Otis Adelbert Kline: "The Malignant Entity," "The Radio Ghost," and "The Demon of Tlaxpam"

In Volume 9 of Hippocampus Press' Letters of H. P. Lovecraft, we find HPL telling Duane W. Rimel that Otis Adelbert Kline is "probably the best agent in the business" (p. 305), "a wizard at placing things" (290) with lots of "influence" (306) who "regard[s] fiction writing as a business & not an art" (286). In our last blog post I was talking about how good some of Frank Belknap Long's early stories are, in contrast to his reprehensible later work, and in a September 8, 1934 letter to August Derleth*, Lovecraft blames Kline for Long's decline:Belknap reports great successes in the pulp field. Under the tutelage of Otis Adelbert Kline he is getting to be a highly enterprising young business man---but the artist of yesteryear seems lost in the shuffle! Indeed, in a March 25, 1933 letter to Robert E. Howard*, HPL admits "I simply can't read the crap Kline and [Hugh B.] Cave grind out...."*See Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth: 1932-1937 and A Means to…