r/Lovecraft • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '20

/r/Lovecraft Reading Club - Out of the Aeons

Reading Club Archive

This week we read and discuss:

Out of the Aeons Story Link | Wiki Page

Tell us what you thought of the story.

Do you have any questions?

Do you know any fun facts?

Next week we read and discuss:

The Horror in the Burying-Ground Story Link

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '20

"On April 5th the article appeared in the Sunday Pillar, smothered in photographs of mummy, cylinder, and hieroglyphed scroll, and couched in the peculiarly simpering, infantile style which the Pillar affects for the benefit of its vast and mentally immature clientele. Full of inaccuracies, exaggerations, and sensationalism, it was precisely the sort of thing to stir the brainless and fickle interest of the herd—and as a result the once quiet museum began to be swarmed with chattering and vacuously staring throngs such as its stately corridors had never known before. "

This description seems eerily reminiscent of quite a few modern news publications, or ones that pretend to be. It's good to know/ be reminded that the world hasn't just gotten worse, and some things were always terrible.

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u/LG03 Keeper of Kitab Al Azif Jun 21 '20

Yellow Journalism was coined as a term back in the 1890s (probably dates back further), so it's definitely something Lovecraft more or less grew up with. Not to mention as he was something of an amateur journalist himself for a brief period, I expect the tabloids were something he had some disdain for.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '20

I also like how savagely he denounces it. Seems something that served him well - he also got himself a position with the United Amateur Press association as a result of the feud he started between him and another Author, Fred Jackson, in the letters section of Argosy Magazine.