Blasphemous Tomes: The Eldritch Quintuplets

This new "blasphemous tomes" series of posts will cover books related to the weird fiction genre that are off the commonly tread literary path. The weird of the weird, you might say. Sometimes humorous, sometimes deathly serious, and always bizarre, these books are also usually obscure. Bringing them to light from an out-of-print musty shelf or from the darker caverns of the online world might or might not unleash a multitude of horrors. You have been warned.

The Elegantly Amused Press only holds one publication to its name so far. And it's easily classifiable as a blasphemous tome. The Eldritch Quintuplets is a re-formatting of H.P. Lovecraft's terrors into jaunty limerick form. Phrases from the famous Necronomicon already possess their own charming rhythm, as in the famous couplet, "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die." Authors Mike Tice and R.A. Strong up the ante by blurring Necronomicon passages into limericks. Observe the example posted on the book's webpage:

There was a Mad Arab who said
That Cthulhu, though dreaming is dead,
But some future night
When the stars become right,
He'll abandon his watery bed.

But they don't stop there. These writers effectively retell nearly every Lovecraft tale with a limerick. The horror! This 2003 work only saw a very limited release from this tiny publisher. Still, it seems copies of this book remain on the publisher's website. Inquire about buying one of these cheap texts to own a truly unique bit of Lovecraftian ephemera.

-Grim Blogger