H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

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Wrenfield
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H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Wrenfield »

Like I'm sure a lot of you Gaming Den denizens do, I read a lot of books. Usually about 2 per week on average. One author I never seem to have gotten around to is H.P. Lovecraft. So bitten by the curiousity bug, I'm now ready to tackle his back catalog. This seems only natural, having played Call of Cthulu once, having fought a multitude of Aboleths and Mind Flayers over the years, and finally ... being the proud owner of a Nyarlathotep plush doll (thanks to my friend Jenny).

So. Lovecraft has a whole crapload of books, short stories, etc. out in reader land. Internet scuttlebut seems to be that his works run the gamut of tantalizing top-tier fantasy/horror to forgettable page-filler dreck.

For you Lovecraft experts, here are some questions and requests for you:

1. What stories are a good place to start - or are your favorites?

2. What stories totally suck?

3. Regardless of how entertaining you may find his specific works, which ones are considered literary masterpieces?

3. H.P. is dead. So let's talk trashy gossip behind his back. Per some of the Gaming Den folks, it sounds like he was a real jerk-off and a racist to boot. Any other interesting tidbits about this cat?

**

Since much of his work has relevance to our shared gaming interest of D&D, I decided to ask all of you for suggestions. Thanks for your help and insight!
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by User3 »

HPL was an escapist:

Azathoth
by H. P. Lovecraft

Written June 1922

Published 1938 in Leaves, Vol. 2: p. 107.

When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's dreams had fled.

Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that ro0m used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.

There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and starred by red camalotes...


I'd start with "Through the Gate of the Silver Key," which reads a lot like a sci-fi novel. I've got most of his works in HTML and PDF format, if you want me to e-mail them to you.
I downloaded them from some website which I have long since forgotten.

The big issue with his writing is it's slow acceleration.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by whb3 »

Hmm. From what I remember, he was a racist and Nazi sympathizer. He was also - I'm working from memory here - one of the early organizers of fandom?

As far as his writings, I think At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are good jumping-off points. As for stories, one of my favorites is The Shadow Over Innsmouth
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Josh_Kablack »

True Story:

At the age of about 14, I decided that I oughtta read some of this here Lovecraft guy, so I go up to the attic to peruse the crates of old paperbacks my dad kept up their. The wiring in the attack was shot, and it was just past dusk, so I took the flashlight up with me. I rummage through my dad's old books, moving the piles of crates around having to watch for the insulation holes in the floor, until eventually I find a collection of Lovecraft + Derleth + etc horror stories. I scan the table of contents trying to figure out where to start and if this has The Call of Cthulu in it. The flashlight goes out. I close the book and shake the flashlight, and it comes back on. I then open the book again, this time to a random page and start to read. Light goes out. Close book, light comes on. Open book again, light goes out.

At this point, I am absolutely sure that this is the book of true horror which I have been seeking, and that the dark and dilapadated attic is absolutely not the place to read it.


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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Username17 »

I'm rather fond of The Color Out of Space, I think that's just plain quality writing. In general, avoid anything involving Deep Ones. While they are iconic of the genre at this point, the original stories are just not that horrifying, and are simultaneously kind of discomfitting in an entirely unintentional way.

Lovecraft himself thought that it was a disturbing and terrifying notion that you might have inferior blood running in your veins. The idea that your cousin might be "not quite human" in some fashion was, to him, a look into fear's face.

Personally, I think it would be pretty cool if my nephew could breathe water. I just don't see what's frightening in any way about other people being different from you. And the idea that we might share something in common nevertheless is to me a source of comfort.

The space madness line of stuff Lovecraft writes can be at times quite disturbing and maintains enough of a draw to keep the pages turning all the way to the end. The bloodlines line of stuff is laughably not scary while the racist overtones are inescapable and unfortunate.

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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Wrenfield »

Thanks for everyone's input and advice.

Per Catharz' post, I poked around a little and found this rather comprehensive site:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lo ... r][br]It's everything Lovecraft ever wrote online! Nice. Like Catharz said though, this cat writes with a rather lumbering & clumsy tempo. Also, H.P. really needed an editor or a confidant who could have reeled him in or touched up his rough edges. I guess that's the result of writing surreptiously in dark rooms at midnight by candlelight back in 1925.

Still, good stuff!
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Out of curiosity, didn't Lovecraft have Syphilitic Dementia? I think I heard that somewhere, and was wondering if it was true or not.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by PhoneLobster »

Hey, is Lovecraft's work old enough and famous enough that you can get it free via that project Gutenburg on thems internets thingmos?
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1116800213[/unixtime]]
Lovecraft himself thought that it was a disturbing and terrifying notion that you might have inferior blood running in your veins. The idea that your cousin might be "not quite human" in some fashion was, to him, a look into fear's face.


I'm not sure about this one. I've always interpreted Lovecraft's stories as depicting humanity as the inferior race. Everything I've read seems to be about putting humans at the bottom of the food chain, where there's all this crap that can screw with us and there isn't much we can do to stop it.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Username17 »

It goes both ways. On the one hand, humans are "small and meaningless in the eyes of an uncaring universe". That much is totally true. But on the other hand, the world is filled up with "inferior races", whether they be gleeping corpse eaters, hairy jungle tribesmen, or demented frog monsters from the oceans.

In many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, the horror comes from the revelation that your blood just isn't good enough. Sometimes it's because humanity turns out to just be a meaningless and inferior diversion for an apathetic and incomprehensible world. Sometimes it's because your grandfather has been mating with hideous and degenerate near-humans, thus damning you.

In either case, it's rather easy to see why Nazi scare tactics might have appealed to him. But in a lot of it the racism doesn't really come up and you can enjoy the story on its own merits.

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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by rapanui »

Frank wrote:
" I'm rather fond of The Color Out of Space, I think that's just plain quality writing."


Oddly enough, that's my favorite.

Wrenfield wrote:
"1. What stories are a good place to start - or are your favorites?

2. What stories totally suck?

3. Regardless of how entertaining you may find his specific works, which ones are considered literary masterpieces?

3. H.P. is dead. So let's talk trashy gossip behind his back. Per some of the Gaming Den folks, it sounds like he was a real jerk-off and a racist to boot. Any other interesting tidbits about this cat?"


1. "Call of Cthulhu" obviously, but I also enjoyed "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" greatly, very D&D kind of stuff actually. However, my second favorite is "A Shadow Out of Time", which has a predictable but quite eerie ending, which is totally worth it.

2. I never finshed reading "A Shadow Over Innsmouth", although that's supposed to be one of his best.

3. Don't know. I read what I can, and form my own opinions. However, I believe "Call of Cthulhu" is widely considered the best representative piece of his work.

3-2 (relax, it happens to the best of us). Yes, Lovecraft was a racist at a time when it was normal to be racist. It is doubtful he was a Nazi sympathizer since he married a Jewish woman, although some parts of the ideology may have appealed.

All is excused however, because he held nothing but admiration and respect for men of science, whom he considered brave and adventurous for plunging deeper into the dark secrets of the universe. This despite making them go mad in most of his stories.

My favorite Lovecraft quote:

"If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction. [/QUOTE]

[A letter to Maurice W. Moe, August 3 1931]

"To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth."
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Absentminded_Wizard »

I was never particularly impressed by Lovecraft. But then, I never read any of the Cthulu mythos stories. The only ones I read were "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Color out Of Space." I always thought somebody should write a thesis about what a wuss Lovecraft was. I mean, as far as I can tell, the major theme of his stories was, "Look! It's something different! Run!" I guess because of the xenophobic times he was writing in, he never had to develop a real explanation of why the Other was bad.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by dbb »

Oddly enough, those are two of HPL's stories in which fear of the Other turns out to actually be a totally reasonable and rational reaction -- I mean, in "At The Mountains Of Madness", an archaological expedition uncovers
ancient alien creatures who dissect the humans they run into to see what's up with them, and then their amorphous shapeshifting servants who rip the heads off things they encounter and coat them with slime
, and in "The Colour Out of Space" a mysterious meteorite
corrupts the entire countryside to the point where crops rot on the vine and people who drink the water turn into horrifying crumbly things before they die.
Neither of the problems yields to Men of Science -- but Men of Science who are smart about it can peer into the darkness and poke the darkness with a stick and still not get eaten alive.

I would pick something like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" or "The Shadow Out of Time" as more representative of that "OTHER = HORRIFYING AND BAD FOR NO VISIBLE REASON" aesthetic, although there's sort of a reason for horror in the second, depending on how creepy you find the central conceit.

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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by RandomCasualty »

Yeah, for the most part the "other" in Lovecraft's stories tends to be some kind of vicious thing that is pretty horrible. Even in Shadow over Innsmouth, the Deep ones weren't exactly benevolent creatures by any means. If I recall correctly they sacrificed some people to Cthulhu or something similar to get the honor of becoming fish men.

While Lovecraft does play up the horror of them being unnatural creatures and perhaps overemphasizes it, they're far from harmless.

There is a lot of xenophobic references in his stories for sure, but certainly there is a lot more to fear from his creatures than them just being merely "different".
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Absentminded_Wizard »

My point was that, regardless of whatever the Other eventually does, Lovecraft and his characters seem to fear them at first sight. By the time the horrible stuff happens, you've been so beaten to death by purple hyperbolic prose about how strange, different, and therefore intrinsically evil the Other is that the real horror is anticlimactic.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by RandomCasualty »

Well, some of it is justified. I mean fear of the unknown is a part of horror. If you went to a strange town like Innsmouth and the people just didn't seem right, that probably would make you uneasy.

That being said, I think Lovecraft plays up that particular theme a bit too much. But back in his day, it was more normal for people openly admit their xenophobia. Now xenophobia is more or less frowned upon by most of society, so is far less acceptable.

But I think all being said if you were to place yourself in Innsmouth with the half human/ half-deep ones walking around, you'd probably be pretty creeped out before they actually did anything. So I don't find anything necessarily bad about the conception, it's just that xenophobic horror stories have really lost a lot of acceptance among modern society.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

I read some Lovecraft in High School. I thought he was funny.

Of course, I don't think he was trying to be funny, but hell.

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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by User3 »

I think that "Cold Air" is a fun story, especially in the light of
[counturl=23]people creating 'zombie' dogs.[/counturl]

Of course, the science is different, but the idea of artificially prolonging life with cold is the same.
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What makes a dog freeze in that position?
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by dbb »

Absentminded_Wizard at [unixtime wrote:1120386458[/unixtime]]My point was that, regardless of whatever the Other eventually does, Lovecraft and his characters seem to fear them at first sight. By the time the horrible stuff happens, you've been so beaten to death by purple hyperbolic prose about how strange, different, and therefore intrinsically evil the Other is that the real horror is anticlimactic.


See, that's exactly what doesn't happen in "Colour Out of Space" or "At the Mountains of Madness", though, which is one of the reasons why I thought they were odd choices. In both stories, Something Weird happens, and it attracts Men Of Science, who are fascinated -- fascinated! -- by just how weird it is, and use their scientific methods to study it. They definitely don't fear it right away -- their immediate response to it is curiousity, rather than terror!

Of course, curiousity in "Mountains" is what eventually gets the Men Of Science into godawful horrific trouble, and in both cases the prudent response would have been to raise your hands and back slowly away from the alien artifacts ... but it takes a good long while before the protagonists get to the point of realizing it.

This isn't to suggest that Lovecraft wasn't a fairly extreme xenophobe -- the man didn't even like to go outside of his house.

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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Username17 »

By the way, if you like that sort of thing, I find William Mayne to be a much better read. And when it comes down to it, more creepy. It, not to be confused with the inane King novel of he same name, is much scarier than anything that Lovecraft ever wrote.

And it does it without anybody being objectionably stupid, which is refreshing.

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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by rapanui »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mayne

I
think this must be a different one.

EDIT: Seriously man, I can't find any references to the story you just mentioned.
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Username17 »

Nope, that's him.

Good children's author. Good mystery author. Liked to have sexual contact with minors.

I figured it was par for the course in the discussion of an author who did some decent mysteries and wrote propaganda for the Nazis. If you're going to talk about authors whose personal lives aren't what you'd want in your neighborhood, Mayne deserves to be on both lists.

It's quite an impressive body of work:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/autho ... [br]-Username17
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Re: H.P. Lovecraft: Any suggestions ??

Post by Basorexic »

I started with the compilation "Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" as it has in it Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space, The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror, all supposedly good.

I started with story #1, The Rats in the Walls and found it a very good introduction to what was about to come.

A sanity point or two lost right there.
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