The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward (1982) - Plot & Excerpts
Though Lovecraft is a favorite writer of mine, until now this book (one of only two novel-length pieces he ever wrote) has been one I hadn't gotten around to reviewing. It was recently nominated as a common read in my Supernatural Fiction Readers group; and though it wasn't the one chosen, that reminded me of it, and I resolved to correct the lapse. It's one of my favorite Lovecraft works, and certainly one I highly recommend to other readers who like this type of fiction.The Goodreads description for this edition (which isn't the one I read) doesn't really give you any accurate clue as to what the book is about, and the reference to "magic" is erroneous; like Poe, Lovecraft tended to eschew magical causes for his horrific plots, preferring naturalistic explanations. (Nonetheless, this novella reads a lot like supernatural fiction, both in mood, tone and style and in the fact that his "science" operates in ways that in practice might be easily mistaken for magic.) The premise here is that in colonial New England, a would-be sorcerer has learned both how to extend his life far beyond its natural limit, and how to reanimate even the long-dead (which some old-time alchemists actually believed was possible by the proper treatment of their "essential saltes"). His villainous activities are destined to have sinister results, both in his own time and that of the author. (Though it was published posthumously in 1941, it was actually written shortly after World War I.) To avoid spoilers, I won't elaborate further.Some Lovecraftians characterize this as one of his "non-Cthulhu" works. To be sure, it was written well before "The Call of Cthulhu" (1927), and the agent of evil here is a human being, not a Great Old One. But there are indications that some of the motifs of the Mythos were already germinating in the author's mind. It's indicated that the baddie got his information from occult traffic with unhallowed elder beings from beyond the earth ("Those Outside"), and one scene in particular depicts a hidden-away place with phenomena that could come from out of any of the later Mythos stories. (Indeed, Lovecraft himself almost certainly never divided his works into those two neat categories in his own mind. Nor did he even coin the "Cthulhu Mythos" term, which was the invention of August Derleth after HPL died.) But although exposure to this place sends our principal good guy into a temporary paralyzed state of catatonic terror, this book does lack some of the heavy-handed moralizing about the supposedly reason-annihilating terror of exposure to Lovecraft's view of nihilistic "reality" that appears in some of his stories (though one earlier passage hints at it.) In terms of his plotting here, a case could be made that this is perhaps one of Lovecraft's more "optimistic" works (if we can apply that adjective to anything from his pen :-) ).Lovecraft is a master of purple prose, one of the authors I most admire when considered strictly as a stylist, and he's at the top of his form here. The storytelling is first-rate, and the evocation of atmosphere is masterful. Much of the story is built around the title character's antiquarian research, a motif I particularly like, and HPL handles it very adeptly. He set the tale in his native Providence, and he brings that setting to life as only he could --he makes it real to me though I've never been there! (One reviewer complained about the wealth of historical detail as distracting and slowing the story, but for me it was actually one of the strong points of the book.) For Lovecraft fans, this is a must-read; and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone wanting to sample his work.It's worthwhile here to briefly mention the 1963 movie The Haunted Palace (www.imdb.com/title/tt0057128/ ) directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price (which I watched before I read the book). Although it takes its title from a Poe poem, this is actually a loose adaptation suggested by this book, though the film writers moved the setting to Lovecraft's fictional Arkham and changed a number of other aspects, including the ending (which seems designed to set up a sequel, though I don't think one was ever made). The movie is worth watching on its own merits, but no one should imagine that viewing it will give them a real understanding of the book's actual plot.
I'm rereading this based upon Stephen's review so if I do not appreciate it more, it will be entirely his fault :-)_______________________________________In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward HPL ventures a novel-length story about his Elder Gods and one man’s tragic fate when he delves into mysteries better left unexamined. Charles Dexter Ward is the scion of a well established Providence family who begins investigating esoteric matters and discovers that an ancestor, Joseph Curwen, was killed by a terrified town when they discovered his unhallowed necromantic studies.The reader doesn’t actually spend a lot of time with Charles Ward. Instead HPL tells the story through the boy’s doctor’s attempt to find out what happened to him. HPL’s strength as a storyteller does not reside in memorable characters but in the ability to evoke an atmosphere of mounting horror and despair, and he does that very well here. You can feel the terror Dr. Willett experiences when he’s trapped in the lightless vaults beneath that ill-omened Pawtuxet farmhouse where Curwen raised up monstrous entities from Outside:But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker’s perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite’s private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous co-ordination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised, and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away over the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stone, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of the shafts the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foothold might exist. (pp. 102-03)And this is a description of the relatively empty vaults found in 1928; nothing at all like these same vaults from 170 years earlier when the men who descended into those hellish catacombs emerged unable to speak about what they had seen and heard – the only account of the venture coming from the journals of a man who remained above ground.I’ve got the entire Ballantine collection of HPL’s stories sitting on my bookshelf but poor Charles Dexter has languished there while I favored its brothers such as The Lurking Fear or The Doom That Came to Sarnath. It took Stephen’s review mentioned above to prompt a reread and I’m glad that I did.So, Stephen, you may not have steered me to a tropical paradise, but I did manage to avoid any literary ice bergs.
What do You think about The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward (1982)?
"There is no evil to any in what I do, so long as I do it rightly."The Case of Charles Dexter Ward chronicles the tale of a young antiquarian who becomes fatally drawn to the satanic opus of his infamous ancestor and unwittingly funnels an ancient evil into his home. The novella is off to a slow start as Ward's character is established, then picks up as as he begins piecing the life of the enigmatic Joseph Curwen, and remains fascinating as the narrative changes focus to one Marinus Bicknell Willett, the stalwart family physician who takes up detective duties as Curwen's phantom looms malignant over young Charles.This is my first Lovecraft read. I was just as reminded of Poe as I was of Borges, he of the fascination for obscure lore, reiterative history, damned lineages and ancient labyrinths. Sure enough, Borges was influenced as much by Poe as he was by Lovecraft, whom he dubbed, in typically condescending fashion, Poe's "involuntary parodist". But I gotta say, for all the comparisons to Poe, Lovecraft does come out as having an approach to horror of his very own. Both writers muck about in the 'tweener realm of the ambiguously fantastic, yes; but whereas Poe usually favors the uncanny (yet scientifically sound) by way of romantically tortured psyches, Lovecraft flat out embraces the marvelous and supernatural as otherworldly forces threaten humanity with a terrifying cosmic reckoning.Lovecraft is a pulpier wordsmith than Poe, too. You can tell this guy was used to getting paid by the word. Check out the way he describes a noise: "It was a godless sound, one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones". He describes the noise nine times in a row, yet his point is that the noise is ultimately indescribable. And he does this a lot in picturing sights, sounds and smells not of this world. Not terribly efficient, but effective in that it creates an effect - and a powerful one, too.On the surface Lovecraft throws in just about every Gothic horror gimmick: shifty-eyed portraits, ciphered grimoires, chalk pentagrams, secret laboratories, grave robbers, satanic rituals, eldritch voices, "archaic and forgotten languages", "pandaemoniac howling" and even a couple of trips to Transylvania. But set aside the B-movie gimmicry, and Lovecraft turns out to be a fantastic narrator, feeding the reader with facts but letting him connect the dots, suggesting horrors that are never fully explained or showcased in detail (the sequence that obliquely tells of the "Tartarean wells" in the Curwen catacombs is the best in the story) and masterfully building and holding the atmosphere until the very end.Honorable mention to all the lovely words I learned: anent, cachimnation, charnel, mephitic, pelf, phthisical, Roodmas, sedulous, shew, vernal.
—Benja
This is my fourth HP Lovecraft story and, so far, it's my favorite. That says a lot. Because, I'm really enjoying discovering his writing and connecting his influences to my favorite horror authors of today. For some odd reason, Lovecraft wasn't happy with his novel. He wrote it in 1927 and he didn't try to get it published. It wasn't until after his death that August Derleth and Donald Wandrei published it in the May and July issues of Weird Tales in 1941 did the story see the light of day. I find this curious. Like his Herbert West: Reanimator, which he also wasn't fond of, I find these stories to be some of his best work and highly influential in the world of horror fiction and film.(view spoiler)[... (hide spoiler)]
—Ken McKinley
“P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in acid. Don’t burn it.”Drawing significantly on European and Jewish occult traditions (for some very in-depth insights take a look, being wary of potential spoilers, here) Lovecraft unfolds a grand story of macabre, grotesque and suspense with a passionate portrayal of Providence in the background.As an already avid reader and fan of Lovecraft's tales I was simply astonished by the novel. I had already read all his major works and I would never have thought that The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, written in 1927 shortly after The Call of Cthulhu would depose At the Mountains of Madness from the position of my favorite work Lovecraft's work, while simultaneously somehow diminishing the impact of his subsequent works!One cannot really avoid comparison of this novel with the other long piece of writing by Lovecraft. While At the Mountains... is definitely a brilliant, extremely atmospheric work, there is one problem with it - Lovecraft infused it with a great deal of unnecessary details, making the story a bit too lengthy and lessening its possible impact. The Case... avoids this issue completely - while being even longer (!) then Mountains all the details here are extremely tasty and surprisingly important for the later development of the plot.Speaking of which, the novel has possibly the most sophisticated plot Lovecraft has ever conceived, most of his stories being really pretty straightforward. Of course this means there have to be, definitely, some loopholes in the story (especially in the last chapter), though they don't diminish the reader's pleasure at all. It is nice to watch how most of classic plot motifs that would pepper his later stories really started to grow and evolve in this novel. ( The stories that most notably echo Charles Dexter's themes are The Dunwich Horror, The Thing on the Doorstep and The Shadow out of Time. )It's also worthy of notice that Charles Dexter is somehow different than other classic works by HPL, having more of a "detective story" feel to it, with various clues and hints appearing here and there and later being pieced together. In this vein the novel is perhaps more closely related to The Call of Cthulhu than to any other Lovecraft's story.Vivid descriptions of Providence, Lovecraft's unquestionable erudition and care for details aside - the story is extremely entertaining!
—Dominik
