Talk:Randolph Carter

The Unnamable

 * "There is some question as to whether "The Unnamable's" protagonist is in fact Randolph Carter. He is named only as "Carter" and described as an author of weird fiction.[2]"

Randolph Carter was definitely the narrator of "The Unnamable". There is a subtle but unmistakable reference to the episode of Randolph Carter's life in Lovecraft's "The Silver Key":


 * "Then he went back to Arkham, the terrible witch-haunted old town of his forfathers in New England, and had experiences in the dark, amidst the hoary willows and tottering gambrel roofs, which made him seal forever certain pages in the diary of a wild-minded ancestor."

Source: From page 413 of the corrected Arkham House edition of At The Mountains of Madness which contains the short story "The Silver Key". This ties in with a diary found by Carter in Arkham in The Unnamable:


 * "Then I told him what I had found in an old diary kept between 1706 and 1723, unearthed among family papers not a mile from where we were sitting [i.e. in Arkham] ... It was all in that ancestral diary I found; all the hushed innuendoes and furtive tales of things with a blemished eye seen ... "

Source: From page 203 of the corrected Arkham House edition of Dagon and Other Macabre Tales which contains the short story "The Unnamable".

Some scholars may have questioned if Carter of the Unnamable and Randolph Carter are the same, but they have forgotten or overlooked this reference. I have also seen claims that the Carter of "The Unnamable" was scientifically minded and scorned supernatural fiction - but any such reading confuses the narrator (Carter) with Joel Manton (the cynic and unbeliever). Willows, Arkham, the ancestral diary, the experiences in the dark, the name "Carter" -- these all point to it being Randolph Carter. Whatsmore this is in a section of the narrative that has just tied in the earlier story "The Statement of Randolph Carter".

I think it is also worth mentioning that although Randolph Carter is obviously based on Lovecraft in the tales, as this Wikipedia entry suggests, it is also the case that Lovecraft himself appears in "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" as "Ward Phillips", a fellow dreamer, eccentric, author and good friend of Carter.

--94.169.128.203 (talk) 21:48, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

What is that thing about Joseph Curven, anyway?
Well imaginary numbers use angle/disturbations ( anyway: hound of tindalos, winged beast with dog ears, you know ) for trying to get people to imagine the existence of another dimension. Curven uses celebrities from the past to get people to imagine the existence of an additional dimension. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4DD7:A13:0:1DF5:2789:42AC:5DA4 (talk) 14:02, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

List of stories
Should The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward be included as a Randolph Carter story? He is only mentioned in it briefly. 188.66.109.177 (talk) 10:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)