n 1935, pulp magazine writer H.P. Lovecraft journeys from Providence,
R.I., to the remote town of Cross Plains, Texas, for an unannounced
visit to fellow pulpsmith Robert E. Howard, known to readers of Weird Tales magazine as the creator of Conan the Barbarian.
The normally reclusive Lovecraft has trekked to Texas out of desperation.
He has come into possession of an ancient Native American artifact, a
kachina doll. Carved on the kachina is the unmistakable, unspeakable visage
of the sea-god Cthulhu. But Cthulhu is just a monster Lovecraft made up, one
of the pantheon of imaginary cosmic horrors that populate his stories. Or so
he thought.
Cthulhu, it seems, is real, and his minions--the faceless, rubbery Night
Gaunts that plagued Lovecraft's childhood nightmares--have entered the
waking world to pursue Lovecraft, recover the kachina and unleash whatever
eldritch horror Cthulhu has planned. Lovecraft convinces Howard to
accompany him to California to visit writer Clark Ashton Smith, who has
found what seems to be a fragmentary translation of the dreaded
Necronomicon, which may hold the key to destroying the kachina and
keeping the Night Gaunts at bay.
Though reluctant to leave his dying mother, Howard joins Lovecraft, and
the two head west in Howard's beat-up '31 Chevy. Along the way they pick up
a passenger, Glory McKenna, a winsome young lady with a scandal-tainted
past. Neither Howard nor Lovecraft has been too successful with the ladies,
and Glory's presence stirs almost as much unease as the pursuing Night
Gaunts.
Writers turned reluctant heroes
Sadly, Lovecraft and Howard never met in real life, although they
corresponded avidly. Such a meeting might have taken place had their lives
not been cut tragically short: Howard, despondent over his mother's death,
committed suicide in 1936, while Lovecraft died of cancer in 1937 (the novel
blames the illness on malign emanations from the kachina).
Barbour and Raleigh vividly evoke the contrasting personalities of this
literary odd couple: the near-destitute New England recluse who fancied
himself a British aristocrat and "Two-Gun Bob," who lived vicariously
through stories of mighty-thewed barbarian kings. The authors do such a
thorough job of capturing their protagonists' quirks that their heroes rarely rise above the level of caricature.
The frequent shifts in point of view permit only brief glimpses into the
complex inner lives of the two men. And that's a shame, because the
real-life Lovecraft and Howard are more interesting than the serviceable-but-routine plot Barbour and Raleigh contrive for them. Efforts by other writers to revisit the "Cthulhu Mythos" seldom work, perhaps because the power of the Mythos is so deeply rooted in Lovecraft's own psyche. Treating the Mythos as just another shared world, like the Star Trek universe, misses the point.
Barbour and Raleigh seem to understand this, at least fleetingly. The most powerful passages in Shadows Bend involve a series of supernaturally induced visions experienced by Lovecraft and Howard. These visions, rendered with surreal intensity, confront the two men with the tragic, poignant terrors that dwell within their own souls.
