{"id":29647,"date":"2019-08-06T22:39:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T19:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=29647"},"modified":"2022-07-07T10:06:35","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T10:06:35","slug":"on-that-elbow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2019\/08\/06\/on-that-elbow\/","title":{"rendered":"On that elbow"},"content":{"rendered":"

After many decades, I think I may have finally figured out that “titan elbow” in the 1924 story “The Shunned House”. It’s always bugged me… “an elbow, why an elbow”<\/em>? Even Joshi is seemingly very slightly puzzled and uses the work “merely” in his summary of the story… “the shape was merely the \u201ctitan elbow\u201d…”. Burleson rather more bluntly notes than an elbow seems… “at this crucial moment, a bit jarring, even a little comic”.<\/p>\n

The damnable Indiana censorship of 1924 is why it’s an “elbow”, I’d suggest. The quick reader was meant to infer the correct body part from the description, spurred by the hint of a double-meaning in “doubled in two”.<\/p>\n

The surface I uncovered was fishy and glassy—a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions of translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form. There was a rift where a part of the substance was folded over. The exposed area was huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter. Still more I scraped, and then abruptly I leaped out of the hole and away from the filthy thing; frantically unstopping and tilting the heavy carboys, and precipitating their corrosive contents one after another down that charnel gulf and upon the unthinkable abnormality whose titan elbow<\/em> I had seen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note also that the tale was written at the exact moment in time when Lovecraft’s short marriage was falling apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After many decades, I think I may have finally figured out that “titan elbow” in the 1924 story “The Shunned …<\/p>\n

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