The Best Of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales Of Horror And The Macabre (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn”Try saying that backward (or forward, which is equally challenging).H.P. Lovecraft is definitely the granddaddy of “Cosmic Horror” and Weird Fiction. He is often mentioned in science fiction / fantasy / horror related websites and forums, not to mention myriad other kinds of websites. Reading fans raving about his works and seeing the numerous fan arts online make many of us genre fiction enthusiasts want to start getting into his fiction to see what the fuss is all about. I suspect a lot of first-time readers of Lovecraft are disappointed at what they find. The way he goes about telling his stories is very idiosyncratic, he has a tendency to overwrite and be highly verbose. This can be very disappointing and off-putting if you choose the wrong story to start with and you were expecting a quick thrilling read.This is where the unwieldy titled The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre comes in. This is a “greatest hits” type of anthology which is ideal for the uninitiated and of course fans who want their favorite stories all in one book. It does not include the novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which is just as well as these are not so suitable starting places. I think it is better to get used to (and forgive) the author’s verbiage and appreciate the otherwise awesomeness of his stories.A lot of the stories tend to be supernatural / sci-fi hybrids with witches and wizards summoning aliens from another planet or dimension by magic. Here is my quick run-through of the stories in this collection:Introduction by Robert Bloch - Best known for Psycho, one of his protégés. A good intro to Lovecraft the man and his fiction. Don’t skip it.The Rats in the Walls - As your very first Lovecraft story his convoluted prose style may take a while to get used to. The climax is spectacular but also a bit of a mess in the narrative department. The story is great though, worth a reread later on.The Picture in the House - The book that drips blood; where the useless protagonist runs away just when things are heating up to a critical point, next time stay at home old chap! Nice, short and atmospheric though.The Outsider - A story of self-discovery. Great twist at the end. Awesome in a most eldritch way.Pickman’s Model - You are in for a treat with this one. Classic Lovecraft, one of his most popular and enduring stories. The colloquial writing style is rather unusual for Lovecraft I think. Possibly his most accessible story and a great starting point for new readers.In the Vault - Break a leg! An amusing and rather inconsequential little story.The Silver Key - Time traveling shenanigan featuring some Lovecraft’s patented awful faux-hillbilly dialog. A Twilight Zone-ish story.The Music of Erich Zann - Featuring a man who is attracted by weird music. Next time just buy a Yoko Ono album. Actually one of HPL’s most popular stories. Doesn’t really do much for me, unfortunately. The bloody protagonist does a runner again just when things are getting interesting.The Call of Cthulhu - The narrative is a little fragmented and the story is rather incohesive, but there is some tremendous world building going on in this story. The creepy atmosphere is very well done and for once the monster actually shows up in all its glory (HPL’s monsters generally prefer to lurk and mess with your head). This story is also often cited as evidence of his racism. According to Robert Bloch Lovecraft did become more mellow and tolerant of foreigners after marriage.The Dunwich Horror - This is what newcomers to Lovecraft are probably looking for. A great, thrilling and creepy tale. That Wilbur Whateley reminds me of Damian in the Omen movies a bit to begin with. He changes later on though (not for the better of course)The Whisperer in Darkness - Gives new meaning to “the Kodak moment”, talk about product placement! A very creepy story featuring weird floating monstrosities and a whispery ET.The Colour Out of Space - This! Ladies and gentlemen. This! Lovecraft’s best story (IMO). For a change, the story is pure sci-fi, no chanting monks, witches, voodoo or Cthulhu. The poor Gardners’ family literal disintegration thanks to a meteor falling on their farm will surely give you the heebie-jeebies.The Haunter of the Dark - Set in Italy. The story of a weird black church. If you spot a copy of the Necronomicon by “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred in a church head for the exit immediately.The Thing on the Doorstep - This also! What a great body swap story, much better than Freaky Friday. Featuring the eponymous Thing on the Doorstep whose catchphrase is “Glub!”. Brrrr!The Shadow Over Innsmouth - Oh my Gawd! A blasphemously amazing story of some very fishy folks. Set mainly in the creepiest town ever. Featuring a very cool twist.The Dreams in the Witch-House Featuring a witch, a rat with a man’s face and a sort of hyperspace bypass. The narrative is a little rambling for my taste, but a great story is embedded in there.The Shadow Out of Time - Another story of involuntary body swap. The Great Race aliens are almost benign by HPL’s standard, unauthorized body swap notwithstanding. It is a longish story (70 pages or so), it starts off very fascinating, but Lovecraft goes into his rambling mode in the second half of the story. An example of his overwriting. Still a great story though, one that will stay with you.Due to his verbiage, thin characters and appalling dialogs Lovecraft’s dissenters often dismiss him as a bad writer. If so he is the most excellent bad writer of all time. The thing about his writing is that while some of the stories will have you nodding off while wading through the long winded prose, but once you get to the end of the stories you realize that they are actually quite good. Also when he is on top form, such as in The Colour Out of Space where the narrative is very evocative and the story is just right, he is unbeatable._______________________________Notes:The website Cthulhuchick has kindly put together a free e-book of the Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft in several formats. The download link is on the main front page.You can read any and all of Lovecraft's stories online at Dagonbytes.Download links for free Lovecraft audiobooks.
One would think after all the bizarre supernatural events that occur in Lovecraft's fictional New England, a larger swath of people around the world would take notice and attempt to do something about them. In some cases, portals to other dimensions or remnants of ancient beings are even located squarely within large cities and, yet, remain undisclosed to the masses. This is, of course, mostly due to two things: because some citizens have a vague knowledge of the evil lurking nearby and wisely choose to stay away from it and because many others display a flippancy toward superstitions, regarding them as wild tales.For the true believers, though, Lovecraft's stories could certainly act as a warning for anyone planning on unearthing secrets of the haunted backwoods or the sinister urban areas of New England. The stories take readers past the traditional New England of the 1920s and 30s to the nightmarish underworlds that lie beneath. A passage from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" perfectly illustrates the dark eastern landscape: "Collapsing huddles of gambrel roofs formed a jagged and fantastic skyline, above which rose the ghoulish, decapitated steeple of an ancient church." In Lovecraft's world, not even the steeples can keep their heads on.The stories typically deal with a protagonist who has stumbled upon some unknown species of ancient beings ("cosmic horror") and, therefore, acquires knowledge not fit for the human mind. This knowledge then causes the protagonist to lose control of his sanity or lead a life of paranoia as unknown assailants pursue him. There are stories that fall outside of this formula as well—like "In the Vault," one of my personal favorites—but even within this framework, Lovecraft manages to keep each story fresh and exciting. Revelations are doled out at the right pace, Lovecraft-invented folklore is mixed with true accounts of obscure occultism, and various monsters are described in such a way that gives the basic structure of their forms but never quite completes the picture, leaving readers with only vague impressions of the monstrosities that abound.One of the big questions for me about Lovecraft's writing is whether he gives away too much information or not. Unfortunately, I feel he often does. There are stories like "The Call of Chtulu" and "The Shadow Out of Time" that almost seem to be informational texts about the Chtulu mythos rather than traditional tales, and here the excess of information might work well. However, in other cases, most notably "The Thing on the Doorstep," stories would have benefitted from revealing far less. It is leaving certain things unknown—as Lovecraft was well aware—that creates real terror. Therefore, I find myself somewhat disappointed that more fear isn't created, but even that doesn't diminish the pleasure I derive from inhabiting the Lovecraft universe and not wanting to leave it.
What do You think about The Best Of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales Of Horror And The Macabre (2002)?
H. P. Lovecraft is a peculiar writer. His stories are extremely predictable. The first-person narrator, a sober man of reason and science, will halfway through the story start noticing something odd about his surroundings: "It was almost as though [horrifying revelation from the end of the story], but I knew that could not be the case." And then, at the end, when all his reason has been denied, "It was then I knew the terrible truth: [horrifying revelation that we all guessed thirty pages ago]!" He also tends to use the same handful of adjectives over and over again: "ancient," "blasphemous," and "cyclopean" occur far more often than is really necessary.But for all that, there is still some strange magical property to his writing. A personal example: the first time I read Lovecraft, I was visiting my sister on spring break. I wanted something to read before going to bed, so I picked up The Best of H.P.L. and started reading "The Call of Cthulu." Halfway through the story, I was thinking "Wow, this is really kind of hack-y and predictable." I was starting to feel rather afraid, though what of I couldn't tell you. Then, I went to sleep, and had scary effed-up nightmares all night about undersea cities and evil giant monsters. Which, I think, is rather the point of reading H. P. Lovecraft.He's not a terribly good writer, but his stories have a strange way of getting into your subconscious and taking root.
—Ayla Zachary
When I bought this book at a Waldenbooks when I was all of 10 years old, I thought I knew what horror was. I was a big fan of the all the horror movies of the 1980's and read my mom's Stephen King books. I will admit; the cover is what we drew me in. When I started to read the stories within, I discovered that horror was more then cheap thrills and a girl running away from a nut with an axe. Lovecraft's stories showed me a world where you would be driven to madness if you tried to be the hero and stand against something like Cthulhu. No witty one liners from the "heroes" who (temporarily) hold back the return of the Old Ones and no catchphrases from any shoggoth. This was a world where humanity was nothing but an afterthought, something that wallows in mud and slime and is oblivious to the stark coldness of a universe that does not care whether or not you have faith. These concepts were very new for a kid, and it took well into my later teens until I could fully appreciate Lovecraft. Yet to this day, I cannot think of a better introduction to the existential horror of the Cthulhu Mythos then this book. And the cover art is still cool after all of these years.
—Robert
Excellent collection of the master of horror! I had read this already back in high school, but I didn’t remember much of it. I decided that since there are so many references to Lovecraft’s work all over the place (books, movies, games, comics, etc…), I should give it a re-read. One of the things I do remember was that it was scary. It’s not easy for a book to be scary - movies can easily make you jump, but without the benefit of graphic scenes and loud noises, a book has to do a lot more work to get you scared - and Lovecraft manages just that. I was surprised by the variety of stories in this collection. A lot of the stories (and none of the earlier ones) stories have nothing to do with the Cthulhu mythos, and are your typical horror stories - an anecdote with a horror twist at the end. But it’s when he gets to the Cthulhu mythos that he really shows his mastery. Some of the stories start as a mystery or adventure story, salted heavily with allusions to hidden things, great mysteries, and “unspeakable horrors”. Despite the exaggerated foreshadowing, Lovecraft does construct a good story, with interesting plot devices (at one point, doom is predicted not by a person having a vision, but by a *statistical analysis* of dreams and visions over a period!), and cliffhangers. His stories sometime link in subtle ways too - you will recognize things in one story that got mentioned in another that in principle had nothing to do with it (they are not sequels), so you slowly get the feeling of a larger world with a lot going on underneath. Another things that surprised me is that this is very much a sci-fi book - the monsters are usually characterized as aliens, be it from other planets or from other “dimensions”. There is a lot of space travel, travel through the folding of space, and the importance of physics and mathematics to the stories. There are even mentions of Einstein, relativity, quantum physics !The major downside of the book is how melodramatic his prose is, specially his use of adjectives. Halfway through the book, it starts getting repetitive, as there are only so many ways to preface the word horror: "indescribable horror”, “Cyclopean horror”, "realms of unfathomable horror and inconceivable abnormality”, etc…There are also an immeasurable number of incongruences to his plots and plot devices. For example, in a few of his stories, there are all-powerful antagonists, ancient beings who have mastered all sorts of dark arts and can destroy all of humanity at a whim, and yet are foiled by dogs (“The Dunwich Horror”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”). Another example is how his characters are always getting horrified by architecture, geometry and language - really, how bad can it be? It makes it difficult to relate sometimes. When someone says how they were paralyzed with fear because of the horrible architecture of the place, it’s not easy to feel sympathetic. A passage says: "My head was aching, and I had a singular feeling that someone else was trying to get possession of my thoughts” You know that feeling that someone is trying to get possession of your thoughts? Yeah, me neither.In the end, if you do get past all the melodrama, you get treated to a vast mythos, with creatures and legends that pop up all over the place (“ah, so this is where that comes from!”), and that have laid important foundations to the genre of horror and sic-fi.
—Luiz
