air," Pugmire continues his exploration of the prose-poem/vignette sequence, in a work that deliciously evokes the mystic aura of not only Lovecraft but Clark Ashton Smith as we ll. With artful decadence and a pen dipped into the dark fin-de-siecle poetry of Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, Pugmire celebrates his beloved genre of fantastic fiction with works that only his cracked skull could conceive. Jeffrey Thomas has provided a provocative Introduction. "Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire is the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have." - S. T. Joshi"

Genres: Horror, Weird Fiction, Lovecraftian, Short Stories, Fiction, Cthulhu Mythos

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire (born William Harry Pugmire, 1951–2019) was a writer of weird fiction and horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically were published as W.H. Pugmire (his adopted middle name derives from the story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe) and his fiction often paid homage to the lore of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S.T. Joshi described Pugmire as "the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have" and as one of the genre's leading Lovecraftian authors.

Wilum lived in Seattle, WA and wrote Cthulhu Mythos fiction full-time. He was the self-proclaimed "Queen of Eldritch Horror". Writing weird fiction was his life, but congestive heart failure slowed his writing. He considered his finest books to be Some Unknown Gulf of Night (Arcane Wisdom Press 2011), Uncommon Places (Hippocampus Press 2012) and The Tangled Muse (Centipede Press 2011).

Reviews

[Karl]

This limited hardcover edition is numbered 4 of 100 produced and is signed by W.H. Pugmire.

The complete name of the author is Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire.

Dark Regions press this books publisher states "With his first collection from Dark Regions Press, W. H. Pugmire continues his radical and obsessive reinterpretations of H. P. Lovecraft. Among the book's original pieces is the title story, "Gathered Dust," a sequel to J. Vernon Shea's "The Haunter of the Graveyard." Set in Arkham, this tale of utter strangeness concerns the legacy of Randolph Carter and a monstrous burying ground where the phantoms of the past linger so as to feed upon the living. In "Depths of Dreams and Madness" we journey to Pugmire's Sesqua Valley, wherein we find Lovecraft's artist, Richard Upton Pickman and Robert E. Howard's mad poet, Justin Geoffrey, tainted by the valley's supernatural lunacy. With "These Deities of Rarest Air," Pugmire continues his exploration of the prose-poem/vignette sequence, in a work that deliciously evokes the mystic aura of not only Lovecraft but Clark Ashton Smith as we ll. With artful decadence and a pen dipped into the dark fin-de-siècle poetry of Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, Pugmire celebrates his beloved genre of fantastic fiction with works that only his cracked skull could conceive. Jeffrey Thomas has provided a provocative Introduction."

Also available as a deluxe 26 lettered slipcased hardcover.

Contents:

vii - The Strange Case of Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, an Introduction by Jeffrey Thomas
viii - The February 26, 2009 an interview of W. H. Pugmire - by Jeffrey Thomas
017 - "Gathered Dust" • (Randolph Carter) - (2011)
047 - "Your Kiss of Corruption" - (1998)
051 - "Yon Baleful God" • (Cthulhu Mythos) - (1996) (variant of "The Baleful God")
055 - "Time of Twilight" - (1998)
059 - "These Deities of Rarest Air" - (Cthulhu Mythos) - (2011)
085 - "The Boy with the Bloodstained Mouth" - (1989)
087 - "The Woven Offspring" - (1998)
093 - "The Tangled Muse" - (2010)
109 - "Let Us Wash This Thing" - (2011)
115 - "Bloom of Sacrifice"- (1995) -(variant of "The Bloom of Sacrifice")
121 - "He Who Made Me Dream" - (1994)
125 - "Cool Mist" - (1987)
129 - "Descent into Shadow and Light" - (2011)
133 - "Serenade of Starlight" - (2002)
143 - "Graffito Flow" - (1991)
149 - "Depths of Dreams and Madness" - (2009)- (variant of "Into the Depths of Dreams and Madness")
175 - "Host of Haunted Air" - (2008)
187 - "A Vestige of Mirth" - (2008)

Cover by Wayne Miller

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her eyes, those colorless orbs, penetrated him with their staring, and her perfect mouth made love to the language she uttered. The artist, his hands itching for his pen, took in her mauve skin, her coils of tawny hair; and he marveled at how luxurious that hair looked in the misty light of the place, how it seemed in his imagination at times to writhe with an almost lecherous sentience.



As I bounced around the internet between several of my favorite weird fiction websites I had come across the name Pugmire on several occasions and decided to give this collection a spin. The book starts with a bang, Gathered Dust is an homage or sequel to J. Vernon Shea's The Haunter of the Graveyard which has always been a favorite of mine. I didn't enjoy the stories in the niddle of the book as much as the first few but the last 3 or 4, especially Host of Haunted Air and A Vestige of Mirth are fantastic.



We had one final fight about my mother-I demanded to be told about her, about why she had vanished when I was a boy. I knew instinctively that she had held the key to my mystery of hatching into this hateful world. She has visited me often, in my queerest dreams, and with each visit she looked a little altered. Often she was accompanied by two silent creatures, winged things with flesh as black as midnight, fiends without faces.



There are references to the Lovecraft world but Pugmire has also created his own little pocket of weird called Sesqua Valley. It's the kind of pocket you don't want to just stick your hand into blindly, too many sharp, pointy, oozy things inside. You could say this is Lovecraft with a darker, sharper edge. Some of these stories are told from the viewpoint of the fiends themselves. There is some sex both gay and straight but that is all secondary, looked down upon as unworthy of what is really important. There is also a recurring theme with eyes......not windows to the soul but windows to the void.



Coming to a stop, he held one hand to the quarter moon and made to it an esoteric sign, his sunken eyes flashing with keen expectancy. A number of people gathered around the cart and took up the queerest looking instruments I had ever seen. Simon chose a mammoth coiled horn-like thing that looked incredibly heavy, an instrument that reminded me of a shofar blown at Jewish holidays, but it didn't come from any ram of earthly existence.

[Phillip Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. It not only wears its influences on its sleeves; it celebrates them. Gothic imagery, southern trappings, and surprising chills. It's a hoot.

[Wilum Pugmire · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title story for this new collection appears here in its second version. The first version was written as an extension to my prose-poem/vignette sequence, "Uncommon Places" (first published in THE TANGLED MUSE), in which each numbered segment is inspired by entries from H. P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book. I decided that I wanted to use the final new ten-thousand words of "Uncommon Places" to tell a connected short story that would stand as a sequel to J. Vernon Shea's "The Haunter of the Graveyard," which he wrote for August Derleth's original edition of TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS. The plot of the story would be entirely dictated by entries in HPL's CB. So I found some choice entries, a few of which I now list:
[entry 112}--"Man lives near graveyard--how does he live? Eats no food."
[entry 219]--"Fog or smoke--assumes shape under incantations."
[entry 212] Strange human being (or beings) living in some ancient house or ruins far from populous district (either old N. E. or far exotic land). Suspicion (based on shape and habits) that not ALL is human."
[entry 165]--"Terrible trip to an ancient and forgotten tomb."
[entry 176]--"Man blindfolded and taken in closed cab or car to some very ancient or secret place."
Vernon Shea was pen-pals with Lovecraft when he was a kid, and near the end of his life he became my own favorite correspondent and chum. When Jim Turner revised TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS, he dropped Vernon's story from the book, and I then determined that I would someday write my own sequel to the story and dedicate it to Vernon's memory. When Dark Regions Press asked me for a book of tales, I decided to take that first version of my sequel and rewrite it as a single narrative, lengthen it a bit and remove some of the dreamy prose-poems that intruded on the narrative in the original version (which will be published in March in my next book from Hippocampus Press, UNCOMMON PLACES).

GATHERED DUST AND OTHERS also includes some tales that have appeared in various journals, ezines and anthologies but never collected in a hardcover collection of my own. I've also written a new tale set in Gershom, my city of exiles, and a new Sesqua Valley tale. I love the jacket illustration by Wayne Miller, and Jeffrey Thomas has provided an Introduction that is quite wonderful. It was such a pleasure to work with Dark Regions Press. This year they will publish another collection, ENCOUNTERS WITH ENOCH COFFIN, whut I wrote in collaboration with Jeffrey Thomas--and it is Lovecraftian to ye Core!

[Romuald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quote: ”[...] I knew from the lingering shadows in his eyes that he had been to that site where diseased shadow crept into his pulsing heart and altered his sanity.”

I first encountered Wilum Pugmire in various associations with Lovecraftian literature. I mentioned him earlier in my review of "Tales of Lovecraftian Horror No. 1" fanzine where his position on creating true alternativeness within Lovecraftian mythos, as well as editorship of the fanzine, impressed my poor soul as much as his spectacular - but not necessarily wide-known - footprint is within weird fiction genre. Sadly, Pugmire passed away in 2019.

”Gathered Dust and Others” was released in 2011 by Dark Regions Press, and is the first collection of short stories by Pugmire I read. I can't help but to be somehow really excited to read more of him, even if not all of his stories deliver excellence. It is a deranged, poetic prose which sometimes revolts but for the most part intrigues. Pugmire is unique in his ideas and deliverance, but he also bears similarities to classical Victorian literature, most notably to Oscar Wilde, and perhaps to Robert W. Chambers to some extent. "The Tangled Muse" story is probably one of the clearer examples of that. He is also not afraid to experiment with lengthy poetic prose erasing boundaries between what is prose and what is poetry ("These Deities of Rarest Air"). And while Pugmire is a clear admirer of H.P. Lovecraft, his similarities with Lovecraftian style go hand in hand with his clear distinction, too. Pugmire himself in an interview says: ”...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.” Finally, one can of course draw parallels to the master of weird fiction, Thomas Ligotti, but even here we have a clear contrast which Jeffrey Thomas in the book's introduction describes like this: ”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.”

Strong 4 stars for this collection.

Individual story ratings (most of the longer tales got 5 stars):

★★★★★ (5/5, excellent)
- (Introduction by Jeffrey Thomas)
- Gathered Dust
- Your Kiss of Corruption
- These Deities of Rarest Air
- The Woven Offspring
- The Tangled Muse
- Serenade of Starlight

★★★★☆ (4/5, good)
- Yon Baleful God
- Time of Twilight
- The Boy with the Bloodstained Mouth
- Let Us Wash This Thing
- Bloom of Sacrifice
- Cool Mist
- Host of Haunted Air

★★★☆☆ (3/5, ok)
- He Who Made Me Dream
- Descent into Shadow and Light
- Graffito Flow
- Depths of Dreams and Madness
- A Vestige of Mirth

[Tylor James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Willum H. Pugmire was a highly talented writer and prose stylist, and I admire him for this greatly. Even despite his overt tributes to his literary heroes (Oscar Wilde, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, etc.), he managed to create tales truly original to his passions; indeed, only Pugmire could have written these weird tales.

A voice of articulate originality; naked in its obsessions and manias; vibrant in its sensuous and unnerving descriptions. Truly, we need more writers like Pugmire---that is to say, writers who write only tales they could have written . . . as one observes in master storytellers such as Bradbury, Ellison, Gaiman, S. Jackson, Oates, etc.

I didn't care for the vignettes, I must admit. Despite their provocative imagery, I found difficulty in connecting with them as intensely as his longer, more absorbing tales. For instance, "Gathered Dust" was so wonderfully atmospheric, so rich in description, with outsider characters so intriguing in their fates and motives, I never once desired to put down the book.

"The Tangled Muse" is a nod to the late nineteenth century bohemia, with decadent flavors of Wilde intermixed with Lovecraftian themes, as well as Pugmire's signature ability to render the sublime and surreal into print-that-comes-to-life.

"A Serenade in Starlight", too, is a fine little Innsmouth tale, featuring a theme which recurs throughout the collection---mainly that of a outsider Protagonist realizing his true nature, and thus being accepted into a particularly strange and macabre society (which may be read as either tragic, or liberating).

While the vignettes felt groundless in their sheer fantasies, I very much admire Pugmire's ability to create a weird, disturbing, and antiquated atmosphere, populated by intriguing and (often quite smart and witty) characters.

[Otto Hahaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luulin, että olin jo ostanut kaikki WH Pugmiren helposti saatavat novellikokoelmat, mutta olihan siellä vielä tämä. Alussa on myös WHP:n haastattelu, joka avaa WHP:n taustaa. Hieman haikeutta on lukea, että hän suunnittelee kirjaa Maryanne K. Snyderin kanssa. Tämä ei ilmeisesti koskaan valmistunut, muutama novelli kyllä.

Tarinat ovat samanlaisia kuin ennenkin ja tämä ei ole yllätys, koska aika monihan näistä tarinoista on julkaistu jo muualla. Mutta WHP:llä oli tapana kirjoitella tekstejään uusiksi (joskus huomattavasti!), joten voi olla, että ihan identtisiä tarinoita ei löydy valmiiksi hyllystäsi. WHP:n tarinat ovat melkeinpä aina tuokiokuvia, jossa lopussa joku kuolee tai kokee jonkinlaisen ”pimeän valaistumisen”. Ei kannata odottaa, että tarinan hahmot erityisesti ehtivät kehittyä, koska hyvin nopeasti ovat jo hengettömiä. Tai hengettömiä jo tarinan alussa. Mutta tunnelman vuoksihan näitä luetaan. Proosarunoissa emme edes odota mitään muuta.

Richard Upton Pickman esiintyy tai ainakin vilahtaa muutamassa tarinassa, kuten myös Justin Geoffrey. Menetän nörttipisteitä myöntäessäni, että en kyllä heti muistanut kuka hän oli. Mutta internet-aikakaudella viittauksia ei tarvitse avata. Muutamassa tarinassa WHP kyllä vähän brassailee taidehistorian tuntemuksellaan. Sesqua-laaksossa käydään, mutta myös Gershomin kaupungin taiteilijakoloniassa, josta olisin halunnut kuulla lisää. Mutta kaikkea ei voi saada.

Voi olla sattumaa, että näissä tarinoissa on tavallista enemmän viitteitä ja vihjeitä ei-ihan-tavallisesta seksuaalisuudesta (mutta voi olla, että en ole vain pitänyt tarkkaa tukkimiehen kirjanpitoa muita kokoelmia lukiessani). Tästä joku muu varmaan osaa sanoa enemmän kuin minä.

[Akshit Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

W.H Pugmire is quite possibly the most fantastic prose stylist I have read so far. His writing is vivid, tender, dripping with gothic sensuality. Everything about his tales is superb, from the dialogue to the characters, the language, the imagery, the Lovecraftian references...it's all there. The stories themselves might not always be very intricate, but that hardly weighs when you're in for the ride with a wordsmith like WHP.

If I hadn't promised myself a degree of breadth in terms of authors I pick up, 'The Strange Dark One' would certainly be next. If time and fate allow, Pugmire and I shall meet again.

Favorites from this collection: 'These Deities of Rarest Air', 'The Tangled Muse', 'Let Us Wash This Thing', 'Cool Mist', 'Serenade of Starlight', 'Depths of Dreams and Madness', 'A Vestige of Mirth'.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pugmire writes a haunting tale that sings to you or gives you only a taste of the sacrifice in its rarest form imaginable. My overall favorite in this collection is “These Deities of Rarest Air” the prose in this title is the type of poetic song I’m talking about.

From macabre kisses leaving one in darkness of kindred reflections, the taste of sacrifice and all its pulpy remains, and a host of haunting air. All these tales bloom into a madness of lovely visual readings.
Other favorites listed below.

-Your Kiss of Corruption
-Yon Baleful God
-Time of Twilight
-Let is Wash This Thing
-Bloom of Sacrifice
-Depths of Dreams and Madness
- Host of Haunted Air

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genuinely original and creepy collection of stories and prose poems in the Lovecraft mythos, but better written than anything HPL ever made. Sad that I didn't know of the author before his untimely passing.

[Kevin Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some fresh takes for weird fiction and a nice addition to the broader Cthulhu Mythos.

There are homosexual characters, as well as themes of incest and assault. I thought it was handled fine, but I understand if some are put off.

[Gevera Piedmont · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't care for his writing style.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again Wilum delivers a fantastic collection of Mythos inspired horror! For anyone who loved his 'Sesqua Valley & Other Haunts' then this unholy mass of degenerate perfumed obscenities will be an intoxicating pleasure!

[Clayton Bye · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://horror.thedeepening.com/2012/0...