The Gloom of Gary Myers's Dreamlands

In June 1975, Arkham House published The House of the Worm by Gary Myers.  It is a small collection of ten short tales, described in the dust-wrapper blurb as an episodic novel, when it is really no such thing. August Derleth had published three of the tales in his Arkham Collector before his death in early July 1971, and he presumably already had the complete manuscript from the author, for Derleth told Lin Carter shortly before his death that “he had plans to issue a slim little book of Myers’ tales, with delightful illustrations by a new artist” (quoted from Carter’s Lovecraft: A Look Behind the “Cthulhu Mythos”—published in February 1972, p.179).  

The “new artist” was Allan Servoss (a write-up of a 2014 exhibition in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, can be found here), contributed ten stylish ink drawings, plus the dust-wrapper art. When the book was published, Myers was still 22 (a short Introduction, dated April 1974, had been added to the book), though the main manuscript must have been completed when he was 20. When Derleth published the eponymous story in the Arkham Collector in the Summer of 1970, Myers was "in his eighteenth year." 

Derleth was noted for publishing precocious youngsters. In the 1940s he published Ray Bradbury's first book at age 27, and Robert Bloch's at 28. In the 1960s, he published Ramsey Campbell's first book at 18. And the anthologies Derleth edited often contained young writers.

Myers's book has a reputation, bolstered by comments on the dust-wrapper, of it presenting "the author's own special insight" into Lovecraft's mythos, and while there is some truth to this, an equally important influence was the tales of Lord Dunsany, specifically, those in The Book of Wonder (1912) and Tales of Wonder (1916; US title The Last Book of Wonder). Of course Lovecraft's dream cycle tales have their own roots in Dunsany, but Myers also follows many of the tropes in Dunsany: thieves, idols, old women in black, gods, dooms, deserts and lost cities. Even with his nomenclature Myers is following Dunsany's lead. 

Two other tales that were published in The Arkham Collector were "Yohk the Necromance" (no. 8, Winter 1971) and "Passing of a Dreamer" (no. 9, Spring 1971). "The Return of Zhosp" appeared in HPL (1972), edited by Meade and Penny Frierson. One tale of that time that was not collected in the book, "The Gods of the Earth," appeared in the Arkham House anthology Nameless Places, edited by Gerald W. Page, and published in November 1975. 

What of the tales themselves?  Doubtless some will find their elliptical style elusive, for the plots are often simple, while it is the expository style filled with allusions and partial explanations that hold a good deal of the interest. Like Dunsany's tales, and even Lovecraft's, it is probably better to spread out  the stories and not read too many at the same sitting. Here is an extreme sample (loaded with Lovecraftian referents) from the title story:

He revealed the secrets the night-gaunts whisper to those luckless dreamers they snatch from the peak of Thoth, to drive them mad; and the appearance of a Dhole; and the meaning of certain rites performed in worship of the goddess N'tse-Kaambl whose splendour hath shattered worlds; and the blasphemous Word that toppled the thrones of the Serpent-priests. He traced the sign of Koth on the table, and told of things in the forbidden Pnakotic Manuscripts which if written here would damn the writer. Men left his House weeping or mad, never to return; all save three, the braver or perhaps the more foolish, who came to the House of the Worm on that last night.

Such doom and gloom predominates in the collection.  I note that the entire volume was reprinted in a much expanded form in 2013 as The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep. The 2013 edition, now out of print, was 248 pages, but a 2022 version of 292 pages is currently available, though I do not know if there are differences between these two editions, or if there are differences with regards to the texts of the 1975 collection.