Kleiner wrote the first analysis of HPL’s poetry, “A Note on Howard P.Lovecraft’s Verse” ( United Amateur,March 1919). He first met HPL on July 1, 1916, while passing through Providence; he returned for visits in 1917, 1918 (after which he wrote a poem, “At Providence in 1918,” Conservative,July 1919) and 1920. HPL met him when he came to New York on two occasions in 1922; during the latter visit, on September 16, HPL and Kleiner visited the churchyard of the Dutch Reformed Church in Brooklyn, inspiring HPL to write “The Hound” the next month. Kleiner appears in the story as “St. John,” referring to HPL’s nickname for him, “Randolph St. JohnRandolp (a purported descendant of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke). HPL and Kleiner met frequently during HPL’s years in New York (1924–26), as members of the Kalem Club. During this time Kleiner worked for the Fairbanks Scales Co. Kleiner wrote several memoirs of HPL after the latter’s death, including “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” ( Californian,Summer 1937) and “A Memoir of Lovecraft” (in HPL’s Cats). He edited a series of extracts of HPL’s letters to him, concentrating on amateur affairs, titled “By Post
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from Providence” ( Californian,Summer 1937). After HPL left New York in 1926, he lost touch with Kleiner for nearly a decade, but they resumed correspondence in 1936–37. Although a prolific poet, Kleiner published only a small number of his poems in book form, mostly in scarce small-press editions: Metrical Moments(1937), Nine Sonnets(1940), Pegasus in Pasture(1943), and so on. Klenze, Lieutenant.
In “The Temple,” the next to last surviving crew member of the disabled German submarine U-29. In his confinement, he believes he is being summoned by the dead man from whom he confiscated an ivory amulet and then exits the stricken vessel to his death.
Knockout Bernie.
In “The Battle That Ended the Century,” one of two antagonists who engage in a boxing match in the year 2001. The character (nicknamed “the Wild Wolf of West Shokan”) is a parody of HPL’s friend Bernard Austin Dwyer, of West Shokan, N.Y.
Koenig, H[erman] C[harles] (1893–1959).
Bibliophile and late associate of HPL. Koenig, employed in the Electrical Testing Laboratories in New York, came in touch with HPL in the fall of 1933 when he asked HPL how to procure the Necronomicon. In the summer of 1934 Koenig began circulating books by William Hope Hodgson among HPL’s circle, leading to HPL’s enthusiastic article “The Weird Work of William Hope Hodgson” ( Phantagraph,February 1937). HPL met Koenig on several occasions during his visits to New York in the Christmas seasons of 1934 and 1935; on January 2, 1935, HPL, R.H.Barlow, and Frank Belknap Long visited the Electrical Testing Laboratories, a place where electrical appliances were tested. In early 1936 Koenig was planning a trip to Charleston and, knowing that HPL had visited it, asked him for some tips on the sights there. HPL dusted off his unpublished 1930 essay, “An Account of Charleston,” and revised and abridged it in a letter to Koenig. Koenig was so taken with the account that he ran off about twenty-five mimeographed copies in March, titling it Charleston. Koenig had made several mistranscriptions of HPL’s handwriting, and he also asked HPL to rewrite the beginning so that it read as an essay; HPL complied, and Koenig ran off about thirty to fifty copies of the revised version, enclosing it in a paper folder and reproducing as photostats some of HPL’s drawings of Charleston sites. After HPL’s death Koenig edited the small-press magazine The Reader and Collector,reprinting HPL’s Hodgson essay (June 1944) and publishing a lengthy article, “Modern Mythological Fiction” by Robert Butman (October 1945, January 1946, and April 1946), which discussed HPL in part (Fritz Leiber’s response, “Butman’s Essay,” appeared in October 1946). Koenig worked with August Derleth to reprint Hodgson’s four novels with Arkham House ( The House on the Borderland and Other and Other Novels,1946).
Kranon.
In “The Cats of Ulthar,” a burgomaster in Ulthar.
Kuntz, Eugene B[asil] (1865–1944).
Prussian-born poet, Presbyterian minister, and amateur journalist. HPL edited Kuntz’s slim collection of poems, Thoughts
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and Pictures(Haverhill, Mass.: “Cooperatively published by H.P.Loveracft [sic]and C.W.Smith,” 1932), probably revising the poems in the process. Later he wrote a plug for the volume, “Dr. Eugene B.Kunz [sic]” ( Hodge Podge,September 1935).
Kuranes.
In “Celephaïs,” the dream identity of an unidentified but once-wealthy person in the waking world. His “real” self, through dreams and drugs, escapes his mundane existence as a writer in London to find the city of Celephaïs, of which he had dreamt as a child. When he awakens, he cannot return to Celephaïs, although he dreams of other wondrous realms; but finally he is able to return forever as its king, although his body is later found washed up on the shore. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,Kuranes greets Randolph Carter, who has voyaged in dream to Celephaïs. It now appears that Kuranes, although a king in dreamland, longs to return to his real life in Cornwall. He warns Carter that his “sunset city” may not be as wondrous as he imagines it to be.
Kuttner, Henry (1915–1958).
Science fiction writer from Los Angeles and correspondent of HPL. Early in his career Kuttner wrote in various genres of pulp fiction, including horror; see “The Graveyard Rats” ( WT,March 1936), which some of HPL’s colleagues thought he had written or ghostwritten. Kuttner, however, came in touch with HPL only after the story had been accepted for publication. The correspondence lasted from February 1936 to February 1937 (see Letters to Henry Kuttner,ed. David E.Schultz and S.T.Joshi [Necronomicon Press, 1990]). HPL assisted on the topographical background for “The Salem Horror” ( WT,May 1937), a story clearly influenced by “The Dreams in the Witch House.” Other Lovecraftian tales by Kuttner have now been reprinted in The Book of lod,ed. Robert M.Price (Chaosium, 1995). Kuttner created numerous additions to HPL’s myth-cycle. In late 1936 Kuttner wrote an acrostic poem on Poe (“Where He Walked”) after he learned that HPL and his colleagues had done so earlier in the year. In May 1936 HPL asked Kuttner to pass on some photographs to C.L.Moore, thereby introducing the two authors to each other. They married in 1940 and collaboratively wrote some of the most imaginative work in the “Golden Age” of science fiction. See The Best of Henry Kuttner (1975).
See Shawn Ramsey, “Henry Kuttner’s Cthulhu Mythos Tales: An Overview,” Crypt No. 51 (Hallowmas 1987): 21–23, 14; Gordon R.Benson, Jr., and Virgil S.Utter, C.L.Moore and Henry Kuttner: A Marriage of Souls and Talent: A Working Bibliography(Albuquerque, N.M.: Galactic Central, 1989).