GP Olsen: The Nutball Who Bedeviled REH and Others

[deuce]

Olsen was a world-class loon. He sent minatory, grandiose letters to Howard, Lovecraft and others. As REH said, "He also sends me a damnable chain letter and tells me I dare not refuse to continue the chain. Like hell I don’t. I might excuse his insanity, but writers of chain-letters are a blight and a stumbling block on the road of progress."


www.rehtwogunraconteur.com/?s=olsen

[Von K]

Thanks for the link Deuce.

A very interesting article on one of the more colourful characters at the edge of pulpdom.

Some great comments too, and I especially appreciated Keith's observation and Bobby's addendum, with the anecdote featuring August Derleth.

[bobbyderie]

Yeah, always amazing what you can miss sometimes.

[deuce]

Olsen the Mad Swede strikes again!


"No word from Bates about my various stories. He sent me yesterday, however, a terrific communication from one G. P. Olsen of Sheldon, Iowa, which had been addressed to me in care of S.T. [Strange Tales]. I’ve had letters from madmen before, but this one really took the gilt-edged angel-cake. Twelve single-spaced pages, much of it phrased with a lucidity almost equal to that of Gertrude Stein or Hegel. Among other things, as well as I could make it out, the fellow seemed to be desirous of correcting certain erroneous ideas about demons and vampires which he had discovered in “The Nameless Offspring.” Also, he wanted to point out the errors of Abdul Alhazred! Some of the stuff about vampires was really weird: “You never thought of a Vampire in your life but he appeared like an Emperor or an Archangel.” Then he exhorts me to refrain from putting vampires in a bad light, since, by virtue of a little blood-sucking, they really confer immortality on those they have chosen! Later, apropos of godknowswhat, he told me that “you must realize it will never be stood for if you act in any other way than that befitting a Spanish Don.” The letter is the damdest mixture of paranoia, delusions of grandeur and mystic delirium that ever went through the U.S. mails. The fellow writes of Ammon-Ra and Ahriman—a regular hash of Oriental mysticism—in the language of an illiterate Swede. He ends with something to the effect that his letter is the most momentous intellectual promulgation of the age. I’m not in the habit of ignoring letters; but there’s nothing else to be done in this case."


-- Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth,
    15 May 1932

[Char-Vell]

Thanks for posting this, it's great.

Olsen would have loved the internet, and this forum!

[almuric]

Jan 16, 2018 10:23:27 GMT -5 Char-Vell said:

Thanks for posting this, it's great.

Olsen would have loved the internet, and this forum!

Not for long. 

[ChrisLAdams]

Olsen sounded like a real fruit cake. If they'd survived, a neat compilation would be his letters, together with all the trash-talking that went on behind his back! 

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The Arkham House that never was...

[bobbyderie]

I dug up a little more on Olsen last year - and he's actually weirder than Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard make him out to be. Hoping to get it published this year.