In the Desert of Madness

Okay. Wow. The Shadow Out of Time. I’m still a bit shaken. He actually asks all of the questions that the reader is asking himself the entire time. The narrative combines the best of all the techniques he’s developed. It’s kind of perfect. It’s an exploratory novel that manages to remain suspenseful and frightening. It hints at the characters created in previous stories and manages to not over-burden the reader with them. I really can’t say much about it other that the fact that I think it’s perfect.

That missing nothing

I don't know what to think. The Dreams in the Witch House, and actually all of the later things have been generally more well-written. I'm not distracted by character or plot elements, but something of the atmosphere is definitely missing. I think the focus on tangible concepts and events is a big part of this. I think about The White Ship or Erich Zann - where the struggle is mostly internal - or at least a psychologist would attempt to to convince one that the struggle is internal -- but then something externalizes it. Even From Beyond is an excellent example of the internal struggle externalized. So while the Witch House has all of the elements of a really scary story, I think it's missing the internal struggle and focuses on the externalization of the events which (really?) are internal.
The Evil Clergyman and The Book are really just lacking development. The Clergyman is like a full short story with all of the important (read: scary) bits edited out and The Book is just an exposition - there's no development and the climax happens before the story even started. It could have been great: a character who doesn't know if the event he's relating are past, present or future. It would be a nightmare to try and organize into a comprehensible text, but if it succeeded, it would be amazing.

lovecraft really is a shitty novel writer, but the short stories are awesome

Okay, let's just skip the bad, At the Mountains of Madness was horrible. Aside from the fact that it used the increasingly over-used device of setting something in a remote place (Antarctica) , and being just an explanation of setting—which, being in Antarctica, really doesn’t get you far, it was really just an historical record his “Elder Ones” on Earth… with an occasional, “Oh yeah, I was scared” or, “and this reminded me of how frightened I was”. Honestly, it would have been an awesome short story had the exposition of their leaving New England been omitted, their travel and arrival, and the first exploration party’s demise been omitted, and the story started with the two–man rescue team looking for the first party. After that, omitting the fake history of the “Elder Ones” (which really added little to the story, excepting how the shoggoths came to be and evolve) and you’ve finally got an interesting story.
No, let's forget all that and focus on Innsmouth, which is one of the scarier stories. Who of us doesn’t have an unknown ancestor and who’s to say who, or what, that ancestor did? And our future is equally unknown to us. Additionally, it finally made “ancestral birth places” relative to someone who knows nothing about his.
I swear, it’s like he knows I’m reading these.

vacation, expatriotism and self-canonization

Okay, I've had my vacation. Read lots during that time: The Colour Out of Space, The Thing in the Moonlight, The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in the Darkness and the fictional histories. What was up with those? It was like he intentionally wanted to canonize his characters and event, locations, and items. Okay as a personal study to make sure that the world he's created would stay true to itself it would be okay, but to publish it jest felt icky.
The horror stories were sufficiently horrifying, and read in broad daylight. Although I think I've figured out why this love of his hometown, or ancestral ground annoys: a) I'm an expat b) I'm a black American. If there were any ancestral feeling I'd probably have to a place, they'd be in Africa: somewhere I've never been. And I voluntarily left the place of my birth; possibly because I don't have any irrational feelings holding me there.

Damned Good

Wow, talk about damned good. Charles Ward is proving to be so much better than that last one that I can’t even remember its name. It’s got depth and maturity, stories within stories, character development that’s insanely good, references to ideas and characters in previous stories (what is up with his re-using names?) and an engaging and cohesive plot. It’s like he set out to write a short story and just expanded on details in the story by writing a short story. I’m only about halfway through the story [this update is actually going up late, and I’ve actually finished the story now, but I want to keep the continuity] and I’ve just pieced (okay, it was kind of given to us) together that Charles is Joseph Curwen and I’m really excited to see how the story comes together.

Well that sucked

I want my money back.
Or, since the whole collection only cost me $1.42, the last three or four days of my life I spent reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath back. I haven't been this disappointed in a novel since I didn't read Tess of the D’Urbervilless in English Lit. (sorry, Mrs. Stonehill). If it were all just an excuse to provide an introduction for Nyarlathotep, then it was an overly-long and overwrought one. If it were an attempt to create a single universe where all of the events of the previous stories are codified and brought together, is succeeded but at the expense of the read. (I think I now truly understand horror–the horror of a horrible novel._ If it were an attempt to cash in on a larger audience of novel readers, and make more money than with short stories, I hope he has better luck in the future, because this single novel wasn’t worth what I paid for the whole collection, and had it been the first thing of his I’d read, I wouldn’t continue (A Farewell to Arms says 'Hi!')
I’m generally not a fan of adventure stories, especially not ones with so much violence (there’s a lot of violence and war in this), but I thought because I genuinely enjoy the writing of the previous short stories, and the had the hope that the hallmarks I’ve seen the previous stories would become more apparent, I decided to keep reading. But the writing is bogged down in the detailing of events that the explanation of motive (or lack thereof) which makes the other stories so interesting is completely missing here. Even Herbert West, which uses the detailing of event to create mood still remembers to give the reader a very conspicuous lack of motive as to why his friend sticks around, and that makes the story all the more gruesome.
The next one had better be damned good.

Magic!!!

There is magic in the world. I think we all know this instinctively and it's an unfortunate series of events that leads us to forget it. I was lucky--I don't think my father ever truly forgot this fact, despite the best efforts of the world we live in to take this knowledge away form him. I think it was a conscious effort on his part to try and constantly remind me of this when I was younger--especially since I was part of the effort to take this knowledge away from him.

Randolph Carter and his silver key reminded me again. I constantly repeat that these stories were written with me specifically in mind, and the more I read, the more I am convinced of this. I know that I will forget again, and I hope that something in my future comes along to remind me.

Yes, I read The Call of Cthulhu and I think that there's nothing I can really say about it that hasn't already been said. It hasn't really affected me personally (and I hope it never does), so I'll leave the literary criticism to those more capable of it than I.

they are not alone

The stories are not independent! To call them a novel is also inaccurate, but to suppose that each one exists solely on its own merits, completely without regard to the events of the other stories is incorrect. Certainly themes will re-occur in any good writer, especially one of stories of the terrible, but the reality that, at a certain point, the stories need each other in order to create a cohesive narrative wasn't clear until I read the Descendant. When I first read it, last night, with the assumption that the story was independent, it was just a character, a bit of prose that had no beginning, no exposition, no climax and no denouement. I decided to re-read the story, and I remember The Nameless City. It's the same character, or at least a descendant of his. Suddenly the re-occurrence of themes brings on a whole new meaning and I can't read the same way. Try it. Read The Descendant. Find the horror--the terror in it. There is non. Then read The Nameless City and you'll find it. It's kind of like watching a well written season of Doctor Who, where minor events turn up later to be very important to a central story.

To be honest, now I'm afraid to continue reading.

Re-Animator

Herbert West—Re-animator
The most frightening part of this story is not the events, which are gruesome, it is not the disjointed manner in which the story is told, not the subject, the characters, or even the end--it is the matter-of-fact way in which the events are related. The narrator-dragged along partly against his will, partly out of curiosity, partly out of fear, and partly, I suspect, out of a genuine desire to help keep his friend from doing something completely stupid--relates the events rather perfunctorily, as if their actions and the results of those actions were completely commonplace and normal.
I noticed today, for the first time really, that depending on the severity of the story, I end up in a kind of dazed stupor after reading. Even if I end on a "lighter" story, I still am less responsive afterwards. They're starting to have a slightly soporific effect on me. Or maybe I notice (call it) that because I just finished "Hypnos"

The soundtrack of my life

I think i should stop reading these.
The Music of Erich Zann. Just moments after writing my last update, I started the Music of Erich Zann. I am a composer, having played music my entire life. As I read the story, Poulenc's organ concerto began playing. It starts calmly, as does the story, and as I exited the tram, as the story began to reach its fevered pitch,  the organ reached his maddening crescendo. To say that the mood of the story matched that of the music would be understatement of wild proportion. But it doesn't end there. Then the rain began, the unknown horror that plagued and tormented poor Hr. Zann seemed to have been re-awakened. The calm before the storm? Quite literally. I don't think I'll ever recover.

Desensitized

Either I'm becoming desensitized to the stories, or I'm going through a section with more "distracting" or fantastic themes. The Outsider, I found actually rather quaint: telling a story from the point of view of the evil seeking only to find its way to the light - without any clear concept of self or purpose until confronted, rather rudely, with its reflection.
 And yet, I can't help but remember the concept of "the calm before the storm", for as much as I think I've acclimated to the writing and general tenor of the themes, somewhere, in the back of my mind is still the memory of how I felt after The Nameless City, and of what happens when curiosity clouds our very important sense of impending doom, a justly founded fear of things we should avoid, and in more logical moments know better than to be curious about.

From Beyond

Okay, I get it. It’s all been planned, very carefully from the beginning. First a systematic distrust of the fallibility of mythology, then blurring the distinction of fantasy & reality, then in true trickster fashion, digression and fantastic tales to relax, then BAM! From Beyond.
Holy Fuck. What if they aren’t just stories? There’s already enough to question how based in fact the “stories” that make up mythology are, so what if these stories comprise a more modern kind of mythology? Tales which we can’t rationally explain, but are plausible enough to be real?
Is it possible that another plane of existence co–exists with us? Of course. Is there any way to verify this? Perhaps all attempts end the same—situations we explain as murder or similar. What about if, once aroused, that fine membrane separating our existence from things we couldn’t understand becomes weaker and something as simple as turning on a light switch is enough to give us a glimpse into another world. You know what sounds like a good idea right now? Re-watching Altered States.

Dick and The Street

I have to admit, after yesterday's rather…unsettling story, I really didn't feel up to another story - so I cheated. I decided to distract myself with some Philip Dick. The earlier short stories generally deal with war and it's a nice tangible concept to anchor myself after the nebulous uncertainty of Lovecraft.

This morning, however, I decided to soldier on and finished Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family and The Street. The former would have been probably completely unbearable for me had I read it yesterday, because even though I'm not white, I am at some point descended from Africa. However, reading it just before The Street, made it completely bearable. A simple pro-America story with colonialism as a positive attribute! Very different from my normal concepts about the American Conquest.
I think that if there are enough of these "lighter" digressions, I won't have to cheat and can focus solely on this project.

Beginning and, "The Temple"

I realize that I'm starting a bit late in this project, hopefully not too late, but after this morning, I realize that a very telling account will come of this endeavor. To start, although I am, and always have been an avid reader, I have managed to live these thirty two years and neglect one of the most celebrated authors: Lovecraft.

I am currently on the fourteenth story in an endeavor to read all of his works, having just finished The Temple. Several hours after finishing the story, I am considerably less rattled and feel that I can put down my thoughts in a somewhat coherent manner. Perhaps it is because I'm reading these stories, and because the writing style is so unique (peculiar?), and I am usually very heavily influence in how I think by what I read, I found the idea of keeping a journal as I read these stories very appropriate for the Lovecraft stories.

After these few stories, I slowly coming to understand the horror that he describes. Horror, however, is the wrong word. He creates a world of sanity, logic and reason, and into this world he slowly introduces the impossible. Or rather, the unexplainable via reason and logic. It is this juxtaposition, the confrontation of the unimaginable with the desire to find an explanation for it is the essence of his stories.

At this point, the stories make me question mythology, and how mythological these older cultures actually are.