(i will try and keep this spoiler-free for those who haven't read the books)
So i just finished reading what i think is a pretty extensive collection of some of H.P. Lovecraft's works, and him being the acclaimed author that he is I have no doubt that some of you have read his tales as well and this should qualify him for a small discussion.
(it should be noted i haven't read any of the many other texts by other authors that compromise the majority of the mythos)
I personally think that he's a good writer with a very impressive vocabulary and language (i think he is the only writer i have ever seen use the word "teratologically"...), but i must admit that I was slightly disappointed. It's not that the stories weren't good, they just failed to impress me as i believed they would, but that might just be because of my high expectations.
That being said, many of his stories are good, although my favorites seem to be the ones Lovecraft and literary critics didn't like and vice versa for the ones i didn't like. I have some problems with some of his creatures; they are just too silly and alien in shape to retain credibility in a work of fiction that was meant to have a certain verisimilitude. The only ones of the three earth races i like are the mi-go who are quite cool and both exotic and credible. If you disagree take a look at the Great Race of Yith and the Elder things. This lack of external logic made for something of an anti-climax in the Dunwich Horror when the horror was revealed (which still remains one of the very best though, despite this minor fault).
My impressions of some of my favorites and non-favorites:
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: definitely one of my favorites. Keeps a sense of horror/mystery throughout, is well-written, and interesting.
Pickman's Model: Also one of my favorites. This story involves alternative aesthetics and is an interesting read (and the eponymous character makes a "cameo" in a later story).
At the mountains of Madness: A great story which retains a great deal of verisimilitude in depicting an arctic expedition. I'm constantly impressed by how Lovecraft can emulate any type of scientist, from chemist to geologist and so on. Only dissapointment was the aforementioned race, although it made up for it by featuring my first (and only) shoggoth.
Herbert West - Reanimator: Apparently not well-liked by many (including Lovecraft), but a pretty good story about messing with the dead and zombies (as should be apparent from the title).
The Colour out of space: Worth a read. Interesting "villain".
The Outsider: Can't make it fit in the mythos, but should be read for its thoughtful aspects.
Silver key and beyond the gates of the silver key: really liked the philosophy in this, but the second one got odd half-way through.
Shadow over Innsmouth: good story and well-written although the ending was sort of unneccesary.
The Shadow out of Time: Was interesting to begin with, but quickly lost my interest because i couldn't sustain the suspension of disbelief.
Dream-quest of unknown Kadath: Interesting in that it is a perfect example of how a story can completely lack external logic yet retain internal logic and its credibility. The story also has a nice dreamy tone (which makes sense as it takes place in a dream world). good story too. You should probably read the Doom that came to Sarnath and the Cats of Ulthar along with the Silver key stories before you read it though.
So what do you think? I hardly expect you to agree with every word i said, but i hope you can identify with some of it.
It's been a few years since I read them. I remember At the Mountains of Madness fondly, and another (the name escapes me).
Call of Cthulu itself didn't strike me as his strongest, to be honest.
I like Lovecraft when he goes off on these wildly descriptive tangents, what some might consider "over-writing" - you can really feel him having fun in evoking certain places and creatures. I do like the vagueness of some of the cosmic horrors, although I agree some can be very goofy. He's really inventive, though, and has a very rich imagination, and gorgeous language.
I think Lovecraft's major weakness lies in his characters. I don't think I've ever cared about a Lovecraft character once. His dialogue, probably as a result, also sucks (part of what I'm edging towards with my Lovecraftian Space Western setting is an attempt to combine the imagery of Lovecraft with the colloquial dialogue of Firefly, but I haven't been working much on that setting recently... and I'm not great at dialogue myself). I think partly this is intentional, part of Lovecraft's view of the "weird story" or whatever, but to me it means his stories lack the real horror of some other dark fantasy out there, where a character I've come to care about is subjected to something horrifying (for those who've read Perdido Street Station, I'm thinking of [spoiler]Lin[/spoiler]). I really like Dream Quest as a whole, and then some individual elements from the other stories. I like Cthulu, for example, but "The Call of Cthulu" isn't his best story, I think.
Cthulhu is awesome. End of story.
I read one of Lovecraft's short stories. "The Outsider" soundsright, but I could be mistaken. Narrator talks about being stuck in a tower & sees his mostrous reflection in the mirror & gets freaked out. I wasn't really impressed. Kinda saw it coming. Probably just because he's been hyped up a certain way, so I was expecting it before I started reading.
Sorry... I couldn't resist...(swear warning)
Quote from: limetom[spoiler=H.P. Lovecrafts "The Call of Cthulhu," in One Act:]
(//../../e107_files/public/1231038193_14_FT3143_cthulhu.png)[/spoiler]
ROFL @ ABOVE
My favorite Lovecraft stories were probably Pickman's Model, The Outsider, The Music of Erich Zann, and The Rats in the Walls. The Rats in the Walls will always be my most favorite because it was the first one I ever read, and I was hooked.
The Rats in the Walls is epic. The end. The Call of Cthulhu, not as much.
Call of Cthulhu= meh
Cthulhu himself= epic
I guess I read the books in the right atmosphere. I was reading a collection (similar collection that you read) either while riding the bus to and from work and just before going to bed. The juxtaposition of atmospheres really lended to the stories creating a sense of uneasiness in me. I can't say I was scared through most of them, but "Shadow over Innsmouth" at least had me turning lights on before going into rooms.
I loved the mood his stories created, and I loved how they immediately felt like they were part of something more. "The Outsider" actually chilled me; somehow I didn't foresee it until it was too late like most twists. The one about the really giant guy who kept growing and his horrible invisible brother creeped the ever-living life out of me, and "Call of Cthulhu" had me considering getting the rest of the mythos.
I appreciate his mastery of my fears as the best of any author I've read so far: my biggest fear is the fear of the unknown. Lovecraftian "horrors from beyond the stars" are going to be one of my setting's chief antagonists (and I'm trying to do everything in my power to not let them resemble Illithid, Beholders, Chuul, or Aboleths, as those have been both branded and claimed by D&D). Something about a being who's mind is completely and truly alien to our own is terrifying to me. You can't reason with it, and just getting a glimpse of understanding of its motivations would shatter your mind.
Check this out http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600031h.html for some free Lovecraft loving goodness.
Completely forgot the "Whisperer in Darkness" this one is actually also one of my favorites.
And i agree you rarely identify with the characters. The main exceptions are the doctor from Whisperer and Randolph Carter. Call of Cthulhu didn't impress me terribly either; the thing that really ruined it was that Cthulhu actually appeared in the end; most of his monsters remain hidden or at least in the shadows. They don't battle the characters!
I thought it was funny how, when you read many of his stories in a row, you detect certain patterns. The most obvious is that most of his characters claim that what they saw is a hallucination of some sort (not believing what they saw) and that he often waits with the major horrific twist for the very last line.
And it was indeed the Outsider you were thinking about. Yes, when he crawls out of a crypt it is pretty obvious, but it is interesting how the monster is portrayed as thinking like a man even though others fear him (yes, it is cliche, but still).
The Statement of Randolph Carter is also pretty good at describing a general Lovecraftian mood.
I agree that Rats in the Walls is good, but yet it didn't really catch me. Not sure why.
Sadly, I've found that my favorite of Lovecraft's stories are the ones that most Lovecraft editors, reviewers, and critiquers think are his weakest works - such as "Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "Thing at the Doorstep."
That was the exact same thing that I realized (as i mentioned earlier). Thing at the Doorstep is also definitely worth a read. I was biassed to think it wouldn't be all that interesting because of the title, but it positively surprised me.
Innsmouth is as I commented also one of my favorites. Although i still dislike the ending (it wasn't hinted enough at throughout to really make it fit in).
Agree about the ending to Innsmouth. Also, love "Rats in the Walls."
Dude Ish, "thing at my doorstep" had me afraid to answer the door for a while. Someone actually called me just after I finished it and I half expected to hear "blub ... blub ... gurgle" on the line.
Yeah, I was already afraid to answer it anyway (due, in course, to the episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" called "Conversations with Dead People"), and that story certainly didn't help my anxiety.
Just wait until the new generation ruins text messaging and the internet forever.
What do you guys see in the Rats in the Walls that I don't? I always thought that story was boring, and had one of the most lackluster endings of all of HPL's stories.
I rate At the Mountains of Madness as my favourite tale. I really love the fact that the "monsters" actually turn out to represent a great civilization and the perspective of how terrible the encounter with humans must have been from their point of view. And you just can't go wrong with a Shoggoth. Ever.
I also enjoyed The Reanimator, The Colour out of Space, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Shadow over Innsmouth and Pickman's Model greatly.
To bring up a couple of stories that haven't been mentioned here yet: The Quest of Iranon is an interesting piece. Not horror at all, but I liked the twist at the end. Imprisoned with the Pharaohs invokes a nice athmosphere although the scene where the monster appears is a bit disappointing.
I think the Quest of Iranon is one of the few not in my collection. Imprisoned with the Pharaohs was in it (although renamed). I liked it, but i agree that the monster was disappointing. It would have worked much better if nothing much had been revealed.
Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowI personally think that he's a good writer with a very impressive vocabulary and language (i think he is the only writer i have ever seen use the word "teratologically"...), but i must admit that I was slightly disappointed. It's not that the stories weren't good, they just failed to impress me as i believed they would, but that might just be because of my high expectations.
I have a large collection of his works and am still pouring over it (though most of these I have already read a couple fo times). It is worth noting, though, that many of his stories seem hackneyed because he has been copied so extensively. Most of the strange ideas, when fist published in Weird Tales, were the first time the public had ever seen them. As a result, they were extremely bizzare and horrific at the time. I think his true genius lay in consieving of such singular things in the first place. That is hardly to say that his literary skills were lacking, of course.
It also bares mention that there are two Lovecraftian cycles. Those of the Cthulhu Mythos and that of his Dream Cycle. While they bare a sense of interrelation and in some cases may share places adn names, they are usually treated as seperate. It is my understanding that the works by other authors that sprung from Lovecraft's brainchild were predominantly if not exclusively based on the Cthulhu Mythos. I could be wrong as I have not yet delved into these writings.
Either way, I will say that I do truly adore his work and consider him the last noteworthy author of horror fiction. I get just as creeped out by "The Music of Erich Zhan" as I do by
Melmoth the Wanderer and find "The Cats of Ulthar" just as surreally dark as "The Maelstrom." I suppose I look to him, in many ways, as Heinlein looked to Edgar Rice Borroughs. If only I could so skillfully steal his ideas, file off the serial numbers, and give them a paint job!
- The Rats in Walls is perhaps his most chilling work.
- I think that At the Mountains of Madness is his best work. It reminded me of John Carpenter's The Thing- which is a great movie.
- The first piece of his that I read was The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath... I thought it was relatively poorly written- BUT it was evocative and strange. I think that it would only appeal to a very certain type of reader... one who likes some of Le Guin's work (which I do not), who likes Lewis Carrol (I am neutral) OR someone who is excited to see the DnD influences (which I was).
- Call of Cthulu was really weak, I thought.
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward reminded me of some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's weird fiction. I thought it was fairly solid.
I feel embarrassed to admit that I, someone obsessed with reading, have never read any of his work. I suppose this would be a good incentive to pick some up.
You can find Lovecraft's work on the internet if you are Canadian, I believe his work is in the public domain in Canada.
I'm not awesome enough to be Canadian so the stork rerouted me to the US.
Quote from: Raven BloodmoonIt also bares mention that there are two Lovecraftian cycles. Those of the Cthulhu Mythos and that of his Dream Cycle. While they bare a sense of interrelation and in some cases may share places adn names, they are usually treated as seperate. It is my understanding that the works by other authors that sprung from Lovecraft's brainchild were predominantly if not exclusively based on the Cthulhu Mythos. I could be wrong as I have not yet delved into these writings.
Also one can't forget that Lovecraft's dream setting owes a huge debt to Lord Dunsany's similar setting in Gods of Pegana, Tales of Three Hemispheres, etc. (there are three stories especially applicable starting with "Idle days on the Yann".. the other two I can't remember the names of.)
Additionally I think that Lovecraft's own Cthulhu mythos might've taken some cues from The King in Yellow by... Chandler was it? It's been a while.
Rats in the Walls echoes a few Poe stories, or the Yellow Wallpaper.
Lovecraft maybe defined and popularized a certain genre of horror/fantasy, rather than inventing it so much. Although his monster descriptions were pretty unique in his day.
All that said, Colour Out of Space, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, and Whisperer in Darkness were my favorites.
Lovecraft never tried to hide that he was heavily inspired by especially Poe. What Lovecraft created that no one else has in any recent time is an entire Mythos which wasn't only his creation, but a collective creation by many authors started by him. They write in the same world, adding to each others versions of the Mythos to expand it beyond what a single person could ever achieve. This is what Lovecraft made. For example, some of the arcane books mentioned in his later works are actually creations of other mythos writers.
The problem though is that most of their work is junk compared to lovecraft. I have only read a few "mythos-inspired" works but nothing really seems to compare.
All of them either border on humorous, or try to throw in too many strings of names.
The most Lovecraft-ish thing I have seen was not even fantasy or sci-fi; it was a few of Borges' works. I find him to be the most Lovecraft inspired literary author who was not in Lovecraft's circle- He was a very intriguing fellow.
I haven't read anything by other Mythos authors, and i probably won't as I've had my share of Cthulhu for now, but there are supposed to be some good ones in between. Lovecraft himself even read them and took inspiration from them.
Really? I thought the extent of his being inspired was by the inventor of Conan. I thought for the most part that Lovecraft edited the works of the "circle" authors and made them better rather than gleaned ideas from them himself?
He did do editing as well, but he also included the creations of the others in his own work. Okay, i'm admittedly no expert on him, but i know that some of the arcane grimoires he mentions in his books are made by others and i think it goes for some creatures as well. Of course, there is no doubt he was the mastermind.