Old Bugs

"Old Bugs"
"Old Bugs"
Short story by H. P. Lovecraft
Text available at Wikisource
Country	United States
Language	English
Publication
Published in	The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces
Publisher	Arkham House
Publication date	1959

"Old Bugs" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, probably written shortly before July 1919.^[1] It was first published in the Arkham House book The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (1959).

Plot

With the onset of Prohibition, the Sheehan Billiard Room in Chicago became a sordid haunt for hard drinkers. A certain Old Bugs, a mature man corroded by vices but capable of showing, at long intervals, the typical sensitivity of educated people works as a kitchen cleaner. When the young Alfred Trever, initiated by his friend Pete Schultz on the way of drinking, arrives at the Sheehan's tavern, Old Bugs will try to convince him not to make the same mistake as he did.

Creation

The piece was written after Lovecraft's friend Alfred Galpin's suggestion that he wanted to try alcohol before Prohibition went into effect. In response, Lovecraft, a teetotaler, wrote a tale of an old derelict known as Old Bugs, who turns out to be Galpin himself, brought low by "evil habits, dating from a first drink taken years before in woodland seclusion." At the bottom of the manuscript, Lovecraft had written, "Now will you be good?"^[1] The woman whose engagement to Old Bugs is canceled due to his drinking, Eleanor Wing, was a fellow student in Galpin's high school press club.^[1]

Reception

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia says of the piece, "It is not nearly as ponderous as it sounds, and is in fact a little masterpiece of comic deflation and self-parody."^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0974878911.

External links

Old Bugs title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Works related to Old Bugs at Wikisource

This article about a horror short story (or stories) published in the 1950s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[Joshi-1] Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0974878911.

[1]

v t e H. P. Lovecraft
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Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Under the Pyramids" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	The Cancer of Superstition "Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Lovecraft Country R'lyeh
Characters	Abdul Alhazred Herbert West Randolph Carter Harley Warren
Deities	Azathoth Cthulhu Nyarlathotep Shub-Niggurath Hastur Dagon
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
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Legacy	Lovecraft studies Works influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos H. P. Lovecraft (band) H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Adaptations Lovecraft (crater) Cthulhu Macula
Related	Aklo Dream Cycle Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife) The Thing in the Moonlight
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