Lovecraft is a master horror writer. Born in 1890, he wrote
prodigiously until his death in 1937; he didn’t live a long life, but he left
behind a literary legacy that endures to this day. It’s hard to describe what
it is that captures and draws you into his stories, but it only takes a page or
two and I’m hooked into yet another short story. I don’t know if I would
describe his tales as bloodcurdling; I would rather describe them as creeping
terror, or as a gradual build-up to what you know are going to be fear- and
anxiety-inducing events. Stephen King has stated that “H.P. Lovecraft has yet
to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic
horror tale”. High praise coming from a master horror writer himself. King grew
up reading Lovecraft’s tales, and Lovecraft himself was inspired by Edgar Allan
Poe (1809 – 1849). We read a fair amount of Poe in school as children/young
teenagers, but not Lovecraft.
I know from my reading and searching online that readers
either like Lovecraft’s classic prose and phrasings, or they don’t. I happen to
be one of the readers who do like his style. He is wordy, but he chooses his
words carefully (some would say he is old-fashioned and that’s fine with me),
and there aren’t many wasted sentences. He doesn’t write or present details
like a journalist, and is excellent at crafting his tales. Each tale deals with
a different kind of horror, and the protagonists, educated and logical men, are
sceptical at first to what they find themselves dealing with, only to
understand (in the nick of time) that what they were sceptical of is in fact real (or surreal) and life-threatening. My
favorite stories are not necessarily the ones that his diehard fans would hold up as
their favorites. In the collection that I am almost finished reading, I would
say my favorite stories are the following:
·
The
Picture in the House (the build-up to
the suggestion of a grim end for the protagonist is nerve-wracking)
·
In the
Vault (just plain creepy, something
you might find in Tales from the Crypt)
·
The
Whisperer in Darkness (cosmic horror
= fear of the unknown, of the cosmos, of all things alien)
·
The Colour
Out of Space (cosmic horror about a
meteor that crashes to earth and the after-effects)
·
The
Haunter of the Dark (the unwitting
unleashing of a satanic-like monster)
·
The Thing
on the Doorstep (wizardry, mental
telepathy, mind transfer—plain creepy)
·
The Shadow
Over Innsmouth (part of the Cthulhu
mythos)
The Call of Cthulhu
is also part of this collection of short stories. After digging into
Lovecraft’s background, I found out that there is an entire cult mythos built
up around the monster Cthulhu, and that the book The Necronomicon that is mentioned in several of his stories, while
fictional, is thought to be real by some people. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is part of this mythos, and I found it to
be much more terrifying than The Call of
Cthulhu because of the pursuit of the protagonist by the townspeople (monsters)
and how the realization of his strange ancestry slowly dawns on the
protagonist. Lovecraft writes in an exceptionally visual
way; his descriptions of the fictional town Innsmouth (in Massachusetts) allowed me to imagine it,
such that when I saw it depicted in artists’ pictures online, I thought, yes,
that’s how I would have seen it too. He is not big on dialog between his
characters, but for some reason that is not a problem for me. He explains the
motives and thoughts of his characters in great detail, and that suffices.
Lovecraft has inspired many writers and filmmakers to this
day—among them the writer Stephen King and director Guillermo Del Toro. HR
Giger’s monster in the Alien
movies was inspired by Lovecraft’s writings, likewise John Carpenter’s creation
The Thing, according to online
searches. I would add that some of the X-Files
episodes bear a Lovecraftian influence, especially those episodes that deal
with insular townspeople, xenophobia, and strange goings-on. Those are the
episodes where Mulder and Scully visit such towns and out-of-the-way places,
and all the while you sit and watch and are anxious for them, wanting them to
leave as soon as possible. The X-Files
remains one of my favorite shows, precisely because the show took the same
kinds of bold risks in its storytelling as Lovecraft did with his.
I am nearing the end of this collection of short
stories/novellas, and I really don’t want them to end. Lovecraft has created a
universe that you are very glad you don’t live in, but that fascinates you
nonetheless. You can ‘visit’ it safely via his tales. He is an excellent
writer; I’m surprised that it took me over twenty years to appreciate him, but
thankfully, I can do so now.
