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HP Lovecraft

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So I was listening to that episode where Jake talks about The Bloop, back before it was identified; where the thumbs briefly talk about HP Lovecraft.

 

Lovecraft is hit or miss for me. On the one hand, "The Colour Out Of Space" is the secret best Lovecraft story, and possibly my favourite horror story ever. The idea of the invasive alien force being a previously-unknown colour so perfectly encapsulates the way Lovecraft used the inherent vagueness of print to induce terror; that he wrote not about the unknown, but the unknowable. On the other hand, stories like "The Thing on the Doorstep" or "The Outsider" are pretty lousy or reductive versions of other horror writing. He was also pretty shamelessly racist, even for someone of his time, and it makes his work borderline unreadable at times ("The Rats in the Walls" features a very unfortunately-named black cat, named after his actual cat, that gets mentioned by name in like every paragraph). Just the same, I figure there's a good likelihood that there are some fans around here.

 

Side note: I've always hated the single piece of artwork that they always crop and use for Lovecraft book covers, because it uses incredibly generic imagery to try to convey a very unconventional type of horror writing. I always joked that it looks like a metal album cover. Then I found out it's from an actual metal album cover. Welp.

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I've really enjoyed all the Lovecraft stories that I've read; I find them to be genuinely horrifying, something that I think is hard to pull off in writing. He and Robert E. Howard are these two fascinating figures in American literature, because they both obviously have had a huge influence on how their respective genres evolved but they don't get near enough recognition that they deserve. I'm hard pressed to come up with their modern day equivalents (Stephen King? Cormac McCarthy?)

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He's my favorite writer of short stories. I have a really tough time finishing books that are over 300 pages so even anthologies of his works are great for someone like me. Why I love Lovecraft's writing is because I think he's just as descriptive as someone like Tolkien or G.R.R. Martin  but he's waaay more concise. The last time I read one of his stories was like four years ago sadly and that was The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Not very scary per se but definitely one of his weirder works. It's apparently not held in such high regards as some of his other stuff but I thought it was great.

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I've really enjoyed all the Lovecraft stories that I've read; I find them to be genuinely horrifying, something that I think is hard to pull off in writing. He and Robert E. Howard are these two fascinating figures in American literature, because they both obviously have had a huge influence on how their respective genres evolved but they don't get near enough recognition that they deserve. I'm hard pressed to come up with their modern day equivalents (Stephen King? Cormac McCarthy?)

 

I think of the reason that they aren't so recognized is that their influence was through pulp magazines which didn't have a long shelf life and wasn't the stuff you see being reviewed in the new yorker. In Lovecraft's case his didn't really become well known till his stuff was reprinted. The other thing is that within their respective genres they are well known and anytime you come across a forum thread talking about the genres and their histories you'll find people arguing over the good and bad of their influence on the genre.

 

Also you should check out Arthur Machen who was an huge influence on Lovecraft which is very clearly seen if you read the Great God Pan. Lord Dunsay is another guy for the 19th century whose influence you can clearly see.

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After slogging through The Mountains of Madness, fInally managed to finish The Case Of Charles Thingummy Ward and goddamn does this guy write slowly. I mean, slowly mounting horror is all well and good, but for a modern reader Lovecraft is lot of work with not much pay off. I might just read the first page, the middle couple of pages and then the last few pages of the rest of his stuff, just to get the idea (or wait for the Del Toro adap's, whichever comes first).

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"The Colour Out Of Space" is the secret best Lovecraft story, and possibly my favourite horror story ever.

 

A couple of years back I read through the Call of Cthulhu collection with the metal cover, and "The Colour Out of Space" is definitely one of my favourites.

 

His less-great stories still work well for me (I remember enjoying "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"), but I must admit that, especially when reading so many one after the other, there are similarities across stories that make some of them blur together, or feel a bit repetitive.

 

Similar to how I read Cosmicomics, I found it way better to wait a while between each story. I think I put the collection down for a few months before coming back to it at one point, and that worked really well.

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His less-great stories still work well for me (I remember enjoying "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"), but I must admit that, especially when reading so many one after the other, there are similarities across stories that make some of them blur together, or feel a bit repetitive.

 

Similar to how I read Cosmicomics, I found it way better to wait a while between each story. I think I put the collection down for a few months before coming back to it at one point, and that worked really well.

I'm reading through a complete HP Lovecraft collection right now, and I agree—especially when you add in his earlier stuff, and his less-regarded works. It's 1000+ pages and I only started hitting stories I recognized on page 170+, and the preceding stuff is pretty repetitive and one-note for the most part. A lot of his shorter works are just ramping up to a specific, singular, unique image or moment that justifies the whole story. Most of the time it's worth it, but the mechanics he uses to get there are kinda repetitive. Still, though, the imagery in "The Outsider" and "The Music of Erich Zann" is as captivating as I remembered, especially the former, though less for the (obvious) end revelation than for the wonderful spatial twist that happens about halfway through.

I'm really excited to get to the later stuff that's more well-regarded, but kinda feel like I need to pace myself.

If anyone's interested in picking it up, the complete collection is one of those really nice Barnes & Noble hardcovers that they've produced a few dozen of. They're absolutely gorgeous, and even cover some non-public-domain stuff like Asimov's Foundation books, Dune, some Stephen King, and more. My only caveat is to NOT buy anything in translation, and only go for the English-written stuff.

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I've got the first omnibus: http://www.amazon.co.uk/H-P-Lovecraft-Omnibus-Mountains/dp/0586063226 (comprises At the Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Silver Key, and Through the Gates of the Silver Key).

 

I left it about a year between Mountains Of Madness and Charles Dexter Ward. I was going to read one of the smaller ones, see how I go, but maybe I won't bother!

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If anyone's interested in picking it up, the complete collection is one of those really nice Barnes & Noble hardcovers that they've produced a few dozen of. They're absolutely gorgeous, and even cover some non-public-domain stuff like Asimov's Foundation books, Dune, some Stephen King, and more. My only caveat is to NOT buy anything in translation, and only go for the English-written stuff.

 

I have the first HG Wells one they did and I love it. I guess they released another edition with the exact same contents but a more subdued cover, but who could say no to purple leather with metallic copper ink?

 

7sNcGAD.jpg

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I have the first HG Wells one they did and I love it. I guess they released another edition with the exact same contents but a more subdued cover, but who could say no to purple leather with metallic copper ink?

 

7sNcGAD.jpg

Yeah, the new ones suck, but they had one or two old ones squirreled away at the store I went to. They really are so gorgeous in person, especially seeing them all together on a table. (And yes, the Lovecraft one could be improved by dropping the pasted-on cover art. The other hardcovers are all etched and look better.)

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For Lovecraft fans there is a great podcast that went through every single HP Lovecraft story - HP Podcraft They're doing other horror stories now and it requires a subscription but I believe the original run is still up and free.

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Lovecraft is an interesting writer to me for a few reasons. His work is really effective and evocative, even though more literary types (people who know what they are talking about) would say he doesn't have a high level of technical ability, and even considering the actual monsters he describes just seem silly these days. Part of that might be the modern obsession with Cthulhu transforming him into an icon for a certain portion of nerds. The other thing I find fascinating about Lovecraft is how he drew on his own fears, which were eccentric at the time and downright unacceptable now, to create something fundamentally fearful. He created The Shadow over Innsmouth from a fear that is completely distasteful, but the story itself is compelling. I guess I'm interested in that clash, where ugly believes lead to interesting art.

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I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable reading Innsmouth. Loved the story, one of my favourites of his, but as you say, predicated on the idea of otherness as being somehow inherently twisted and wrong. As I've read more and more Lovecraft, my feelings towards him have transitioned from profound admiration of how effectively he can scare, to ambivalence because his stories so frequently fail to scare, to something of a sense that he is, for a pulp writer, hugely overrated and actually wildly inconsistent. Sometimes he gets it spot on, as with The Colour out of Space (my personal fave) and sometimes he transcends horror in the wrong direction and ends up being a parody of himself. 

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As much as I love Lovecraft's works, I still am uncomfortable with the subtle racist undertones in his works. Ugh, why did he have to be such a humongous piece of crap of a person? ):

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As much as I love Lovecraft's works, I still am uncomfortable with the subtle racist undertones in his works. Ugh, why did he have to be such a humongous piece of crap of a person? ):

 

1) Not really so subtle.

2) Arguably it's inextricably tied to what made his writing effective (I mean in his case specifically, obviously, not saying one needs to be racist to write horror, or even his type of horror well): there's this pervasive fear/revulsion at "otherness"

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1) Not really so subtle.

2) Arguably it's inextricably tied to what made his writing effective (I mean in his case specifically, obviously, not saying one needs to be racist to write horror, or even his type of horror well): there's this pervasive fear/revulsion at "otherness"

 

Yeah...thinking again, he wasn't that subtle. Now that I remember "The Shadow of Innsmouth". Yeah, it helped elevate his writing into being something fairly pensive and thought-provoking, but still...

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Hey, just adding in here that on amazon you can get all of the Lovecraft stories in one ebook for $1.

http://www.amazon.com/Yog-Sothothery-Definitive-Lovecraft-Anthology-ebook/dp/B008BOX0KE/ref=sr_1_27?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1386816879&sr=1-27&keywords=h.p+lovecraft

 

Lovecraft has some really great ideas in his work and also some good stories.  Something to keep in mind that I myself had a lot of problems with is that his work is cumulative. In later stories, he references things that were in previous stories in a way that presumes that you know what he is referencing by name. If you were to start with reading the Shadow Over Innsmouth, he talks about Shaggoths being kept in houses. You would really have no idea what that means if you haven't read At the Mountains of Madness.

 

Falselogic also mentioned it, but http://hppodcraft.com/ is a great resource, especially if you're no loving slogging through some of his stories. They do a good job of summarizing his works and they're pretty funny guys. All their stuff on Lovecraft's work is still up for free.

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Okay, so I've been listening to old HP Podcraft episodes and I think they narrowed down the most hilariously awful, incredibly racist thing Lovecraft ever wrote: "The Street." There's a decent audiobook version here, number 21. It's only fifteen minutes long.

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Do they actually read the stories in HP Podcraft, or just discuss them?

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Like a good few of his stories: The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulu, Colour out of Space, Mountains of Madness, The Horror at Red Hook, The Dunwich Horror, but he can be fairly hit and miss. The racism in his stories is undeniable, Rats in The Walls and the Horror at Red Hook stand out as being among the worst offenders.

 

Good documentary here, incase any of you are interested:

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