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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
The thing about reading Lovecraft is that he was really in need of a good editor. Some of his prose is stunning and the ideas are astonishing, but sometimes his prose is too dense or repetitive. So a mixture of glorious and terrible. He was a hideous racist even for the time period, it's disgusting. But it's important to not erase writing like this lest we deify writers who had unconscionable opinions without knowing that was the case.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, War
Lovecraft is the most miserable, mundane kind of bigot. He had driven nearly everyone around him out of his life by the time he died alone, practically unknown, and nearly penniless. By exasperating them, one imagines, or because of his repeated anti-Semitic rants (or worse). His writing is over-stylized and tedious; he relies on the same descriptors, character types, and narrative gimmicks over and over again; and his view of the world is stilted, filtered, and shot through with very basic misunderstandings.
He is one of my favorite writers. His aesthetic of horror, of slime and fish and a vast unknowable horror, has essentially been reclaimed by the very people he spent his lifetime hating and cowering from. His writing is affected, yes, but it is honest and somehow almost charming. No one else can claim to have lifted his style even as they plunder his so-called mythos whole-cloth. He has directly inspired so many writers, and the best of them have taken from him a commitment to their own idiosyncratic (and often gorgeous) prose style and built their own horrible houses of blackened, slimy, rotting cards.
Long live Lovecraft, a sick little freak, and all the freaks and monsters he's inspired since. What a fascinating and utterly weird man, and what a strange and counterintuitive legacy.
He is one of my favorite writers. His aesthetic of horror, of slime and fish and a vast unknowable horror, has essentially been reclaimed by the very people he spent his lifetime hating and cowering from. His writing is affected, yes, but it is honest and somehow almost charming. No one else can claim to have lifted his style even as they plunder his so-called mythos whole-cloth. He has directly inspired so many writers, and the best of them have taken from him a commitment to their own idiosyncratic (and often gorgeous) prose style and built their own horrible houses of blackened, slimy, rotting cards.
Long live Lovecraft, a sick little freak, and all the freaks and monsters he's inspired since. What a fascinating and utterly weird man, and what a strange and counterintuitive legacy.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Finally finished this book that was sitting on my shelf for almost a decade. Yes, that long. But I also remember not understanding a single word when I tried to read the first time. But I guess today I'm mature enough to enjoy it in its entirety.
While it didn't introduce me to new concepts, The Call of Cthulhu definitely impressed me for being the first written horror work of its kind, influencing deeply the horror genre that we know today.
The protagonist being introduced to the horror through manuscripts and correspondence left behind by his uncle was a nice way of building the eerie atmosphere. Almost making us feel like we're probing into something we shouldn't have, which was probably intended. After all, Lovecraft himself believed that the key to happiness was utter ignorance.
Today, we obviously aren't strangers to monsters or any other fantastical species, so none of his descriptions of Cthulhu and his species did anything to me. Except for the sunken city. I was quite amazed by the type of bizarre fear it instilled into and later I thought it might be because of its wrong and non Euclidian geometry that messes with our sense of space. Things that appears convex being concave, or angles that should have been obtuse being dangerously sharp? Scary, right? I definitely love being disconcerted by illusions and having characters not knowing what to do as a result.
I would have also enjoyed the weird cult rituals if it wasn't for the author's aversion towards non white ethnicities. Him simply describing the cult members by their skin colour or facial features was shameful to read, regardless if his views were common at that time or not. Because all I could visualize were simple people that were victim of his racism. He could have made up something else that didn't lump all non Anglo-Saxon people into one bad mess, given the fact that he had the creativity for it but whatever...
Other than that, the plot is extremely simple and straightforward, which actually serves as its strength, bringing attention to the horror elements which were new at that time. And I can see why why Lovecraft's ideas are so widely used.
While it didn't introduce me to new concepts, The Call of Cthulhu definitely impressed me for being the first written horror work of its kind, influencing deeply the horror genre that we know today.
The protagonist being introduced to the horror through manuscripts and correspondence left behind by his uncle was a nice way of building the eerie atmosphere. Almost making us feel like we're probing into something we shouldn't have, which was probably intended. After all, Lovecraft himself believed that the key to happiness was utter ignorance.
Today, we obviously aren't strangers to monsters or any other fantastical species, so none of his descriptions of Cthulhu and his species did anything to me. Except for the sunken city. I was quite amazed by the type of bizarre fear it instilled into and later I thought it might be because of its wrong and non Euclidian geometry that messes with our sense of space. Things that appears convex being concave, or angles that should have been obtuse being dangerously sharp? Scary, right? I definitely love being disconcerted by illusions and having characters not knowing what to do as a result.
I would have also enjoyed the weird cult rituals if it wasn't for the author's aversion towards non white ethnicities. Him simply describing the cult members by their skin colour or facial features was shameful to read, regardless if his views were common at that time or not. Because all I could visualize were simple people that were victim of his racism. He could have made up something else that didn't lump all non Anglo-Saxon people into one bad mess, given the fact that he had the creativity for it but whatever...
Other than that, the plot is extremely simple and straightforward, which actually serves as its strength, bringing attention to the horror elements which were new at that time. And I can see why why Lovecraft's ideas are so widely used.
