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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

H.P. Lovecraft

  
  

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Quantum
12:10 / 24.10.03
I searched, but couldn't find a thread on Lovecraft- how can this be?
I was recently given a pile of seventies paperbacks comprising most of his work and am chewing through the pile, realising most Lovecraft I've read was either someone else or from the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

It's great, and famous, and inspires devoted fannishness, what do you think about Lovecraft? About his pantheon? About his weird and scary monsters? About the Necronomicon and the Mad Arab, the hounds of Tindalos and Yog Sothoth?
 
 
doctorbeck
12:54 / 24.10.03
my inner geek boy liked the whole cthulu-universe bits of it, the interconnectedness of the stories, the sense of grasping around the edges of a great mystery, but i seem to remember all the stories had pretty much the same format of revelation and unspeakable eldritch dread at the end, much like scooby doo except it was elder gods and not the owner of the amusement park all along

saying that i loved it at the time, as well as some of the allied writers from that period whose names are lost in the swirling mists of memory, if i can drege them up i will post them but other ppl contributed to the universe or wrote along similar lines

have fun


andrew
 
 
Baz Auckland
13:43 / 24.10.03
I read them all for the first time two summers ago, and loved them as well...

...may favourite being "The Undescribable" (I think) where he sits with a friend in a graveyard, while the friend makes fun of him for always writing stories with 'undescribable' horrors, claiming there's no such thing as something that can't be described... foolish mortal!
 
 
illmatic
13:47 / 24.10.03
Well, critical opinion holds that a lot of writers from roughly the similar period, associated with Lovecraft are superior - people like Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith and Arthur Machen are superior writers. The only one of these I've read is Arthur Machen and I can safely say he leaves Lovecraft at the starting block.

Anyway, that's not to knock him too much. I find the Mythos stories, even the pulpy two minute terror things, a great read - one particular favourite is "Dagon" - but I prefered the longer works generally ie. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The stuff I really, really like though are the Randloph Carter stories - The Silver Key and several others, the names of which escape me. They've a beautiful dream like atomosphere as RC escapes beyond the Wall of Sleep and into the dreamlands. Kind of like Opium dreams or something. There seems to be less focus on ye olde eldritch horror in these tales for some reason, perhaps because they've got a protaganist Lovecraft cares about.

One thing I do ove about his stories though is the sense of slowly uncovering a veiled mystery - all that hidden knowledge and Necronomicon Gnosis, the hints and the way it connects with other stories. I think this is a big fascination in a lot of fantasy stuff - finally knowing the SECRET - I can remember it even for teenage forays into the world of Conan the Barbarian.
 
 
gergsnickle
13:51 / 24.10.03
Ah yes, I LOVE H.P. Lovecraft - got into him years ago in High School and started re-reading everything a couple of years ago, culiminating in a period of intense re-reading about a year ago. The best part was when I realized that through all those years I had someehow missed out on reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" even though it was in this paperback I owned (I always mistook the start for another story which I HAD read). It's difficult to describe the appeal of H.P. to people who don't get it: all the stories are similar (within a couple different set-ups), they are written in long blocky paragraphs without respite, but somehow this creates such a strong visual impression that it's like you're wandering around in some self-contained dreadful universe. Favorite stories: Dagon, Pickman's Model and the aformentioned 'Innsmouth'
 
 
doctorbeck
14:51 / 24.10.03
>Algernon Blackwood

thanks for the reminder, yes really liked his work at the time although for the life of me can remember none of the titles

there was aslo some modern cthulu stories i got in a book, although as this would have been the late 80s i supoose they are far from modern now, grant morrisons zenith stories were i suppoise part of a modern mythos too, and very good for it

somehow the stodgey deadness of the prose seems to suit the stories, all existential dread in a meaningless universe, but wonder in hindsite if there is a hint of xenophobia in the fear of the other in stories like, that one where all the town is inbred with fishmonsters and have big buggy eyes...books of their time i suppose


andrew
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
14:51 / 24.10.03
I'm a big fan of Lovecraft's stilted prose style. The Creation Books crowd like using the term 'oneiric' about it. I'll second that.
 
 
cusm
15:01 / 24.10.03
I really like his earlier dreamlands stuff, actually. More fantastical, like Dunsany, who I adore what little of him I've read.
 
 
illmatic
15:12 / 24.10.03
doctorbec: Well, Grant Morrision and a few others have said it's actually fear of women/sex blown up to cosmic proportions. All those slimy, evil, cosmic holes. Kind of like a giant Vagina Dentata.
 
 
pachinko droog
15:46 / 24.10.03
I got into Lovecraft my junior year of high school, about the same time I discovered the Beat Generation. I really admired his shared world approach to writing, creating this universe that others could add to and participate in, an interactive mythology. I suppose my favourite piece by him would be "At the Mountains of Madness". Alien horror in Antarctica and doomed expeditions, now what's NOT to like about that?
 
 
Catjerome
16:16 / 24.10.03
Hah, pachinko, I did the exact same thing - got into Lovecraft back in junior/senior year of high school, around the same time I was getting into the Beats and Yippies and all those guys. Crazy.

I love the interconnectedness - how one story will off-handedly mention a name or a scrap of information that ties into another completely separate story. It's like the parable about the blind men feeling an elephant and describing what it's like - the same mythos told from a thousand different angles.

My favorites were always *Charles Dexter Ward* and *The Color Out of Space*. Never quite describing what was actually happening and freaking your imagination out that way (the things that Charles' ancestor kept in those pits ... they weren't fully formed ... they'd been there for ages ... aaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Can anyone recommend any non-Lovecraft mythos stories? I've tried reading a few, but I'm usually disappointed.
 
 
pachinko droog
17:46 / 24.10.03
People into this stuff often recommend Clark Ashton Smith, but I can never find anything by him. (Some of his collections are listed in several local libraries, but they always seem to "vanish". I suppose I'll take that as a sign that his work is worth reading.)

What about the writers who influenced Lovecraft? Anyone read "The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers?
 
 
Baz Auckland
19:41 / 24.10.03
...one of the best things about having read Lovecraft is that you start seeing references to it everywhere.

Last week I watched a horribly cheesy 80s vampire comedy called "Transylvania Twist", where the main character's name is Dexter Ward, and of course he lives in Arkham and has to battle Eldritch beings to save the world...
 
 
LDones
20:04 / 24.10.03
For any casual Lovecraft reader who may not own any of his stories, this site has the complete texts of virtually everything the man ever wrote, available for on-line perusal in both html and pdf format.

Not the same as curling up against a bedroom wall with a flashlight and a dusty Bantam tome, but you could always print it out and pretend you were obtaining arcane secrets from some horrible internet portal of doom.
 
 
gergsnickle
02:03 / 25.10.03
Wow, LDones, thanks for that link! And I thought I had read everything by H.P. Being a cat lover (ailurophile, as Lovecraft writes), I was particularly curious to see what he had to say in the "Cats and Dogs" essay, and he doesn't disappoint. But he's rather harsh on the subject of dogs. Check this out:

"Persons of commonplace ideas -- unimaginative worthy burghers who are satisfied with the daily round of things and who subscribe to the popular credo of sentimental values -- will always be dog-lovers. To them nothing will ever be more important than themselves and their own primitive feelings, and they will never cease to esteem and glorify the fellow-animal who best typifies these. Such persons are submerged in the vortex of Oriental idealism and abasement which ruined classic civilisation in the Dark Ages, and live in a bleak world of abstract sentimental values wherein the mawkish illusions of meekness, gentleness, brotherhood, and whining humility are magnified into supreme virtues, and a whole false ethic and philosophy erected on the timid reactions of the flexor system of muscles."

Some of the re-writes which Lovecraft did were also quite enjoyable (and on that site as well) even though they often leave you wondering how much he contributed. "The Night Ocean", I seem to recall, was a particularly well-written story that didn't seem especially "Lovecraftian". Imagine sending a story off to H.P. Lovecraft and then having him "revise" it for you as he saw fit. That would be pretty great.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:45 / 25.10.03
Don't even get me STARTED on Lovecraft!!!

Holding myself back here.

One of my favourite writers. Ever. A pure triumph of content over style. Technically, he was an awful writer. Kind of a McGonagall of the weird. But ideas-wise... fuck, there's nothing scarier. Pre-HPL, it was all good/evil, Xtian stuff. Lovecraft may not have invented the entire "yes... there is a god... and he DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT!!!" thing ("The House on the Borderland" by William Hope Hodgson kind of sums this one up neatly) but he turned it into a genre. Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" stuff (and everyone else's since) really does play up the fact that the true horror is not in evil, and man having evil done to him... it's the fact that maybe, just maybe, as a species we don't mean shit. Which, despite having been done to death by now, is still a fairly frightening concept.

And there is a certain cumulative thrill in reading Lovecraft's "bad" prose... read one story, it's a good story but badly written. Read a whole bunch in a row, and you start getting into the rhythm, the repeated, over-used adjectives... and it actually becomes good writing- almost poetry. (Not that I'm suggesting that's how he intended it to happen... he was being paid by the word, for fuck's sake... of course he's needlessly verbose). Kind of the way Stewart Home uses the repetition of phrases he's nicked from Richard Allen novels, maybe? Only better, and not deliberate.

Lovecraft absolutely fucking rules. "The Rats In The Walls" is one of the all-time best horror stories ever written. There's no room for argument on this one. It's a FACT.
 
 
LDones
22:54 / 26.10.03
It's hard to talk about Lovecraft without resorting to a string of superlatives (in one direaction or another). Most folks tend to think of him as old news, tragically (I think) because his effect on popular fiction can't really accurately be weighed, or it's so large it goes unnoticed.

I think it's awesome that his work is so primally affecting and culturally far-reaching that mystics across the board, from folks like Crowley to vaudevillians/charlatans like Anton LaVey praised and incorporated his themes and ideas into parts of their work - and nobody bats an eye about it.

Sexual/Xeno phobias aside, I don't find it difficult to believe that

In reply to pachinko droog above:
I have not read The King In Yellow, though many on the board will recognize the reference from Vol.3 of the Invisibles. The story (although very famous) is largely out of print, but you can find the complete story on-line at this site.

Slightly OT: On the subject of comprehensive horror-writers whose works are at least partially out of copyright and available in their entirety on-line - there's a similar, in-progress Online Library for all of Poe's work (poetry, stories, etc.) available here - of particular note if only because the Tales Section, catalogues a variety of different versions of his popular stories, apparently altered between different printings (how much of a difference there is, I don't know).
 
 
LDones
22:56 / 26.10.03
Ack! Didn't complete a thought...

Should read:

Sexual/Xeno phobias aside, I don't find it difficult to believe that Lovecraft tapped into something serious for his inspiration beyond the thought that vaginas and foreigners were scary.
 
 
Baz Auckland
00:09 / 27.10.03
Don't forget A Cthulu on the Roof, the smash musical based on the work of Lovecraft...

...also included: a Yog Sothoth based 404 error...
 
 
trouser the trouserian
04:32 / 27.10.03
Lovecraft is def. a favourite author - tho' admittedly I got into Clark Ashton Smith first & only read HPL 'cos I wondered who was this lovecraft dude who kept saying "unexcelled" etc. on the back of Smith's collections.
Read Robert Chambers - didn't think he was that interesting - but much more impressed with Lord Dunsany (who was a big influence on HPL's dream-cycle stuff).
If anyone wants to read some contemporary HPL-inspired horror, I'd seriously reccomend Pagan Publishing's Delta Green novels, Dark Theatres and The Rules of Engagement. Dark Theatres kicks off with this old US Marine recounting his experiences when his unit was sent into Innsmouth to round up the population - a rather gory coda to The Shadows over Innsmouth.
 
 
bjacques
07:23 / 27.10.03
There's a(nother) book floating around, of modern stories in the Lovecraft Mythos, published by Creation. One is "Lovecraft in Heaven," by Grant Morrison, in which HPL finally faces one of his creations and it explains his curious affinity for the Deep Ones.

I was 11 or 12 when I found Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos II in my classroom library. I was glad to have had a strong bladder, since I wouldn't venture to the bathroom some nights.

Now I've been trying to rebuild my Lovecraft library with the paperbacks from the mid-'70s, the ones with the black covers and single messed-up faces. TOTCMII has been by far the hardest to find, especially since I live in Amsterdam, but I have the patience of a Great Old One.

Re-reading the stories now I'm struck that, for all his Anglophilia and racism, he really loved his native New England. I get a picturesque sense of the small, somewhat rundown coastal towns, ancient (by American standards) steeples and the rolling hills (and, of course the tunnels filled with abominations).

"I'll teach ye to shrink at what my family do!" - Walter de la Poer
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
11:01 / 27.10.03
The Creation books title 'The Starry Wisdom' is a good colllection of Lovecraft inspired short stories by the likes of JG Ballard, Burroughs, DM Mitchell, Simon Whitechapel, James Havoc and other 'Transgressives'. Recommended especially for the graphic adaptation of 'The Call of Cthulu' by Lovecraft fanatic John Coulthard. Some bits of it are better than others but it's definately worth a look.
 
 
doctorbeck
11:25 / 27.10.03
>What about the writers who influenced Lovecraft? Anyone read "The >King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers?

yes, years ago and liked it though harder work than lovecraft, denser even, sadly sold along with all my juvenalia and one of the things i will end up buying back for lots of money one day

also anyone had a conversation with someone at length at hp lovecraft the writer/band and only realised at the end that the other person was on about hp lovecraft the band/writer. only me then?

andrew

ps and surely illmatic all mens writing is about fear of women and vaginas
 
 
gergsnickle
13:22 / 27.10.03
Well, if I bring up H.P. Lovecraft - the writer - around most people I know, they always go, "Nope, never read him, but you ever listen the band H.P. Lovecraft, man..." And I never have, though I am defintely interested; eeveryone describes it as 'very psychedelic'. Anyway, anyone wanting more of the Lovecraft mythos is pointed towards Tales of the Cthulu Mythos (I guess this would be volume 1 then) - I had reservations about this when I took it out of library, but was surprised that many of the stories were as good as Lovecraft's. Robert Block's, in particular, were really good, and the Philip José Farmer story was very funny and hip, in a Lovecraft kinda way.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
15:04 / 27.10.03
There's been quite a few audio adaptations of Lovecraft's stories. I have an mp3 of a Canadian radio adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, and used to, many moons ago, have an LP of David Mcallum (the blond guy from the Man from Uncle) reading The Dunwich Horror.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
04:32 / 28.10.03
What do folk think of August Derleth, finisher & polisher of some Lovecraftania? I say he sucks tentacle bigtime.
 
 
LDones
06:51 / 28.10.03
August Derleth, of derleth.org? Wisconsin's most prolific writer even 31 years after his death?

I like this quote from his own autobiographical career blurb:

"My prolificity is a matter of economic necessity, and I have no doubt that the quality of my work has suffered to some extent because of its necessary quantity."

Did anybody here see In The Mouth of Madness - John Carpenter's shot at homage to Lovecraft? I remember enjoying it like hell in the , but a repeat view a year or two back left me cold as a witch's teat...
 
 
Quantum
15:16 / 28.10.03
A pure triumph of content over style Maominstoat
Ai! Yes! That's exactly it!

a string of superlatives
in the RPG there was a whole page of adjectives HPL used (sussurating, ululating, noisesome etc.) to inspire storytellers to keep the mood, great fun for making random sentences 'The unwholesome creatures frolicked in the noisesome stench issuing from the shudderingly unnatural chasmophilic mephistian gloom, illuminated only by the wan light of the gibbous moon' yeah baby, add some italics to emphasize the horror and some exclamation marks to round off the paragraph revealing SOME UNSPEAKABLE HORROR!! and you're away..

And the Rats in the Walls is the best horror story ever. FACT!
 
 
doctorbeck
10:36 / 29.10.03
surprised no one has mentioned GMs greatest hour ZENITH as nu-cthuloid literature, or is that stretching the boundaries a bit too much?

have dim recollections of my mate having an hp lovecraft comic too, anyone remember this?

a
 
 
rizla mission
12:23 / 29.10.03
As longtime listeners will no doubt be aware, I'm somewhat fanatical about Lovecraft and his various chums.

Had I the time & inclination, I could proably ramble on for weeks on the subject, but I'll restrain myself and say;

70s paperbacks - THAT's the best way to read Lovecraft! The ones with the cool covers actually seem to be becoming collectors items now - by which I mean they seem to be going for £5-£7 in a lot of 2nd hand shops, rather than the more conventional 95p - although I picked some up for almost nothing a few years back..

I wholly agree with the Chairman re: the increasing power of HPL's 'bad' prose.. it may be bad in formal terms, nigh on unreadable even.. but then nothing about his stories works in a formal/traditional manner (despite his deliberate attempts to write in purposefully antiquated pre-20th C. style).. it's not JUST great scifi/horror ideas buried under dreadful prose.. Lovecraft's lack of concern for literary technique combines with the genuinely baffling and otherworldly subject matter (there are few writers who leave their readers so frequently wondering "what's that supposed to mean?", "what?? that's crazy!", "why did he put that bit in? it doesn't seem to make much sense.." etc.) to create something which leaves him sailing through uncharted waters of supernatural, psychological and emotional turmoil, emerging with stories which are just basically some of the most wholly freakish and inexplicable and fascinating things ever written..

As I've said before, I think one of the most important things about effective horror stories (and films for that matter) - something that a lot of people (not to name names, August Derleth and Stephen King!) don't get - is that they've got to be cracked. They've got to not quite add up. They've got to read like they originated in the mind of some genuinely strange and troubled soul .. they've got to resonate with flaws and mysteries and less-than-obvious subtexts and all-out bizarreness - and it's this sort of thing that Lovecraft is the master of.

I'd definitely say he's not a writer everyone can enjoy/appreciate. If a few initial stories leave you thinking "this is absolute garbage.. I wonder what all the fuss is about.." then reading the rest probably isn't going to change your opinion. I rarely recommend Lovecraft to friends for precisely that reason.. I think you've got to develop a pretty singular mindset to really get into what he does.. I suppose in that sense he's the classic example of a "cult author".
 
 
Yagg
15:06 / 29.10.03
Well, Grant Morrision and a few others have said it's actually fear of women/sex blown up to cosmic proportions. All those slimy, evil, cosmic holes. Kind of like a giant Vagina Dentata.

I read somewhere that the whole slimy alien thing may have been born from the fact that The Old Gent really, really, really hated shellfish. The crawly things from the ocean people kept trying to put on his plate became crawly things in his stories. Instead of eating squid, he invented giant squids from space who were here to eat the world. Or so the story goes...

I second the dislike for August Derleth. He completely fucked up the Cthulhu Mythos by introducing: Duh duh-DAHH! The Good Guys!

There are no good guys in the Mythos! And no crying in baseball, either! Ruins the whole "we don't matter shit to these bigger, hidden powers" vibe.

Incidentally, I moved to Wisconsin a few years ago, the home of the late Mr. Derleth. There's a town I drive through sometimes with an August Derleth Memorial Bridge or somesuch. Odds are that if anything lives under it, it's not all that scary.
 
 
trouser the trouserian
15:08 / 29.10.03
surprised no one has mentioned GMs greatest hour ZENITH as nu-cthuloid literature, or is that stretching the boundaries a bit too much?

Well, Zenith definitely gets my vote for entry into the cthulhu corpus.

have dim recollections of my mate having an hp lovecraft comic too, anyone remember this?

Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant did a HP Lovecraft special a few years back - only thing I can recall from it was a graphic novellisation of "the Dunwich Horror".
 
 
Yagg
15:08 / 29.10.03
Well, Grant Morrision and a few others have said it's actually fear of women/sex blown up to cosmic proportions. All those slimy, evil, cosmic holes. Kind of like a giant Vagina Dentata.

I read somewhere that the whole slimy alien thing may have been born from the fact that The Old Gent really, really, really hated shellfish. The crawly things from the ocean people kept trying to put on his plate became crawly things in his stories. Instead of eating squid, he invented giant squids from space who were here to eat the world. Or so the story goes...

I second the dislike for August Derleth. He completely fucked up the Cthulhu Mythos by introducing: Duh duh-DAHH! The Good Guys!

There are no good guys in the Mythos! And no crying in baseball, either! Ruins the whole "we don't matter shit to these bigger, hidden powers" vibe.

Incidentally, I moved to Wisconsin a few years ago. There's a town I drive through sometimes with an August Derleth Memorial Bridge or somesuch. Odds are that if anything lives under it, it's not all that scary.
 
 
Yagg
15:10 / 29.10.03
Well, Grant Morrision and a few others have said it's actually fear of women/sex blown up to cosmic proportions. All those slimy, evil, cosmic holes. Kind of like a giant Vagina Dentata.

I read somewhere that the whole slimy alien thing may have been born from the fact that The Old Gent really, really, really hated shellfish. The crawly things from the ocean people kept trying to put on his plate became crawly things in his stories. Instead of eating squid, he invented giant squids from space who were here to eat the world. Or so the story goes...

I second the dislike for August Derleth. He completely fucked up the Cthulhu Mythos by introducing: Duh duh-DAHH! The Good Guys!

There are no good guys in the Mythos! And no crying in baseball, either! Ruins the whole "we don't matter shit to these bigger, hidden powers" vibe.

Incidentally, I moved to Wisconsin a few years ago. There's a town I drive through sometimes with an August Derleth Memorial Bridge or somesuch. Odds are that if anything lives under it, it's not all that scary.
 
 
pachinko droog
16:55 / 29.10.03
Trivia question: Who actually created the whole Hastur portion of the Mythos? Was that Derleth or someone else?
 
  

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