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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
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.
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.