More Lovecraft

[randy_byers]

After I read "The Shadow out of Time", I decided I'd also read Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space", just to cover the space-time continuum. Or no, I guess it was because "The Colour out of Space" is frequently cited as his best science fiction short story. But when I looked at the table of contents of the Best Of collection from Ballantine that I have, I decided I might as well take the plunge and read a bunch of Lovecraft's better known stories. I read a few Lovecraft stories when I was younger, but not many. Time to bone up.

So far I've read "The Outsider" (1921) and "The Dunwich Horror" (1928), and I've started "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930). "The Outsider" gave its name to the first Lovecraft collection from Arkham House in 1939. It's mostly a mood piece, with a zinger ending that is obvious now if it wasn't obvious at the time. One of the things I've gotten from reading a bit of Lovecraft criticism (including an excellent overview by S.T. Joshi) is that his prose got less purple over time. "The Outsider" is still in high purple mode, and I guess I don't mind it much. The one thing of Lovecraft's I've loved since I was a teenager is The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which is very purple indeed.

"The Dunwich Horror" is one of his most famous stories, and I was a little surprised I had never read it before. It's a very effective piece of business set in Lovecraft's gothic New England about the unholy spawn of godlike alien entities out to scourge the Earth of all life. It has been criticized for some structural clumsiness, but it actually has nice bit of misdirection that leaves a first time reader somewhat befuddled by developments about three-quarters of the way through and then delivers a nice punch in the end. Lovecraft has a weakness for punchy endings, but this one was better, I thought, than the one at the end of "The Shadow out of Time" and certainly better than the punchline ending of "The Outsider". In any event, I begin to think that like Tolkien, Lovecraft is writing about landscape as much as anything else. The creepy New England countryside is in many ways the most interesting character in the story. Well, that and the creepy folklore and depraved, inbred country folk. Reminds me of my trip to the Berkshires a few years ago!

Ho ho ho. Well, it's only finally sinking in how much Lovecraft was a regional writer along the lines of Faulkner.

Update: 'Later in his life, Lovecraft’s opinion of one of his most beloved stories, “The Outsider,” was not a positive one. He wrote that it was “too glibly mechanical in its climactic effect, & almost comic in the bombastic pomposity of its language... It represents my literal though unconscious imitation of Poe at its very height.” Later, he went even further, calling it a “rotten piece of rhetorical hash with Poesque imitativeness plastered all over it.”' -- Louise Norlie, Existential Sadness in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, but Joshi's essay hit me with terminal ennui at the beginning of the fourth paragraph, where not only does he tell you the exact street address of Lovecraft's birth, he adds parenthetically what the street number used to be.

This might be relevant in a 400-page biography, but in an introductory Web essay, it's a lack of proportion so glaring as to drive me away in gibbering, eldritch horror.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I probably skimmed at that point. Which is also true of the Bob Bloch intro to the Best Of collection I have, where he spends some time defending HPL from accusations of being sick and depraved by talking about all the other famous writers who could be accused of the same. Dope fiends and alcoholics, all of them! Zzzzzzzzzz. Although it was interesting to see him list Ted White as one of the accusers (and Ted still feels that way, as far as I can tell).

It might be worth clicking on the link to the second section of Joshi's article, "Philosophy", before you give up on it entirely. Or not, of course. I found the discussion of Lovecraft's evolving antiquarianism and interest in cutting edge science quite interesting.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I've always found that about Joshi. The man's reputation as the premier Lovecraft scholar disappoints me - Joshi always has enormous, voluminous, amounts of biographical detail and such sundry data at his fingertips, but always seems to be awkward and a little confused when it comes to talking about the actual weird tales and eldritch horror that is the heart of the actual work. Joshi is a machine when it comes to mundane scholarship, but seems to have discovered so much of the weird occult world only via Lovecraft.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

Yes, Lovecraft is a regional author. I highly recommend reading a stack of the stories and then wandering around the old parts of Providence and Salem. Providence especially; I remember seeing buildings and thinking "that's the Witch House!" "that's the Church of the Starry Wisdom!" and later finding out that I was right, in that Lovecraft mentions that the places I saw were the inspirations for the place. Haven't visited Marblehead yet; it's supposedly the inspiration for Kingsport.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

So do they have Lovecraft tours in Providence? Is he a local institution yet?

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

Well, we were there because World Fantasy Con was there; WFC was there because HPL was. I don't know of that makes him a local institution. We weren't on a tour; just wandering around randomly produced enough Lovecraftian moments.