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ethancf 's review for:
At the Mountains of Madness
by H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft's current popularity is a strange phenomenon in that there is a notable dichotomy between "pop" Lovecraft and his actual prose. The vast realm of "lovecraftian" fiction and artwork, while very clearly inspired by his universe, has very little to do with his actual stories. This is no more apparent than in At the Mountains of Madness. The artwork this story has inspired, of the strange creatures and metropolis buried under the ice of Antarctica, is truly fantastic in every sense of the word. And yet the actual story is rather dry – we spend more time focusing on the natural icy landscape of Antarctica than anything else. If one were to translate Lovecraft's words directly to an image, you'd get little more than an everyday photograph of the area.
Of course, that isn't what this story is trying to do – it hints at the monsters, the unknowable terror lurking beneath the ice. The narrator's refusal to give us more detail about the terror is frustrating at first, and may ruin the novella for some entirely. But his refusal plays well into a sort of PTSD-style reading: whatever is down there is so scary, he cannot force himself to detail it. This adds importance to the detail of the icy landscape: not only are these details the ones seared in the narrator's mind (and so we get minute details about boring into ice and the engineering behind their equipment), but describing the ice in such excruciating detail fills in the story so that our imaginations can create the horror. For Lovecraft's creations are so alien, so bizarre, that prose can do them no justice – our imagination not only carries this weight, but enhances the terror much more than real descriptions ever might.
While the "Lovecraftian" appeal term may now mean tentacles, cultists, and journalists/investigators in trenchcoats, maybe an ancient, bizarre alien menace or two, that's more an aesthetic derived from illustrations of Lovecraft's universe than his actual work. It's a really bizarre rift that can make visiting his work off-putting, since he focuses so little on these monsters he's created. "Lovecraftian" has taken on a strange life of its own. Whatever you think of the repetitive and unspecific prose, one cannot deny that this is a staggering work of imagination whose influence has been felt for generations.
Of course, that isn't what this story is trying to do – it hints at the monsters, the unknowable terror lurking beneath the ice. The narrator's refusal to give us more detail about the terror is frustrating at first, and may ruin the novella for some entirely. But his refusal plays well into a sort of PTSD-style reading: whatever is down there is so scary, he cannot force himself to detail it. This adds importance to the detail of the icy landscape: not only are these details the ones seared in the narrator's mind (and so we get minute details about boring into ice and the engineering behind their equipment), but describing the ice in such excruciating detail fills in the story so that our imaginations can create the horror. For Lovecraft's creations are so alien, so bizarre, that prose can do them no justice – our imagination not only carries this weight, but enhances the terror much more than real descriptions ever might.
While the "Lovecraftian" appeal term may now mean tentacles, cultists, and journalists/investigators in trenchcoats, maybe an ancient, bizarre alien menace or two, that's more an aesthetic derived from illustrations of Lovecraft's universe than his actual work. It's a really bizarre rift that can make visiting his work off-putting, since he focuses so little on these monsters he's created. "Lovecraftian" has taken on a strange life of its own. Whatever you think of the repetitive and unspecific prose, one cannot deny that this is a staggering work of imagination whose influence has been felt for generations.