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brannigan 's review for:
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
by H.P. Lovecraft
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.