H.P. Lovecraft: "The Statement of Randolph Carter" {read by Drew Heinmiller}

"The Statement of Randolph Carter" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in December 1919, it was first published in The Vagrant, May 1920. It tells of a traumatic event in the life of Randolph Carter, a student of the occult loosely representing Lovecraft himself. It is the first story in which Carter appears. "The Statement of Randolph Carter" is the first person testimony of the titular character, who has been found wandering through swampland in an amnesiac shock. In his statement, Carter attempts to explain the disappearance of his companion, the occultist Harley Warren. Lovecraft based the story on a dream that he transcribed, adding only a preamble to make it more fluid as a narrative, and wrote it in the form of a testimony given to the police. An account of the actual dream Lovecraft had can be found in one of his letters to August Derleth. The story contains an early statement of a common theme of Lovecraft's—the terrible price of knowledge. This theme is most famously stated in "The Call of Cthulhu": "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." ****** (Voice Recording): *read for LibriVox by Drew Heinmiller LibriVox (Short Ghost and Horror Story Collection Vol. 012) librivox.org/short-ghost-and-horror-collection-012… ****** (Music): "Long Four Note" & "Symmetry " by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ****** (Illustrations): "The Statement of Randolph Carter" ("Weird Tales", February, 1929) by Andrew Brosnatch (Public Domain) "Portrait of Lovecraft" by Dominique Signoret (Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Bronze bust of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum. Providence, Rhode Island by Kenneth C. Zirkel (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported) *All other artwork an photos are in the public domain ****** If you like this video subscribe to my channel. There are many more videos like this one lovingly prepared and edited by myself for your enjoyment! Check out my extensive playlist collections as well.