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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
I really wanted to love this more than I did. I know Mr. Lovecraft is a pioneer of the horror genre, but I had a really hard time getting into most of these stories. I know I have to take into account when these were written (and I tried, I really did), but the amount of racism and sexism was just a bit too much for me. Some of the stories I was able to enjoy regardless, but I have to admit that I didn't even bother reading all of them.
Odd stories, kept me confused as if I'm tripping on something. Have to research further information about the stories.
I love everything this guy wrote. Its scary, macabre, suspenseful, and extremely weird.
It's hard to rate this because it is for sure racist, but The Dunwich Horror is genuinely compelling.
It's a wierd way of presenting a dystopian literature, the horrors presented here nonetheless seems grave to the world of 1900s but as of the people of 2021 we have seen and heard much worse! Looks like I read the early script that inspired app the sci-fi/horror/thriller movies I had already seen. But by the way the creature is put together and also wierd named makes it more like the cryptic cross breed creatures we see in the mythos. As per the horrors, I say the Godzilla movies provide even more thrilling horrors. My guess is that the confusing old English language makes this somewhat of a awe-inspiring work but probably if we get it to translate to usual English or any other rudimentary languages it would plainly cause a "meh" reaction. What I feel like is " Before humans, a huge "spaceship" crash landed on earth, probably herded dinosorus, then something happened and they saved their asses by going back and locking themselves up, while the spaceship kept in touch with what's happening around and also broadcasted signals which apparently some humans were able to pick up (probably some kind of special genetic mutation which got disperserd due to evolution for several millennia or aeons!). Destiny lured these men and others to venture upon the risen spaceship of wierd advanced tech and the humans somehow opened the door and out comes this ugly thing of crossed mix and suddenly disappeared after coughing some poisonous gas (may be the "then" earth is not the "now" earth and the air was toxic to it?) So hopefully the creature either went back to the ship and back to its cryo-pod or just switched on and went home while people lingered on with the memories (obviously since for some it's genetic mutation). All in all this would have certainly thrilled me of I was born later the 1900 when everything apart from the select few scriptures and doctrines were blasphemous and horror. Unfortunately due to increase in population and also technology these work now reach to far corners and more people who really try and find meaning in such work rather than their day to day life.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.Ironic, considering the man's own beliefs.
A mountain walked or stumbled.These stories live up to the hype. Lovecraft was a vastly hateful and bigoted man, but also deeply talented at portraying a looming, cosmic horror, lurking at the edge of one's vision... or perhaps not but; perhaps and consequently. Much of Lovecraft's beliefs strongly influenced his writing. Even divorcing his racism, misogyny, and homophobia from the interpretation of the text, the text itself is still seeped in prejudice and the sallow stink of fear. It's easy to get caught up in the casual inclusion of slurs, snake-oil race science, and other harmful ideologies, but then Lovecraft hits you with something like this:
A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.and his mastery of horror is once again settled. The "thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes"; "ghastly midnights of rotting creation"; "corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities"; "dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods."
Obviously Lovecraft's writing has been incredibly influential to me. It's strange, reckoning with my love of Lovecraftian horror while also living as a person whose very existence would have shaken Lovecraft to his core. A lot of my friends who are also queer, or not white, or not male, also really enjoy these stories and this universe. "The abnormal," Lovecraft wrote, in this very book, "always excites aversion, distrust, and fear." By defining normality as a mirror of himself—heteronormative, patriarchal, cisgender, white—the justification for his hatred and fear of the "abnormal" could be rationalised.
Anyway, I don't believe that not reading or adapting Lovecraftian horror stories will help anything or anyone. If anything, the mere fact that so many of the most ardent fans of the Cthulhu mythos are people whom Lovecraft himself would quake in his boots upon meeting is the best fuck-you that can be achieved. The author is dead, literally in this case; he's not receiving any of our money, accolades, or support. He's dead in the ground, and all that remains is to study and to transform his work into something beautiful.
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
Finora non ho letto nessun racconto/romanzo di Lovecraft che non mi sia piaciuto, e anzi, comincio a pensare che sia impossibile per me non apprezzare un suo scritto.
Ovviamente ci possono essere racconti più o meno interessanti di altri (è anche una cosa soggettiva), ma comunque lo stile narrativo dell’autore riesce sempre a tenere incollati alle pagine.
Ormai non ho più nessuna parvenza di dubbio: Lovecraft è diventato ufficialmente il mio autore preferito del genere, e sono pronto a leggere ogni cosa scritta da lui.
Non mi resta che buttarmi nella lettura del temuto Necronomicon, scritto dall’arabo pazzo Abdul Alhazred, sperando di preservare la sanità mentale e di non cadere negli abissi neri della follia, tipica di chi decide di intraprendere tale sfida.
Ovviamente ci possono essere racconti più o meno interessanti di altri (è anche una cosa soggettiva), ma comunque lo stile narrativo dell’autore riesce sempre a tenere incollati alle pagine.
Ormai non ho più nessuna parvenza di dubbio: Lovecraft è diventato ufficialmente il mio autore preferito del genere, e sono pronto a leggere ogni cosa scritta da lui.
Non mi resta che buttarmi nella lettura del temuto Necronomicon, scritto dall’arabo pazzo Abdul Alhazred, sperando di preservare la sanità mentale e di non cadere negli abissi neri della follia, tipica di chi decide di intraprendere tale sfida.
This is a solid 3 1/2 stars in my estimation. By most standards, Lovecraft is a bad writer. He has some strong images and motifs, but also an unfortunate tendency to overwork words like "terror", "nameless horror", "blasphemous monstrosity", etc., to the point they lose their power to signify anything. He tells something is terrible but rarely makes you feel it.
And yet — there's something about the Cthulhu mythos and the way Lovecraft tells a story that makes it worthwhile. Technically speaking, one thing I appreciate about Lovecraft is that everything happens at a distance. The monster is always recounted, or read about, or glimpsed in dreams, or seen for a moment in a telescope, etc. Coupled with the cosmic horror of Cthulhu, reading a Lovecraft story feels something like this...
You pick up the book. You read about a man, safe in his study, sitting down in the rich windowed light of late afternoon to read the diary of a sailor who went mad. He reads with growing apprehension of dark unspeakable secrets as the shadows lengthen and the air cools around him. He reaches the end of the sailor's narrative and looks up. Night has fallen, and for a moment he panics, seized with the dread he now sees behind the world. He now knows the secret, but how to bear it?
You feel a breeze, and look up. The dark blue of night has fallen around you, too.
And yet — there's something about the Cthulhu mythos and the way Lovecraft tells a story that makes it worthwhile. Technically speaking, one thing I appreciate about Lovecraft is that everything happens at a distance. The monster is always recounted, or read about, or glimpsed in dreams, or seen for a moment in a telescope, etc. Coupled with the cosmic horror of Cthulhu, reading a Lovecraft story feels something like this...
You pick up the book. You read about a man, safe in his study, sitting down in the rich windowed light of late afternoon to read the diary of a sailor who went mad. He reads with growing apprehension of dark unspeakable secrets as the shadows lengthen and the air cools around him. He reaches the end of the sailor's narrative and looks up. Night has fallen, and for a moment he panics, seized with the dread he now sees behind the world. He now knows the secret, but how to bear it?
You feel a breeze, and look up. The dark blue of night has fallen around you, too.
Of the 18 short stories in this book, I thoroughly enjoyed at least 5 of them which would be getting about 4 to 5 stars, including Herbert West: Reanimator, The Rats in the Walls, The Colour Out of Space, The Whisperer in the Darkness & The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
It did take me some time to adjust to the Lovecraft language, being a bit older than the majority of books I usually read. It also took some time for Lovecraft himself to develop his writing, which can be seen in some ways over the course of these stories, since they're placed here in chronological writing/publishing order and all of those previously mentioned are placed in the second half of the book or later.
It was certainly something to finally read some of the original stories of Cthulhu, the city of Arkham (no, not the batman one) and all the other weird and wonderful Lovecraft creations!
It did take me some time to adjust to the Lovecraft language, being a bit older than the majority of books I usually read. It also took some time for Lovecraft himself to develop his writing, which can be seen in some ways over the course of these stories, since they're placed here in chronological writing/publishing order and all of those previously mentioned are placed in the second half of the book or later.
It was certainly something to finally read some of the original stories of Cthulhu, the city of Arkham (no, not the batman one) and all the other weird and wonderful Lovecraft creations!
A few of the stories I've read were creepy, but mostly I just don't get the appeal of HP Lovecraft.