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book_concierge 's review for:
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
by H.P. Lovecraft
Of course, I’ve heard of H P Lovecraft for years, but I’d never bothered to read anything by him. Just not my genre of choice. But I happened to have this in the house, courtesy of Penguin Random House (the publisher gifted me a set of their new “orange” Penguin Classics a few years ago), and it carries the “science fiction” tag so it fit a challenge.
First, these stories are mostly NOT science fiction, although one, dealing with aliens removing the brains of humans but keeping the bodies and brains both alive separately probably would qualify. Mostly this collection is one of horror stories originally published in magazines.
Second, as horror stories, I didn’t find them all that horrifying. Although, I can imagine that an audience in the early part of the 20th century would find them disturbing. The fact that Lovecraft writes all these stories in the first person serves to remove much of the suspense. Clearly the person survives any ordeal because he is telling the story. Reading them one after another in this collection made them seem formulaic and dull.
Lovecraft relied on the reader’s imagination in that he virtually never describes the “horror I witnessed,” instead relying on stating that said horror was just “too terrible for words.” There’s frequent use of the typical, dark, deserted location – either a room at the top of a tall tower, or a pit underground – into which the hero ascends (or descends), without any good light or backup, and despite the feeling of dread. In many of these cases, the hero awakens some time later with no memory of how he escaped.
Finally, although I recognize that this is a sign of the times in which they were written, Lovecraft relies on some disturbingly racist / prejudicial stereotypes.
On the plus side, one of his friends/colleagues was the inspiration for the hero of the final story in this collection: The Haunter Of the Dark. That person was Robert Bloch, who wrote Psycho. Lovecraft gave his character, Robert Blake, an address that was once Bloch’s home in Milwaukee. Sadly, one can no longer visit that edifice. It’s at a location that was cleared of houses in the ‘60s to make way for a freeway extension. But it was fun to see that address pop up in the book.
First, these stories are mostly NOT science fiction, although one, dealing with aliens removing the brains of humans but keeping the bodies and brains both alive separately probably would qualify. Mostly this collection is one of horror stories originally published in magazines.
Second, as horror stories, I didn’t find them all that horrifying. Although, I can imagine that an audience in the early part of the 20th century would find them disturbing. The fact that Lovecraft writes all these stories in the first person serves to remove much of the suspense. Clearly the person survives any ordeal because he is telling the story. Reading them one after another in this collection made them seem formulaic and dull.
Lovecraft relied on the reader’s imagination in that he virtually never describes the “horror I witnessed,” instead relying on stating that said horror was just “too terrible for words.” There’s frequent use of the typical, dark, deserted location – either a room at the top of a tall tower, or a pit underground – into which the hero ascends (or descends), without any good light or backup, and despite the feeling of dread. In many of these cases, the hero awakens some time later with no memory of how he escaped.
Finally, although I recognize that this is a sign of the times in which they were written, Lovecraft relies on some disturbingly racist / prejudicial stereotypes.
On the plus side, one of his friends/colleagues was the inspiration for the hero of the final story in this collection: The Haunter Of the Dark. That person was Robert Bloch, who wrote Psycho. Lovecraft gave his character, Robert Blake, an address that was once Bloch’s home in Milwaukee. Sadly, one can no longer visit that edifice. It’s at a location that was cleared of houses in the ‘60s to make way for a freeway extension. But it was fun to see that address pop up in the book.