Reading Group #13 (Lovecraft's Birthday: 'Dagon,' 'The Rats in the Walls,' 'The Haunter of the Dark'

Here we are. Happy 121st (well, in 13 days, at least)!

Three Lovecraft tales I've never had the pleasure of reading yet. That's why I love this group.

Hopefully I get to them this week. If not, it may be awhile before I get around to them. Next week I'm off to Worldcon for the first time, so maybe a little Lovecraft before would be a good taste of the strangeness I'm sure I'll encounter.

#2 - I didn't know what Worldcon was, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and now I know - World Science Fiction Convention, and I understand that this one in Reno, Nevada. Fair enough, and I hope you have a good time.

Now for the big question. How the hell did Morris dancing come to be listed in 'activities'?! If I wanted to think of the least likely thing to be found in a sci-fi convention, Morris dancing would be right up there with bog-snorkelling, coracle-racing and cack-handed straw wimbling.

Hi there,

I've never read Lovecraft, but now want to after seeing a documentary about him called Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. I happen to be at a library right now ;) I'll letcha know what I think in a few days.

naima

3> Morris dancing is a new one for me. I'm hoping to avoid the people who dress up and wanna live in some medieval fantasy world, doing their middle earth jig or whatever (not that there's anything wrong with that!). I read some SF/F, so this is a bit of a lark to just go see what all the fuss is all about, and hopefully meet a few authors I like (Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman, etc...) and maybe make some publishing/agent connections.

But speaking of Lovecraft, I'm sure I'll run into the occasional costumed Cthulu roaming the casinos. I'll snap a pic if I'm that lucky.

4> Haven't heard of that doc. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have to check that out.

"bog-snorkelling, coracle-racing and cack-handed straw wimbling." Just had to say that is hilarious.

#2 brother_salvatore Enjoy Worldcon. I attended the event in Glasgow (I think it was 2005) and I'm hoping the London bid for 2014 is successful so I can nip over there.

You will probably see some people dressed up who wanna live in a futuristic fantasy world, although, there weren't too many in Glasgow outside of the masquerade. I did, however, bump into a rather well endowed Klingon lady.

Connie Willis is good value on panels. She seems to have a good sense of humour and she takes her role on panels seriously and prepares well for the topics. That is a lot more than can be said for some of the authors.

Look out for Ian Mcdonald too. His sense of humour is more subtle than Connie's. He is great on panels too, as well as being a nice guy.

7> Thanks for info! I've moved Con talk to another thread. Didn't mean to hijack Lovecraft.

I read 'The Haunter of the Dark' last night and I'm now at risk of getting seriously over-excited about this thread. I'm going to have a problem writing less than several thousand words.

I had a bit of a love affair with Lovecraft (sorry - silly play on words) when I was a youngster and returning to him with 'Pickford's Model' 'Pickman's Model' in one of our earlier threads was rather a disappointment to me. This is the Lovecraft I remember - this is the real thing! To ice the cake, I'm pretty sure this is a brand new story to me, too (which surprised me, it being so well-known a title).

Now then, there's something I really have to get off my chest.

I've noticed a number of reviewers condemning what they see as Lovecraft's over-ornateness of style. Different people have different tastes, of course, but they're talking crap I think they're not appreciating what's going on.

Just using ‘The Haunter of the Dark’, I think that what they’re getting at is his liberal use of adjectives in his descriptive passages.

This is not some sort of unconscious fault in his writing - the ornateness is clearly intentional and he confines it to the descriptive passages - the explanatory and action passages are lean and spare enough to not attract the ire of these critics, I'm sure.

For the descriptive passages, first of all I don’t think there is a redundant adjective in there - I think it’s the most visual of writing and he builds up quite detailed and atmospheric pictures in my mind’s eye and every single adjective adds a bit more to its picture – I see what Blake sees. Secondly, try reading it aloud: Lovecraft’s actually crafting this stuff like a poet – I see and hear him building up rhythms and echoing stress patterns and making use of alliteration and assonance – but not too much so that it looks silly and pretentious – just a judicious use to make a lovely, lush prose that I, personally, just luxuriate in. If they can't do that I think it reflects more badly on their attention spans and powers of concentration than on Lovecraft's writing. It’s an ornate style, I grant, but I think in condemning that there's something seriously at odds with the spirit of this type of literature. If there's anywhere where an ornate style is appropriate it's the Gothic, surely?

As I said, it's all a matter of taste, of course, and everyone's entitled to their opinion, and, of course, I support to the hilt their right to be wrong.

Edited - 'Pickford's Model'?!

I have a confession to make. I have only read a few Lovecraft works.

On the other hand, those that I have read I have found beautiful, primarily due to the, over-ornateness of style.

In other words, the small sample of Lovecraft's work that I have read leads me to support rankamateur's statements in #10.

I'm with you rank; I will fight at the barricades to defend their right to be wrong.

(I maintain there's nothing wrong with being biased when you're right.)

Over-ornateness puts a name on it, but I think I'd refer to it as more of a self-conciously artifical archaism, if that makes sense: he's totally aware of himself and his non-commitment to his trappings, which is what gives them their peculiar insidiousness. I mean, he can turn it on or off at will: 'Pickman's Model' (I have to disagree with you on this one, Paul) and 'The Picture in the House' both lack the opulence, but are still unmistakably Lovecraftian and pretty fabulous for what they are.

One reason why 'The Haunter of the Dark' is my favorite Lovecraft yarn is because this quality doesn't detract, but rather adds, to the story in a way that just isn't the case with, say, Lovecraft's 'dream' cycle (like the absolutely dreadful 'Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath'). When he's not imitating Lord Dunsany, he has a wonderfully unique and idiosyncratic way of telling a story that almost suffocates with its power---bombast or not. 'The Haunter of the Dark' is also his last piece of work, as far as I know, and you can see how his style has refined itself from the brooding decadence of 'The Hound' or 'The Outsider' (the latter is deservedly famous and, under the influence of Poe, probably more 'Gothic' than the selections I made, but this can be argued). Later, when you get to 'The Rats in the Walls' (which I'm not sure if either of you are familiar with), you'll see how his archaism can actually DEFINE the overall cosmic power of some of his best writing; because, for not being part of the 'mythos,' this one is pretty damn epic: and his style is responsible for a large degree of its sinister potency. And, in fact, 'The Rats in the Walls' is one of the most terrifying things I've ever read.

Personally I DO find Lovecraft's prose pretty pretentious: but so did he, I think. And this is part of his charm (and, sometimes, his power). And in his better stories, and his more haunting stories, it can fortify a routine narrative and lend it an epicness that is severely wanting in most horror fiction of this nature. I guess I see Lovecraft as a synthesis of Blackwood's grace, Chambers' cosmicism, Dunsany's dreaminess, Poe's Gothicism, Bierce's cynicism (though this can be limiting), and James' nostalgia for the past, along with a great deal of his own highly original pomp. His body of work is of WILDLY varying quality, in my humble opinion, but at his best he is probably the best American practitioner of the supernatural in well over the last hundred years. Like Poe, I'm proud to call him one of mine...

So happy (almost) birthday, old fellow. :)

I got through 'Dagon' last night, then half-way through 'The Rats in the Walls', then woke up, sitting in this chair, at five this morning, from some weird dream about Hamlet shouting 'Rats! Rats!' and stabbing Polonius in his arras. And, yes, as it sounds, it was more 'Carry On' film than Shakespeare or Lovecraft.

>13 alaudacorax:

HAHAHAHAHA! That image has set my day on the right track...

Re-read 'The Rats in the Walls' tonight and, this time, managed to finish it. Wow - blindsided - did not see that ending coming! I also re-read Pickford's Model', but after last night I'm too knackered to write coherently. If I don't go to bed THIS MINUTE I'm going to go face down on the keyboard, so, perhaps on the weekend.

Hope your sleep was fabulous, Paul, but I don't see how you could get much after that toxic little tale...

That said, REALLY interested to hear your thoughts.

Finally got around to reading The Rats in the Walls. I was absolutely floored. The narrative, the tension, the crypts, the altar....I was totally sucked into it and loved every minute of it. I'll def have to re-read this several times to have any intelligent thought about, since it was more of a visceral, aesthetic experience the first time through. Great choice...Of the paltry few I've read, I don't think I've enjoyed reading a Lovecraft story this much in a long time.

17

Oh I'm glad you liked it! I agree: it's one of his absolute best. When he gets to that bit about the two-legged pack 'animals.' UGH... Marvelous.

Over the weekend, I've managed to re-read these three and 'Pickman's Model'. Forgive me for sticking the latter in here, but I've no self-discipline.

#12 - We'll have to agree to disagree on 'Pickman's Model', J. I thought it a bit slow off the mark - or, to put it another way, I found the first six or ten paragraphs to be not very attention-engaging. Then, once he'd really got into his stride, I think he got a bit carried away with it: rather than sticking with his one, eponymous, horrid creature, he had to throw in all those other paintings. The picture with the ghouls and the guidebook and the one with the ghouls and the little child particularly caused me problems. I didn't know whether they were meant as spine-chillers or black humour and didn't think they really worked as either. The one about the cross-section of the hill, I thought, veered close to comic-book silliness. I think they all rather weakened the effect of the 'ultimate' picture when it came and that he'd have done better to culminate the story on just that one - though I have to say that the effect of that would have been much greater if we weren't, these days, all so familiar with that Goya painting of Cronos eating his children (or do I mean William Blake?).

'Dagon' I thought quite good, though it won't be a favourite of mine. I thought it a fantasy/curiosity rather than a chiller. Lovecraft seems to be trying a 'psychological'' story here in that (I think, anyway) he's offering us the possibility that it's all a figment of his narrator's imagination, he being mentally damaged by all that time drifting alone in an open boat. Of course, there's always that 'shaman' thing that you might get glimpses of a truth in 'altered' mental states - as I remember it, Lovecraft invented quite a hefty 'mythology' to underpin his works (which, digging around online, seems to have been appropriated by all sorts of people since). I'd describe it as an interesting read and I always think that using 'interesting' about something is damning with faint praise - okay in an anthology but a bit weak as a stand-alone.

'The Haunter of the Dark': I'm a bit 'conflicted' about this one - I don't think it's the best of the bunch but it's my favourite - possibly for the wrong reasons. As I might, just, have hinted in #12, I absolutely love Lovecraft's use of language and his descriptive passages in this one (so much so, in fact, that I've spent quite a bit of time, recently, wandering the streets of Providence on Google Maps' street view when I should have been doing other stuff - I've yet to find the church, or a good view of Federal Hill from the Brown University area, and, in fact, I'm beginning to suspect the Federal Hill isn't really a hill at all - looks pretty flat to me - anyone from Providence here?). Lovecraft shows me every step of Blake's progress like I'm seeing through Blake's eyes. Did I say I love this story?

I've got to give 'The Rats in the Walls' the prize, though. It's as if Lovecraft set out to write the ultimate Gothic short story - it's got everything, hasn't it: ghosts (if only those of rats); an old, mediaeval (if newly rebuilt for the purpose) pile perched on top of a cliff; cellars; secret passages; caves; dark family secrets; resentful, fearful locals? It even has arrases! You can't go wrong with arrases. I thought it worked properly all the way through: good, descriptive writing; one's curiosity really baited and held; nicely building tension; and I, for one, found the ending as horrific and unexpected as one could wish.

And I've had an email to say that my replacement Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft has been dispatched. Happy as a sandbag.

Um ... sorry this is so long ...

#19 - Thinking over it a bit more, I'm not at all sure whether I prefer 'The Haunter of the Dark' to 'The Rats in the Walls' or vice versa - both excellent, but different. Does it make sense if I say the latter is more 'traditional' while the former is more 'Lovecraft'?

I tried to read the stories over the weekend. I made three attempts, starting with "The Rats in the Walls".

It was nothing to do with the story, but I fell asleep each time. I think I'm cursed.

>21 pgmcc:

I understand your predicament. I was reading Dagon last night, and I slowly drifted off to sleep. Not the story's fault, just too much wine ;)

Ahhhh wine and sleep...but that's another thread...

Paul: 'Haunter' and 'Rats' are my two favorite Lovecraft stories, and they're constantly switching places for number one, so don't feel too conflicted!

By the way, friends, this thread has reminded me of a Lovecraft imitation I wrote earlier this year and forgot about. Anybody care to give it a read? It's not exactly breathtaking, but I passed an enjoyable afternoon with it. It's got some 'Rats in the Walls,' some 'Haunter of the Dark,' some other stuff. I was also inspired by that painting 'Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion,' which I realized later actually graces the cover of one of my Penguin Lovecraft collections (trippy coincidence, that!!). So, uh...anyone wanna take a look??

#24 I'd be delighted to have a look. I'll drop my e-mail on a private message on your profile, if that's ok.

#24 - I was totally unfamiliar with that painting or the name John Martin - though the style seems very familiar. And there's a book and a play and an opera! All of which I'd never heard of ...

I'd love to read your story, too. Are you going to put it on your website?

24
I'd love to read it also!

#19 - And I've had an email to say that my replacement Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft has been dispatched. Happy as a sandbag.

Arrived as I was posting #26 ... happy as two sandbags! ... see here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115266#2877830

>26 alaudacorax:, 27

Shoot me your email addresses and I'll send it as an attatchment! Does everyone have Microsoft Word?

Pgmcc: I'll get it out to you in a few hours. Thanks for the interest, everyone! I just hope I don't make a fool of myself! Hahaha...

As for the Lovecraft volume, I DO love the illustrations, and the selection includes a lot of Lovecraft stories I'd like to have in hardcover but don't. My only trivial little issue is that I don't like the shameless marketing of the Stephen King quote on the back cover, and I kind of wish the words 'commemorative edition' weren't on the front. But I'm a bit anal. I realized that the Eldritch Tales is back in stock at American Amazon, so I'll be picking that guy up soon. I have to say that my Library of America Lovecraft volume is my still my favorite edition of his work, though. I just wish they included less obvious stuff like 'The Hound' or 'Dagon' or 'Under the Pyramids.'

Probably should've posted that last on the interesting editions thread, but oh well.... :D

#12 - One reason why 'The Haunter of the Dark' is my favorite Lovecraft yarn is because this quality doesn't detract, but rather adds, to the story in a way that just isn't the case with, say, Lovecraft's 'dream' cycle (like the absolutely dreadful 'Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath'). When he's not imitating Lord Dunsany, he has a wonderfully unique and idiosyncratic way of telling a story that almost suffocates with its power---bombast or not.

I read half to two-thirds of 'Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath' last night, basically to see why you disliked it so much. I have to say that I'm rather enjoying it - though I'm damned if I know how to categorise it: fairy tale (all those pussy-cats), fantasy (in the literal rather than literary sense - though I suppose the 'quest' thing is pretty much a cliché in modern fantasy)? The word 'surreal', I suppose, is tailor-made here. I'm not sure I can really call it ghost story or horror story. Lovecraft seems, in places, more concerned with giving full range to his flights of fancy (almost to a 'what on earth has he been smoking?' extent) than with plot and depth, but I'm quite enjoying that. Though, I suspect that this means that it's not something that will stand up to repeated reads.*

I can't appreciate your point on Dunsany as I have absolutely no memory of reading him - although I know I have read him in the remote past as whatever I read had an appreciative mention in its preamble of The King of Elfland's Daughter, which my then local library didn't have, and so I wanted to read it and I've been 'meaning to' read it ever since - for decades. So that's my only memory of him - I don't know if that reflects on the quality of his writing. I'm not clear from your comment whether you like Dunsany or not. Fan? No?

*It's another story that I've read before, but decades ago. Which means that I've pretty much forgotten it except for the odd fragment and am reading it as 'new' ... except that 'odd fragment' happens to be the ending! I sometimes think my memory has its own bloody-mindedness - if you only remember one little bit of a story, the last thing you'd want it to be is the ending.

ETA - Looking at the Wikipedia entry, I'm quite surprised to find how late Dunsanay's dates are - I'd had him firmly down as a Victorian.

'Kadath' would work for me if it was, maybe, a tenth of its length. Like Lovecraft's 'The Quest of Iranon.' That was an okay read for me. Bear in mind that this 'Kadath' stuff goes on and on with other stories, too: 'The Silver Key,' Through the Gates of the Silver Key,' etc. That said, I DO like some of these dream cycle stories. 'Beyond the Wall of Sleep' is a classic. 'Polaris' and 'The Doom that Came to Sarnath' were rather good. And while 'The Statement of Randolph Carter' isn't exactly a dream cycle story, it DOES feature the protagonist (of sorts) of that series, and I think that that story is absolutely wonderful. So it's a mixed bag for me. I'm due to reread 'Kadath,' though. Maybe I'll change my mind. You've inspired me to at least pick it up again, Paul...

I'm mixed on Dunsany. He writes wildly varied stuff. A ghost story here, a cosmic yarn there, a dreadful romance, some brilliant poetry... So yes, I'm mixed. At his best you can see the little inklings of Lovecraft in his work, and yet you don't have to view them in comparison to enjoy them. Like The King in Yellow. But while that book is intense, brilliant, and jarring it is also varied after the King in Yellow cycle is over, like Dunsany's work can fade into watery nothingness for me once his mythology wanes. The Gods of Pegana really does it for me. Moving beyond that, he has his moments, but it's a big wash between multiple kinds of writing that really don't work for me in the first place...

I've never been a 'high fantasy' kind of gal. Tolkien isn't my thing at all, for example. Can't stand him. Dunsany, for all my caveats, walks a line between fantasy, horror, and sci-fi that can be brilliant. But when it gets a little too 'magical,' like Lovecraft's dream cycle, my interest just wanes. Give me something darker. Much darker, please.

I found this line in the Wikipedia page on Robert E. Howard:

In August 1930 Howard wrote a letter to Weird Tales praising a recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the obscure Gaelic references used within.

I can't say I noticed any 'obscure Gaelic references' - I know very little of Gaelic folklore - and I shall try to give it a careful re-read this weekend.

Did anyone pick these up?

Ah, some of the language used towards the end is Gaelic. I found translations and some interesting comments here - http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/37245-rookie-questions-about-lovecraft-2.ht... - in the seventh post down.

Oh sh*t, we missed the boat! A happy BELATED birthday to Mr. Lovecraft! :D

Oops - sorry H. P. - wherever you are.

We're doomed! We're doomed!

Great Chthulu will punish us for this.

Oh, be merciful oh great one!

:-p

On that note, I think it's time to move on, though everyone should, as usual, feel free to keep posting here.

Next up I've selected 'The Repairer of Reputations' from Chambers' The King in Yellow, because I've been yammering on about it for a while. It's one of the best short stories I've ever read. New thread is up. I hope everyone joins me on this one: there's a LOT to talk about.

:)

Hey all this is Jourdain's (veilofisis) friend Luke who she has warmly invited into your reading group. As you can tell by my screen name, I have recently read 'The Rats in the Walls.' It's also, apparently, due to my lack of creativity and the need to get a name quick. :D

I'll be back to post some thoughts later when I have more time...

Oh and a warm welcome to Luke AKA exhampriory!!

Welcome, Luke, from pgmcc, alias, Peter.

'Dagon' : I really liked this one, but I wish it were longer.

'The Haunter of the Dark' : Don't even know where to begin on this one. I'll organize my thoughts and report back later. But I liked it.

'The Rats in the Walls' : This has definitely become my new favorite Lovecraft work. The imagery was really intense and vivid, and also the atmosphere--the sounds, everything. Down to the smell, even: I could imagine that. Covered all the senses. Oh, and it was terrifying. :D

OK, so I finally got to read "The Rats in the Walls". A great story. My thoughts are:

Lovecraft was a master at developing atmosphere and the building of tension and suspense. The Rats in the Walls demonstrates his skill and his ability to tell a story in which you know what is going to happen, but are surprised by the fashion in which it ultimately happens.

It is pretty obvious from the start of this story that the family of the protagonist is cursed by something more ancient than known civilisations. This power has been worshipped by the people living on the, shall I call it "sacred", site of the protagonist's family home. The reader realises that the true horror of the curse will be revealed in time, and the only doubt is whether or not the narrating member of the accursed family is going to succumb to the dreads of his family burden, of will he conquer it and banish the demons of his ancestral home for ever.

Lovecraft misleads the reader and presents an unexpected ending.

Throughout the story, Lovecraft’s drip-feeding of pertinent information to the reader is perfectly timed to build the apprehension felt which is paralleled in the growing fear of the characters.

As I read about the first night when the cats became agitated and searched for unseen rats in the walls, my dog was with me in my study. She usually just lies down on the carpet beside me and sleeps. On this occasion she was restless and wandered around the room in a most unsettled manner. I wonder if she has read this story and was trying to wind me up. I will never know.

ETA: Like any Lovecraft story I read, I found the images just building effortlessly in my mind as I read. I could see the bleak cliff, the desolate ruins, the newly built rooms, the darkness of the sub-cellars, the enormity of the subterranean chamber, etc... What's more, I could feel the pervading loathing of the locals for anyone associated with the priory.

Shiver!

42. If I had a dog who wandered around in an unsettled way while reading this story, I would freak out (but completely enjoying the weirdness of it.) But I think I would have to leave and go to a bar or something to settle my mind.

#43 I was a bit unsettled, so I went down to the crypt and had a pint of blood. That sorted out my unease. Bwahahahaha...

>44 pgmcc:

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Sounds MIGHTY refreshing!

#42 - Like any Lovecraft story I read, I found the images just building effortlessly in my mind as I read.

Yes. For me, this is perhaps Lovecraft's greatest attraction - I find him the most wonderfully 'visual' (if that makes sense) of writers.

On this occasion she was restless and wandered around the room in a most unsettled manner.

Poor dog was probably quite conflicted - enthusiastic about the rats but all those cats would unsettle any self-respecting dog. Come to think of it, that was a pointer to the ending of the story: you always have to keep a wary eye on male cat-lovers - I wouldn't put anything past them.

DAGON! (I'm catching up slowly.)

I believe all successful horror stories attempt to isolate the victim(s) to expose them to the terrors of the story while ensuring there is no hope of rescue from their impending fate. Lovecraft does this in two ways in the story, “Dagon”. Firstly, he isolates his protagonist on the raised ocean floor where the stranded mariner witnesses the creature and artefact that are to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Secondly, after his return to civilisation, after passing through an episode of apparent delirium, he remains isolated from his fellow man as there is no evidence of the experiences he remembers.

In his state of isolation amidst the throng of modern day life our hero imagines all sorts of possible futures involving the creatures of the deep rising up and destroying mankind. His desolation leads him to his final acts of writing up his story and ending his mental anguish.
Were his experiences real? Did he see a sentient merman? Did the massive obelisk exist on the seabed?

If not, then we have a man driven to madness through his exposure to the sun and his enforced isolation on the boat.

Either way, Lovecraft has told a great tale which gives us an insight into the loneliness of the insane, even to the extent of leaping from a great height to end it all.

Stepping away from the essence of the story, I want to note two things that came to mind while I was reading this story.

In the opening lines the protagonist states that he is going to end his life. This reminded me of Iain Bank’s novel, “Espedair Street”. The main character tells how he decided to kill himself, and even went into his intended method and the location he would use. He then states,
Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain.

The other point of interest was the reference to Piltdown Man. When Lovecraft wrote Dagon the Piltdown Man fossil would not yet have been exposed as a hoax.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Dagon.

#45 Sounds MIGHTY refreshing!

It is. Especially if it's still warm.

#46 you always have to keep a wary eye on male cat-lovers - I wouldn't put anything past them.

Agreed. They are a strange lot.

I find him the most wonderfully 'visual' (if that makes sense) of writers.

It makes loads of sense to me. When I'm reading Lovecraft I am totally surrounded by images in my mind. (Maybe I should stay away from windows in tall buildings.)

Hi,

I just read Lovecraft for the first time ever and loved the stories. I'm not into monsters or sci-fi; maybe that's why I didn't veer toward him sooner. I read these stories:

The Dunwich Horror
The Outsider
The Call of Cthulhu
The Rats in the Walls
The Color Out of Space

I loved his ornateness in style and even when it didn't quite seem to work, I loved its campiness and originality (I mean, is "slipperily" an existing word?). I love how he introduces you to a bad place by instilling a mounting sense of dread through description. An example would be the opening paragraph of The Dunwich Horror. By the time you get to the mountains whose summits are "too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness", you already know you should've taken a detour. Another great thing he did was give minor characters names and define them by incidental landmarks in the town. It's the sort of thing a town native would do if he were giving a stranger directions. It really makes the setting feel true. Stephen King does this also to good effect. I think it was also in The Dunwich Horror that Lovecraft used the party-line telephone as way to let the readers know what was going on in a location distant from the story's POV character and to reveal the reactions of many dispersed townspeople at once. It's a great story device.

The one thing I found unfortunate in Lovecraft's style is his telling you the story sometimes as distantly as 4th hand. The Call of Cthulhu is written that way: the narrator writes what his grand-uncle wrote about something he read or heard from someone who saw something ...and so on. It makes a reader feel distant from the events. I don't think this method works well very often for any writer. I found myself mentally re-writing the story from the grand-uncle's POV.

Anyhow, that's way more than 2 cents worth...my Lovecraft rant.

I enjoyed The Haunter of the Dark. Again Lovecraft created images in my mind.

His creation of not only terror for the individual, but a communal fear on Federal Hill all seemed real.

For anyone who has walked through an old church, something I have done, his description was very realistic.

One old church I visited several times was an abandoned Church of Ireland building in Donegal. As youths, my friends and I explored this several times.

There was drama one morning when a neigbhours straying donkey wandered into the vestry. While many people had walked through this area without mishap, the donkey proved too heavy for an old trapdoor in the centre of the floor.

It is not funny to think of this hapless beast suddenly falling into the cellar; but it did, and does, cause a certain degree of mirth. Thankfully, a party of about five of us were able, with the aid of much rope, pully-blocks, and blankets to use as cradles, to rescue the animal from the cellar. Surprisingly it appeared none the worse for wear, and lived as happy a life as a donkey can live for many years to follow.

Having read The Haunter of the Dark I am glad we didn't hear any strange noises from above us, or discover anything strange in the cellar.

Great story about your misadventure in the church -- glad the donkey made it out ok! Haunter in the Dark isn't in this anthology. I'll have to look it up when I get back to the library. I think old abandoned churches must be extremely resonant places; all the hopes and fears expressed in prayers over centuries within those walls. No wonder they are good settings for haunting stories.

#51 - If you don't object to reading online you can read it here - http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hd.asp

The Rats in the Walls is my favorite HPL story. I think it is a very good crossover of Weird and Gothic fiction.

53

My thoughts exactly, Thulean.

>42 pgmcc:

"Lovecraft misleads the reader and presents an unexpected ending."

Lovecraft, I think, is notorious for his unreliable narrators.

Hope you don't mind the interruption, but anyone interested in Lovecraft's story "Dagon" might want to look for Fred Chappell's short novel Dagon, which utilizes the Lovecraft mythos.

#56 Hi, Makifat. Thank you for the pointer. I will keep it in mind.

>60 frahealee:

I'd say so!
https://theconversation.com/seeing-double-the-origins-of-the-evil-twin-in-gothic...

(Oh, and I realise with shock that the "recent films I just haven't got around to seeing yet" are now, some of them, 20+ years old. I've never seen a Paul Thomas Anderson film).

>62 frahealee:

I have an odd combination: I have an absolutely lousy memory for faces--to the point of quite regularly being in embarrassing situations (I've even walked past close family members on the street). Yet I've known a couple of pairs of twins at different stages in my life and never had any difficulty telling them apart. I could never explain to mutual friends how I could always tell them apart, but, at the same time, I could never understand how those friends couldn't tell the difference--to me they were simply two differing people, not a matching pair.

I've just begun reading The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories contains the following tales:

Dagon
The Statement of Randolph Carter
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
Celephaïs
Nyarlathotep
The Picture in the House
The Outsider
Herbert West -- Reanimator
The Hound
The Rats in the Walls
The Festival
He
Cool Air
The Call of Cthulhu
The Colour Out of Space
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Haunter of the Dark

I confess, after reading about Lovecraft's life, I was a bit bewildered. It seems like a rather sad life, and I genuinely felt sorry for him. But at same time, I was greatly impressed that he was a "man of letters", and that he championed many of new writers of his day.

I also confess that I'm relatively new to 'Pulp Fiction", but after reading how many of the great writers, storytellers (Lovecraft, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.) had their works published in Pulp Fiction magazines/readers, I will look to see if there are anthologies of Pulp Fiction. I know that a few of my current books do have many of these stories, The Big Book of Ghost Stories (2012), Editor Otto Penzler and The Vampire Archives, Editor Otto Penzler, have ample amounts of Pulp Fiction stories/tales/a few novellas.

The hardest thing for me when reading Lovecraft is that I'm not very good at tracking what's going on. It sometimes reads like Fantasy to me, which I sadly admit is probably what I'm very horrible at reading (Tolkien? I wouldn't dare!).

But it's the narrator's voice that I do enjoy the most, in the stories I've begun reading. Very impressed and I look forward to reading the rest of this collection, this week.

And as 'Houseful of Paper' mentions, this is a great anthology of Lovecraft's works to start with.

After completing The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, I've got to put a few notes of interest, for myself and any others that might want to read it.

-- many online readers complain about the racism, lack of females, miscegenation tropes, etc. in Lovecraft's writing. I know these are sensitive topics, but I'd remind gentle readers--- that at the time period & prior, in which Lovecraft was writing, there were many popular authors who probably used language that readers today would find offensive. I'll point to only a few: Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, etc. etc. The list goes on. We can completely find these abhorrent, while at the same time finding depth in the stories

-- now I understand why many readers say Lovecraft was as much a Sci-Fi writer, in addition to being a writer of Horror. I found the the story "The Colour Out of Space" to be utterly fascinating

--many online readers and critics ensure to add that the Penguin Classics series have three books for Lovecraft works. This one just happens to have a great depth, much of his Cthulhu mythos are found in the stories of this particular collection

It's the narrators voice that I find most interesting when reading H.P. Lovecraft. And his descriptions can be incredibly vivid. I can see why he's such a influential writer, even today. And much of is writing has slipped into/found its way into our popular culture (movies, T.V. shows/series, video-games, etc.).

This particular works has an substantial amount of explanatory notes---some of which inadvertently have spoilers, so I'd advise against reading them until after or during your reading the story, not before.

>66 benbrainard8:

I know that in their heyday the pulp magazines covered just about all types of popular fiction, from crime & detection to westerns to science fiction and fantasy/horror to sports and so on. I don't know what percentage of pulp writers managed to transition to other media, but quite a lot did. If the didn't all get as famous and/or respected as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and H. P. Lovecraft (the SF writers' stars have waned somewhat and Lovecraft's success was posthumous, as we all know) there were plenty working for Hollywood or radio dramas (big for two or three decades) and television. And paperbacks, which sort of took over the ecological niche of the pulps from the '50s onwards, as well as actually reprinting material that had first been in the pulps.

All of which is to say that a lot of the material, as to storytelling approaches, subjects, even plotlnes and tropes/clichés, probably won't seem too unfamilar (the science fiction and fantasy/horror/weird titles were probably the most unlike what was appearing in other media at the same time that the pulps were around. They started to catch up 10 to 20 years later - '50s Sci Fi movies, the original Star Trek, Lovecraftian ideas filtering into popular culture.

What might be harder to recover is the experience of reading the stories in the pulps, in the context of regular features, letters, cover and interior art. I can try to synthesis memories of being excited about the new comics (i.e. comic books) in the newsagents every week (British titles were usually issued weekly; a lot of newsagents also had American comics which were usually monthlies - but there were weekly shipments just like today!) with the not-respectable air of the racy paperbacks in the spinner racks and the men's magazines a couple of shelves above the comics.

>67 benbrainard8:

I haven't read much Lovecraft, just some stories, long ago, but I gather that the problem with his racism isn't of the cosmetic sort, but the fact that it's embedded deeply into his worldview. Of course, he's not alone even in that. It's another kind of false trail to ignore that racism when it's actually a main (or even THE main) source of his inspiration.

I've read pretty much all of Lovecraft's fiction, and some of his poetry, and a couple of volumes of his correspondence. There are some very ugly sentiments expressed in some of those letters (if the subject crops up in the course of the letter, and the correspondent is of the same mind - Robert E. Howard, or a New England relative for example). But I honestly don't see it in the majority of the fiction.

I suppose if you made a list of themes in Lovecraft's fiction you could match them to a racist mindset but I think the racism is a subset of these bigger fears.

There is one story (in fact one of the "revisions" undertaken for another author - either rewritten or ghostwritten) which is racist at its core. But I think it can be taken as evidence that it isn't racism that inspires the stories. In this story after the usual supernatural horror, there's a final kicker.This big shock ending is that a character was "passing" - was African-American living as white. Given what else she is, and what she's done, it just comes across as stupid and self-defeating just in story terms. The racism isn't the motor of the story, rather it destroys it.

The list, then:
Deterioration of the individual. Descent into madness. "Bad blood"
There was madness in Lovecraft's family. both parents in fact. His father had contracted syphilis and died from it. I don't thik it's known if HPL knew the cause of his father's insanity. If he did he must have wondered if his mother's mental problems were due to being infected in turn, had he been born infected with it? If he didn't know he must still have feared a congenital mental weakness. Of course - although there's no hint of it in HPL's family tree - in fiction the bad blood could be ascribed to non-white ancestry. Although HPL can make passing insulting remarks about character's looks and ethnic background (in common with just about every Anglophone writer of his time) the only example I can bring to mind is "Arthur Jermyn" (because of the discredited theory that the humans on each major continent are descended from different geographically-separated hominid species, and the European one must have been the "best", then the fact that Arthur's recent ancestor is African is - in this racist reading - as much a blow as that she is an ape. That's my theory at any rate).

Deterioration of the Race
Obviously thinking that Europeans, Africans, etc. is already racist. But it was a commonplace idea when HPL was writing.

HPL's backwoods characters regress through isolation and ignornance, and often too unmixed a bloodline: inbreeding.

Looking at the Deep Ones and Innsmouth. It depends if you view "The Shadow over Innsmouth" as a kind of alien invasion story, a kind of proto-Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, or if you think the Deep Ones are stand-ins for non-white races and the whole thing is actually about the horrors of miscegenation.

The Universe doesn't care for us or about us
The flipside of which seems to be HPL's emotional attachment to home, i.e. the "gambrel roofs" of Providence. And of course wanting to keep "home" as you remember it (or imagined it) can manifest in wanting to keep "Others" out. If HPL had lived longer he would have seen more destruction of old buildings by town planners than by East European immigrants and African-Americans, I'm sure (there is some evidence that his views were modified as he got older. Approached middle-age, rather. Dead at 46.)

Sinister Cults
Yes. On the one hand, sinister cults an essential ingredient of many a pulp story or ripping yarn, so it's not as if HPL is the only practitioner. On the other, they do tend to be non-white, and in HPL's stories their victiims are strictly Anglo-Saxon or Nordic types (the painful irony of HPL writing this stuff during the period of Jim Crow, when African-Americans had reason to fear their neighbours, couldn't trust the authorities, has been pointed out, not least in Lovecraft Country).

On a general note, racism being widespread means only that; it doesn't make individual instance somehow less racist. Horrible things being normalized doesn't make them less horrible.

As I said, I don't recall enough of what I read of him to go into details personally, but these articles ought to be more successful:

Lovecraftian horror — and the racism at its core — explained (Vox)

We Can’t Ignore H.P. Lovecraft’s White Supremacy (LitHub)

The Racial Imaginaries of H. P. Lovecraft (text accompanying exhibition at Brown University)

How writers are turning H.P. Lovecraft's racist work on its head (CBC, interview with P. Djéli Clark)

... and so on.