Missed Opportunity: "Penelope" by Vincent Starrett

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Right after "The Floor Above," which I did a reading of last week, appears a short story by Vincent Starrett called "Penelope." It has tons of great elements of a good weird tale:

• A talkative, eccentric, intelligent main character: Raymond is unorthodox but imaginative and expansive in his descriptions of the world around him
• A strange astrological prophecy: Raymond is told by his mad father to "Beware of Penelope when in perihelion"
• A furtively-told story: Raymond invites Haswell into his home to tell him the story that has convinced others Raymond himself is mad
• A bizarre physical phenomenon: Raymond awakes at midnight one night to discover the force of gravity has inverted for him and only him!
• A tense twenty minutes: Raymond walking around on the ceiling draws out his landlord with a revolver
• An acrobatic exit: Raymond climbs "up" the fire escape to the street and goes around outside for a bit

The story is well-written with a relaxed, conversational style. Weird Tales calls it "a Grotesque, Fantastic Tale."

But really all that happens is that Raymond scares a woman outside, talks to her for a minute, climbs back into his house, and goes to sleep. The next morning, he finds his gravity is back to normal and he goes looking for the woman he met. Eventually, he finds her and they soon arrange to get married.

Is it just dated humor? Is there something I'm missing? It ends in such an anti-climax.

As I thought more about it, more issues came to mind:

• He talks about pedestrians on the street, but somehow nobody sees him
• What does it mean for Penelope to be his natal star? Did he fly upwards when he was born? Or did he marry when he was 50? Or does a natal star have nothing to do with "perihelion?"
• Also, "perihelion" only really applies to stuff orbiting the sun
• Do other people with different natal stars have this same problem? Obviously not
• If he does live another 50 years, does he get another upside-down night?

...And so on.

It turns out Starrett was a prolific writer who happened to correspond with H.P. Lovecraft, and even wrote a poem about him that was published in 1949.

So I guess I'm either missing something, or he got much better at crafting satisfying stories after this one.

Am I crazy? Read the story here (scan from Internet Archive)

...or here (Wikisource).