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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
mysterious
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
I really wanted to like this. I love the idea of cosmic horror... Unknowably large and mysterious beings that could crush us out of existence with barely a thought... That idea is terrifying!
Unfortunately, the writing style was hard for me to follow. There were many words I had to look up, and many phrasings that had me rereading sentences or even paragraphs to follow what happened. Hell, in the climax of the namesake story in this book, I MISSED a crucial part, because it was described so strangely. I only realized later when I read a review online!
That said, I know this is classic writing, and I know it inspired many later horror writers, so I have to give some credit there.
THAT said, I also learned Lovecraft was a very racist person, and it showed through in some of the stories.
I did not read all the stories here. I recommend not starting at the first one, but instead doing research about which ones people liked. Out of those I read, I'd say Rats In The Walls was probably my favorite.
Unfortunately, the writing style was hard for me to follow. There were many words I had to look up, and many phrasings that had me rereading sentences or even paragraphs to follow what happened. Hell, in the climax of the namesake story in this book, I MISSED a crucial part, because it was described so strangely. I only realized later when I read a review online!
That said, I know this is classic writing, and I know it inspired many later horror writers, so I have to give some credit there.
THAT said, I also learned Lovecraft was a very racist person, and it showed through in some of the stories.
I did not read all the stories here. I recommend not starting at the first one, but instead doing research about which ones people liked. Out of those I read, I'd say Rats In The Walls was probably my favorite.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
Minor: Racism, Xenophobia
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Comparándola con las dos colecciones anteriores, lo bueno sería que al menos acá su escritura ya no es tan densa e infumable, especialmente sus descripciones.
¿Lo malo? Lovecraft sigue repitiendo la misma fórmula de mierda en todos los relatos.
Dato curioso: Lovecraft es el único autor con el que me dan ganas de poder re cagarme a trompadas.
Sólo le rescato haber creado el horror cósmico, pero era un pésimo escritor, y lo mejor del género que él creó está en el cine y en los videojuegos, sin lugar a dudas.
Todo lo que se diga de él como escritor es caer en la redundancia, porque el Chad Borges ya destruyó al Virgin Lovecraft en 1975 cuando publicó un cuento ("There are more things", en El Libro de Arena) parodiando su estilo y fórmula, que tiene todos los puntos altos de sus relatos pero ninguna de sus falencias.
Como no tengo ganas de buscar un link donde leer tal cuento, prefiero ilustrar mi punto con una imagen que saqué de twitter.
¿Lo malo? Lovecraft sigue repitiendo la misma fórmula de mierda en todos los relatos.
Dato curioso: Lovecraft es el único autor con el que me dan ganas de poder re cagarme a trompadas.
Sólo le rescato haber creado el horror cósmico, pero era un pésimo escritor, y lo mejor del género que él creó está en el cine y en los videojuegos, sin lugar a dudas.
Todo lo que se diga de él como escritor es caer en la redundancia, porque el Chad Borges ya destruyó al Virgin Lovecraft en 1975 cuando publicó un cuento ("There are more things", en El Libro de Arena) parodiando su estilo y fórmula, que tiene todos los puntos altos de sus relatos pero ninguna de sus falencias.
Como no tengo ganas de buscar un link donde leer tal cuento, prefiero ilustrar mi punto con una imagen que saqué de twitter.
Strange how New England seems to engender such a deep presentiment of a dark prehistoric evil and the uncanny. Steven King and H.P. Lovecraft, the nation's two most famous horror writers, are New Englanders, and, in reading them, it is hard to escape this fact. Indeed, Lovecraft seems the (albeit considerably less talented) descendent of Hawthorne, Melville and Poe-- like these New Englanders, eerily aware, somewhere in his bones, of something dark and primordial lurking in a young virgin land. Not that New England alone inspires this. The Pacific Northwest is perhaps most closely comparable region-- think Twin Peaks or Twilight. The American South also lends itself quite easily to supernatural horror (though of a somewhat different sort). The American Midwest, by contrast, does not seem to shelter many terrible or cursed beings. Why? The forested and rocky terrain of the coastal regions, in contrast to flat prairies where you can perhaps for miles? Their odd fauna? (Lobsters, for example, are intrinsically uncanny creatures, as Lovecraft's stories make clear) Or is it perhaps just a matter of local literary tradition?
Yet if the alienness of the environment -- the sense that some evil is lurking, lying in wait-- can be said to inspire so much of this fiction, it also explains why I find Lovecraft's stories unsatisfying. Too many explanations are given. The explanations might be supernatural, but even so they leave little to the reader's imagination. They lay out the terrain of horror far too clearly, quickly reassuring characters and readers alike that they have not, in fact, lost their minds when the largest part of true terror lies in the extended periods of doubt that the eldritch and the inexplicable engenders. For this reason, "The Colour from Out of Space" is justly considered the best in this collection, whereas other contenders, like "The Rats in the Wall" are largely ruined by letting us know too much about the horrible and impenetrable mysteries.
Yet if the alienness of the environment -- the sense that some evil is lurking, lying in wait-- can be said to inspire so much of this fiction, it also explains why I find Lovecraft's stories unsatisfying. Too many explanations are given. The explanations might be supernatural, but even so they leave little to the reader's imagination. They lay out the terrain of horror far too clearly, quickly reassuring characters and readers alike that they have not, in fact, lost their minds when the largest part of true terror lies in the extended periods of doubt that the eldritch and the inexplicable engenders. For this reason, "The Colour from Out of Space" is justly considered the best in this collection, whereas other contenders, like "The Rats in the Wall" are largely ruined by letting us know too much about the horrible and impenetrable mysteries.
Sorely, sorely disappointed. I simply don't see what all the fuss is about. I have heard it said though that no book is completely devoid of value, and at least my reading of Lovecraft did throw up a few interesting questions.
The main question is this: how fair is it to criticize an author for being a blatant horrible racist, given that the author lived a century ago and such attitudes were widespread during his time? I'm sure some allowances have to be made for the 'product of his time' factor. If the racism gets in the way of my enjoyment of his stories, some may say well, that's my problem - not Lovecraft's. Get over it.
However, the problem is that the racism is not confined to a few remarks here and there. It is constant, and indeed it is apparent that Lovecraft intended race to be a main contributing factor to the 'horror' of the stories. A couple of examples: in the story 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family', the horrible dénouement is the protagonist's realisation that he is descended from a tribe of ape-men. The explanatory notes expand on Lovecraft's difficulty coming to grips with the fact that the white race is derived from a 'primal' African race - that "we are all products of miscegenation". Likewise, at the end of 'The Rats in the Walls', the protagonist displays a supposed regression down the evolutionary scale through babbling in various languages, each one 'baser' than the last - English, Old English, Latin, Gaelic, grunting. This is not to mention the numerous times the mere fact that a person is of colour or otherwise 'low breeding' is shamelessly used as a device to convey the unnaturalness of the events at hand - e.g. the Negro sailor and exotic cultists in 'The Call of Cthulhu' - or even when the description of someone being 'of mixed blood' etc. is entirely superfluous.
The main problem here is therefore that the 'horror' of many of these storeis derives from Lovecraft's assumption that his reader shares his revulsion and obsession with humans' evolutionary predecessors and the idea of 'low breeding', reverting to type, the savage lurking beneath the surface, the 'corrupt' origins of the white race. This simply isn't a problem for the modern reader - and consequently, the stories are not scary - they do not work.
The repeated racism is symptomatic of another, stylistic defect in Lovecraft's writing - namely, that his formulaic style (first person, ex-post-facto recounting of events) shows negligible variance throughout all his stories. It may as well be the exact same protagonist in every single story - the same wordy description, the same racial obsessions, the same "this may be terrible but I am a man of science" attitude. Lovecraft, you are a one-trick pony.
Indeed, this wouldn't matter so much if the one trick was at least a good one. In fact, these stories were overblown, predictable and anticlimactic. The trope of 'the horror was indescribable and it has driven many men to madness' is a boring cliché. Additionally, many of the stories bear striking similarities to other stories by better authors - who couldn't note the uncanny resemblance between 'Herbert West - Reanimator' and 'Frankenstein', or 'The Hound' and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'?
Finally, a note on this particular edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) - the notes were distracting and pointless to the point of absurdity. I think the series editor is paying people to shoehorn the author's biography into the notes section to give the impression of value for money, no matter how irrelevant the details may be. For example: in one story, a mentioned date of "Oct 19, 1852" was noted with the detail "Lovecraft's mother was born on October 17, 1857". So what? In 'Cool Air, the passage describing the protagonist's landlady as Spanish explains that Lovecraft's own landlady was an Irishwoman. I flipped all the way to the back of the book for this? Who gives a shit? How is this relevant?
God, this book was crap.
The main question is this: how fair is it to criticize an author for being a blatant horrible racist, given that the author lived a century ago and such attitudes were widespread during his time? I'm sure some allowances have to be made for the 'product of his time' factor. If the racism gets in the way of my enjoyment of his stories, some may say well, that's my problem - not Lovecraft's. Get over it.
However, the problem is that the racism is not confined to a few remarks here and there. It is constant, and indeed it is apparent that Lovecraft intended race to be a main contributing factor to the 'horror' of the stories. A couple of examples: in the story 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family', the horrible dénouement is the protagonist's realisation that he is descended from a tribe of ape-men. The explanatory notes expand on Lovecraft's difficulty coming to grips with the fact that the white race is derived from a 'primal' African race - that "we are all products of miscegenation". Likewise, at the end of 'The Rats in the Walls', the protagonist displays a supposed regression down the evolutionary scale through babbling in various languages, each one 'baser' than the last - English, Old English, Latin, Gaelic, grunting. This is not to mention the numerous times the mere fact that a person is of colour or otherwise 'low breeding' is shamelessly used as a device to convey the unnaturalness of the events at hand - e.g. the Negro sailor and exotic cultists in 'The Call of Cthulhu' - or even when the description of someone being 'of mixed blood' etc. is entirely superfluous.
The main problem here is therefore that the 'horror' of many of these storeis derives from Lovecraft's assumption that his reader shares his revulsion and obsession with humans' evolutionary predecessors and the idea of 'low breeding', reverting to type, the savage lurking beneath the surface, the 'corrupt' origins of the white race. This simply isn't a problem for the modern reader - and consequently, the stories are not scary - they do not work.
The repeated racism is symptomatic of another, stylistic defect in Lovecraft's writing - namely, that his formulaic style (first person, ex-post-facto recounting of events) shows negligible variance throughout all his stories. It may as well be the exact same protagonist in every single story - the same wordy description, the same racial obsessions, the same "this may be terrible but I am a man of science" attitude. Lovecraft, you are a one-trick pony.
Indeed, this wouldn't matter so much if the one trick was at least a good one. In fact, these stories were overblown, predictable and anticlimactic. The trope of 'the horror was indescribable and it has driven many men to madness' is a boring cliché. Additionally, many of the stories bear striking similarities to other stories by better authors - who couldn't note the uncanny resemblance between 'Herbert West - Reanimator' and 'Frankenstein', or 'The Hound' and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'?
Finally, a note on this particular edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) - the notes were distracting and pointless to the point of absurdity. I think the series editor is paying people to shoehorn the author's biography into the notes section to give the impression of value for money, no matter how irrelevant the details may be. For example: in one story, a mentioned date of "Oct 19, 1852" was noted with the detail "Lovecraft's mother was born on October 17, 1857". So what? In 'Cool Air, the passage describing the protagonist's landlady as Spanish explains that Lovecraft's own landlady was an Irishwoman. I flipped all the way to the back of the book for this? Who gives a shit? How is this relevant?
God, this book was crap.
Jamás en la vida me pareció que me fuera a gustar tanto Lovecraft, nunca le había entrado no sé por que pero hasta ahora y la neta me gusto chingo.
Muchísimo.
Si no lo han leído, háganlo no se van a arrepentir.
Muchísimo.
Si no lo han leído, háganlo no se van a arrepentir.
These are all masterworks and, in my opinion, pretty much all you need to read of HPL. When he's bad, he's unbearable but when he's good there is no one like him. These are his best and read by a terrific reader. I think this edition is only available as audio.
This is saved from a one-star rating because I really liked one story. It was "The Colour Out of Space." That one was genuinely creepy, and also wasn't pervaded by some of the most sickening racism I've encountered in a long time. This sets it apart from the other stories by a large margin.