Lovecraft Extravaganza
Between fantasy, science fiction, and horror, the last genre has always been my least favorite. Granted, I love books that include elements of horror. But books that are horrific throughout and usually marketed as horror? Not so much. Some Stephen King, some Dean Koontz**, but that's about it. Various short stories, but I've rarely found horror all that sustainable in the longer form.
Anyway, the last 6 weeks or so have given me a brutal crash course in H. P. Lovecraft. Back in my college dropout days, maybe around the year 2000 or so, I did read The Dreamscapes of H. P. Lovecraft, a collection of his Dunsanyian dreamland fiction and, despite really liking "The Quest of Iranon," just couldn't get into him. The horrors were all rather lame, I had no idea that this collection didn't include any of HPL's best stuff, and damn the prose was lush but dense -- and extremely light on dialogue. Even now, HPL's more streamlined stuff isn't calculated to win my affection.
But that collection was my only exposure to Lovecraft for almost two decades, until I read another collection of his stuff last summer in preparation for my Nonhuman Subjects: Monsters, Ghosts, Aliens, and Others class. I had decided to teach "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Call of Cthulhu," so wanted to give myself some greater background. Read all of M. R. James and a whole lot of other related stuff, too. And when I learned that HPL's entire fictional output only totaled about 60 short stories and novellas, well, I decided that at some point it would be worth doing an in-depth study.
My actual catalyst, though, was teaching "The Rats in the Walls" for that Monsters class of mine. Just doing normal prep work for the story, trying to break it down to make it teachable, I came up with an entirely novel reading of the short story. Of course, I didn't realize that at the time -- only realized it, in fact, once I started browsing the secondary literature to see what others have said about it. It has since occurred to me that, despite the burgeoning field of Lovecraft Studies, which took off about the time Tolkien Studies did (i.e., the year 2000), no one has really done a first-rate close reading of the text. My background research on the subject, though, has given me quite the heady dose of HPL: all day, all the time.
This research has been awesome, intellectually engaging, and extraordinarily fun . . . but how much do I actually love Lovecraft's fiction now? Well . . . meh. Finally just finished his last major short story, "The Color Out of Time," and it was still too much of a slog to raise that love it love it feeling you get with the best literature. Still a good piece -- but not love at first second. Overall, I've liked best "The Colour Out of Space" and At the Mountains of Madness, which truly lives up to its premises. Of course, I still really like "The Quest of Iranon," although I gather I'm not quite supposed to.
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** Watchers and Lightning are both top notch. Intriguing, Lightning is the only book my mother has ever re-read again immediately upon finishing it . . . and Watchers is the only book my wife has ever done that for.
Anyway, the last 6 weeks or so have given me a brutal crash course in H. P. Lovecraft. Back in my college dropout days, maybe around the year 2000 or so, I did read The Dreamscapes of H. P. Lovecraft, a collection of his Dunsanyian dreamland fiction and, despite really liking "The Quest of Iranon," just couldn't get into him. The horrors were all rather lame, I had no idea that this collection didn't include any of HPL's best stuff, and damn the prose was lush but dense -- and extremely light on dialogue. Even now, HPL's more streamlined stuff isn't calculated to win my affection.
But that collection was my only exposure to Lovecraft for almost two decades, until I read another collection of his stuff last summer in preparation for my Nonhuman Subjects: Monsters, Ghosts, Aliens, and Others class. I had decided to teach "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Call of Cthulhu," so wanted to give myself some greater background. Read all of M. R. James and a whole lot of other related stuff, too. And when I learned that HPL's entire fictional output only totaled about 60 short stories and novellas, well, I decided that at some point it would be worth doing an in-depth study.
My actual catalyst, though, was teaching "The Rats in the Walls" for that Monsters class of mine. Just doing normal prep work for the story, trying to break it down to make it teachable, I came up with an entirely novel reading of the short story. Of course, I didn't realize that at the time -- only realized it, in fact, once I started browsing the secondary literature to see what others have said about it. It has since occurred to me that, despite the burgeoning field of Lovecraft Studies, which took off about the time Tolkien Studies did (i.e., the year 2000), no one has really done a first-rate close reading of the text. My background research on the subject, though, has given me quite the heady dose of HPL: all day, all the time.
This research has been awesome, intellectually engaging, and extraordinarily fun . . . but how much do I actually love Lovecraft's fiction now? Well . . . meh. Finally just finished his last major short story, "The Color Out of Time," and it was still too much of a slog to raise that love it love it feeling you get with the best literature. Still a good piece -- but not love at first second. Overall, I've liked best "The Colour Out of Space" and At the Mountains of Madness, which truly lives up to its premises. Of course, I still really like "The Quest of Iranon," although I gather I'm not quite supposed to.
---
** Watchers and Lightning are both top notch. Intriguing, Lightning is the only book my mother has ever re-read again immediately upon finishing it . . . and Watchers is the only book my wife has ever done that for.
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