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The Shunned House: Disappointing; long, dull, and without a good payoff. The only thing to fear is French itself. To the Members of the Pin-Feathers on the Merits of Their Organisation, and of Their New Publication, The Pinfeather [November 1914]
If you didn’t know, the Necronomicon is a collection of his best works. They aren’t all of his works. There were a few stories that took a while before getting to the “good stuff” but most immediately drew you into the story. My favorite is Herbert West—Reanimator. Not only did it have a necromancy-like feel to it like Frankenstein, but Lovecraft went into how West began his studies in bringing the dead to life and it completely drew my interest! It was not only creepy but cool as F%#K! I also liked the Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Colour out of Space, and the Call of Cthulhu (to name a few!). While put forward as posthumous collaborations while Derleth was alive, the status of these works as collaborations with Lovecraft was swiftly disputed after Derleth’s death. Subsequent critics consider them part of the Cthulhu Mythos, but often split this into the original "Lovecraft Mythos" and the later and lesser "Derleth Mythos". [1] Unknown authorship [ edit ] Took me years to get through it, bought it in 2014 (crazy I know) but obviously that wasn't continuous reading, I'd read a story from it and leave it for ages with the bookmark in; he can be difficult to read sometimes due to his writing style - it's slow-paced and sometimes difficult for me to interpret because sometimes it seems to me like he starts rambling and I'm like..what's going on? The Temple: A good early example of Lovecraft's epistolary tales. Nautical, set in WWI on a German U-boat, with mounting but barely-seen horror, and underwater structures that may be considered to later morph into R'lyeh. This is Lovecraft's last major work, and I can see how several of his ideas,Finally, at the end of the book, we readers are treated to Lovecraft's well-regarded treatise on weird fiction, "Supernatural Horror in Literature". Lovecraft describes his understanding of horror and the place that fear has in humans, and then proceeds to trace the evolution of horror in writing from ancient times right up to his contemporaries in the pulp magazines of the Twenties and Thirties, from elements of classical mythology cycles through old folklore, Gothic literature, and the weird fiction of the early 20th Century. I don't know how the essay holds up to modern examinations of the subject, but I'll certainly use it as a reference in my own survey of the genre. The Doom That Came to Sarnath: I was reminded of Robert E. Howard in this primordial tale of lost lands. Of course, Howard was influenced by Lovecraft.
The five star rating for this book is not because I think every story (or even most of them) were 5 stars, or because Lovecraft was a great writer (though I do think he was a better writer than he's often given credit for). It's because these stories are essential reading. Like him or hate him, Lovecraft casts a long, dark shadow over all of American fantasy and horror, and in fact, the stories are mostly pretty good, in a very dated way. Yes, Lovecraft wrote purple. Yes, his characterization is usually pretty thin. And yes, he was a horrible racist and it shows in his writing. But no one who touched this genre after him has been untouched by it, and if you have ever been awed or frightened or scared by a tale of eldritch horrors, unfathomable beings from beyond time and space, bubbling squamous obscenities so horrible that the very sight of them will erode your sanity, or vast, alien, cosmic gods inimical to humans and regarding us the way we regard germs... well, that's all Lovecraftian influence. Now, on to the fiction itself. Lovecraft is regarded as one of the best authors of supernatural horror and weird fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, and is credited with turning the concept of horror in literature at that time on its head, casting the gaze of the reader out into the endless cold beyond our atmosphere while his precursors and many of his contemporaries dealt with far more terrestrial and comparatively homely methods of inspiring dread and fright.Some stories I waited too long to add to this review so I don’t have much noteworthy to say:Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (there’s a title for you); Celephaïs (a wonderful dreamlands story); From Beyond (so cheesy, I saw the movie based on this); Nyarlathotep; The Picture in the House; Ex Oblivione. However, the reader needs to be prepared for the moral vacuity and hate which they will encounter in the work of HPL. Not to mention, the horrific writing, which is often responsible for some of the worst published writing I have ever come across. It seriously took a publisher how much of a century to title a collection of Lovecraft's stories "Necronomicon"? Like seventy years? Did it really just not occur to anyone? Shouldn't the first collected volume of his stories have been called that? I blame August Derleth. The Beast in the Cave: This was written by Lovecraft at age 13-14, and for that is impressive. It only starts to touch the horror of being trapped underground that, say, the film The Descent shows fully, muted by the narrator's early resignation to his fate. Its youthful exuberance is captured in the final words, "... a MAN!!!", bold, caps, and triple-exclamation all original.
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