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kieralesley 's review for:
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
by H.P. Lovecraft
I’ve been enjoying a lot of modern Lovecraftian fiction lately, and after my experience with Agents of Dreamland tripped me up I decided it was time I read some of the original material.
I had heard that Lovecraft was dry and dull. I had heard that Lovecraft was racist and sexist and horrible. My recent experiences with classic scifi and fantasy have led me to realise that the elements that modern pop culture latches on to are not necessarily indicative of the tone or content of their original source material.
I was expecting to dutifully read as much of this as I needed to and then put it down and move on with my life.
Guys, I did not expect to like this collection as much as I did.
This collection brings together a series of short pieces and novellas, arranged chronologically from earliest to latest, linking to the Cthulhu mythos.
Highlights for me were: “Nyarlathotep” (a strong contender for my favourite Lovecraftian figure so far), “The Rats in the Walls”, “He”, and “The Colour Out of Space”. I’m also glad I’m familiar now with “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
I was stoked to find out how much of the pop culture, modern awareness of Lovecraft are straight up presented in his work. I’ve been burned through things like Dracula and Frankenstein where elements of the story have been overemphasised over time and obscured the real feel of the original, often leaving me disappointed. Not the case here.
I also didn’t mind elements of Lovecraft’s prose and turns of phrase. I can see why some readers find it frustrating and at times there is a lot of seemingly unnecessary description and the pacing is not modern. But among that there’s some good, weird, poetic stuff!
An extra bonus for this edition and doing it in ebook I was able to take full advantage of the footnotes which really helped to support and provide context to the material I was reading. Most of the time I didn’t care about whether the street or building being referred to was real or not, but I found getting insights into the wider mythos and tips like “this might be the first time Lovecraft introduced a Shoggoth” in “He” really helpful.
Let’s deal with the elephant in the room and, honestly, the reason this isn’t a five-star for me. The material is often horribly and overtly racist. Lovecraft seems to have been scared of everyone that wasn’t like him – immigrants, women, people of colour, rural people generally. There isn’t a woman to be seen anywhere – they just don’t seem to exist in this world. His protagonists are always from his class and worldview and anything else is cast in a negative light or doesn’t exist. It’s not comfortable for a modern reader, nor should it be.
I can see why the most recent related works are deliberately carving space in this world for… basically everyone else. Not only has Lovecraft left these areas wide open for someone else to fill and therefore made them an easy target for current writers wanting to contribute to the canon, it’s also needed to create some balance and depth to the world. Lovecraft’s depiction of his ideas is so frustratingly narrow that the ideas and world he created aren’t able to be fully explored by relying solely on his works.
Having found this not as intimidating a task as I had expected, however, I’m going to go and read through his back catalogue and then probably start heading towards modernity through the key contributing authors and related material.
I had heard that Lovecraft was dry and dull. I had heard that Lovecraft was racist and sexist and horrible. My recent experiences with classic scifi and fantasy have led me to realise that the elements that modern pop culture latches on to are not necessarily indicative of the tone or content of their original source material.
I was expecting to dutifully read as much of this as I needed to and then put it down and move on with my life.
Guys, I did not expect to like this collection as much as I did.
This collection brings together a series of short pieces and novellas, arranged chronologically from earliest to latest, linking to the Cthulhu mythos.
Highlights for me were: “Nyarlathotep” (a strong contender for my favourite Lovecraftian figure so far), “The Rats in the Walls”, “He”, and “The Colour Out of Space”. I’m also glad I’m familiar now with “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
I was stoked to find out how much of the pop culture, modern awareness of Lovecraft are straight up presented in his work. I’ve been burned through things like Dracula and Frankenstein where elements of the story have been overemphasised over time and obscured the real feel of the original, often leaving me disappointed. Not the case here.
I also didn’t mind elements of Lovecraft’s prose and turns of phrase. I can see why some readers find it frustrating and at times there is a lot of seemingly unnecessary description and the pacing is not modern. But among that there’s some good, weird, poetic stuff!
An extra bonus for this edition and doing it in ebook I was able to take full advantage of the footnotes which really helped to support and provide context to the material I was reading. Most of the time I didn’t care about whether the street or building being referred to was real or not, but I found getting insights into the wider mythos and tips like “this might be the first time Lovecraft introduced a Shoggoth” in “He” really helpful.
Let’s deal with the elephant in the room and, honestly, the reason this isn’t a five-star for me. The material is often horribly and overtly racist. Lovecraft seems to have been scared of everyone that wasn’t like him – immigrants, women, people of colour, rural people generally. There isn’t a woman to be seen anywhere – they just don’t seem to exist in this world. His protagonists are always from his class and worldview and anything else is cast in a negative light or doesn’t exist. It’s not comfortable for a modern reader, nor should it be.
I can see why the most recent related works are deliberately carving space in this world for… basically everyone else. Not only has Lovecraft left these areas wide open for someone else to fill and therefore made them an easy target for current writers wanting to contribute to the canon, it’s also needed to create some balance and depth to the world. Lovecraft’s depiction of his ideas is so frustratingly narrow that the ideas and world he created aren’t able to be fully explored by relying solely on his works.
Having found this not as intimidating a task as I had expected, however, I’m going to go and read through his back catalogue and then probably start heading towards modernity through the key contributing authors and related material.