Customer Reviews

The Necronomicon Files: The Truth Behind The Legend

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been rereading and enjoying Lovecraft, man and boy, for fifty years now. I haven't been a full-blown fan, but I've absorbed several volumes of discussion and criticism. In depth of detail, documentation, readability and balance, this one is head and shoulders above anything else I've seen. Once I track down Daniel Harms' Encyclopedia Cthuliana, I'll be able to toss my old Lin Carter. Hey, it was about to start flaking and putrescing anyway.

I snapped up the Simon version of the Necronomicon the month Avon released it in 1980. I won't bore you with the tale here, but so many unsettling synchronicities attended the purchase that I didn't have the nerve to read through it for over a year. So my mind has definitely been open to taking it seriously. At the same time, I was familiar enough with HPL's descriptions of the mad Arab's book to know it didn't match up, and was at least partly hoax. What a pleasure to find that nearly a third of this book discusses Simon's opus, exploring it from just about every angle. I found the authors' conclusions completely convincing.

Harms is a Lovecraft scholar; he gets almost a third of the book to discuss the history of the Necronomicon as an artifact of the fiction written by HPL and his circle. Even if you are one of those fans who share Howard's complete confidence that the only things that ever really go bump in the night are turns of bad plumbing, this part of the book alone justifies its space on your shelf. There's a bit of biography, a look into the evidence on sources, and a masterfully clear timeline of how, story by story, the notion of the Necronomicon was fleshed out. Harms sticks to business, discussing the Cthulhu mythos only to the extent that it bears directly on some detail about the book. (The one thing I missed seeing here was a catalogue of all the other non-existent companion titles dreamed up by Bloch and Smith and Derleth and the crew.) A reasonably complete list of published titles purporting to be the Necronomicon, with summaries and evaluations, is here too.

Then Mr. Gonce picks up the story from the perspective of the impact of the idea of the Necronomicon on the occult subculture. Of the many supposed "Necronomicons" on offer, only a few claim to include usable spells and rituals. And of these, only the Simon volume is sufficiently explicit and complete to have enticed any significant number of readers to try the contents out. The results have been, as Warren Zevon might have put it, not that pretty at all. So the core of the book devotes itself to untangling the origins of the Simon version, explaining why it is a hoax, and looking at the phenomenon of the many cults, most of them very tiny, that have sprung up around that hoax. Its grimoire is a pastiche from many incompatible cultures and some invokings invented out of whole cloth. As a practicing pagan, Gonce believes many of these individual spells "work", but the incoherence of the whole system means they don't work very well, and amateurs will get into magickal trouble because the book doesn't indicate how to banish what is invoked. For practicing skeptics in his readership, he provides sobering examples of manipulative cults and even murders, which show that you don't need to believe in magick to know that in the hands of alienated teens the Simon edition is bad juju.

All this is rounded off with a hilarious roll call of films and TV shows that have played off the Necronomicon meme. Many of the film reviews are several pages long, with plot synopses probably more entertaining than the movies themselves. And then each is scored for fidelity to Lovecraft.

If you have only one book about Lovecraft in your library, other than a biography, this is probably the one you want. If your circle of friends includes dabblers (or adepts) in magick, it definitely is.

I've read just about everything BY Lovecraft and lots of stuff ABOUT Lovecraft, and this is one of the most valuable books, aside from HPL's own writing, that I have come across. In my early days I was haunted by the feeling that underneath Lovecraft's fiction were hints of something horribly TRUE, that his work has endured not only because of its artistic merits, but because he had somehow synthesized his voracious reading and vivid dreaming into content that tapped into archetypal sources of human fear. I spent a lot of time hunting for books he mentioned in his stories on his occultist characters' shelves - to ascertain for myself how much of what Lovecraft told was the "truth" and how much he made up - and I found, much to my relief, that many of those books do not exist.
But a few of them do: The Golden Bough, The Witch Cult in Western Europe ... and the Necronomicon. I actually own a number of published books claiming to be "the Necronomicon." There's a list of them in The Necronomicon Files, and I was amused to note that I own most of the publications on that list. I realized early on that none of these books are actually THE Necronomicon from Lovecraft's stories. That book isn't real, never was, and never will be. The question that remained for me was: how "real" are the various Necronomicons that are floating around out there?
The answer to that question, (at least as far as regards the notorious "Simon" edition - now published by Avon,) according to Harms and Gonce, is "real enough to be dangerous in the hands of the foolish." Gonce's section of this book is a wealth of information on the history and theory of Magick. Even if I hadn't been interested in the Necronomicon, this section would still be fascinating to read. I learned a lot of things I never would have even thought about before. The Necronomicon legend is lovingly debunked, but the mystical allure and spiritual danger of the book, whatever it is, are still preserved after reading The Necronomicon Files.
The listing of movies and TV shows was amusing but not useful from my perspective. I've seen more than a few "Lovecraft-inspired" movies and was so disappointed by each and every one of them that I have given up on the celluloid version of the HPL mythos.

As you can probably tell from the ratings, this book impresses those of us who have actually READ it (as the single reviewer giving it the low rating obviously has not . . . not even the dust cover or back of cover comments, apparently)!

Harms and Gonce have performed a scolarly study of the legendary tome of dreaded lore known as the Necronomicon. In their research, they examine the facts, the legends, and the history . . . and they place it firmly right where it belongs: a creation that originally sprang from the mind of fantasy/horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

This book examines many facets of the "Necronomicon legend:"

* How Lovecraft came up with the idea and what might have inspired him;

* The popularization of Lovecraft's fiction and the subsequent arising of a popular opinion that he had been quoting an actual ancient codex;

* The production of the many modern faux versions of the Necronomicon, some firmly tongue-in-cheek and others carefully-reworded versions of extant ancient occult texts (none of which were originally titled "Necronomicon"), in response to the popularity of the title;

* The inclusion of references to the Necronomicon in films and television episodes in addition to written fiction.

The material presented is well-researched and factual, accompanied by proper citations where appropriate, and presented in some detail. In fact, it might well be presented in TOO much detail if the reader happens to be new to the "Necronomicon debate!" The amount of detail presented on both the literary origins and presentations of the Necronomicon, and the connections of the tome to modern Magick, will likely be far too in-depth for anyone interested solely in one and not the other!

But if you are someone with a true scholarly interest in the subject, you will find this book a wonderful thing! I consider it a "must-have" volume for anyone who is deeply interested in the "Cthulhu Mythos" born from H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, and equally so for anyone who has developed a similar interest in the legend of the Necronomicon as an occult studies issue.

Just a bit of warning, however: be prepared to have some things that you might have heard as "Facts" get firmly proven otherwise . . . !

The Necronomicon Files is a book which contains much information about a curious phenomenon: the life that a fictional book took on after it's creator passed away. This is a very interesting phenomenon for both studying the human need to believe in things which do not exist and the lengths that those who are faced with overwhelming evidence of an idea's falsehood will go to cling to it. Let me state that I am fully in agreement with the authors' conclusions that a pre-Lovecraft Necronomicon has no basis in reality apart from the archetypal significance of a book of forbidden knowledge; yet the answer to the true believers is not couched in such terms as it should be. While the facts and rumors surrounding the production of the Simon Necronomicon are laid out in almost as much detail as I have seen from multiple sources in studying the phenomenon over the years, my prime complaint is in the inflammatory manner which Gonce portrays many dissenters with his line of thought. The words "idiotic", "moron" and "necro-nerd" pop up with appalling frequency for a work which is supposed to be semiobjective. The issue of the historical legitimacy of Wicca is skirted around several times (perhaps because of the "many Wiccan friends" he states that he has?) while the believers in the Simonomicon are lampooned and portrayed as slackjawed teenage wastelanders. I do not believe that it is fair to apply such judgement selectively if one is going to express it at all. I would say that the proper approach to such things is to state the facts such as they are and let the reader draw their own conclusion on the mental competence of the people discussed. While I noticed quite a few (smallish) errors throughout the book, most of the information is laid out close to what I believe to be the facts of the matter, and it is a very interesting study of a very interesting phenomenon. However, I cannot fully endorse this book because of the strong bias displayed by Gonce, both in his judgement of others and his self righteous pseudoreligious stance on Inanna which reads much like a fundamentalist Christian reacting to someone taking their lord's name in vain. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Simon occult phenomenon, but not to those merely interested in Lovecraft and his work; Simon and his Necronomicon are much more present throughout the book than the gentelman from Rhode Island. To those who would examine the controversy as it is, I would suggest that they pick up the book but also note how slanted even those who desire to merely display the facts can be as compared to those who choose to wholly abandon them.

I think the reviewer from San Diego may not have read the same book I read. The one I read was well-researched, well written, and stocked with interesting facts. The entire point of the book, in fact, is that the Necronomicon is a myth - but it's an interesting myth, which came from Lovecraft and developed a life of it's own. A great read, well worth the money, and highly recommended.

Everything anyone could possibly want to know about the history and background of "The" Necronomicon. Every library should have a copy of this excellently researched and nicely written book. Clear, concise, well reasoned -- and unfortunately all too rare to get a hold of.The last section itemizing theNecronomicon in film and television is amusingly done and valuable in and of itself.Most of all, the authors' careful, informed, level-headed approach to the entire cultural phenomena thathas developed out of Lovecraft's fictional grimoiredeserves praise. Obviously a labor of love.

And alot of stuff you'd have never thought of, or cared about... Well, its probably long over due, but someone (actually two someones) have produced what may be both the definitive essay on the Necronomican in all its glorious manifestations and the ultimate proof that Lovecrafties are the among most obsessive fans of anything anywhere. Covers alot of ground, from HPL's inspirations to the necronomicon(s) that you can find at Waldens(!), plus lot of material on the serious occult side including some good stuff about one of my favorites, Kenneth Grant. ( If you want to know what is like to hunt down the real Necronomicon just try and get ahold of Grant's Typhonian Trilogy volumes - at least before they were reprinted). And of course Simon's necronomicon takes a beating (is it really news to anyone that it ain't THE Necronimocon?) The best part, though, is the huge movie review section where the authors list every single move that might somehow feature, mention or is some way hint at the Necronomicon in its plot. Definitely worthwhile and the best work on the subject I've read to date.

An interesting and well-researched take on the existence - or lack thereof - of H. P. Lovecraft's infamous tome, 'The Necronomicon Files' remains badly flawed. These flaws rest largely on John Wisdom Gonce III's side (now there's a name to conjure with). While Daniel Harms does a good job of following the 'Necronomicon's history in literary and fandom circles, Gonce is far less convincing attempting to give us the occult side of the story.

The primary problem is his assumption that magic(k) 'works', and that we all know what he means by this. Without laying his cards on the table in this regard, we are left taking the words of various bulletin board 'magi' as gospel, when the very tenor of their views make their reliability suspect to say the least. I'm not saying such folk should be dismissed out of hand - but Mr Gonce telling us that they are 'respected' on-line presences is weak testimony to say the least. Add his tendency to parade his standard-issue pagan-prejudices in a rather pompous fashion, and you get an approach that does the book's credibility few favours.

In many ways, as is, much of this is most interesting as a semi-self-conscious study of the power of self-delusion in post-modern fandom-based cults. It would be interesting to know if the first (horror-fiction-based) Esoteric Order of Dagon had any connection with the later (druggy-occult-obsessed) Esoteric Order of Dagon.

The fact that 'The Necronomicon Files' states pretty baldly fairly early on that every supposed 'Necronomicon' is a hoax makes much of this occultic navel-gazing rather redundant. Further study of the characteristic themes of Lovecraftian 'occultism' - inbreeding, murderous sea-food, blasphemous angles, etc - from a psychological or cultural perspective would've been more interesting than endless noodling on whether any of the pseudo-'Necronomicon's 'work'.

An interesting, readable book in many respects, which would've qualified as a classic a decade or two back, but with Lovecraftian studies multiplying like Shub-Niggurath's Spawn these days, it's flaws are less forgiveable. A must for Lovecraft completists perhaps, but less robust in any broader sense.

Anyone interested in learning the truth about the Necronomicon should read this. This book is definitely a well-researched,well-written piece of work. Lots of surprises in store for the reader. The authors carefully unfold issues, ideas, and facts behind the Necronomicon that are both easy to understand and absorb. A great reading for Lovecraft fans and newcomers to fantasy and horror literature. If you want to know what the Necronomicon really is, then get this book.

This group of essays put the facts in the proper light. Instead of trying to prove that something simply does not exist, the writers outline their arguments very cohesively, stating that what does exist is not the real deal. The Necronomicon is a recent invention not a aeons-old grimoire. This book should be shelved next to all of the various copies to help the foolish and gullible. The Necronomicon may have some merit, but it is not exactly what everyone wants it to be.