| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.153.239.19 |
 Thanks to Craig Herbertson ((HERE) for assiduously seeking and then finding that image of ‘The Haunter of the Dark’ (a UK Panther paperback collection from the Sixties of some HP Lovecraft stories). Michel Parry in 1965 picked this book off the shelf in the Colchester WH Smiths as he recommended it to me. We had just made a chance meeting in that shop; we were fellow sixth-formers at the time. I never looked back after buying it new all those years ago. As with many books, this particular edition I lost during the intervening years: and this is the first time I’ve seen the cover for a very long while. It is amazingly effective. Or is that just nostalgia working? How did you first encounter HPL? And was it seminal or terminal? | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.2.67.184 |
My Dad saying it was alright for me to read his copy of THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD. I was about 10, I think, and attracted by its fantastically lurid cover. I followed this shortly afterwards by reading, on my Dad's recommendation, THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.82.216 |
I was eleven, and read "The Horror In The Museum" in the first Pan Book of Horror Stories, owned by my older sister. I thought this was an amazing tale, taking elements of horror and mixing them with the sense of awe I'd only come across in science fiction. I then found a paperback copy of "The Boris Karloff Horror Anthology" and read Lovecraft's wonderful "Haunter of the Dark", and thought that this Lovecraft bloke was copying Hazel Heald's style. Little did I know... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
As stated on another thread recently, I was eleven and for me it was a translation of "The Thing on the Doorstep". That was the only Lovecraft story then available in my native language, but I wanted to read more. Luckily a number of Dutch-language paperbacks saw the light of day in the late sixties/early seventies, so then I got aquainted with a great many of the major stories as well as the three novels. For the 'lesser' tales I had to seek out French-language paperbacks. Sometime in 1975 I finally got my first 'proper' English-language Lovecraft, The Tomb, a Panther book which I found in Canterbury. On a school trip to Germany in 1976 I found two more Panthers containing the revisions, in a railway station no less. Etc. etc. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
Some of these books would contain fascinating bits of biography, Utpatel illustrations and notes on the Forbidden Books and entities: I was hooked for life. The idea to go and explore Providence and adjacent parts came as early as 1977 - One dream that did eventually come true. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
As I think I mentioned on another thread, my old man had shelves of 70s and 80s horror paperbacks, one of which was Ramsey's COLD PRINT. After reading that, I was on the look out for more of the same, so I naturally followed the spring back to the source. In the local WH Smiths I found the three Voyager mass-market paperback collections of Lovecraft's stories, complete with their luridly inappropriate covers, and was hooked. That, as they say, was that. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.152.74.159 |
I was eleven, and read "The Horror In The Museum" in the first Pan Book of Horror Stories, . I thought this was an amazing tale, taking elements of horror and mixing them with the sense of awe I'd only come across in science fiction. Same here, Mick! For a while I thought HPL was ripping off Hazel Heald! | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.111.132.33 |
I first read 'At the Mountains of Madness' in Iceland, tucked up in a little tent, with the wind howling around me. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.48.210 |
I was, um... 27 or so, and read "The Call of Cthulhu" at the beginning of the role playing game of the same name.  I'd encountered the concept of Lovecraftian horror before, and had an awareness of some of the Mythos, but that was the first time I actually read any of his work. So many thanks to the crew at Yog-Sothoth.com, whose audio recordings of their Call of Cthulhu gaming sessions inspired me to seek out the game and, thus, the original material, which I am still working my way through. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
Like Jamie, via the RPG and friends who were playing it. I was about thirteen. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.194.128 |
I can't remember, to be honest. But I was about 17. Maybe Danse Macabre turned me onto it; it did with so much other stuff. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
"The Rats in the Walls" in an Italian translated anthology shifted my infant-like paradigm of Horror having mainly to do with traditional "ghoulies and ghosties". | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
Maybe Danse Macabre turned me onto it; it did with so much other stuff. Me, it was Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature" - although most of the items mentioned were hard to find indeed. I'm pleasantly surprised that a few members got into HPL via the Call of Cthulhu role playing game. This was actually discussed at one of the conventions - whether gamers would seek out the stories. I suspect not very many 'scholars' were converted to the game. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
I'm pretty certain the first one was "The Colour out of Space" when I was - good Lord - no more than seven. It was in Groff Conklin's Strange Travels in Science Fiction, borrowed from the public library on my mother's ticket, and I still recall finding it so disturbing that I was afraid she would see what I was reading and stop me before the end (not an effect any other tale in the book had). Now I recall reading it as fast as I could so as not to be found out! | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I came late to Lovecraft -- too late! A number of people have told me that if you encounter Lovecraft at the right age, he gets hold of some part of your imagination and never lets go; and that this grip remains even after you realise his prose isn't actually very good. That's exactly what happened to me with Clark Ashton Smith. I discovered him when I was 17 and lying in a bed with a fever: Smith's work heightened and improved the clarity of my delerium. But I didn't get round to reading Lovecraft's stories properly until I was in my late 20s. They didn't work for me then and they still don't, because of that fact. I missed my chance! | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 81.152.74.159 |
I first encountered Lovecraft through Re-Animator, which remains an all-time favourite film to this day. I loved the film so much I never wanted to read the story for fear of being disappointed. Some years later I got a Lovecraft anthology from the library and I remember how the titles filled me with such excitement! I read the one whose title intrigued me most - "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", followed by "The Colour Out of Space" and then "The Rats in the Walls". I was in my late teens/early 20s and still found the stories magical, even if the prose wasn't excellent. It didn't matter; the stories transcended the medium for me. They still do. John read me "The Rats in the Walls" the other night, which I remember absolutely loving all those years ago. And except for the rather unfortunate name of the cat (ouch!), it's still a breathtaking piece. Lovecraft's like a mind-altering drug. The cosmic awe, "unnameable things" and "unimaginable horrors" make me feel like my brain is expanding. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
I can't even remember - I do recall, however, that I wasn't very impressed. And thus began my curious ongoing love/hate relationship with the works of H.P. Lovecraft.  | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
found the stories magical, even if the prose wasn't excellent Can you expand a bit on your dislike of the prose, Kate? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.19 |
I think Ramsey's mentioned in the past that he doesn't feel you need to have read Lovecraft initially at a young age, although the majority of folk I know who love his work first read him whilst in their teens, whereas most of those I know who don't like him read him when they were older. As I said, I came to Lovecraft's work around the age of eleven, and can't now 'unread' him, obviously, so I have no way of knowing whether I'd like him or not if I first read him as an adult, but I suspect I would. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
I raised that received notion (about needing to encounter Lovecraft in your youth) at Fantasycon on the panel about Bradbury, another writer of whom it is frequently said. Most of the audience didn't agree. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.19 |
Ah-ha - that's where I heard it! As an aside I came to Bradbury in my early 'twenties and love his work. I thought that was a good panel with great input from all involved, especially Pete Crowther. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.48.210 |
Bradbury's an interesting case, because I think it's not so much your age when you discover him as which stories it is you encounter first -- I think the overall quality of his stories has deteriorated over the decades. But I recognize that's a contentious claim, and not really the purview of this thread. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
My jazz-musician-playing/wedding-singer dad, a former John Birch Society activist, Roman-Catholic apocalyptic (assured of the immanent destruction of Earth as prophesied by mystics like Padre Pio), rabid anti-Communist/pro-McCarthyite, who hated Reagan all through the Reagan years for being too liberal, who forbade me to play "Dungeons & Dragons" (a game I'd never heard of or cared about UNTIL he forbade it)... he's he one who passed on to me a book of Lovecraft's stories, encouraging me to read him, telling me how great he really was... my first real personal encounter with horror literature.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.185.1.18 |
It was 'The Horror In The Museum', in Pan Horror 1, for me too, although at the time I wasn't aware it was Lovecraft, but just loved the weird atmosphere of the story. The first Lovecraft book I owned was 'Dagon And Other Macabre Tales' in my late teens, which simply blew my mind. I hadn't read anything in the horror field as disturbingly strange or otherworldly as those stories. The two companion volumes followed in quick succession, and I haven't looked back since. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
Coming at Lovecraft through the RPG meant I was exposed to the ideas - the universe - first, rather than the stories, and although I enjoyed the stories it's the ideas that stuck with me. I think the shared universe aspect of his stories, and the way he let other people write for that universe, has a lot to do with the ongoing interest in his work. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.194.128 |
Well, HPL never really saw the Mythos that way. Wasn't it Derleth who 'marketed' his work as such? | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
Depends what you mean by "saw the Mythos that way". Of course he didn't conceive it as something as explicitly continuity-driven as the Marvel Universe, but there are connections between the stories, and from what I remember he included those connections not only in his own work, but in the rewrites he did for other people. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I didn't come to Bradbury until quite recently, and I'm in my early thirties. I don't think my enjoyment of the stories has suffered as a result. It may be that, rather than reading him as a kid, I've got to the stage where I'm nostalgic enough about my childhood for the stories to still resonate with me. Re. The shared element of Lovecraft's fiction: I've never really been interested in this. The crossovers between his stories always felt more like in-jokes (like Stephen King's references to his own work, before he started beating them into his own incoherent mythos with The Dark Tower) than an effort to create anything grander. I enjoy a good mythos tale, but have generally avoided anything that tries to tie it all together, such as Derleth's work. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
I must say I was intrigued from the first by this 'shared namedropping'. I discovered Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, etc. in my early teens and was puzzled to read about R'lyeh and Cthulhu in Smith and Howard tales - or about Vulthoom in an early Campbell story, for that matter. Lovecraft of course never conceived of the Cthulhu Mythos as such, but he thought it was fun to add deities or apocryphal forbidden books created by Smith to his own pantheon, and Smith willingly went along with it for the sheer fun of it. It was Derleth who thought he had to rationalize and sytsematize the lot into one coherent 'mythos', adding a few deities of his own in the process. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.30.157 |
We're more likely to struggle through viscous prose in our youth, before we realise that our time here is finite. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.201.93 |
 At around 14, I discovered HPL in the above paperback anthology. The story was "The Horror in the Museum". I also fondly remember "In Amundsen's Tent" in the same book. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
> We're more likely to struggle through viscous prose in our youth, before we realise that our time here is finite. Oh yes! I read Melmoth the Wanderer and The Mysteries of Udolpho when I was 16. I was trying to work my way through the proper gothic fiction of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries... Clara Reeve, William Beckford, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Eugene Sue... No way would I touch those books now! I wonder where my patience came from? The only early example I still regard with great admiration is Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa which is much more than just a 'gothic'. It's also a satire, an adventure and a wry piece of proto-absurdism. But back to Lovecraft... I suppose his work is regarded as the epitome of WEIRD TALES' existence, but my favourite contributor to that magazine was Jack Williamson. 'The Wand of Doom' and Golden Blood are almost forgotten now, but pack a punch. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.194.128 |
Yeah. I read War and Peace when I was younger. I simply wouldn't have the time now, unless I quit work. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 213.81.119.169 |
Anyone else catch the Dunsany/Lovecraft/Howard question on Eggheads last night? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
Tom, that's actually a reprint of an earlier Bruna collection entitled Het monster in de lift. Took me a while to find it as it's from 1966! The volume with "Het ding op de drempel" is the very rare Elsevier hardcover Voor en na middernacht which saw the light of day in 1949. The second and third printings are great books too, only they contain less of J.F. Doeve's splendid illustrations. | ||
| Degsy (Degsy) Username: Degsy Registered: 08-2010 Posted From: 86.139.164.67 |
Some of the Goth kids in my secondary school were passing around one of those rip-off volumes that purported to be the true 'Necronomicon'. It was utter drivel, but nevertheless my curiosity was piqued and a quick trip to the library furnished me with a doorstop-sized 'Best of' Lovecraft collection and I read the whole thing from cover to cover in a single weekend. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.82.216 |
Anyone else catch the Dunsany/Lovecraft/Howard question on Eggheads last night? What was it, Stu? | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.27.19.79 |
I forget the exact wording but it was something like "Which writer created the Cthulhu Mythos?" | ||
| James Armstrong (James_armstrong) Username: James_armstrong Registered: 10-2010 Posted From: 86.135.204.174 |
I was either sixteen or seventeen when I played a video game entitled Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It was faithful enough to Lovecraft’s atmosphere and concepts to make me want to seek out the real thing. I remember reading 'Dagon' for the first time and feeling a jolt of excitement; the realisation that I’d finally found affinity with a type of fiction, an affinity I hadn’t realised I’d been missing. That was my entrance into the world of weird fiction. I just wish it had happened earlier. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.18.201.128 |
Now I'm not overly familiar with Lovecraft's work and do tend to think of him as a cosmic horror tentacle-monsters purveying misery guts. So I was quite surprised when I read one of his Dunsany-inspired pieces earlier this year -- I forget the title offhand, the story involved something about going up a mountain -- as it showed his range was wider than I'd realised. Something else I noticed in the last couple of Lovecraft stories I read -- Dreams in the Witch House and The Dunwich Horror -- was the way the climaxes veered into action-adventure territory. But in a very perfunctory way as though Lovecraft either didn't have the talent or the inclination to dwell on that side of things in any detail. So the hero might wrestle with a knife-wielding assailant or rush up a hill armed with an ancient spell to tackle a demonic entity or do something else that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Buffy but that stuff will just get mentioned in passing. I think there's a similar thing in The Call of Cthulhu -- "Cthulhu's free! He'll lay waste to all before him, the word is doomed, we're all going to -- oh, he's gone." Maybe it's just because I've been reading some Robert E Howard lately but it seems to me that in the cited stories at least, Lovecraft is more action-oriented, in a teasing kind of way, than he's given credit for. In fact, as I was saying to a Howard fan the other day, it seemed to me that Lovecraft was actually doing the kind of action scenes that Howard is famous for but Lovecraft, deliberately or otherwise, just didn't do it so well. Just a thought. Probably completely wrong-headed and ill-informed but those are the thoughts that I tend to have the most often. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Stu, Lovecraft was more interested in generating an atmosphere of cosmic dread and hinting at the physical nature of the unimaginable, while Howard was much superior at describing visceral blood 'n' guts, dirt 'n' sweat action - and putting you right in the middle of it. Both are unmatched at their respective types of weird tale imho. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.18.201.128 |
That's how HPL and REH are usually portrayed -- as polar opposites. But I was getting the impression that in certain stories, or perhaps even only in certain scenes, they were both aiming for the same general idea but brought slightly different flavours to the idea. It's not uncommon to talk about REH bringing Lovecraft elements into his stories with bleak horror and cosmic entities but no one seems to talk about Lovecraft's action scenes. Even when the action is pivotal to the plot he tends to treat it in a perfunctory manner and it's not entirely clear how much of that is due to stylistic preference and how much is due to him just not being very good at action scenes. There's probably also an issue of how Lovecraft and Howard's personal philosophies influenced their stories but that still doesn't remove the action scenes from Lovecraft's stories. Yet people continue to talk about his characters as effete intellectuals who get out of breath merely through turning the pages of the arcane tomes they peruse and who faint at the first sign of trouble despite some of them clearly being able to hold their own in the running about and fisticuffs stakes. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Not polar opposites, they both made cosmic horror palpably real but using different techniques. I do think Lovecraft's heroes were more into the intellectual investigation, at their peril, side of things, while Howard's were more hands on action oriented primitives. Because of the physical nature of the horrors Lovecraft created there had to be an element of action involved, but it was always secondary, in my experience of his tales. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.21 |
Howard's protagonists are nearly always muscular he-men (let's not forget Two-Gun Bob, as Lovecraft called him, was into boxing and weightlifting), while Lovecraft's are not infrequently intellectuals who discover some mind-shattering truth about their ancestry and hence themselves. Look ar Howard's magnificent "Worms of the Earth" and imagine what Lovecraft would have made of such a theme and what manner of 'hero' he would have introduced. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
a cosmic horror tentacle-monsters purveying misery guts God, that's fucking hilarious, Stu.  | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 81.100.112.60 |
I've just been informed that there's a great chase sequence in The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I'll have to check it out. Btw, I just stumbled across this portrait of HP Lovecraft by Bruce "Batman: The Animated Series" Timm. http://heyoscarwilde.com/bruce-timm-hplovecraft/ | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' is Lovecraft's most perfect tale of terror imo... in it he makes the reader not only empathise completely with the shattering personal discoveries made by his hero but he also makes you feel the physical discomfort, fear and pain of the experience - culminating in the greatest chase sequence and final pay-off in all horror literature imho. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.24.174 |
It's my fave Lovecraft tale, and it even made a good film (Dagon). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
It's my fave Lovecraft tale, and it even made a good film (Dagon). btw, did anyone see THE GIRL WITH THE DAGON TATTOO?... I think I read that title right.... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.140.191.81 |
The radio adaptation on radio 7 of Mountains of Madness is really highlighting a few faults in Lovecraft. He sounds like a Dorling Kindersley book, so endlessly factual it sounds. It's almost unlisten-to-able. I like Lovecraft in shorter works, ones more tinged with the ordinary than the fantastic. Generally speaking. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.140.191.81 |
And recently I tried reading Bradbury's Dandelion Wine in a recent ('big') edition and couldn't stand it - but then dug out my old one and am loving it to bits. What's that about? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Great to see you back here, Tony!!  | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.211.224 |
http://www.llbbl.com/data/RPG-motivational/target16.html | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.22 |
Tony After a disastrous attmett at reading Panther's 1970s edition of "The Lurking Menace" back in that era of brown and orange and when I was about 15 and which I bought solely on the basis of its fantastic cover (I'd never heard of H P Lovecraft), I finally made a serious attempt about three years ago (that is one long sentence, rivals anything that amateur Henry James ever cobbled together). I bought the Penguin collections and "The Mountains of Madness" was in one of them. I thought it was the most boring story of either collection. I'm sorry if this hurts anyone, but dear God... I loved many of the others including the Houdini/Pyramid story, the one about the violinist and the story of the German WW1 submarine, and "Charles Dexter Ward". I can't say I'm a great HPL fan but when he was on form, he was great. He hasn't written much lately though... Cheers Terry | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I can't stand HPL for lots of reasons. I first encountered him in my 20s. I was a huge devotee of Poe and had been advised that HPL was Poe's heir. This advice was incorrect. Poe was an intellectual; HPL was weak intellectually (but that doesn't mean that his work has emotional power instead). I find almost anything to do with Lovecraft ludicrously bad. Just my view. Borges wrote a 'tribute' story to Lovecraft that found a mechanism (I nearly wrote 'Machenism') for Lovecraft's 'unnatural angles' in hyperspatial geometry. Great! But that's doing Lovecraft too much of a service. I doubt that HPL would have recognised a tesseract even if it had clonked him on his indescribable head. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.18.147 |
I first discovered Lovecraft at the age of eleven: three poems (not bad ones: 'Halloween in a Suburb', 'Night-Gaunts' and 'The Nightmare Lake') in a Helen Hoke anthology aimed at children, then 'The Outsider' in another HH anthology. I gradually read more and more of the stories in anthologies, mostly from the library, before buying the Panther edition of The Haunter of the Dark with an incredible weird landscape image. While Lovecraft was an obsession of my early teens, there are some stories – most notably 'The Shadow out of Time' – that I've appreciated more in recent years, and others – the short Dunsany pastiches and some of the early horror stories – that I like much less than I used to. Lovecraft has not been well-served by collections that present early and half-baked work alongside mature work without any qualification or context. Given the opportunity to put together a collection of his best work, he would have consigned most of the early pieces to outer darkness. As with people who don't like Bob Dylan's 'voice' (which one: the 1962 voice, the 1966 voice, the 1974 voice, the 1989 voice?), people who don't like Lovecraft's 'prose style' rarely qualify which prose style they mean. It's hard to recognise the author of 'Dagon' in a story as measured and controlled as 'The Whisperer in Darkness'. While some of his fans claim to love more or less all of his work, Lovecraft disliked most of it, and continued to try different styles and approaches throughout his life. Tony, the slow faux-scientific setting of 'At the Mountains of Madness' was clearly meant to establish the voice of the narrator and the nature of the document – an article for a scientific journal. The shift in perspective to a more personal account is gradual and carefully managed. However that aspect of the story is undoubtedly what led the editor of Weird Tales to reject it and led the editor of Astounding Stories to edit it heavily. It's somewhat ironic that the word 'boring' is used many times in the opening chapters (as a noun, not an adjective). We also find the phrase 'Lake's camp and boring' dropped in casually by the narrator, tensions between the two explorers having already been hinted at. This is pure coincidence however. There has always been some polarisation of views on Lovecraft, even within the genre. I think there's a hardcore of a dozen to two dozen stories which command respect for their seriousness, their painstaking construction and their carefully orchestrated imaginative impact. There's a lot more that you have to be in tune with Lovecraft's ideas to get much out of, the delivery being clumsy and the tone being quite immature. There are at least a dozen stories that are simply very poor. Sadly all of these tend, because of indiscriminate publishing, to be talked about as definitive of Lovecraft. What's special about Lovecraft, I think, is his ability to give supernatural or paranormal horror (most of his post-1926 work is really SF) a history and a geography, thereby rooting it deeply in our world, showing the strange and the familiar terribly interlocked. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.107.43 |
One of the most interesting discussions dealing with and around HPL that I've seen is on Rhys' own interview (5 pages) on TLO in 2009: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=3606 | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.25.141.120 |
My first girlfriend read "Colour Out of Space" to me in my college dorm room. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.139.112 |
Interesting foreplay . . . | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.58.66 |
During foreplay with my first ever girlfriend I kept thinking about Asenath Waite. It should come as no surprise that the relationship didn't last very long. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 202.73.206.32 |
I took At the Mountains of Madness to Iceland over twenty years ago. Read it in a tent with basalt mountains towering above me. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.145.133.174 |
I've never actually read any Lovecraft. I've got Dream-quest of unknown Kadath, The Tomb and The Case of Charles Dexter ward on my book shelves but they've been in my TBR for several years | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.14.32 |
If your volume of The Tomb includes 'The Festival', read that. Otherwise it's a manky collection. The Case of CDW is magnificent however. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.145.133.174 |
The Festival is the second story | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.28.228 |
"I find almost anything to do with Lovecraft ludicrously bad..." His influence included? On T. E. D. Klein or Fritz Leiber, say, or Ligotti or Kiernan or Barron? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.29.180 |
The Tomb cleared up the stories left over after four Panther collections. It's not all bad but it is pretty weak overall. The best place to start with Lovecraft in terms of paperback editions in the UK is The Call of Cthulhu, the first volume of the three Penguin Modern Classics volumes edited by S.T. Joshi. These are corrected texts based on manuscripts, sometimes significantly better than the versions originally published. Joshi provides useful end-notes as well. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.58.66 |
All Lovecraft's stories have merit. Some of the 'lesser' tales (as Derleth called them) are blueprints of later tales and some aren't at all bad in their own right, like "The Picture in the House" and, indeed, "The Festival". I don't care much for Lovecraft's Dunsanian period myself, but then I don't care much for Dunsany. I think the reason people dislike the early stories so much is that by the time they read them most are likely to have perused "The Shadow out of Time", "The Dunwich Horror" and all those other really great tales. I discovered the 'revisions' relatively late and remember thinking "What a find after all that stuff in Dagon!" | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.139.112 |
Rhys writes: >>>>Real work, you mean, rather than writing stories? I hate that kind of work. I do it when I have to, but I’d rather be poor and do what I want than be a slave to the system. What about a third option involving prostituting yourself for a lengthy spell, living a modest life, saving everything you can, before taking early retirement with enough finance to back you up until death? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.107.43 |
Well-tried idea. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.139.112 |
Be clearer, Des. Not always sure what you're adding. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.107.43 |
Your third option suggestion is the most common thing for people to do? Well-tried and sensible. Not sure of the word prostituting - I call it working as an employee. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.139.112 |
Like a cold bath: quick in, quick out. That's me and working life. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
As I think I've said before, my dad introduced me to Lovecraft, said I should read him - I had never even heard the name uttered before. My dad, activist in the John Birch Society, a fundamentalist RC, and serial wedding singer through the 70's and 80's. (He also, about the same time, forbade me ever to play the wickedly malicious game sweeping the youth of America, something I had also never heard of before he uttered its unhallowed name: Dungeons & Dragons. Big mistake....) I have a memory consuming an entire tome of Lovecraft way back during high school, and it left me immeasurably depressed. His cosmology was so possible, in its utter inhumanness; its alien-ness. I didn't believe Cthulhu existed, but the universe gave more reasons for a Cthulhu, let alone nothing at all, than anything like something beneficent behind the existence and nature of things.... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.107.43 |
Like a cold bath: quick in, quick out. That's me and working life. ======================= Not sure what that means. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.107.43 |
Also I don't get the discussion's audit trail, Gary. That quote of Rhys' about work doesn't seem to be from this thread or to do with HPL? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.139.112 |
Forgive non sequitor. It just caught my interest. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Re: real work and stuff... Oh yes, the temporary prostituting of oneself to make cash and then take early retirement is a good strategy, but it requires the sort of stamina and self-discipline I don't have. I can't stand taking orders from anyone: that's why I'm no good working in the corporate world. I tend to get sacked for objecting to someone asking me to do something without saying "please" first. I had to throw a line manager down the stairs once for refusing to say "thank you." But I don't think I'm a psycho, just full of masculine pride in an old fashioned 'Corsican' sort of way. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
I had to throw a line manager down the stairs once for refusing to say "thank you." Hahahahaha...that's great.  | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
I'm touchy and highly strung about manners and stuff but only from a British perspective: in many parts of the world I've found that men have even shorter fuses than me (and it's not considered unusual or improper). | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
I've known a few line managers who would've benefited from that kind of treatment, Rhys. Ever considered hiring yourself out to teach employees self-respect? Management management, as opposed to anger management... | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Management management? That's almost meta! I'm a sucker for anything meta! It gives me a hard on, but I won't confess that in public. Playing games with the rules of the game... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Met a what? And presumably they would know without the need for a confession. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Oh sorry, no, they wouldn't. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Rhys, a cheap gag is to me what meta is to you. I apologise. |