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Title: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by S. T. Joshi, Howard Phillips Lovecraft ISBN: 0-14-118234-2 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (26 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Imaginative
Comment: These are the strangest stories. They are less strong than Edgar Allan Poe's stories of a similar vein - almost childlike in some ways. Invariably the expose at the end of the story is tame, rather trivial. And I don't think I have ever read the words 'horrible' or 'horror' so often. To be truthful about it, I don't really like being told something is horrible - I need to be shown. Often Lovecraft absolutely declines to do this. Take for example 'The Statement of Randolph Carter'. This is a engaging yarn but we never know what the horror is, we just have cries of anguish reporting it. Is this carelessness or laziness? Or is it like a sound heard in the distance - peripherally - unrecoverable and disturbing, keeping you on the edge of the seat waiting just in case it sounds again?
Despite, for me, the poor structure of the stories and the weakness of their endings, I find it impossible to criticise Lovecraft's imaginativeness. These are very creative stories. It is commonly believed that Poe showed great psychological insight in his stories, but what does Lovecraft use as the trigger for his imagination? Is it a dread of science - an irrational fear? I'm not at all sure that I know and perhaps this adds to the intrigue of these stories.
I also enjoyed the notes to these stories with their historic and critical insights. (Although what this statement means puzzled both my wife and I: 'The seemingly straightforward story of an explorer ....... appears more complex than it seems.')
Rating: 5
Summary: Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftagn! Long live Cthulhu!
Comment: Finally, Howard Phillips Lovecraft seems to be getting some due from the straight literary world. First it was that long Joyce Carol Oates essay in the NY Review of Books, than it was the "Annotated Lovecraft" updates from Ballantine/Del Rey, and now Penguin Classics has seen fit to bestow the mainstream American reading public with this quality paperback. Wow, I can't imagine what readers of Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck and T.S. Eliot will do when confronted with the likes of Yog Sothoth, the Goat with a Thousand Young, The Great Old Ones and that nasty ol' Cthulhu....
Seriously: this stuff is incomparable. Lovecraft's creation of the Cthulhu Mythos (or, as he called it, "Yog-Sothothory") heralded a new age in supernatural fiction. So vivid, so cosmic, so vast and imaginative, it is the equal of Middle Earth, of Oz or Wonderland. HPL's view of humanity and the cosmos is deeply, darkly existential, almost nihilistic, and he used symbolic structures of his neuroses to portray that view.
As for the stories themselves, the cornerstones are "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926)and "The Color Out of Space" (1927); they will still be read a hundred years from now for their controlled atmosphere of cosmic dread and awe. His skill at evoking a slowly dawning sense of terror is unparalleled in these tales. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1931)--not too shabbily adapted in a 2002 film as "Dagon"--and "The Shadow Out of Time" (1934) rank next, later stories that are a bit wordy but still powerful, unsettling, and unforgettable. Man's place in the cosmos is revealed as paltry and incosequential; his physical being rendered as mutated and degraded. Space and time become meaningless. These latter two stories contain my favorite climaxes; the chill will remain with you for ages. Others in this collection include "Rats in the Walls," "The Outsider" and "The Hound." The latter two reveal his penchant for evoking Poe all too derivatively (although the erstwhile Poppy Z. Brite wrote a reverent Goth-punk update of "The Hound," "And His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood"); the former is one of his best early works.
H.P. Lovecraft forced horror and supernatural fiction out of its old world infancy of vampires, ghosts, and devils and into the adult, modern world of a cold, uncaring, nearly malicious universe that we can scarcely comprehend. While Lovecraft's prose at times leaves much to be desired, the power of his imaginings is unique and convincing. This collection belongs on the bookshelf of serious readers everywhere. S.T. Joshi is a marvelous editor and biographer of Lovecraft, and his efforts should not go unheeded. Kudos to Penguin for finally adding H.P. Lovecraft to their catalog of Twentieth Century Classics.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Horror Fiction
Comment: H.P. Lovecraft is without a doubt one of the best fiction writers of the 20th century. It's no surprise his writing techniques and stories still enthrall people today. The world he creates in his short stories and novels have often been revisted by various modern writers, but nobody has been able to top Lovecraft when it comes to cosmic terrors.
The most famous story in this volume is, of course, "Call of Cthulhu", in which one of the central entities of Lovecraft's stories appears: Great Cthulhu. As with many of Lovecraft's tales, the story focuses on the main character gaining forbidden and unblieveable knowledge of prehuman intellegences that once roamed the Earth. Some came from other dimensions, others from the stars. These "Old Ones" are chronicled in forbidden texts handed down by hideous cults who worship them like gods. The world in which Lovecraft places human beings is not a pleasant one. He basically paints a rather frightening picture; human beings live on a planet surrounded by gulfs of unknown monstrosities and extraterrestrial forces.
By contrast, some of Lovecraft's other tales, such as "Pickman's Model" and "The Hound" have a more basic, creeping fear feel rather than cosmic terror. "The Whisperer in Darkness" and "At the Mountains of Madness" combine both themes, resulting in stories that both intrege and frighten readers. Lovecraft's ability to decribe the emotions of his characters and the world in which they live adds the final gruesome touch. Like Poe, Lovecraft has a nack for portraying the emotions of his characters, and in these stories fear is the emotion that receives the most attention. Another aspect of these stories that I really enjoy is Lovecraft's ability to weave myths into his tales. He ficticously explains everything from Robert Blake's death, the Tuscan Event, witchcraft and ancient mythology as man's racial knowledge of various weird entities they could not understand.
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Title: The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft, S. T. Joshi ISBN: 0142180033 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 02 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 034542204X Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 14 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 0345329457 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 13 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch ISBN: 0345350804 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 May, 1987 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Dreams of Terror and Death : The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 0345384210 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 11 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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